Live Consciously To Live Better

Your conscious decision to choose your priorities every day

Many people make it a resolution to live more consciously. However, very few people know what that really means and, above all, even fewer can put it into practice.

It actually sounds very simple at first. Carry on as before, only with more awareness. But that can be a difficult endeavor. Where routine has crept in for years, we quickly surrender when we try to really change something lastingly. Living consciously and being mindful is enormously important in our days.

Do you sometimes think that your life is rushing by you? Or that you’re stuck somewhere where you don’t really belong? Every day you seem to get lost in your habits and duties. You lose sight of your own needs more and more. If you can find yourself in any of these points, you are probably not leading a conscious life. In the worst-case scenario, you might be living on autopilot and just stuck in routines.

Living consciously means being mindful and feeling the moment. To live neither in the past nor in the future, but the here and now. In addition, it is a matter of making well-considered and deliberate decisions and not leaving everything to chance. Routines and habits can and should be broken. This leads to more alertness and caution, but also acceptance of one’s existence and the current situation.

• Do you live in a relationship that is actually not good for you?
• Do you have a job that does not fulfill you and in which you don’t get ahead?
• Do you not take care of your health, do you eat unhealthily, and do not move enough?
• Do you not take time just for yourself?
• Do you feel like you’re wasting your time on irrelevant things?
• Do you have to do an inordinate amount of things every day that you don’t enjoy doing?
• Do you hardly notice what is happening around you?
• Do you only live in the past or the future?

If you can agree with some questions, you should think twice about whether you are really happy. Going through life with blinkers may be easier. But that doesn’t make you happy in the long run. Why? Because you live against your own standard. But that can be changed.

The first very important step is to realize that your life is going in the wrong direction. You can learn to lead a conscious and sustainable life. That doesn’t happen overnight, because this state has manifested itself over time.

Step 1 — Give mindfulness more space in your life!

Those who can live consciously and be mindful can cope with stressful times. Today we just have to be able to endure a certain amount of stress. Hardly anyone can get around there. So it’s not about getting rid of stress, but rather about coping with it better.

Mindfulness is a good way to get there.

Always keep your focus on the activity you are currently doing.

A big problem today is that we do too many things at once. For example, if you have breakfast in the morning, stick with the breakfast in your mind. Don’t start thinking about what to expect at work. There is time for that later. In the beginning, a mindful breakfast will be difficult for you.

Most likely, your thoughts will often be elsewhere. Then consciously call yourself back to here and now. At some point, the digression becomes less and you stay in the situation more. You may find it easier if you consciously focus on the taste, texture, or chewing sounds.

Either way, start your day with something you can enjoy. This charges your batteries and means living consciously. If you don’t like breakfast, then neither do you.

Experiment — The Mindfulness Exercise

For this experiment, you’ll need a cup of coffee or tea. The only important thing you have to do is to focus on it, preferably with all of your senses.

This is how it would work with the cup of coffee for example:

• Visual perception: What color is the coffee? Do you see the steam rising, how does the color change when you add milk?
• Olfactory perception: How does the coffee smell? What does that trigger in you?
• Gustatory perception: How does the coffee taste? How does it feel in your mouth? What taste has been left behind?
• Auditory perception: How does it sound when the coffee is brewed? What if you pour it?
• Tactile perception: Can you feel the warmth of the cup on your hands? What does that trigger in you?

Step 2 — Take care of your health!

We live in a time that is characterized by consumption and abundance. Everything is always available to us. On the one hand, this is good because it enables us to live a carefree life. On the other hand, it doesn’t make it easy for us to withstand constant temptations. Why cook when there are ready-made products? Why go shopping when everything can be delivered to your doorstep?

But that has nothing to do with living consciously. A conscious lifestyle also has something to do with healthy and sustainable nutrition. Do not just grab the best or cheapest from the supermarket rule, but consciously decide on a product. Eating a healthy diet has an impact on your health. Make a conscious decision to feed your body only good things.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t treat yourself to something now and then. But try to eat healthily for the most part. It doesn’t always have to be certified organic. Local foods can also take your diet to a higher level. Have a look around your area. You are bound to find fruit and vegetable growers selling their products in the market or a farm shop.

Also, try to celebrate food preparation more again. Tearing open bags has little to do with eating well. If you don’t have the time to do extensive cooking, you don’t have to do it every day. Reserve one or two days a week for this, that’s enough. After all, you can eat healthily without much effort. The most important thing is that you do it consciously.

