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First of all, I want to say that I am sorry about whatever it is that makes life seem completely pointless, or whatever is that makes you feel depressed and lethargic about going on living.

Then I’d like to ask you to look at the bigger picture. Chances are, it’s not the end of the world. Young children live in fear every day of being abducted and forced to kill people who they may have once been friends with. Others are victims of human trafficking. This doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to be sad or upset about what is going on in your life. Take some time to wallow, and grieve about your problem – especially when you have a more serious situation. Then grow some balls (figuratively) and realize the world doesn’t revolve around you.

If you have access to read this article – and given the fact that you can read it, I guarantee that there are thousands of people in a much worse situation than you. More likely, there are millions.

What am I asking you to take away from this? I don’t want you to feel guilty that you are better off. The world is an unfair place and you have gotten a lucky roll of the dice. Be grateful for that.

I’m not even saying you should try to take the world head on, resting the weight on your shoulders. All I really want is for you to open your eyes and realize that there are bigger things than you. No matter how bad or stressful your day was, there is someone out there who had a much worse day and they are still managing to keep their head and hopes high.

Surely you can quit being an ass to the person serving you your coffee at a slower speed than your high standard for how fast coffee should be served. You should appreciate the fact that you have access to an abundance of drinkable water, let alone the luxury of coffee. Yes, that’s right, that coffee is a luxury, and you’re acting like it’s an inconvenience because the hostess is making you late for work – the job which you probably don’t appreciate as much as you should.

Get over yourself – the world owes you nothing. Be the best person you can be. Make something of yourself. If you’re feeling especially gracious, maybe you should even get involved in making the world a better place.

Photo cred: Steven Fernandez@flickr

The world won’t change overnight. Even if most people changed, there would still be a large number of people who refused to be anything but self-centered and stubborn in their selfish ways.

Imagine if you chose not to throw trash out of your car. Didn’t use the world as your ash tray. Chose to follow the simple laws, even if they don’t make sense to you. If you truly feel that your rights as a human are being violated, then do something that will actually change the situation, instead of breaking the law to get your way. Imagine if you reached out to the people you met every day. Said “hi” to a total stranger. Offered to help someone stuck on the side of the road. The little things add up, even in your own individual life. Imagine how big of an impact there would be if we were all making the small changes.

It’s contagious. If we all just made a conscientious effort to be a little nicer, kinder, and more friendly… wouldn’t the world slowly turn into a better place? We need to set the example. Pointing fingers, placing blame, and complaining about how horrible our lives are won’t change anything. In fact, all it’s doing is delaying the solution.

Be the change you want to see. Do it for your health and mine: happy people are healthier.

Photo cred: Timothy Lloyd@flickr

Because, by choosing to do nothing about it, you are choosing to let life be boring. When you decide not to ever take risks, you are deciding that life will be the same day in an day out. How boring is that?

I believe that you can live an interesting, fulfilling life while generally maintaining safety and stability. “What good is gaining the whole world if you lose your soul?” We don’t want to sacrifice too much in order to lead an exciting life. However, using common sense, you can take reasonable risks to go out on a limb and try something new.

You hate your job? Quit, get a new one, start your own.

You are jealous that all your friends go on vacations, but you never do? Work a part time job for a short time, walk some dogs, do some house sitting, and save. Take a few days off and take a vacation. It’s worth it! Excuses are a crutch, I don’t care what they are. Work past them.

You never do anything exciting? Try something out of your comfort zone. From taking a run on the beach, to sky diving, there is always something you haven’t tried yet. Take a surfing class, hike a big mountain, take an unplanned weekend road-trip. Go back to school and take an interesting class.

You don’t do anything all day but sit around? Get out of the house! Make it your goal to have at least one interesting thing to do every day for the next week. Be creative. There are lots of outings (both expensive and inexpensive) to try. Get off the couch.

The biggest thing is to find goals, or a hobby, or something that will intellectually stimulate your brain for growth. If you’re not growing and learning things every day, it’s no wonder you’re bored with life.

Photo cred: Foxtongue@flickr

Now, I believe in making healthy and happy habits work for your lifestyle. Making the move from unhealthy habits to healthy habits is a big one, especially if you eat fast food all the time. So take it in small steps! Seriously, eat an apple after breakfast every day for starters. I can almost guarantee that you will feel better in a week or so.

There are lots of weight loss programs and millions of diets to choose from. I think that unless you are training to be a serious athlete, getting to a healthy weight can be a gradual and relatively easy process – granted, it will take some will power and it won’t always be easy to choose the healthier paths – but concentrating on being healthier rather than counting calories has definitely worked for me.

Learn the basics about how food affects your mood. Choose one simple thing to change about your diet. Add vegetables to one meal a day, or like I suggested before, have an apple with breakfast. If you are overweight, eat a quarter less of every meal. If you are underweight, examine your diet and try to add a little extra something nutritious to each meal and make sure to eat until you are full. Take the change in small steps, and those will add up faster than you would think.

The goal here is to let your body find it’s own natural, healthy state. If all you do is make one small change to your diet every 2 weeks for the next year, you will find that you will look and feel significantly better. Give a test run and see if it doesn’t work for you.

What are your expriences with eating healthy? What are things that you could change? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Photo cred: chispita 666@flickr

If you approach life with the mentality that you will fail, that you aren’t good enough, and that nothing can or will ever be better, you don’t even try to break out of that rut. Therefore, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy automatically, because if you don’t try to make things better the chances are slim to none that they will improve on their own. Even if they did, you probably wouldn’t accept it, because you would feel you didn’t “deserve” it. You might not even notice, because you’re so busy throwing a pity party.

