The Behaviors That Keep You From Living Fully
Everyone wants to feel as though they are living fully. But the truth is that this is often harder to achieve than you might think. If you are wondering what you might need to do in order to live your life much more fully and in a more engaging way, there are a variety of areas that you might want to look into. In this post, we are going to take a look specifically at some of the behaviors that you might be engaging in which are stopping you from living fully. If you can look into and adopt these, you will find that you are living your life much more fully soon enough.
Trying To Predict The Future
Most of us spend far too much time and energy trying to figure out what is going to come in the future. The fact is you can’t know the future, and you are not able to predict it at all. While you can make plans, really these are just wishes, and there is no real way to know what is going to happen. Many people get too caught up in the notion of the future, to the point that they end up worse off than if they just merely lived moment to moment. Not only that, but humans are famously pretty bad at knowing what will make them happy anyway, so you probably don’t even know what kind of life you should aim for.
Instead of trying to predict the future all the time, put a little more effort into living as fully as you can right now – the present moment, the only moment that you have any control over.
Moving Away From Fear
There is an automatic assumption that most of us make with regard to the feeling of fear, that it is bad and something to be avoided. You might think that feeling happy is good and feeling scared is bad. The problem here is that these formulations are not actually facts about those feelings, but interpretations – and as it happens, they might be less than useful interpretations when it comes to making wise decisions for yourself.
If, instead of trying to keep away from the feeling of fear, you actually try to embrace it a little more, you might find yourself starting to do things you thought you weren’t capable of. And that will mean you are probably living more bravely and with a much better sense of adventure.
Addiction
Addiction comes in many forms, and most of us have at least one thing that we would say we are addicted to – or we would if we could see clearly that this is what it is. The trouble is that many of our most common addictions are actually hidden from us, and we can’t see that they are troublesome. It could be that you are addicted to a particular drug, in which case you might need substance use treatment to overcome it. Or maybe you are addicted to an everyday thing like your phone or screens in general. This is common, but still harmful, and you might want to see if you can do something about it.
Whatever the addiction is, the point is that it is probably stopping you from living fully, sometimes in a subtle way. So overcoming it will really help in turning things around.
Self-Sabotage
In a sense, self-sabotage could be lurking under any of the behaviors discussed above, and other behaviors too. But it is such a pernicious thing that it is worth investigating on its own too. How often have you found yourself to be self-sabotaging, without really realizing for ages, until one day it becomes clear to you that this is what you’ve been doing? This is a common cycle for many, and it can really effectively get in the way of whatever you are trying to achieve in life.
So what is the solution to self-sabotage? Firstly, you need to develop sufficient mindfulness that you can see when you are engaging in it. Soon enough, you will then start to see exactly when it is happening. Then you simply need to remind yourself why you are doing it, and try to replace it with a more useful action. Over time, this is going to become easier and easier, though it might take you quite a lot of practice. However, it is worth it for the good it will do you in your life now and in the future, so try it out.