Living a life you love is possible!

To me, a life to love is a joyful, fulfilled, and satisfying life.
To live it is not always so easy, or is it?

Summer often reminds us that living a life of such is possible simply because we take the time to “holiday”; to get away from the every-day and enjoy the sunshine and warm weather.

This might mean heading to the lake to enjoy beautiful sunsets and just being.  Heading into nature to camp or going to another country to learn about another culture. Or simply spending more time with family and friends.

It is a time in which we intentionally focus on replenishing our own battery and filling our cup up.

But then we come back to our lives and get back into the grind we often forgo the holiday spirit of being.

But what if you could lead a life that you do not need to take a vacation from?

I believe it is possible.

I personally am working on this myself and see glimpse of it and remember a time when I really did live that life. Then life shifted. We had a family, I took on more responsibilities and life got even busier as my son got older.

I got older.

I left some of the things that brought me joy and added other tasks in its place forgoing balance thinking it might help me get further faster.

In hindsight I missed the point.

But I believe within my inner knowing that this is possible to attain my best life, even while living a busy life.

And I believe one of the things that helps us is simply changing how we view our daily activities. Activities either drain us or fill us.

If life feels as though you need a vacation from it, or it is not (or not as) satisfying for you I offer the following exercise.

It is more an exercise in awareness, but it will give you amazing information that will help you choose to live a life to which you love and no longer need an escape from.

This exercise is a simplified and modified version of what have used with clients with chronic pain.

It is well documented that when you are happy, or doing activities that bring you more joy, we are lighter (physically lighter not just feeling lighter) which allows us to interpret pain in a different way.

The result, our perception of pain changes and we feel “less” pain.

The activity is simple.

Take a piece of paper fold it in half and open it up again. If you wish, draw a line along the crease.

On the top of one column 1 write daily activities that bring me joy (fill up my tank) and on the other (column 2) write daily activities that drain me or that must be done (they can be anywhere from neutral activities to activities we truly hate thus really drain us).

Take a moment now to write out the activities in each column.

Look at each column. Which one is bigger?

My guess is that column 2 is overflowing and there are very few items in column 1.

Take notice. Sit with the information you just received. What does it spark for you? Is it anger, sadness, motivation?

What are you now going to do with this information? What changes do you intend to make?

The second is to look at the two lists.

What could you add to fill you up column to balance it more with drain your tank column?

What items on the must do list could you possibly get rid of? Perhaps some of these takes are simply habit and you do not really need to do them. Perhaps you can ask the kids to do some of them? Ask your significant to help? What could you possibly pay someone to do.

Balance?

You will never have a list that is balanced in the number of “tasks” as simply some are more energy producing or draining than other tasks, but you can see where simple changes might help you create more time and space for activities that help build you up thereby increasing the joy you experience daily in your life.