How can you live consciously to make every day count? Living a life filled with purpose, health, and happiness requires conscious effort. Living consciously is to make decisions that align with your deepest values and goals, even in the face of uncertainty.
I find inspiration from philosophers such as Napoleon Hill, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, and Immanuel Kant, to find timeless wisdom and guidance in modern times.
Here are some helpful ways you can live consciously while focusing on your health, safety, and goals, all in times of uncertainty.
What does living consciously mean?
Conscious living refers to a lifestyle that is intentional and deliberate. You are in control of your destiny, and all your decisions are in alignment with your goals, values, and the well-being of yourself and others.
To live a conscious life involves being mindful of the impact your actions have on your environment, and striving towards a balance between achieving your own goals and then making a much larger impact.
Here are some inspirational ways to help you live consciously 365 days a year.
Self Awareness
Being self aware involves being mindful of your thought processes, emotions, and behaviors. This means also understanding your true desires and how your actions affect your goals.
Are you living unconsciously?
Being self aware means taking control of your thought patterns. It means being conscious of negativity and anything that can sidetrack your focus.
According to Napoleon Hill, “Every adversity has the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.” You have to maintain a positive mental attitude to achieve your goals and success.
It’s setting realistic goals so you spend enough time on yourself and your life goals and not wasting your energy on the wrong things.
Being self aware means understanding your personal values, personal beliefs, and personal goals.
These are the most important things to you and make up your belief system and how you live your daily life.
Look at your daily routine and do a quick time audit. How do you spend your time?
Making sure to focus on you and living your life for you and your goals is part of self awareness and living consciously.
In every moment, make conscious decisions that keep you on your path toward the progressive realization of your goals.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness means being present and fully aware in every moment and making conscious choices in your everyday life.
Mindfulness is to live your life with gratitude and accept the things you can’t change.
It’s establishing core values that reflect both reality and consciousness to live your best life.
Mindfulness is to live with a conscious mind and develop a regular routine that incorporates the present and awareness in that moment.
To be mindful in every moment is to be aware of how you’re feeling and why.
To live consciously, you can accept or change what is happening in the present moment.
The great Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius focused on the present moment and accepting it without judgment. He advocated for an awareness of the transience of life and the importance of living according to nature and reason. To do this, you must be aware of your thoughts and actions and ensure they are consistent with virtue and the common good.
Unconscious living is accepting everything and being reactionary and impulsive.
Embrace the world around you and look for the beauty in it.
Look forward to tomorrow and be thankful for today. Recognize what you have and that you are fortunate in so many ways.
Realize that there is always someone somewhere that is less fortunate than you.
Use positive affirmations for motivation and strength. Find ways to be more mindful, such as daily reflection.
Don’t hold grudges and stay away from negativity. It’s toxic and spreads like wildfire. Let it go and make sure you surround yourself with positivity and good energy. Look for it if you have to.
Take time to be thankful of who you are and what you have to offer. Remember that you are worth more than you are valued.
Intentional Choices
This one is, in my opinion, probably one of the most important aspects in your quest to live consciously.
Intention is by far a critical component of conscious living. This is essentially self control.
This is making decisions that reflect your personal values and goals rather than being impulsive or caving to societal pressures.
In his book, “Thinking Fast and Slow,” Dr. Daniel Kahneman refers to one of the most significant studies conducted in psychology.
This was the study of children who were given the option to resist eating a cookie for 15 minutes for a greater reward or caving to the temptation of the cookie and nothing else before the 15 minutes was up.
The results of the study were significant in that the children who resisted the cookie and demonstrated self control demonstrated greater cognitive control and had higher scores on tests of intelligence. These children were less likely to be influenced by impulsivity.
Making intentional choices means considering the consequences of your actions and effectively navigating the challenges of human nature by demonstrating self control in your desires, emotions, actions, and lifestyle.
There isn’t a right or wrong way to live consciously, but there is a better way.
According to Socrates, realizing your own lack of knowledge is the first step towards wisdom. By being curious and continuing to question things, you can examine the validity of others’ beliefs, leading to more informed decisions. By doing this, you acknowledge uncertainty and explore it thoroughly rather than rushing to make impulsive decisions based on incomplete or inaccurate information.
