We all have impairments, limitations, and restrictions. However, choosing to live a full life despite our so-called deficits is critical to feeling happy, fulfilled, and complete. For most of us, the task ahead is how to think outside of our flaws and experience the world fully alive.
There are several ways of envisioning our world in more colorful terms and painting our universe in broader, more vibrant vistas. The first method is merely thinking more positively. Indeed, living fully alive starts with eliminating negative thinking and framing the world in a narrative that captures a more positive daily experience. From more positive thinking, a long catalog of techniques is available to live a full existence.
Fully alive means more than just framing the world in more favorable terms. It means broadening our daily experiences. This means challenging our everyday norms, routines, day-to-day habits and integrating new content and perspective into the way we think about our lives. I am suggesting turning the usual day on its head and embracing the unknown. When we spend our days in a routine, engage in the same habits, and generally focus on the same social news feed, we defer new experiences and new ways of understanding and living in the world around us.
One practical way of challenging our daily norms is to ask more questions when presented with similar or the usual content of the day. Instead of taking the information you get or come across for granted, think more critically about the news and data you collect daily. Begin to challenge assumptions in your life, and consider alternate possibilities that you might have dismissed in the past. All of this means re-patterning how you collect data.
There is data everywhere. Data is the information our brain processes. Our brain is continuously processing information that we come across. These are the things we touch. We smell, we breathe-in, we look at. Our minds then pattern and process the information for interpretation and experience. How we choose to interpret the data depends on how we approach the collection of the data. So, instead of reading a book. Be sure to read the book jacket and the author to get an even deeper, more complex understanding of the data in the book’s pages.
Many of us get stuck in holding patterns. As one therapist, I knew to put it: “you’re in a holding pattern.” This means the person is doing things but not making much progress, or in clinical terms, the gain is on hold. This happens to people quickly when the goal isn’t clear or the path to get it is opaque. So, be more vigilant about living and how you are living. Choose to experience every moment in a manner that is both calculated and spontaneously wild at times. Be balanced in your daily endeavors, and never forget that life is how you choose to experience it.