Making The Best Out Of Life and How To Make Your Life Meaningful?
How to live a meaningful life?
What makes life meaningful?
Are there any standards? Is there a checklist that tells you you live a meaningful life?
The question of meaningful living and how to make your life meaningful has been bothering me for a while.
Probably, once you enter your 30s, you start seriously thinking about the direction your life has.
In a week time (the time I write this post, July 2020) I turn 33 and just as every other self-respected Cancer I start dramatizing on what I’ve done with my life so far (maybe other astrological signs do it too, but I know Cancers are very good at that).
Am I living a meaningful life, and what gives life value?
I dug a little bit here and there, and I read the same answers – find purpose, give to others, get a hobby…
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with these tips. In fact, they are must-do things…
But they didn’t give me the satisfaction I was looking for. I didn’t get the Aha!-moment.
So I had to think about it and decide…
What would make me feel like my life has a meaning?
If I was in my 80s and my life was steadily going towards its end, what would I want to live behind?
What would make me say “Yeah, dying isn’t fun, but my life had a meaning to me, and that’s what makes it less painful.”
Here are a few rules I came up with:
- Making life meaningful shouldn’t cost anything. It’s not just a cliche to repeat that the best things in life are for free (air, a kiss, a hug, a tier of joy)
- What is life all about? It’s about having some moments of joy, peace, happiness and adding quality to other people’s life. So everything that adds meaning to life must be simple, accessible, and a matter of choice.
With that said, I came up with 50 simple ways to give life meaning, and I can’t wait to share them with you. Maybe none of them will surprise you, and I believe that’s the reason they are so important.
I hope they mean something to you too.
50 Ways to Make Your Life Meaningful
1. Have someone to love.
2. Allow them to love you back.
3. Find gratitude in your heart.
I am amazed by the way gratitude has transformed my life. I use gratitude journaling as a way to appreciate the life I have, but also to manifest the life I want to have. If you struggle to start, I’ve got 10 gratitude journals to help you, and another 100 gratitude journaling prompts here.
4. Speak up your mind, but do it kindly.
5. Hold close to you the people that matter the most.
We often ignore the people who matter the most to us but living a meaningful life also asks for taking a step back and nurturing the relationships we have.
6. Learn something new every day.
7. Do things you love more often.
8. Change someone’s life.
9. Make people’s days better.
Just because I have a bad day, it doesn’t mean I should ignore others. I want people to feel good after they’ve met me.
10. Work on making your dreams come true.
Develop good daily habits and make sure they lead you to where you want to go.
11. Whatever you do, make sure it makes you happy.
12. Grow. Always look for ways to grow and improve yourself.
13. Enjoy quality food that makes you feel good about yourself.
14. Hug more often.
15. Look for reasons to smile.
Ideas to help you live a meaningful life
16. It’s all about perspective.
Things are as they are – we are the ones who attach feelings to reality. The moment we change our perspective on life is the moment when life changes as well.
17. Think thoughts that inspire you.
Even if we believe that positive thinking is good but unrealistic, we must admit that things look prettier and life feels better if we think positively.
18. Explore your own ideas.
Every dream or idea is a possibility – a new universe that cracks its door in front of us. We must explore it and see if it will take us on a beautiful journey. And it usually does.
19. Trust in yourself.
Trust and believe in yourself. Your self-belief is the single most crucial responsibility you have.
20. Be your best friend.
21. Be someone’s best friend.
22. Be someone’s hope.
23. Help if you can.
Stay away if you can’t help.
24. Appreciate people and things before you lose them.
How to make life more meaningful?
26. Find what makes you special and unique and embrace it.
We aren’t at school anymore. Being different isn’t a bad thing. In fact, being different means, you can offer something more to the world. The beauty is that we are all different, and we all have something different to contribute to this world. So let’s embrace it and love it.
27. Allow yourself to be happy.
The only person who stays in front of the door to happiness is yourself.
28. Always search for the good in the bad and not the opposite. (I must work on that a lot)
29. Evaluate. Contemplate. Reflect.
Only by occasionally stopping and looking back, we could evaluate how far we’ve come. Reflecting on life and its meaning is what helps us move ahead.
30. Aim for inner peace, whatever the situation.
Inner peace is that magic state of being in a state of accepting whatever life gives us and reflecting on what we’ve already got in our hands.
Creating meaning in life – ideas on how to live a meaningful life
31. Make people feel good about themselves.
32. Take risks.
Every risk you take gives you a 50% chance to win. Every risk you don’t take gives you a 100% chance to lose.
33. Enjoy quiet moments.
Book. Candle. Peace. Quiet moments are what make life stops for a second. Let everyone else keep spinning. You stop and enjoy this moment.
34. Watch more sunsets and sunrises.
35. Forgive. Others. Yourself.
36. Believe in a higher power.
We aren’t as big and as important as we think. Believing in a higher power reminds us that and keeps our feet on the ground.
