The BASIC Necessities of Life
Life is a precious experience encapsulated within a frame of time. How one chooses to live their life will essentially play a critical role in how fulfilling their life turns out to be. In order to live life to a more fulfilling potential, it is important to provide one's self with the basic necessities of life. This process begins by securing the basic components necessary to ensure that life goes on as desired. This means that a human needs certain fundamental items to develop the core of their basic life support system. Among these components are proper nutrition, warm, durable clothing, and adequate shelter from the elements. When these basic needs are met, life has a foundation on which to begin to thrive. But, the journey to improve and extend life does not end here. Rather, this foundational stage is just a primitive stepping-stone to a greater form of living.
Cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude
The next step in developing a superb life support system is to learn how to appreciate things for what they truly are. When people lose sight of their ability to appreciate things in life, their life begins to lack purpose itself. Imagine if you could not appreciate anything that occurs in your lifetime. Such an existence would be absolutely miserable and down right pointless. Being able to appreciate even the simple things in life makes the process of living become a whole new experience. Appreciation helps a person to prioritize things and experiences by imparting value to these things and experiences. In a fundamentally primal way, appreciating things helps us to identify how much something is worth in terms of our own existence. How much value we place on things and experiences helps to explain who a person is in their own unique way. The reason is because we all appreciate things and experiences differently. As people assign degrees of appreciative value and priority to things and experiences they encounter, they unlock the unique relationships they have to such aspects of their life. To recognize this inherent power of assigning value through the process of developing an appreciation of things and experiences is one way a person can truly become aware of who they are as an individual.
Moving Beyond Temporary Happiness
One of the biggest struggles people face in developing a more fulfilling life is the struggle they have with temporary things. Temporary things bring temporary happiness. A new car or a ton of money always feels good when you first embrace it. But, new cars get old. Money gets spent. Over time, a person realizes that temporary things loose their newness and fall apart. When money is spent, you find that you are always ending up with less of it. In the end, it becomes difficult to be satisfied with things that only bring never-ending loss. Such an experience always leaves a person wanting a new toy or more money in order to feel remotely satisfied. Unfortunately, more is generally never enough to make a person's feeling of satisfaction or happiness long lasting. In such a situation, life is rarely fulfilling.
Where You Start Living a Meaningful Life
When one takes the focus off things and places their focus on their state of being, something changes in their outlook on life. All of a sudden their health, attitude, and overall character development end up being the most important core aspects of what it means to live a meaningful life. Health is necessary for ensuring a good quality of life. A positive attitude is essential for shaping how we choose to feel about life, making happiness boil down to being mostly a choice that is solely within our power to make. An individual's character development identifies how far an individual is willing to go to be honest with themselves and do what is right. This responsibility, not only extends to themselves, but to others around them. If only serving self makes us happy, then happiness boils down to being little more than unbridled greed and the selfish depravity that causes some children to be spoiled rotten. To resolve this enigma, it turns out that true happiness and living a meaningful life ultimately boils down to sacrificing our own selfishness on the altar of human compassion, which involves making an effort to help others understand happiness and how to live a meaningful life through our own living example.