Life sucks. Am I right?
Fuck no, I’m not right! Life is awesome. Actually, it’s not anything – life is what you make it.
If your life sucks, it’s because you haven’t made your life awesome. Awesomeness rarely just happens. You have to go out and make it happen.
I’m gonna tell you what I do to make sure my life is awesome most of the time. And I’ll tell you what you can do to do the same. But first, what makes an awesome life awesome?
What makes an awesome life?
Philosophers have been debating the essence of awesomeness for millennia. Some say a happy life is one filled with virtue. Others say that living it up and partying all the time is the way to go. And some even say that chastity is the path to the best life.
It’s up to YOU to define what makes an awesome life.
Now, I think those chastity people are way off the mark. I have trouble going without sex for more than a couple weeks. I can’t imagine going an entire lifetime. But I don’t judge them. Because that’s the beauty of life: There’s no wrong way to live it.
What makes your life awesome is up to you. You need to forget about what others think and figure out what you want. Not your parents. Not your girlfriend or your wife. You.
For me, it’s simple. I want to feel good mentally and physically. I want to have a fit body that I can be proud of. I want to travel and enjoy the company of a lot of women. I want to be a good father. And I want to make a living with my writing. That’s what an awesome life looks like to me.
Some of you might think that all sounds pretty good. Others might hate every last word of it. That’s because we all have different likes and dislikes. But to live an awesome life, there’s only one attitude that will get you there.
Attitude is everything
The one thing that unites everyone who’s out there living an awesome life is their attitude. They all think “I can” instead of “I can’t” or “I shouldn’t” (Although, sometimes, you really shouldn’t). They all choose positivity over negativity. And they choose acceptance over anger or denial.
The thing that holds most people back is their attitude. I’d always had a very negative attitude for the first twenty-seven years of my life. But then, I made the conscious decision to start being positive as much as I could.
It wasn’t easy at first. My mind naturally wanted to think negatively. But slowly, over time, all the positive thinking was starting to sink in. I began feeling better, getting more stuff done, and had less anxiety.
An example that comes to mind is the gym. I’d always wanted to get in shape but made up the most ridiculous excuses using negative language. Here are some of the negative self-talk I’d give myself:
- “I don’t want to go to the gym because I’m too out of shape to get fit.”
- “I don’t want to go because I’ll get judged for not being fit.”
- “I shouldn’t go to the gym because it’s not gonna make a difference anyway.”
As you can see, these are all negative statements. As I started thinking more positively, my attitude changed. Instead of thinking “I don’t” or “I shouldn’t,” I started thinking “I want” and “I should.”
- “I want to go to the gym so I can build muscle like Arnold, Henry Rollins, and many of my other heroes.”
- “I want to get fit so I will feel better, attract more women, and be as healthy as possible.”
- “I should go to the gym so I’ll have more energy to play with my son.”
Now, these statements are much more positive. Once you start thinking like this, pretty soon, you start making your life more awesome. After making the conscious decision to think as positively as possible, it wasn’t long before I got my first gym membership.
I realized before long that all the negative self talk I’d given to myself over the years was wrong – all wrong. All the ridiculous excuses I’d told myself were nothing more than the product of anxiety. I learned that:
- You can’t be too unfit to get in shape
- No one at the gym is judging you: They’re too busy judging themselves. Most gym goers are friendly, positive people doing the same thing that you are – trying to make their life more awesome.
- It does make a difference and I watched my body transform month after month.
Your attitude is everything. If you have a positive attitude, you can achieve almost anything – even awesomeness. It’s a prerequisite for living an awesome life. You have to do your best to always maintain a positive attitude.
How to live an awesome life
With the right attitude, you can accomplish anything. But that’s only half of the awesomeness equation. You also need to take that positive attitude and put it into action.
The first step in living an awesome life is often the most difficult: figuring out what you want. What would make your life awesome?
Once you figure out what would make your life awesome, the next step is to figure out how to make it happen. This is usually the easiest step.
Life can be as awesome as you make it.
When I decided that getting in shape would make my life more awesome, it wasn’t hard to figure out how to make it happen. I knew that I needed to work out and eat better. Figuring this out wasn’t hard at all. But the next step was more challenging.
After you know what you want and how to get it, you need to take action. But you don’t want to just dive in. That’s a recipe for failure. You need to break your plan down into small, measurable goals.
Back to my fitness example. I knew that I wanted to build muscle and burn fat. And I knew that I needed to work out and eat better to make it happen. But, instead of trying to do all that at once, I set smaller, measurable goals.
My first goal was to gain 10 pounds of muscle. I started working out and eating more protein. When I reached that goal, I felt great and set a new goal: gain 10 more pounds of muscle. When I reached that goal, I set a new one: drop 5 pounds of fat.
By setting small goals, you accomplish two things. First, you set yourself up to succeed. It’s much easier to reach several small goals than one big one. And second, you get to experience the confidence that comes from setting a goal and reaching it.
You can’t make your life awesome overnight. It takes time, effort, and patience. By setting small goals, you set yourself up to succeed. Trying to go from 1 to 100 is a lot harder than going from 1 to 10, 10 to 20, 20 to 30, and so on.
So to recap, here are the steps to living an awesome life:
- Cultivate a positive “can do” attitude
- Figure out what would make your life awesome
- Figure out how to make it happen
- Break it down into small, measurable steps
- Make it happen
- Enjoy your awesome life
Failure is your friend
“I never lose. I either win or learn.” – Nelson Mandela
I’ve always loved that quote. On the path to awesomeness, there will be setbacks and failures. But I don’t like to think of them as such. I see them as opportunities to learn and grow.
To use my fitness example again, I experienced a lot of failures along the path to success. I tried diets that didn’t work, did exercises completely wrong, and made a ton of mistakes. But I didn’t get discouraged by these setbacks because I learned from them.
By learning which diets didn’t work, I got closer to figuring out the right way to eat to reach my goals. By acknowledging that I was doing exercises wrong, I was able to learn the right way to do them. If you can learn from your failures, you can accomplish just about anything.
This is what separates losers from winners. Everyone at the top of business, sports, and virtually every other profession was able to get to where they are by learning from their mistakes. We often only see the end result but don’t see all the struggles along the way. Being able to learn from your failures and keep moving forward is a necessary part of building an awesome life.
Conclusion
You can live an awesome life. I do and, if I can do it, so can you.
Awesomeness doesn’t always come easy and it usually doesn’t come quickly, but it will come if you follow the above steps. Few things in life worth having come easily and awesomeness is no exception.
So, what would make your life awesome? Or, if it’s already awesome, what did you do to make it that way?
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