Everywhere I look recently people keep saying WE ONLY LIVE ONCE – make the most of it. I thought it would be good to stop for a moment and reflect on it.If you don’t believe in reincarnation or the after life, I guess it is only fair to admit that we only live once. Somehow, we turn this amazing gift which is life into a dramatic story. More and more people are diagnosed with mental illnesses, they are suicidal and depressed. They are overworked, unappreciated or unhappy with their life choices. Even though they don’t like the situation they are in they don’t seem to try and find the way out. I can’t help but wonder why so many of us put our careers, peer pressure, strangers or family opinions before our own happiness. Is it the emotional blackmail from a spouse, the concern of not finding a better job or the fear of not meeting someone’s expectations?

Everyone is different and struggles with their own insecurities the best way they can, but we need to find a way out from the misery before it is too late. We can’t take life too seriously as it wasn’t intended that way. The biggest enemy in your life is the person staring at you in the mirror. Reinvent yourself, fall in love with yourself again, became healthy selfish, put yourself on a pedestal. If you fail to do so, life will become a never-ending battle of survival.

You need the right ATTITUDE to start with. Stop overanalysing, dwelling on things, asking the wrong people for advice, or asking the wrong questions. How do you recognise if they are wrong? If your family/friends never took a chance in life, they have probably been stuck in the same job/relationship for ages and complain about it. They are most likely to be the ones to criticize any decisions you make or discourage you from moving forward. They are scared and fear is a progression blocker. You should ask questions like: What makes ME happy? What do I want to achieve? Where do I see myself in the future? Set your own deadlines. Society created those fake norms that by certain age you need to get somewhere (buy a house, build a family etc). You need to set your own pace. There is no need to put extra pressure on yourself. Sometimes the f.ck off attitude works magic. No one should dictate to you what to do and when. Your life your rules.

We live for moments. We expect (hope, pray) continuously for a happy life but that’s simply impossible. It is not in our nature to be happy 24/7 we can be content but that’s about it. Imagine a life when you are constantly ecstatic. How tiring that would be. You wouldn’t recognise happiness without sadness. As humans we need to go through all sorts of emotions, the bad ones and the good ones. They make us. The sooner we stop chasing nirvana the better our wellbeing. When we look back in the past we think about moments, some magical and some not so much. That’s what makes our lives so special. We need to learn gratitude. There are so many things we should be thankful for and yet we focus on the ones which make us miserable. That needs to change. ACCEPT that life is not and is not going to be perfect. Accept your flaws, your bad moods, your imperfections.

We can’t change others mentality, however, we can change our perspective on life. The world is becoming a better, safer place but bad news travels much faster and is much more appealing to the audience. Not a surprise then that in our personal lives we have the tendency to focus on the bad events rather than good ones. We just follow the pattern. If your habit is to think about the worst scenarios like becoming sick, jobless, lonely… sooner or later, that would become your reality. Subconsciously you are introducing all the events to your life. They say if you want something badly and work towards it really hard you will get it. It is the same with negative feelings. If you keep thinking about them (even though you don’t want them to happen) they will CONTROL your thoughts.

Positivity is portrayed as a delusion to “realistic” or “negative” people. They will say “think about the worst that can happen, prepare yourself to fail”. It is good advice that we need to be prepared for all scenarios (in personal or business life) but we need to focus only on winning. Along the way we will possibly fail hundreds of times but that’s just life. FAILURE is needed in our development otherwise we would not learn much. You need to fail and then rise as many times as possible until you reach your goal. If you learn how to love failure you will conquer one of the biggest fears in our generation.

When I call myself positive, I am focused on the outcome. I am not ignorant to all the things which could happen wrongly. I just truly believe that at the end of each of my journeys there would be a happy ending. I need to trust that otherwise there would be no point to wake up every day. I programmed myself that way a long time ago, it wasn’t easy at first, but practice made it easy.

We put so much pressure on ourselves and our children. Technology gives us easy access to all sorts of information, so much in fact that we need to segregate them carefully. Social media impacts our lives massively. Some may not even realise how the world has changed since all the platforms were introduced to public. Changes were inevitable and not everyone can adjust to them fast enough. Once you create your profile you are sucked into it. You spend more and more time in a virtual world than in the real one. You can’t leave your phone behind for 10 mins because you have a feeling that you miss out on something important. The topic about the advantages and disadvantages of social media circles around the world but nothing is going to change as we are already consumed by the product.

It is the pace of life which worries me. We were never designed to live so fast and it is mainly due to technology. We need everything NOW or even better… yesterday. Fast transportation, fast communication, fast customer service, fast food and so on. Do you think our brains have adapted to all the changes within the last 20-30 years? No! They wouldn’t, even if we have 100 years. We are sprinting through life. How far can you actually get on full capacity? How many tasks can you complete and how much information can you absorb? At one point you will feel massively overwhelmed and drained. Slow down, pace yourself. Time is money but you are going to be much more productive if you allow yourself to rest. To find a balance between leisure and work is incredibly important.

WE HAVE ONE LIFE AND YET NO ONE ACTS LIKE IT.

How long can you pretend that everything is fine when deep inside you are crying for help? How long can you build those fake social media profiles on which you are the happiest and most successful person, when behind closed doors the reality is so different.

Time (apart from health which we are not in full control of) is the biggest asset. Please don’t be the one who wakes up one day basically on his death bed wishing that life could give him another chance. Make sure your life is not filled with regrets. Make your mistakes, challenge yourself, find your passions and follow them. There is no time machine (yet 😊).

TAKE THE FULL ADVANTAGE OF NOW.