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How many people do you know go through life with their head down, shoulders hunched and a constant frown on their face? Stand outside virtually any tube station, any busy city centre and you’ll see them. It’s as if they have the world’s problems bearing down on them and on them alone. They look miserable and they more than likely feel miserable.

It may seem like a weird thing to say, but how you live your life is 100% up to you. You can learn to live your life in any way you want.

Glass half empty or half full?

If you’re going through life with a ‘glass half empty’ outlook, it’s not surprising that you feel low and attract people with low emotions into your life. If you’re someone who smiles in the face of adversity, feels grateful and does all you can to extend a hand of kindness, you’re likely to feel completely differently and attract a whole different sort of network. Learning to live isn’t quite as odd a phenomenon as it may sound. In the same way that you breathe, think, digest and move, you can live life consciously or unconsciously. If you live it consciously or mindfully if you prefer, you really can begin to live how you want to.

Setting SMART goals

Learning to live is no different to learning any other skill. You need to decide what you want as an outcome and then set about working how you’re going to achieve it. When you set goals, it’s always a good idea to set SMART goals. Goals that are SMART are:

Specific

Measurable

Actionable

Reasonable

Time specific

Take this as an example…It may be that you are someone who rarely socialises or makes time to go out of the house solely for pleasure. If you have a big event coming up in a few months’ time, you may be worried about your lack of ability or keenness to go out. You could then set a SMART goal to help change your attitude. In this example, a specific action to change your mindset would be that at least 3 days a week you make a point of going out to meet someone or to where there are lots of people.

By planning your actions in this way, you can easily measure your progress by looking at your actions on a week by week basis. If you aim to do this for only 20-30 minutes per day, for example, this would be a goal that would put you sufficiently out of your comfort zone to instigate change, but wouldn’t push you so far that it would scare you.

Learning to live means different things to different people and in your own journey of personal development, you need to be clear on what it means for you and setting out your stall so you achieve it. Making progress little by little and rewarding yourself along the way is one of the most pleasurable and pain-free ways of instigating and sustaining change.

If you feel as if the life you’re living is less than you’d like it to be, learning to live how you want to isn’t as far-fetched as it may sound. Why not give it a go?