5 Ways To Live Consciously And What Does It Really Mean
Many people live a life of quiet desperation. They just go with the flow, join the herd. Their only reward for living this way is that they are able to avoid trouble and live a comfortable life.
What looks like comfort from the outside may in fact be killing them inside.
After all, isn’t it torture to go through the same routine 365 days a year and don’t know why you’re doing it?
Absolutely it is.
Therefore it’s important to live consciously by becoming conscious of your actions, emotions, desires, intentions, and finally, your purpose.
What Does It Mean to Live Consciously?
So what does it mean to live consciously?
In simple words, to live consciously means that you’re creating your life consciously rather than drifting along passively. It means you are aware of your true desires and you’re able to direct your energy for the progressive realization of those desires.
Also, it means that you’re becoming aware of any negative beliefs or thought patterns. Releasing them so that they don’t pull you down. When you’re conscious, you feel good irrespective of the circumstances because you realize that YOU are creating your life with your thoughts, actions and belief system.
Steve Pavlina, a prominent personal development coach and blogger, believes that to live consciously, you should exhibit the following traits:
- making careful, intelligent, and deliberate decisions
- maintaining a positive emotional state regardless of circumstances
- developing empowering beliefs while purging disempowering ones
- understanding your own thought processes, emotions, and behaviors
- staying focused on what’s most important while tuning out distractions
- building an accurate and effective model of reality
How to Live Consciously
1. Embrace The Truth, Even If It Is Bitter
Learn to live with the truth. Stop telling yourself lies about what you are or what you should do so that you can finally be happy. Think about the areas of your life where you aren’t honest with yourself or others. You’ll find a part of yourself you can’t accept.
Take gradual steps. Speak the truth to trusted people first. And slowly you’ll be able to come out on to the other side.
2. Know How You Spend Your Time
A great way to become conscious is to know where your attention goes. Do you use your attention for personal growth? Are you able to move closer to your goals? Or are you wasting your time or even self-destructing?
3. Become Self-Aware
Take some time to figure out what you value in life the most. It might be health, love, achievement, adventure, creativity, and so on. Know your desires.
And know your emotional nature: how you treat yourself, how you treat others, and when you feel the most alive.
4. Focus Your Attention, Stop Being Distracted
Attention raises consciousness, distraction lowers it. Think about it. When you’re not paying attention, how can you be conscious?
Start focusing more. Do one thing at a time. When you spend time with people, be present instead of zoning out on your smartphone.
5. Develop Positive Values
Positive values raise consciousness, negative values lower consciousness. Choose courage, desire, compassion, knowledge, reason, energy (with exercising, physical activity), and intention over cowardice, apathy, cruelty, ignorance, irrationality, disease, and passivity.