Dear Life, I Will Live You To Exhaustion

Dear life, I would like to ask your forgiveness for all the times I neglected you and did not take advantage of everything you offered me. Now that my fears, shyness and prejudices are gone, I promise to dance you until dawn, love you, listen to you and make you laugh until your stomach hurts. , until you’re exhausted. Because you and I understand each other. We only want our happiness.

Telling us this at a certain point in our life cycle can presumably involve a whole inflection point or, as a lover of spirituality would say, a “wake-up call”. However,  we do not always succeed in deploying all our resources and attitudes to initiate such a firm commitment with ourselves,  a commitment that would allow us to take advantage of all these days that we have left to live.

This goal, which is to live intensely until you are exhausted, may seem a little too hedonistic to us. However, behind this vision, there is something very simple which brings together anthropologists, sociologists and positivist psychologists. Each of the actions we take responds to two basic impulses: to survive and, if we achieve our goal, to be happy.

Existing, opening our eyes every morning, going to the streets and connecting with people are dimensions that respond to a continuous process of “trial and error”, from which we learn little by little in order to achieve what we so desire: stability, inner calm, well-being and, above all … happiness. Good, but to achieve this goal it is necessary to add an ingredient to this recipe: passion.

A life full of passion, here’s the secret

Humanistic psychology continues to form one of the most important and useful schools of thought in psychology. We could not understand it without two great personalities: Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. It was they who first indicated that humans are the ones responsible for their achievement and that they must work every day in order to grow and achieve happiness.

Until now,  trends such as Freudian psychoanalysis or behavioralism have described us as passive beings,  as figures incapable of influencing their environment. It was all very far from reality. As Rogers taught us, it is very important for human beings to be able to see themselves as someone who is functional, able to change their surroundings through four basic components: a flexible mindset, a sense of freedom, self-confidence and openness to experience.

Many psychologists have taken this point of view and added a component, which has been called “the goal of passion”. To achieve this self-realization that sits at the top of Abraham Maslow’s pyramid, we also need passion in order to create a positive and meaningful impact in our lives. In this way, we give shape to a firm and loyal commitment to ourselves to face adversity, to let go of our fears and concerns relying on motivation and the sparkle of illusions every day.

From today I will live you with envy and with all of my being

We could say, without being mistaken, that  today’s consumer society has wanted to convince us that happiness is a momentary and fleeting state,  almost always associated with leisure or the possession of certain products. A beautiful car, a phone of a certain brand, a certain comfort at home, a particular style of clothing also associated with a very concrete brand … All this gives us disposable happiness, a false well-being that transforms us into real drug addicts.

It might be time to take a different and much more logical point of view. Let’s accept once and for all that happiness doesn’t have to be momentary or fleeting. To live a life which corresponds to what we want, to what we need, and which can offer us permanent well-being, we need to work on a daily basis on a series of dimensions which, without a doubt, will be of interest to us. ‘great utility.

We suggest you think about it.

Some keys to a life that fulfills us more

• The goal of passion: we were talking about it a little earlier; to live a happier daily life and guarantee a permanent and satisfying well-being,  we must find those internal passions which define us and which, in turn, can give shape to our style of life. We must therefore realize that everything we do must satisfy us, be in tune with our values, our identity and our personal interests.
• Rational Thinking: We know today that the topic of emotions and intuitions play an important role when it comes to understanding our behavior. However, we must keep one thing in mind:  in our pursuit of happiness, we must make rational, firm and objective decisions. This would involve, for example, deciding to move away from certain people, to quit our job to start new projects … All of these decisions involve logical and rational thinking that we cannot neglect and which, in turn, needs another dimension: courage.

• Self-discipline: To live life to the fullest, beyond what many people think, you need a certain discipline. Sometimes it is indeed necessary to put aside immediate gratification in order to achieve greater rewards in the long run.

To conclude, and as we have seen, it takes a good dose of will, discipline and courage to shape a much more meaningful and positive existence. Because sometimes, and we all know it, it is necessary to take a series of serious decisions to achieve what we so desire.

Dare to do this can open doors for us that will allow us to be ourselves, for the first time in a long time …