4 Ways to Live an Amazing Life

You may be going through some stressful situations in your life right now. Happiness feels like a fairy tale that only happens to characters in a movie. Here are four ways you can life a amazing life and experience real freedom.
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An "amazing life" will have a different meaning for each of our lives. The one theme that everyone strives for in life is freedom. We long for freedom from financial stress and freedom to live and love. The freedom to wake up each day and spend our precious time on the things that are important to the kind of life we want to live.

For years, I was in survival mode. I was happy just to wake up and limp through each day. I had no hope or dreams and never gave a second thought to what I wanted from life. I was overweight, overworked and stressed beyond my limits in my marriage. My finances were a joke -- we were in serious debt. We spent money faster than we made it.

You may be going through some stressful situations in your life right now. Happiness feels like a fairy tale that only happens to characters in a movie. Here are four ways you can life a amazing life and experience real freedom.

1. Eat Healthy and Move More

I'm not a health expert, but there are enough books, websites, and courses that can teach you what it means to eat healthily. In the last year, I've lost 170 pounds through portion control meals and avoiding junk food. What you eat affects how you feel and it essential to living a long life.

Along with healthy eating is exercise. Again, what exercise you should be doing and how often will be different for each of us. Exercise provides you more energy, helps you keep the pounds off and gives you an excellent opportunity to relieve stress. It can be a time for you to plan, refresh and challenge yourself. That discipline will boil over into other areas of your life.

2. Grow Your Relationships

Stress in relationships -- romantic or not -- can affect your mood or worse. There will always be ups and downs in relationships, but the toxic ones can kill your happiness. Our relationships should lift us up and compliment our life. Communication is crucial and understanding that we won't always see things the same way as others will help. Deciding to love that person each day and keeping situations in the right perspective will help your relationship grow.

3. Do Work You Love

Most of us will spend 40 hours plus in some form of work. That time could be spent doing something you love or hate. To many of us spend a bulk of our week doing work we don't enjoy, and that doesn't fulfill us. With so much of our week spent miserable, that stress festers into other areas of our life.

Yes, the economy is still recovering. Yes, finding a job you love seems like it's right up there with finding a unicorn, but these are just self-limiting beliefs. Every day people all over the world wake up and do work that they love. It's not easy to find a good job or start a business, but it is possible, and it can happen if you start today. With over 2.5 billion people on the Internet every day, a wealth of new opportunities have presented themselves. Don't let your work keep you from an amazing life.

4. Live Fully Present

Life is short and time is the one resource we can never recover. When you live life distracted, you waste that precious time. Learn to live each moment. Be there and tune out the distractions that will make you miss what's right in front of you. Listen, breath, and understand what that moment means. There will be plenty of time to check Facebook later.

Today my life is a different story--today I wake up each day amazed that anyone can live life this way. I lost the weight; I got financial freedom by paying off the debt entirely. We now invest and make our money work for us. I quit a job I hated with every fiber of my being to live my dream of being a writer. We moved our family to our dream destination of Maui, Hawaii. I have to pinch myself each morning.

Life may not be what you want it to be right now. You may be where I was and are struggling to believe life can be better--I'm here to tell you it can. You can wake up every day and experience true freedom in every area of your life. It's going to take time, sacrifice, and more determination than you think is possible, but it's possible for you, too.

It all starts with what you believe about yourself and your dream. If you don't think it's possible, you won't do anything about the kind of life you want to live--you won't take action. Don't listen to doubt, fear, or self-limiting people or beliefs. Dig deep and take control of your life. You can and will find your happy place. You will find what an amazing life means to you.

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Photo: Flickr/ IamNotUnique

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