This means not wasting your free time and making sure to spend your time wisely and with intention.
Being ethical is another key aspect of intentional decision-making. This is also how you treat others and awareness of how you as a person contribute to a better society and better world.
Holistic Wellness
Holistic wellness means a focus on your overall physical and spiritual self.
This means to practice positive mental and emotional wellbeing through practices like meditation, journaling, and reflection.
To live consciously is not just being present and aware, it’s also nurturing your body and mind through physical fitness, self-care, nutrition, and emotional wellbeing.
Controlling your physical and spiritual life is the part of your ability to live consciously that you may battle most in your everyday life. This one takes a lot of effort.
So often it’s difficult to control our environment, especially at work or within our own family.
How you respond to your environment and your instinctive responses presents challenges that conflict with our energy levels, such as stress and anxiety.
This can negatively affect your ability practice good physical fitness.
We may become worried or have other conflicting emotions that challenge us, making us work harder to live the lifestyle we want or to realize our goals.
The world is full of temptations and negativity, which also challenge our good intentions for holistic wellbeing.
Living consciously is a process and is difficult in an unconscious world.
How you want to experience life is the ultimate goal of living consciously. Sometimes making changes in your life is necessary to achieve your ultimate physical and spiritual wellbeing.
Our relationships, our quality of living, our ability to spend time on the things we want are all dependent on our environment.
Taking time to reflect and write down our thoughts helps us to consciously observe how our environments might be affecting our actions or emotions.
To live consciously requires us to reflect and make changes in order to be that person we want to be, both physically and spiritually.
This means long term changes.
Relationships and Interdependence
In order to live consciously, you have to be aware of how you contribute to your environment and others and how everything is interconnected.
What kind of impact do you make now and is it positive?
Living consciously makes a positive impact on yourself and your environment.
Do you bring good energy to others and do you treat others with respect?
Do most people you encounter see you as someone they want to be more like?
How do you consciously contribute to a better community and society?
Keep in mind the law of attraction. You attract what you are.
There’s also the law of reaping and sowing; you reap what you sow. The actions you take today will affect your life tomorrow.
Personal Growth and Development
By challenging yourself to grow and learn, you not only increase in wisdom but also in intellectual consciousness.
Being open to new experiences provides us with opportunities to develop new skills and be better tomorrow than we are today.
Personal growth isn’t just about knowledge.
Personal growth enables us to be more resilient to change and the ability to pivot when life presents us with obstacles.
Your personal growth and development is also about seeking truth and meaning in your life.
We’re shaped by our environments and sometimes this isn’t such a good thing.
By opening your mind to new ideas and others’ opinions, you transform into a better you and increase your understanding. This gives you more tools to live consciously.
In bettering ourselves and finding truth, Immanuel Kant suggested in his “Critique of Pure Reason” that thought preceded both mathematical and natural science and if not for our curiosity, we would not fully understand either.
Therefore, our pursuit for truth and meaning is imperative in our lives as we try to find the answers we need to develop and transform into our best selves.
Action
Living conscious lives means taking action. This means contributing to the bigger world rather than the small worlds we are living in at that moment.
We need to look out for each other and protect humanity.
Living our best life means helping others be conscious about theirs and showing them how to live consciously.
To live consciously means seeing beyond ourselves and our world to make an impact on others and theirs.
To live consciously means to seek out more than what is in front of you in order to make a greater impact.
Don’t live unconsciously and let life come to you.
Incorporate conscious actions in your daily routine that will bring you the success you deserve and help you transform into the best you possible.
Living consciously takes practice, effort, and resilience.
What actions you take will differ and there is no right or wrong way to live life consciously, but there are some actions that will guarantee you success.
This means making a contribution to both the smaller and larger world around you. Fight for what’s right and defend those who can’t defend themselves.
Final Thoughts
Do you truly know your purpose in life? Do you understand where you fit in this world and where you want to? How can you find the answers you’re looking for if you don’t take action? What changes can you make in your life to live consciously and be more aware, mindful, in control, and physically and mentally powerful?
The answers to these questions are the path to your future. You don’t have to be reactive to life and your environment. Make small changes in your life now and set long term goals for your future. Visualize yourself in the future and make a positive impact in the world around you.
