Every situation has a silver lining – discover a mindset that heals and enlightens.
August 26, 2021 · 7 min read
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. - Agatha Christie
I remember myself being dull, boring and just lifeless. I knew I had to change something in my life. But… What exactly?
Well, there could be a lot of activities that you wouldn’t have thought of. There could be a mindset shift that you must experience. Perhaps you need a bigger social circle to feel more alive.
This need varies from person to person and therefore, I will be presenting life-changing tips that will make you feel like a new person again.
What exactly makes people not to feel alive?
People feel not alive because they have fell into a routine of habits and are not experiencing anything new in life. That is the most common reason why this occurs and why a person needs changes in life.
However, you have to be prepared to change and do something outside your comfort zone. By simply doing something very passive and by not feeling excitement, you won’t feel alive.
People by nature are creatures that have to be entertained and feel flourishing.
I recall my times when I felt very empty in my life. This happened periodically in short and long periods of time. To live fully, you have to embrace your fears, experience activities that you have always kept in your mind or perhaps even do something that you haven’t thought of yet.
7 Life-changing tips on how to feel alive and be happy
1. Start from the basics of living
The basics of living are healthy eating and exercising. Yes, this sound cliché, but bear with me!
I perfectly know this feeling when I used to overeat (A LOT!) unhealthy snacks and food, and then felt sluggish and doing absolutely nothing for the rest of the day. This was one of the reasons why I felt not alive.
What you put in your body reflects in your mind and physical appearance. It also affects the way how you feel. Not only that, but if you are overweight (like I was once for a long period of time), then this might be one of the biggest reasons why you feel not alive.
Healthy eating doesn’t have to be boring. What I’m saying is, that you shouldn’t overthink it and still eat at least relatively healthy, which means it’s totally fine to make a chicken sandwich with mayo and BBQ sauce. You just have to avoid crappy food like sweets, crisps and chips, fried goods and similar.
Now, I eat much healthier for 7 years and I feel fantastic!
Besides, exercising boosted my confidence and pushed me to do the things I wouldn’t have done in the past. I thoroughly enjoy going for long walks, do kayaking, go on mountain trips, spend my holidays actively and almost anything else active that you can think of. Being on the move brings excitement, especially if that’s something that you haven’t experienced yet.
Therefore, I highly recommend you embrace healthy living lifestyle, because you will experience new activities and boost your self-confidence, which has a lot of benefits to it.
2. Practice self-care
Sometimes we feel being all the time on the rush and neglect our well-being. That is a wrong thing to do. We must be one of our biggest priorities in life. Our well-being is reflected mentally and physically.
The main idea of feeling alive is to experience something new that you haven’t experienced in a while or never at all.
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. - Marcus Aurelius
If you haven’t experienced a massage, you must do it right away! It’s absolutely amazing and eases all the stress off your muscles and your mind.
Also, you can do SPA, write journals, spend time with yourself, go to museums or conferences, go sightseeing and anything else you can think of. The key is not to do the same things that you practice daily or what has become pretty casual to you.
3. Breathe
“What? Breathe? I do this all the time. How can it help me??”
I can see this confusion coming and it’s totally understandable.
Breathing is one of the natural things that we do and don’t even think for a second about that. It comes naturally and effortlessly.
However, the distinction between feeling alive and not alive is literally breathing. It’s something that keeps us alive and lets us experience other life pleasures.
Therefore, that’s why it’s important to come back to our roots. Go outside away from all the transportation traffic. Get yourself to nature. Then, close your eyes and take a deep breath. Be conscious of it. Try to smell the breath and enjoy it.
For me, it works the best at evenings, when the weather becomes a bit cooler (when it’s summer). I’m either an early morning or late evening person. That’s when my senses become sharper and I feel more alive than ever. It helps me to unwind, clear my mind and be grateful that we live in such a beautiful world.
4. Be self-aware
The problem why we forget what it’s like to be alive is because we start living on autopilot. We wake up, get ready to school or work, come back home, relax for the rest of the day, sleep and repeat the process again. It becomes too ordinary and we don’t even think about it.
Instead, try to look at your daily activities from a different point of view. Try to think of it as something that will bring you great results and sooner or later you will be able to enjoy it’s fruits. Remind yourself what is the main cause that you are working for.
