I am sure I am much the same as everyone else……If someone was to ask me what my best life would like it would be full of pleasures and engaging in my favourite activities and fulfilling my dreams and not having to worry about money etc. I would own my own beautiful home, be a successful singer song writer, etc. However, fantasies aside, it is actually important to consider what it means to live my best life right now with the conditions I have currently manifesting.
As humans we want several things which are probably universal desires: we want ease, we withdraw from suffering and we want to be with the people we have harmony with and whom we love . We also don’t seem to like to like to engage in too much effort and can easily slide towards the lowest common denominator in terms of behaviours and attitudes!
I would like to challenge ourselves to think what ” living our best life ” might actually mean in real time current reality. I actually don’t think it is any of the things I have mentioned above.
I think ” Living Our Best Lives” means we live consciously from moment to moment being the best we can manage that day. It means holding ourselves accountable, striving to bring forth our good qualities of kindness, patience , effort, moral discipline, wisdom and bravery. It means learning new skills, keeping fit and eating wholesomely.
Living our best lives requires a courage and an honesty with ourselves that could sometimes be disquieting. It means knowing our weaknesses and our shadow side so we can candidly recognise when this manifests without kidding ourselves or pretending. Often we can hide from the truth within ourselves. Being internally honest can be scary stuff for it leaves us humbled and reduces pride.
We can not live our best lives without this degree of internal honesty for otherwise we do not know where to practice mindfulness, where or how to make goals that elicit positive change. It also therefore requires us to be kind towards ourselves so we don’t fall into a morass of self loathing. Media always presents perfection; perfect houses, beautiful bodies, brilliant/special people. But, actually none of that exists……we are just all bumbling, muddley people getting by in life; we forget thing, drop things, say the wrong thing. Humanity, by it’s very nature is utterly imperfect and that is our endearing quality and our weakness and our point of growth. We are here to learn and grow in this life we are in.
So, what does your best life look like in the life you are in, with the conditions that define your life? We all have different life situations and life challenges and different temperaments . So, no two people’s best life is alike.
The following is something of mine:
To cultivate internal honesty and hold myself accountable.
To be kind to myself and others
To act with as much wisdom as I can muster ( I think I have a long way to go with this.)
To continually learn or face challenges that will help me develop new skillsets or grow as a being.
To be happy to challenge things that need challenging ( not easy this one).
To love as wisely as I can
To give and be a light beam in this world through being me and my work.
To enjoy what pleasures that come to me
To reframe my difficulties and challenges so that I remain un-jaded and optimistic .
These are the thoughts that swirl around my head as I live my little life, love those in my path and encounter the challenges that come my way.
Living my best life is therefore a daily challenge that does not allow me to sink into apathy or smallness. It is a call to grow from an acorn to an oak. I may never reach the metaphorical oak but the process is the all important thing. It is the alchemy of growth, the rainbow that is beautiful but forever changing, the spiral that keeps turning, the song that is always being sung.
I nurture my best life in the humbleness of each day, wherever I am at, as imperfect human me.
Abi's World of Music 