Eat Life – 15 life goals to aspire to

Eat Life – 15 life goals to aspire to 

‘Eat Life’, ‘take the bull by the horns’, ‘live life to the fullest’… there are so many idioms to say, ‘go out and live your life’.

How you approach life says a lot about who you are. Some of us choose to coast through, taking life as it comes, others stride through ticking off goals as they go.

So, here’s a scary fact – the lifespan of an average human is 75 years giving you roughly 27,375 days to do everything you want to do. Think of it like a ‘time bank’ from which you’re making an involuntary withdrawal each day you’re on the planet. Now if you’re 21, you’ll probably feel quite wealthy, look again when you’re 51 and you might not feel the same.

If you’re someone who likes to take life head on, someone who ‘eats life’, you probably make the most of every day and lead a happy and fulfilled life irrespective of the ups and downs along the way. It also means you’re much less likely to be on your death bed expressing regrets such as wishing you hadn’t worked so hard, that you’d kept in touch with your friends, expressed your feelings more openly, or simply lived a better life.

As kids, we tend to live moment to moment, our thoughts centre on the here and now, we feel invincible in a trajectory of life that is seemingly endless. Our life goal seems to be, consume everything we can about the world.

As we get older, we become more aware of our own mortality but many of us still deny our inevitable fate and gamble with the idea that we have plenty of time left for everything we want to do. The result is that we don’t act to change what we’re doing.

Life is too short to waste even one day, choose how you spend them, and as a good friend once said, “eat life”.

My advice, live today like it’s your last and set yourself some goals to live by, here are the 15 life goals I try to live by: 

1.      Focus on the good things - positive energy begets positive energy

2.      Find what you love doing – Do more of what makes you happy and love what you do, chances are, people will love you more because of it

3.      Your life is right now - Be present in-the-moment with those around you

4.      Be curious – Listen with an open mind before you judge, there's always more than one version of the truth and other people may have stuff going on that you know nothing about

5.      Live brave – Expect and accept that failure is part of the experience. Learn from it, grow, steer into the difficult conversations and move on

6.      Think about your thinking – Thoughts transition quickly to words, actions and habits, untwist your thinking and be true to yourself even when no-one is watching

7.      Be kind and focus on what really matters– Our behaviour gives us the power to spread happiness or misery, genuine care and compassion for others makes a massive difference

8.      Be your own leader – How you respond to everyday situations is in your gift, be accountable for your own actions, people respond more to what you do than what you say

9.      Appreciate what you’ve got – simply because It’s impossible to feel grateful and stressed at the same time and that’s a powerful place to be

10.  Forgive – Let go, don’t carry a poisonous weight in a hurt locker in your mind, it will eat away at all the good stuff in your life

11.  Give people the benefit of the doubt – Assume people are doing the best they can for the right reasons and challenge behaviour that isn’t acceptable

12.  Look after yourself – Your health is your wealth, treat yourself with respect 

13.  Be you with skill and never give up –Each of life’s small lessons builds up to big change so keep on trying and you’ll find out what you’re capable of

14.  Be humble and authentic – nobody is perfect, and people will relate to you on a much deeper level if you show who you really are

15.  Give generously - If you want an abundant life, give back as much as you can

 And if you want to know roughly how much is in your time bank, here’s how to do it:

27,375- (your age x 365) = number of days left on this planet 

Puts it into perspective, doesn’t it?