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MAKING IT BETTER: Living Your Best Life!

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Monday, August 29th, 2016
20 comments

“Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose” – Helen Keller

Apart from the obvious economic drain, even devastation to many people’s lives, there are other more pertinent repercussions that prevail in the strive to keep up with the Jones’s. How much of yourself do you lose, trying to live up to an ideal that is simply unattainable?

I worked with a client a few years back and she has recently come back in my life for some more work. She is in her mid to late fifties, she has achieved comparative success in her professional life. She is relatively happily married with grown up children. She has spent most of her working life in one financial debt or another. She came to therapy because she felt she was losing control of her life and felt profoundly unhappy within herself despite all the success she had attained. She was unable to stop spending money on things she could ill afford; this constituted mainly clothing.

We explored how she felt prior to buying things; how she felt when she was actually making the purchases and what feelings she had post shopping. At first she was resistant to the process because she felt going shopping was a natural, instinctual, pleasurable activity that couldn’t and shouldn’t be analysed…’it is what it is’, she would say. After some gentle persuasion she agreed to take a closer look at the process and try and identify any emotions she could.

She was quite surprised at what she unearthed. It transpired that when she saw fashionable items in stores, in magazines, including trendy gadgets and gizmos, many of which she already possessed, she admitted to feeling a compulsion and desperation to acquire whatever it was. She said at that point she felt she needed to get the item in order to be fulfilled or to be the best person she could be. She said she felt having these things would make people appreciate her more; they would want to be associated with her and think she had a great life. I asked her if she herself felt all these things about herself regardless of what others thought. She said she did at times, but I had grave doubts if she really did. While she was going through the act of shopping, she describes feeling excited, full of anticipation and expectation. She said she had at times even trembled with the promise and prospect of her acquisitions. She said it would feel as if something wonderful was happening in her life. Then I asked her about her post shopping feelings to which she said that the excitement, elation and happiness she had felt initially was most times eventually be replaced with regret at times, other times disappointment, guilt and other times all three; which she said felt unbearable. But invariably the cycle would start all over again.

It was clear that she was trying to fill a void, emptiness, a bottomless pit that would never be filled with ‘things’. We had to begin to peel the layers of defences and coping mechanisms she had established over many years, to avoid the emotional and psychological pain she felt. This behaviour is very similar to any other addictive one which involves a vicious cycle of feeling bad, using, feeling good temporarily but ultimately feeling bad again or even worse and needing to repeat the act or amplify it.

There are many other ways to redirect difficult emotions that don’t involve the further damaging or degradation of one’s self esteem, and/or in my client’s case financial ruin. Rather than accumulating or hoarding material things to feel better, other healthier ways to build self esteem is by giving of yourself.

Don’t get me wrong, I love, love, love shopping and acquiring nice things! But I also don’t need them to make me happy. On the contrary I have learnt that my true happiness lies in the simpler things in life, my family, friends, my love for humanity and ‘making it better’

My client gave her permission for me to use her story

Below are some ways that have inspired me to feel fulfilled. Can you share some of yours and add to his list add to this list?

*Focus on the job you do, whatever it is, and do it with passion, giving it all you’ve got. Take great pride and invest yourself in it.

*Donate money, clothing to a charity, or better still volunteer a couple of hours of your time to help out.

*Try to surprise someone who has done good things for you in the past, with something thoughtful.

*Give money (no matter how small) to someone you know who needs it, and don’t expect it or anything else back in return.

*Be unconventionally nice to your house helps, shop assistance, people who we traditionally take for granted and tend to yell at.

*Get rid of the need to want some kind of payback or return from those you think ‘owe you’.

*Regularly practice an attitude of gratitude for the many gifts you do have.

Hold on to the belief that all the good things you do will come back to you tenfold or more.

*Seek out and associate with positive people who try to live righteously (not necessarily the same as religiously) and who challenge you by helping you to grow.

