45 Ways to Know You’re living your life on your terms

It can be hard to tell if you’re headed in the right direction.

How do you measure happiness? How do you measure internal fulfilment? How do you know if you’re really living the life you want or just following that path because you’ve been told it’s the right thing to do?? Aside from measuring the levels of dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin in your brain, it can be hard to tell.

So, to make it simpler and easier than having to get your brain fluid sucked out through a tiny hole in the back of your skull, I’ve put together a list of the 45 most common traits that guys who’ve ‘made the leap’ report back.

Which ones do you have?

  1. You stop listening to rules and start trusting your intuition
  2. You still feel ok, even when she says no
  3. Spending time alone is more enjoyable than hanging out with other people*
  4. Shutting down is scarier than opening up
  5. Doing what’s right is more important than doing what’s easy
  6. You stop focussing on what other people did wrong and start focussing on what you could have done differently
  7. You connect deeper with people you’ve just met than people who you thought were your friends for years
  8. Doing the same thing over and over again is far scarier than trying something new
  9. You follow your fear rather than running from it
  10. Meditation becomes an enjoyable activity rather than a boring chore
  11. You stop saying ‘I don’t want…’ and start saying ‘I want…’
  12. You start to see just how boring, needy, and dependent most people really are
  13. You feel empathy rather than pain, when you get a negative response
  14. You start to appreciate random things like the colour blue
  15. Solutions that are obvious and simple to you, come across as deep and profound to other people
  16. You can understand what’s someone’s really trying to communicate, without being able to understand what they’re saying
  17. The thought of creating a life where you have to rely on anyone else makes you violently ill
  18. You find the lesson in every experience
  19. You accidentally seduce a woman whilst buying milk (or any other routine activity)
  20. Admitting you’re wrong is easier than pretending to be right
  21. Everyone accuses you of being a flirt, even when you’re not trying to
  22. Her friends approve of you rather than trying to get in your way
  23. You exercise and eat well for enjoyment rather than out of necessity
  24. People call you weird and you just don’t care because you’re having too much fun to care
  25. People who’ve known you for years stop wanting to hang out with you
  26. You value your own opinion more than you value the opinion of others
  27. People who had no desire to hang out with you in the past start to want to hang out with you
  28. You start to smile and laugh for no apparent reason
  29. Women are interested in you, despite what you say and do, not because of it
  30. People are amazed when they hear what you do on the weekend
  31. You laugh at your own jokes, even when no-one else gets them
  32. Selfishness becomes your default state
  33. You stop expecting the world to change
  34. You trust and mistrust people, regardless of what they say and do
  35. Process becomes more important and enjoyable than outcome
  36. You look back on a bucket list you wrote 2 years ago and realise that everything on there is either completely unimportant or you’ve already done it without planning to
  37. Tension is far more enjoyable than safety
  38. More often than not, you go to bed at night and think to yourself ‘That was a good day…’
  39. More often than not, you wake up in the morning excited, wondering what the world has in store for you today
  40. You look back at how far you’ve come in the last 2 weeks and can’t believe it
  41. Other people tend to break eye contact first
  42. You realise that beauty runs far deeper than great legs and a nice pair of tits
  43. You feel in control of your life, regardless of the outcome
  44. You realise just how simple this whole thing really is…
  45. You don’t need this list to tell you that you’re on the right track because everything feels amazing

That’s it. That’s everything I could come up with whilst sitting in the sun on my back porch, eating half a watermelon.I’m sure there’s more, positive in fact, but I can’t think of any right now. So, help me out.

What else deserves to be on the list? How do you know when you’re headed in the right direction and how do you know when you’re off track?

Also, which ones of these have you experienced? I’m keen to know if you guys are heading in the right direction or I need to find a better way to teach you.

Hit me up,

Leigh

*Don’t confuse this for ‘spending time alone is less painful than hanging out with other people’. If you’re spending time alone because it’s less frustrating, painful and scary than having to face the possibility of getting something wrong, then you’re definitely not ‘doing it right’.

23 thoughts on “45 Ways to Know You’re living your life on your terms”

  1. -You cry at the smallest things

    LOL i connect so deep with images in my mind of where i want to be in life or watch like an inspiring speech and I can’t help but watch the tears roll down 0:-)

    Reply
  2. – You stop thinking about things that don’t matter and concentrate on things that do

    I don’t do a lot of things on the list, but I enjoy the process 🙂

    Reply
  3. About the selfishness.. More often then not I like to give without wanting anything in return. And I feel better when I try to make somebody else happier. Despite the outcome. And sometimes when its about completing a task or sth I consider Other peoples opinions and then make my own decision and do/insist on doing my own decision. What do you think about it?

    Reply
  4. You realize plateaus are temporary and you just have to push through them to new levels of growth, instead of getting stuck there.

