3 Characteristics to a great life.

Everyone wants to have a great life right ?! But what does a great life mean to you? What is means to you may be vastly different from the person standing in line next to you at the supermarket and there is nothing wrong with that ! The great thing is, it is our life and we get to choose what is important to us.

In my coaching practise I have worked with countless clients over the past 5 years and no matter what their social, economic or cultural background this is always the starting point of our coaching journey together. There are three characteristics I believe we must have or be willing to learn how to develop in order to great a life.

The first characteristic is we have to have a personal vision for ourselves.  So many people have made the decision in life to go along and take whatever life gives them.  That is a really narrow way to live life,  with no agenda, no plan and no decision making, whilst it might sound lovely to be that cool and inflow with the moment but reality is, if we don’t decide where we’re going, it doesn’t really matter where you go, as you’ll put up with whatever you get.

Living a great life takes conscious decision making. To be able to say to ourselves “what do I really want my life to be about? When I look back at the end of my life when I am 95 and sitting on the front porch in a rocking chair what would I like to have achieved?” You can write this out and create a vision statement for yourself or like a lot of people do you may like to create a beautiful vision board.   Use this to really get into your mind exactly where you are headed, where you are going. Always start with the end in mind – know where you are going in life. 

The second characteristic is you have to know what you stand for or know what your values are. Values are like rules in life, they are the things that you will or will not do. Examples of value is wellness and by wellness I mean life force, vitality to be want to wake up in the morning and think clearly and want to fully embrace the day.  Another example of a value is growth. It is important to always be learning and growing otherwise you are ripe and rotting!  Who you are today is not who you were 10 years ago and it is not who you are going to be in 10 years’ time – you can be vastly different.  

There is no right or wrong when you stand for something it is a completely personal choice.  It’s like with football you might stand or support one team and your friend may stand for and support another – it doesn’t make one necessarily better than the other it is simply saying this is my preference for what which team I will support in my life.  Knowing what you stand for and what your values are is really important as you can then make decisions that are alignment with what you stand for and what is important to you.

The third characteristic is to take action in your life rather than being someone who just reflects on everything. We have two options on how we can live our life, we can just think about our life and we can worry about what could go wrong which could prevent ourselves from ever taking action on the things we want to become great at, the things we know we could help others with. Our two options are we can think about it or we can do it.  Are you a gunner or a doer?

I understand that actually doing it then comes with another whole set of challenges that creates fear, anxiety and concern of judgement and of what other people with think, but we still only have those two choices. 

Decision making is all about consequences. If you think about it and do nothing in your life you’ll get to the end of your life with regrets or as the book by Susan Jeffers recommends you can feel the fear and do it anyway! 

You can take action and do the things you love and then when you get to the end of your life you can look back and say ‘wow’ look at all the things I did, look at all the amazing adventure I had.  Be the person that creates and holds the magic and not just sits on the sideline and watches life from the outside.

If this blog post resonated with you and you would like to learn more about how I can help you gain more clarity in your life, please click below to connect.