Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Meghashyam Chirravoori. We all want to live our best possible life. We want improvements in finances, relationships and everything else. Yet we all know that it is “we” who needs to change in order to improve these areas. Here are 25 interesting, inspiring and practical tips that can help you change the way you look at the world and to live a better life. 1) Clearly understand that happiness does not lie in the past or the future. It lies in the present moment. Sometime during the day, pay attention to the sounds around you, the sights you see, and feel the air touching your skin. The small things you pay attention to in the moment will fill you with contentment in that moment. 2) Accept people and situations completely as they are, and THEN choose your response. When an unpleasant situation occurs or when someone is angry at you, instead of saying, “This should not be so” or “Why is this so?”, say, “This is so. I accept this that I see it to be the truth because it is so.” Now, choose what you truly want to do. Don’t choose to impulsively react to the unpleasant situation as that will lead to more pain and unpleasantness without a healthy no solution. 3) Change your identity from a person who is doing, thinking, and talking etc. to a “Watcher.” Detach yourself from your identity, your words, your actions and observe yourself as if you were an outsider watching. Watch your anger, your joy, your pain, your sadness, your stress, your excitement, your pleasure…Just watch yourself and smile. J This will give you peace. 4) Every time you are afraid, go ahead and face it. No matter what, do not succumb to the fear. Every time you succumb to fear, you are telling yourself that it is OK to be afraid. You’re reinforcing that you have no courage! Go give a speech, dance in public, talk to a stranger…do things you are afraid of doing. They will teach you how courageous you can be. 5) No matter what, maintain an overwhelmingly positive attitude. Just maintaining a positive attitude may or may not improve your life, but maintaining a negative attitude, complaining, criticizing, and saying how terrible things are will never improve your life. No matter how many times things go wrong, go ahead and believe they’ll rock! 6) Understand that you are on earth to learn a lot of things. Whenever you fail, whenever things go wrong, know that this is happening so you can learn something. Therefore, when life sucks, ask yourself what you can learn from the situation and look for the lesson. You will find that solutions appear and problems disappear. 7) Know that you are completely and wholly responsible for everything in your life. None of your friends, enemies, relatives or colleagues is responsible for your life. You are! If Viktor Frankl could write a book and rock the world while living in a Nazi concentration camp, you can see how much control of your life you can take if you CHOOSE to. 8) Realize that self discipline is as important for achievement as passion, energy, or desire. The most earnest desires are useless if you are too lazy to follow up on them. Also, even when doing work that you absolutely love, you will encounter situations where you’ll feel like giving up and not doing anything. Self discipline is what will ultimately carry you through once the initial euphoria is gone. 9) In any relationship, make sure you establish clear boundaries of giving. Take care to respect both yourself and others. Don’t go overboard with giving to such an extent that you starve yourself. If you do not give to yourself first, you will eventually start resenting the other person. Similarly, don’t get so involved in yourself as to not respect the other person at all, because then there is no relationship, there is only you. 10) Do not try to control people and make them act the way you want them to. No matter how hard you try, they will always resist it and they won’t act exactly the way you want. You won’t be happy doing this either. Celebrate the differences and contrasts between you and others and respect them for it. 11) It is very important to be true to your deepest self. This is more important than any other loyalty to anyone or anything. If you are not true to your deepest self you cannot be happy, no matter what your circumstances, because other people and situations will control you, and you will be living an unauthentic life. 12) If you know you should be doing something, then go ahead and do it now. Remember “some day” never comes. If you think you should stop that fight on the street, stop it now. If you know you should change your job, go ahead and change it now. When you are saying, “not now, someday”, you are basically saying, “never.” 13) Do not think of what other people are thinking about you – be yourself completely instead. Whenever you are overcome by fear about what others may think of you – let that fear pass through you and take the action you want to take. Even if you’re afraid and your head is full of other people’s comments, go ahead and do what you know you want to be doing. 14) Remember that the past and future are illusions. They exist only in your head. Only right now exists. And there are no problems right now. 15) Remember that there are no shortcuts to anything worth achieving. You will have to work hard, learn from mistakes and keep going. Even the law of attraction needs to be mastered if you want to use it – it is not as easy as saying “Hey come over here, I want to attract you!” 16) Doing something purely for someone else is amazing – almost divine – it’s called unconditional love. Try doing with pure love often. However, don’t fall into the trap of doing something for someone and subconsciously expecting returns while consciously thinking your love is unconditional. If there are conditions, accept that there are conditions. If there are no conditions, that’s a beautiful thing. 17) Read a lot – as much as you can – especially about things of interest. Reading a wonderful book is like having a wonderful conversation with a wonderful person. There are so many things you can learn about just by reading a little each day. 18) No matter what, do not make another person, or any object or thing (like money) the center of your existence. Keep your center deep within yourself. Whoever or whatever you make your center you give that person or thing the power to control your life. Your happiness and pain will then vary depending on the stability of your center and you will never be peaceful. 19) Learn to say yes to what you truly feel good about and no to what you do not truly feel good about. It is OK if people get offended or even drift away from you – because you cannot control them! If you say yes in order to please someone, you will secretly resent that person and you will also feel controlled and unhappy. 20) Allow yourself and others to make mistakes. Sometimes, you may be very afraid of taking a “wrong” step – but don’t let that fear stop you from taking action because you can never perfectly rule out wrong steps. You have to make some mistakes in order to learn. Sometimes you know that others are making a mistake so you warn them and they refuse to listen. Let them be in this case, because they will learn when they are ready. 21) Realize that you never need to wait to feel motivated or inspired. Motivation does indeed follow action, so start taking action even if you feel unmotivated. Soon motivation will rush in and fill you up. Just starting to do something instead of postponing it is a superb motivator. 22) Know that business is about truly helping people. And therefore, so is making money. If you ever fail in business or are not able to make money – ask yourself, how can I really help people? [Note that people need to feel helped, your saying you are helping is not enough.] 23) Realize that there is something to learn from everyone around you. Just because someone is inferior to you with respect to some quality does not mean they cannot teach you things. We can learn something from every person we encounter. 24) No matter what, be honest with yourself and others. Being honest means – having nothing to hide. The moment you hide things, you are succumbing to fear and succumbing to fear (rather than facing it) is the enemy of happiness. 25) Spend time learning, fulfilling your own true desires, playing, having fun, relaxing, unwinding, laughing, and doing things that you enjoy doing. Remember that the better you feel, the more you can help the world and influence others in a positive way. Out of all of the tips mentioned pick a few that you think will help improve your life the most. Even incorporating a couple of these ideas can help you experience more fulfillment and well-being. What other tips can you think of to start being the best version of you? Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Meghashyam Chirravoori. Meghashyam is a personal growth enthusiast and the editor of a “different” motivational quotes e-book called 500 Steve Pavlina Quotes. Meghashyam believes that life is a learning process and is always using words like “conscious”, “choice”, “heart”, “deep down”, “honestly” in his daily conversations. He also writes about living a more inspired and meaningful life at personal-development-is-