37. Trust more.
It helps you create relationships that matter.
38. See the beauty in everything around you.
There’s plenty of it.
39. Be a role model.
To your kids. To your friends. To yourself.
Ideas on meaningful living
40. Work what you love and love what you work.
There aren’t too many other things that could ruin our lives as much as working something that sucks our energy out. If you are in this position, find a way to change it.
41. Do things with passion.
Or don’t do them at all… umm..except paying taxes.
42. Live in the present, but plan for the future.
43. Do only acts of love.
According to Gabby Bernstein – motivational speaker and life-coach; every action and every decision we take come from either a place of love or a place of fear. Our ego creates our fears, and our main task is to fight the ego and overcome our fears.
If we ever wonder if a decision we’ve made is good or bad, all we have to find out is if it came from a place of love or a place of fear.
44. Be the person who doesn’t get angry quickly.
45. Give – love, advice, hug, kindness, help…
Last 5 tips on what makes life meaningful
46. Love who you are.
47. Be focused on things that matter.
48. Do what the world needs.
That’s not mine. It’s the Japanese formula for life satisfaction.
49. Connect with yourself.
On every level.
50. Live every day in a way that makes you proud of yourself.
Recently I was asked by a fellow blogger if writing quality content is more important (but time-consuming) or the average one is fine too as it’s easy to crack out fast.
I advised him that if he puts his name underneath a piece of text, he needs to be proud of every word in it.
It’s the same with life. If we live a life and we call it “ours” than we must be proud of every day of it.
5 Books that help you live a meaningful life
At the end of this post, I would like to share with you five books that I believe will help you have a different perspective on the meaning of life.
40 Rules of Love by Elif Shafak
A book that takes you on a journey to understand and embrace love – for the others and yourself. One of the few books I’ve read more than once.
Here are a few quotes to help you tune with the book:
- “Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven’t loved enough.”
- “What we need is sincere self-examination. Not being on the watch for the fault of others.”
- “Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come”
Listen to it for free with Audible.
Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom
Based on a true story, this is the book that gives you deep dive into how to live a life you won’t regret you’ve lived. This book will make you laugh and cry, it will change your opinion of what life is about, or it will make you feel life is unfair. It doesn’t matter the feelings; one thing is a fact – you will be changed when you finish reading.
Here are a few quotes to help you understand the book:
- “Death ends a life, not a relationship.”
- “I give myself a good cry if I need it, but then I concentrate on all good things still in my life.”
- “We’ve got a sort of brainwashing going on in our country, Morrie sighed. Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat something over and over. And that’s what we do in this country. Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good. More is good. We repeat it–and have it repeated to us–over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all of this, he has no perspective on what’s really important anymore.”
- “Everyone knows they re going to die,’ he said again, ‘but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.”
The Five People You Meet In Heaven
Another book by Mitch Albom that won’t leave emotionless. What happens when we day? Who do we meet and why? How do we evaluate our lives, and what makes life truly meaningful? This is a book that explores all of these questions. It’s a quick read, it didn’t take me more than two hours to finish it, but I’ve read it more than once. It’s not the volume, ut the content that makes it memorable.
Quotes from the book:
- “All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.”
- “Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something to regret. It’s something to aspire to.”
- “The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.”
- “You have peace,” the old woman said, “when you make it with yourself.”
Listen to it for free with Audible.
The Secret Letters By The Monk Who Sold His Ferarri
I’m not sure if I’ve got a list of books on this blog (or my other blog) that doesn’t include at least one quote or book by Robin Sharma. The Secret Letters by The Monk Who Sold His Ferarri is a small book that gives you more than a few ideas on what matters in your life.
Quotes from the book:
- “We grow fearless when we do the things we fear”
- “The most important gift we can give ourselves is the commitment to living our authentic life. To be true to ourselves, however, is not an easy task. We must break free of the seductions of society and live life on our own terms, under our own values and aligned with our original dreams. We must tap our hidden selves; explore the deep-seated, unseen hopes, desires, strengths and weaknesses that make us who we are. We have to understand where we have been and know where we are going.”
- “It is important to remember that just as our words are our thoughts verbalized, so our deeds are our beliefs actualized.”
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
I know you’ve heard about this one, but there’s a reason everyone was talking about it years ago. It’s a story about the journey to finding true love – the love for yourself. It’s honestly my favourite book, and I’ve read it probably 10 times. Finding meaning in life is something different to all of us. This is one side of the story.
Quotes by the book:
- “This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”
- “I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it—I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you, too. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.”
- “When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.”
- “Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.”
Final thoughts on how to make your life meaningful
The simple truth is that we all have meaningful lives, and every life changes the face of this world forever. We never know how many other people’s lives we’ve touched and how we’ve changed them.
Enjoy what you have, embrace who you are and follow your heart’s calling – so trivial and yet so profound.
Can you do it?
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