On the other hand, if you approach life with a positive mentality, convinced that you are meant to succeed, you are more likely to succeed. In fact, you won’t feel as depressed even when you don’t. Why is this? Because you develop a sense of self-esteem and purpose. You take advantages of opportunity. You become a happier, more fulfilled person. No matter what your situation, you will be better off than if you chose only to shrug and accept the circumstances. You are living life, instead of life being a timer counting down to the end while you stare at the clock, like a student waiting for a boring class to be over.

There are a lot of things we can’t change. We can’t control other people. We can’t always control our environment. However there are a lot of things that we can change. We can control how we deal with other people. We can creatively handle the situations given us. We can choose to place ourselves in good situations as much as possible. We can find solutions to problems, instead of focusing on complaining about the things out of our control.

Opportunity is everywhere. It is your choice to take advantage of it. You can only fail by quitting. For every success you make, you will probably have 10 or more perceived failures. It’s part of the learning process! Take knowledge away from every experience and you will be the wiser for it. How is it a failure when you learned something invaluable?

I encourage you to think of one thing in your life that you want to improve, or change in some way. Whether it’s personal, political, or whatever it is, brainstorm a creative way to make a change in that area. Then do it.

Photo cred: lilit@flickr

Think outside the box here – if you have a bit of cash, you could go for something thrilling like skydiving or (slightly less adrenaline filled) going on a hot air balloon. Maybe you’re short on money, so you could visit a part of the city you haven’t been to yet – take your camera and snap off some cool pictures.

Every once in a while it’s just good to step out of your comfort zone and expand your horizon. Go for it.

Here’s a list of ideas to get you going:

• Try skydiving
• Go on a hot air balloon ride
• Try a new restaurant
• Visit a park you haven’t been to
• Visit a local attraction you haven’t seen
• Hold a photo shoot with some friends
• Rent an old movie you never got around to seeing
• Visit the mountains and learn to ski or snowboard
• Go on a one-night camping trip
• Visit a museum
• Call someone who you haven’t seen in a while
• Go on a mini road trip (leave Friday night/Saturday morning, get back Sunday evening)
• Volunteer at a homeless shelter
• Volunteer anywhere!
• Try to sell something on Craigslist
• Go horse back riding
• Go on a hike

If that doesn’t get your juices going, I don’t know what will!

What do you do on the weekends to spice things up? Make sure to leave your ideas in the comments!

Photo cred: abi skipp@flickr

I encourage you to give it a listen and take it to heart.

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There’s a cross on the side of the road
Where a mother lost her son
How could she know that the morning he left
Would be the last time she’d trade with him for a little more time
(so she could say she loved him one last time)
And hold him tight
But with life we never know when we’re coming up to the end of the road
So what do we do then
With tragedy around the bend

We live, we love, we forgive and never give up
‘Cause the days we are given are gifts from above
And today we remember to live and to love
We live, we love, we forgive and never give up
‘Cause the days we are given are gifts from above
And today we remember to live and to love

There’s a man who waits for the tests to
See if the cancer had spread yet
And now he asks why did I wait to live ’til it was time to die
If I could have the time back, how I’d live
Life is such a gift
So how does the story end?
Well, this is your story and it all depends
So don’t let it become true
Get out and do what we were meant to do

We live, we love, we forgive and never give up
‘Cause the days we are given are gifts from above
And today we remember to live and to love
We live, we love, we forgive and never give up
‘Cause the days we are given are gifts from above
And today we remember to live and to love

Waking up to another dark morning
People are mourning
The weather in life outside is storming
But what would it take for the clouds to break
For us to realize each day
Is a gift somehow, someway
And get our heads up out of this darkness
And spark this new mindset and start on with life ’cause it ain’t gone yet
And tragedy’s a reminder to take off the blinders and wake up
(to live the life)
We’re supposed to take up
(moving forward)
With all our heads up
‘Cause life is worth living

We live, we love, we forgive and never give up
‘Cause the days we are given are gifts from above
And today we remember to live and to love
We live, we love, we forgive and never give up
‘Cause the days we are given are gifts from above
And today we remember to live and to love

Photo cred: kalandrakas@flickr

The beginning of the saying is inspirational. Live life to the fullest, be hopeful and inspired by all that life may have to offer. Don’t be afraid to dream big, and to chase those dreams. It applies in the littlest situations to the biggest (from planning an outing to deciding on a career path).

The end of the saying advises caution. Don’t jump into the deep end of a pool without some lifeline (knowing how to swim, life jacket, life guard). If you chase your hopes at random, with no plan, and no fallback plan, it’s like driving down the wrong side of the freeway blindfolded. Unless you get extremely lucky, you’re not going to make it out in good shape.

Don’t take the second to an extreme – you can usually balance it based on the weight of the situation. Of course, there’s the slight chance a tragedy could occur while you’re on the picnic but you don’t need to have an ambulance on hand. If you’re going to attempt to swim the Atlantic Ocean, you should notify the appropriate authorities and have medical assistance ready in the very probably chance of failure.

So dream big! Just be smart in how you chase them.

How do you interpret this saying? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

Photo cred: wheat in your hair@flickr

Curiosity fuels our desire for knowledge. We learn because we want to know, we want answers to our questions. If you aren’t ever asking questions, if you never care to investigate a situation further, then perhaps you should try to develop some curiosity. After all, life is pretty boring when nothing arouses your interest.

Do you think that curiosity is important?

Everything does need moderation. In your quest to be curious… remember that sometimes it’s just not worth knowing. Don’t be stupid about being curious, but try to be more curious today than you were yesterday. The feat of learning something that was gnawing at you is like relief from a severe itch, not very many things compare to the satisfying feeling. Plus, you’ll be smarter for the experience.

Photo cred: fazen@flickr