What makes you feel alive? Here are five tools I use to help me feel alive:
1. Above all, take risks. No caterpillar can become a butterfly without risking leaving the cocoon. You must live unbridled!
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” Helen Keller
2. Fill your world with sensual pleasures wherever you can find them: the smell of a BBQ, the taste of your favorite ice cream, the sound of the ocean, the feel of your lover’s touch.
What are your sensual pleasures? I went from a secretive life to a sensual life. A material life to an experiential life. Don’t be ashamed to seek out what pleases and excites you in whatever form it takes, as long as it’s not harmful to others.
I enjoy dancing, the sound of the music, skating around the dance floor and laughter among friends. What is your pleasure?
“The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” Eleanor Roosevelt
3. If you want to feel alive, give life and give of yourself. Strive to make the world a better place because you were here. It definitely will make you feel alive. Pick something that you want to change and be the change you want to see. Is it sharing a love for cooking? Is it helping to empower women? Is it nurturing mother earth by gardening?
Mother Teresa was asked why she helped the children of Calcutta and she responded, “Because it gave ME so much joy!”
4. Don’t let anyone “suck the life out of you.” Negative people will bring you down to their victimization. Most people live lives of quiet desperation, dying with the music still in them. Seek out friends who are excited about life and all the opportunities to enjoy life.
“I do not want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” Diane Ackerman
5. Be aware of your life. Do you remember what excited you yesterday, what simple pleasures you enjoyed? We can be the co-authors of our life to create the life we want, to feel alive! It just may take thinking about what we want and then taking the risk to make it happen!
“Most people think once or twice a year. I’ve made an international name for myself by thinking once or twice a week. “ George Bernard Shaw.