*When you give liberally without attaching any strings, you invariably inform the world and people around you that you are happily allowing yourself to be a vehicle for other people’s abundance and joy. The law of attraction does dictate that, the more generous you are, the more generosity you will attract. The same concept applies to reciprocity.

*The ability to freely, joyfully give back when you have been given gifts yourself, increases the probability that you will always be in a position of receiving yourself. We are all part of the same energy in the universe and we are always giving and receiving energy (both good and bad). What kind of energy are you giving or receiving?.

It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it were the only one we had.

 

 

 

 

 

20 Responses

  1. Making it better, not just for me alone but people around me.. I am always filled with joy when i see my friends, family and loved ones making it out there.. It gives me a feeling i can’t explain. Depression though shows its ugly face at times, but all my strength, joy, power i have found in God. I tend to live my best life. Thank you for this article.

  2. Life has no duplicate so one has to live it to the fullest. And one can only achieve that by just being one’s self come rain come shine.

  3. All we need in life is to live it as there’s no tomorrow. Eat well, be good to every dick and harry you come across on planet earth and belief in God almighty.

  4. I believe one great thing about life. life should not be taking hard. you leave life on a soft feelings you don’t leave a life of worries. by so doing you leave long.

  5. Make every single day count by living a worry less life. Making it better, not only when am the best in what I do but when my loved ones, my family, my friends and relatives achieve good success. When am able to put a smile on someone’s face, when am able to reach out to those that are wearied and down. Am successful when am able to fulfill God’s will for my life in every areas.

  6. Life is too short to worry and care about the negative things people think about you. Living it best at God’s expense not at people’s expense. So many people live people’s life not their’s. My friends are going shopping so I need to go shopping, my friends are wearing expensive stuffs so me too I want to put on expensive stuffs… Live your own life. Make every day count by putting Smile on someone’s face.
    Successful people have one thing in common, they do what unsuccessful people are unwilling to do.

  7. To be sincere, have sometimes be in the shoes of this woman illustrated in this article. But later put my self into order. Because I now believe I can never live my life to please others. I leave my life expected by God, have no worries, forget about the past, leave the very best of today and focus on the future.

  8. Living your best life is simply making things around you, everything about you and also everything within you the best. Love your self the way you are, love others the way you love yourself and appreciate everything in your life. Your family, friends, neighbour, spouse, colleagues etc.

  9. Life is all about choice, the only thing you can’t choose are your families, which include your parent, siblings and most of the time your extended ones. Every other thing you have a right to choose. Living the best of life is also a choice. Choose wisely from the things of life then you’v got to live the best life.

  10. Living your best life, hmmmm… The first thing to know is, what is life? Life is not a problem, life is just a dream for the wise. The best things in life comes sweatly, but never cry because its over, smile because it happened. Understand what life is and live the best of it.

  11. Always be positive about life. The ways to live the best of life is to build your self esteem, have self love – I quote “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” Be productive. Make sure you are doing what you love doing most/best.

  12. You must have more inner stability and self- sabotage less. When your opinion of yourself goes up then you’ll stop trying to get so much validation and attention from other people. You become less needy and find an inner stability even when your world might be negative or uncertain at times. The increasing self-esteem and self-love also makes you feel more deserving of good things in life and so you’ll self-sabotage less and go after what you deep down want with more motivation and focus than ever before.

  13. Life becomes simpler and lighter. When you love yourself more then things simply become lighter and easier. You won’t make
    as many mountains out of molehills (or out of plain air) as you used to. Or beat yourself up or drag yourself down over mistakes or temporary setbacks.

  14. “Life becomes simpler and lighter. When you love yourself more then things simply become lighter and easier. You won’t make as many mountains out of molehills (or out of plain air) as you used to. Or beat yourself up or drag yourself down over mistakes or
    temporary setbacks.” I quote

  15. Don’t rely on someone else for your happiness and self-worth. Only you can be
    responsible for that. If you can’t love and respect yourself – no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are completely; the good and the bad – and make changes as YOU see fit – not because you think someone else wants you to be different.

  16. Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive.
    And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

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