Many of us have a habit of eating while watching our favorite series or movie. This is not good because you are doing two things at once. So you can’t really perceive and enjoy the food. You have to make a choice: either you’ll eat your meal or you’ll watch TV. That is living consciously.

Step 3 — Decide what is valuable to you!

We all have a limited time. Even if the world is open to us these days, we don’t have more time. Living consciously means deciding what is really important in life, taking time for what is really valuable, and then pushing it forward. If you work on all kinds of construction sites, you won’t be able to finish any of them really well.

Make a conscious decision about what your most important goals in life are and pursue them with all your energy. We all have a few meaningful things in our life that cost us a lot of energy. But they don’t really help us. Make a conscious decision not to pay any more attention to such energy guzzlers. Life is too short to chase the wrong goals.

Step 4 — Be aware of your environment!

Our world with all its beauty is a gift that we simply do not appreciate enough. Are you really always aware of that value when you walk through our world? Far too often you see people absorbed in their cell phones instead of enjoying the beautiful nature. If you go through the world more openly here, you will soon also notice that some things are not going really well. It is your right to criticize circumstances.

A lot of you may ask: “What can I do as an individual?” But if everyone thinks like this, nothing changes. Once you have become aware of your environment and have learned to appreciate it, you are also more ready to tackle things. Each individual can take care of their environment for themselves. Living consciously also means seeing things instead of turning a blind eye to them.

Step 5 — Be grateful every day, even if things don’t go well!

In the beginning, we are all grateful for every little success. As life becomes more strenuous, gratitude fades even more. That is embarrassing because those who are no longer grateful lose sight of the essentials. To reintegrate more gratitude into your life, do this: Every evening before you go to bed, think about what you can be grateful for that day.

It’s easy to repeat this exercise every day because there are no days when everything was just bad. When doing this exercise, keep an eye on the little things too. That could be the nice weather, the delicious coffee in the morning, or a nice chat with a colleague. Just write down these little things. Then in less good times, you can read how grateful you can actually be for your life.

Living consciously also means being consciously grateful for everything.

Step 6 — Stop relying on others for your happiness!

We are used to basing our happiness on others. And if something happens and the person we rely on cancels a procedure we get disappointed. This can be, for example, a long-awaited visit from a loved one or an exciting weekend with friends. The anticipation was great and suddenly it’s like a slap in the face while everything disappears into thin air. That’s annoying, no doubt, and you have every right to be disappointed.

But that’s not why the whole day or possibly the whole week is gone. Instead of burying yourself, look for alternatives. A day or evening can also be beautiful with Plan B. If you only make your sense of happiness depending on a certain situation or other people, you run the risk of constantly being disappointed. Emotional independence is an important building block to live happily and consciously.

Knowing that you can get by without any one's help and the company is more than essential. If a long-awaited meeting then fails, it is frustrating, but that’s not the end of the world. You’ll just find another date but now you have to move on. Use this newly gained time for something good for you. Spending your day living in a bad mood and being sad, will lead you nowhere. Learn to meet your own emotional needs.

Being independent without relying on others' help makes you will feel a lot safer. Of course, it doesn’t mean you should avoid other people. You just shouldn’t need them at all costs and all the time.

Live consciously — Preserve your inner child!

I’m sure there are times when you look back with nostalgia for your childhood. Even if everything wasn’t always beautiful back then, we went through life so much more carefree. We were more curious, more cosmopolitan, and held onto our dreams. We didn’t care about others' thoughts. It was our dream. We had fewer inhibitions and approached the world with curiosity and a lot of imagination.

What has happened since then? It’s simple, we’ve grown up. Our dreams have been replaced by realistic and sensible projects and our priorities have been shifted. To a certain extent, that’s a good thing, of course. After all, we have to be able to survive in the real world somehow. But part of us remains a child, that is the so-called inner child.

Try to keep this up as best as you can. You can still benefit from it in adulthood.

And some tips…

• Live as intensely as possible every day. It could be over tomorrow.
• Plan a (small) event every day that you can look forward to!
• Keep trying something new that will make you feel alive!
• Do something good every day-something for other people!
• Talk to people instead of communicating with them on social media!
• Always hold on to your dreams and values, they are your foundation!
• Speak in the imperative!

If you enjoyed reading this, you might also like these:

A great article from Alejandro Betancourt about human suffering