    You also REALLY appreciate a sexy six pack of abs on a hairy real Man.

    Reply
    • Ok, I see. The way I use the word ‘Selfish’ is doing what you need to do to make yourself happy, regardless of what other people want of think. That includes finding happiness is giving to others.

      Does that makes sense?

      Reply
  5. Yeap, really found myself in many of those, some occure often, some rarely;

    – you wonder how such a good article is given away for free?

    Reply
  6. Looks like I am in the right direction… but I must say I didn’t check (at least when I read the article) the 45th point:
    ‘You don’t need this list to tell you that you’re on the right track because everything feels amazing’

    Well… it takes time. Maybe you should add to the list another one that is not true for me:
    ‘You become more patiant’.

    A good article means a good reflexation. Thanks Leigh!

    Reply
  7. this one made me really curious:

    “You feel empathy rather than pain, when you get a negative response”

    What do you mean? How could you possibly feel empathy when you get a negative response? Do you mean that you will feel empathy for a person that gives you a negative response because feel that the person has pain, jeaulusy himself because of giving you a neagative comment? But that is not always the case, some people just give you negative responses because they are plain bad, it can´t always be that they are in pain themself that they want you too fell painfull too, or is it? What do you think? Just a weird thought of mine because I myself have dealt with a lot of negative responses of other people 🙂

    Reply
    • Hey mate,

      I do mean that you will feel empathy for the people who give you a negative response because you can feel their pain. Rather than worrying about what you’re going through, you have the internal fulfilment in your life that allows you to be compassionate to others rather than worrying about what you’re going through.

      If you feel pain when you get a negative response, then that’s fine. This isn’t a set of rules you have to follow, this is a set of characteristics that will appear when the time is right.

      Does that clear it up?

      Reply
  8. One I noticed today:

    While your mind is busy blaming others, the real issue keeps popping into your head, ’till you can’t ignore the real issue anymore.

    And a similar one to that:

    While the storm rages around you, you wonder if you should be worrying more (because actually you don’t give a damn, it’s only your old pattern of worrying rearing it’s ugly head)

    Reply
  9. – When meditating, you feel a kind of prescence in your chest. You know it is your heart. And when you ask it “What should I do now?” it simply says “Keep going.”
    It’s a bit out there, but an interesting experience nonetheless.
    Also, I’d just like to say that accidentally seducing a woman whilst buying milk sounds hilarious and awesome. Can’t say I’m at that stage yet. It sounds like a story I’d like to hear though!

    Reply
  10. I like this article and I can identify myself in many of them, and what really did it for me was number 2 “You still feel ok, even when she says no”.

    Another one I identify myself with but do not quite agree with is 6. “You stop focussing on what other people did wrong and start focussing on what you could have done differently”.

    In my past I have focused too much on what I could have done differently to the point where it turned to a lot of self doubt, and thus I ended up undermining by own self-confidence… So for me it has become somewhat the opposite, but is now mostly a matter of objectivity and logic when something went wrong.

    Thank you for the read.

    Reply
    • My understanding of responsibility now, is so much clearer then my parents tried to explain it to me when I was young.

      Say someone shoots you in the foot. Is it your fault? No. But if you were to respond in the same way most people respond to unwanted situations, you’d wait for whoever shot you in the foot to apologize and take you to the hospital. Now that COULD happen, but I’m sure you’ll agree that it wouldn’t be wise to rely on the person who just shot your foot to offer you help.

      The wise thing to do is help yourself in whatever way you can (call someone, cry for help, drag yourself to the hospital etc) even though you may in no way be responsible for the bullet in your leg.

      You’re right that it takes skill and presence of mind to know when the fault is your own, or someone else’s or (as is actually most often the case) both. I too used to think that whatever went wrong, I must have done something (or not done something) to contribute to the situation, while also blaming others for forcing me into that situation. Then I switched it and mostly blamed others, and got a lot angrier (which was far better than being depressed).

      Now I’m balancing it out: now I also see how other people aren’t just being awkward because of my social anxiety, but because they have their own anxiety and insecurities too, and sometimes they even try and project those anxieties and fears onto others…

      But if your goal is to grow in life, then you have to consider what or how you could’ve done things differently, irrespective of where the blame lies. That’s my take on it anyway.

      Reply
      • Well done mate. Powerful realisation.

        The core message is really this: in any situation, there are elements inside your control and elements outside your control. Focussing on the elements that are outside your control is a waste of time, so why do it? Just focus on what you can control and eventually, you’ll build a life where the elements outside your control matter less and less.

        Reply
  11. Hi , this is my first ever time commenting in two years since I started following you.
    & I really connected with , you finding lessons with every neg & pos experiences and I think I have completely liberated from what people think of me and I follow my heart.

    and I feel a huge sense of purpose each day.

    thanks 🙂

    Reply

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