I was journaling the other day about how to live a “successful life.” Whatever that means because it’s different for everyone. I figured that, in order to be successful and live a happy life, you need to uphold certain habits. There are some things that you should do often and some things that should be cut from your life, right? I figured that must be the only way to build a good life.
So I asked myself:
- What steps do I need to take?
- What good habits do I need to uphold?
- Which bad habits do I need to get rid of or minimize?
☝️ To start working in my dream career (as a full-time blogger/YouTuber) and to maintain that success over time, for many years into the future. To grow financially and have more freedom in my life.
This is what I realized…
There’s no rulebook for success (no matter how bad you want there to be.) But if you follow this guidance, you’ll get there more quickly and easily.
- Anything that brings you joy/light, follow it.
- Anything that leads you to darkness, avoid it.*
*I can still have negative emotions, of course. I’m human. Those emotions are there to guide me in a certain direction in life.
But when it comes to habits:
There aren’t habits that are always “bad” or always “good”. Everything comes in levels. This is something that I’ve intuitively understood for a while, but have been trying to make actually sink into my everyday life.
Unfortunately, my human nature of wanting to control everything, and always have a simple/certain answer, keeps trumping this inner knowing.
The truth is this:
Like with intuitive eating, we all intuitively know what we need out of life.
Like my body knows what foods I’m craving, what I need more and less of, my mind/soul knows this with life experiences too.
When I’m too full or have eaten too many sweets, my body naturally knows to stop eating (for now.)
In that same way, if I’ve binge-watched 5 hours of reality TV, my brain knows that I don’t need any more of it. It starts to not feel as good. Just like sweets start to taste less good and become unsatisfying after you’ve eaten a bunch in one sitting.
There’s a beautiful balance and harmony to it all.
You always have to work and stay aware to find and maintain that balance. There’s no way to perfect it, and no way to predict it ahead of time. There’ll be times when you fall off track, and you’ll know because you start to feel bad. You’ll crave whatever the opposite force is (work vs. relaxing) to get you back on track.
There are no wholly “good” or “bad” habits. Watching trash TV for 2 hours after a long, tiring day, to unwind, relax, zone out, and enjoy yourself, is a good thing. It brings you back to equilibrium.
As opposed to the dichotomous view that productivity is always “good” and TV is always “bad”. That only constantly being more productive is “good”. Being so productive until you’re burnt out, you get sick/depressed, and your body forces you to take a break by keeping you in bed for a week, unable to be productive.
Either way, your body will find its equilibrium. But the first way (finding balance, always) sounds a lot more enjoyable (and efficient.)
When you don’t push yourself too hard and overdo it, you’ll still naturally end up being productive. And that productivity is amplified because it’s fueled by light, love, happiness, and a lust for life, that you don’t get by trying to be productive/”useful” 24/7.
You can live a balanced life, consistently following your heart/intuition, and still be productive.
You can do big, amazing things with your life, and still take time to enjoy it. Being successful doesn’t mean you have to suffer and hate your journey to get there.
P.S. 🙃
I know this isn’t my normal type of Vitality Vixens blog post. It’s not a review, a workout plan, a recipe, or a listicle of self-improvement tips. But I started doing morning pages a few months ago (actually it ended up being night pages most of the time since I’m not a morning person, lol). And I’ve had a lot of important thoughts/revelations in my own life through that. I figured, why keep this to myself instead of sharing it with you guys?
If this type of post isn’t your thing, I get it. If I’m being honest, I don’t even know if this post made any sense whatsoever. Or if it was just me nonsensically rambling through the thoughts in my head. So if you hated it, that’s cool. I’m going to try a few of these posts though, in hopes that my random journaling thoughts make sense to someone, or can help them in some way.
I’ll keep them here, in my morning pages archives.