To me, life is a gift, and it's a blessing to just be alive. And each person should learn what a gift it is to be alive no matter how tough things get. - Tony Bennett
Perhaps you work for a non-profit humanitarian organization and you fell into a routine and unconsciously forgot what impact do you make on other people’s lives?
Don’t forget what you are trying to achieve and accomplish and why are you working or doing a certain thing for. You have to wake up from autopilot regime and start feeling alive once again.
5. Shift to abundance mindset
If your mind is suffering from negative thoughts and constant worrying and doesn’t let you live your life to it’s fullest potential, then you must consider abundance mindset.
At this very moment you might be having scarcity mindset, which stops you from enjoying life. You might be thinking that the whole world is against you, you don’t have and might never achieve your goals, you don’t know your passions or you might simply have a belief that you are not an interesting person.
If anything sounds similar to you, then you have a scarcity mindset and you must turn the switch to abundance mindset immediately.
Not so old events of Covid-19 pandemic have planted a seed of fear in people’s minds. The shelves of shops were full toilet paper, salt, hand sanitizers, cans of beans and tuna… People started panicking and were preparing for the worst. Everything was sold out.
In this scenario, scarcity mindset has shown up in a form of fear of unknown. Nevertheless, fear of unknown can show in different ways of stress, anxiety, depression, sadness and other negative feelings and emotions.
Therefore, if you really want to feel alive, you have to adopt abundance mindset. It’s a mindset that shifts your thoughts to positive ones and you never look back to the past. Generally, people with this mindset are happier and achieve more in life.
Therefore, to adopt abundance mindset, you have to be grateful for what you have and always keep in mind that if, for an instance, you’ve missed a “once in a lifetime opportunity” (you really didn’t), it’s not the end of the world. Sooner or later you will be given even a better lifetime opportunity.
Abundance mindset is all about positivity and gratitude for life. People with this mindset always believe that life is full of opportunities and even when some opportunities close their doors in front of their eyes, these people always have faith that it’s not for the worse, but for the better.
6. Practice leadership
Leadership doesn’t mean that you have to be responsible for, let’s say, a team of software developers. It means that you should be taking your life into your own hands.
You will experience liveliness by becoming more active instead of being passive. What I mean is, that instead of waiting for someone to tell you what to do in your workplace or at your home, take initiative and start acting on your own. Instead of constantly asking questions, look for the answers on your own and show ownership of your actions.
When we give up on our dreams, we die while still alive. - Robin Sharma
The most important thing is to be proactive and to be the first to take a step. This is something that will get you out of your comfort zone and will inculcate confidence within you. As a result, you will start feeling more alive.
It’s not a coincidence why leaders have more opportunities in life and are prone more to life-changing experiences. It’s because they have more doors open due of being proactive and having bigger social network.
Feeling alive is about finding meaningful things to do and improving your life for the better.
7. Work on your relationships
Talking to someone makes you feel alive because of the constant interaction and discussions. These discussions can be emotional, technical, psychological, financial related and anything else you can think of.
Humans by nature are social creatures and thrive for communication. That’s not coincidence and it doesn’t happen for no reason.
Talking to someone sparks mutual interest, ignites the fire within your heart to do something interesting together and gives you positive feelings in general.
That’s why you shouldn’t abandon your friends and family. It’s very simple to forget about your friends, especially when you graduate from college or high school. A lot of friendships end in that way.
The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It can be totally the case that some people don’t have a lot of friends and they may be busy at times. However, there are a lot of opportunities to get to know new people. You can find them through mutual hobbies, debate communities, even on the internet on speaking platforms, such as discord.
Also, treasure your family while it still lasts. Parents and grandparents don’t live forever. You’ll regret for not spending time with them when the time comes.
What I’m trying to say, is that relationships brighten up one’s life in many ways: bring excitement, introduce to new activities, force to speak and express your thoughts, boost confidence, bring people together closer and make you feel alive.
Final Verdict
To sum up this article, you have to do something that you don’t do often or you have never done before. You must also change your mindset to a positive one if your thoughts are always occupied by negative ones.
Life offers a lot of interesting opportunities and challenges for you to cope with. However, don’t be discouraged if something goes not the way how you planned. Feeling alive is all about experiencing real and exceptional life events.
Feeling alive is absolutely possible if you are willing to change your habits and routines. We don’t have enough time not to feel alive. Therefore, embrace the changes and be happy just like you deserve to be.