Here at GirlDreamer, we talk a lot about Living Your Best Life.
We mention it frequently, on our socials, in our newsletters and in person when we get the chance to see our incredible community at our events, workshops or programmes. It is a phrase that is cemented in our vocabulary.
Despite using it so often and determining it as a goal, we realised that we have never really explained what living your best life means to us.
In short, living your best life for us is a goal and an expectation. It means that if we aren’t already, we plan to seek and embody happiness. We will seek and craft out enjoyment and peace. Living our best life means that we navigate life focusing on positivity and living with optimism, planning to thrive.
Now, we know this is a lot easier said than done. Trying to remain positive and optimistic doesn’t really account for the intricacies of life and its ever-challenging and moving parts. For us, living our best life encompasses this. We place importance on looking ahead and feeling confident that whatever we are going through, we will get through it. It is not about quick fixes, overnight changes, or dismissing real-world problems but understanding that we can truly live the life that we want to without having to settle.
With the start of a new year and a natural desire to have a great year, we wanted to share our tips on how to truly live your best life.
Evaluate your life
In living your best life, it is beneficial to first evaluate things in your life and determine what brings you joy and importantly, what doesn’t. Acknowledging what brings you happiness will encourage you to actively seek this and work to carve out your happiness. Evaluating your life helps you determine why you are doing what you are doing. From this, you can understand the reasoning behind the choices you have made and plan to make. You can determine if the path you have chosen in life brings you joy, whether you are where you want to be in life, if you want to make a change and what it is that you want from your life. In doing this, you will be able to work towards the life that you want and can prioritise your happiness and live your best life.
Prioritise Your Happiness
If there is one thing we can all do more, it is to dedicate some more time to ourselves. Prioritising yourself and your happiness is a necessary part of living your best life. In prioritising yourself and your happiness, you advocate for yourself. You practice and sustain habits that bring you joy. You regularly and importantly choose yourself and your peace. Prioritising your happiness goes hand in hand with living your best life. It ensures that you do not put yourself on the back burner and that you consider yourself to be important and worthy of self-care.
A part of prioritising your happiness that coincides with living your best life is showing kindness and patience to yourself. With life’s ever-moving parts, it is vital that you show up for yourself and show up with kindness. Developing a healthy relationship with yourself is essential to living your best life, as it means you can offer yourself grace, comfort and compassion whenever needed.
As you live your best life, you dedicate time and advocate for yourself because you are a priority and should treat yourself as such. Practice some self-care. Buy yourself a treat, and indulge in some joys. You cannot live your best life without showing up for yourself first.
Don’t Look Back
It is all too easy to constantly look back and think of what-ifs. Regret wastes your energy. Constantly looking to the past and wondering what could have been is antithetical to living your best life.
Do not get us wrong. We know that this is easier said than done. Reflection and regret are all natural parts of life, and living your best life does not mean that you reject the truth of this. It simply means that while you understand regret and reflection are natural, you are realistic in understanding that what’s in the past has passed. We cannot change what has happened, regardless of how we may feel. You understand that you cannot control everything and know that life will happen around us, and sometimes it will not happen in your favour. And that is okay.
In living your best life, you look back with kindness and compassion for yourself. You don’t judge your previous years or choices harshly but with an understanding of how unhealthy it is to harp on the past and harbouring resentment for past choices and decisions. In living your best life, you look ahead with positivity, clarity and excitement.
In living your best life, you have faith and remain hopeful that things will get better. You regularly look ahead. You look ahead with excitement and an understanding that the best is yet to come.
Here at GirlDreamer, living our best life means that we remain positive and have faith in ourselves and the universe. We have a deep understanding that our life will be good. Life will be great, in fact.
