The real life

Book is written by multiple authors. The authors are therapeutist and coaches. Each of them has two chapters in which they talk about a certain problem. I will go through the chapters (problems) and I will try to explain it with my own words.

Stop tolerating the energy eaters

Imagine your energy as a battery that your phone has. In the morning, you wake up and you go out doing something. It will drain your battery and then you come home to the family that will drain even more of your energy and at the end of the day, you will be exhausted without any motivation for doing the same tomorrow.

This may indicate that throughout the day, you didn't do anything that would recharge your battery a bit. Or maybe you were doing a little bit more activities that drains your battery too much. What you should do now? You should identify the things that drains your spirit. It can be anything, from the friends, family, work and so on.

Do yourself a favor and define the things that drain you and also define a things that will recharge you. Maybe after you get home, you need a few minutes to just sit down and listen to some music before you hit the wall of the real life that is awaiting you at home. And maybe that is all that it needs to be done in order for you to operate as a good parent and spouse. Just a little bit of recharge.

After you identify battery eaters and fillers, you should let your friends or close friends know that you found out this about yourself and that you would like them to respect the new you. You may find that in order to function as a normal adult, you have to have some time for yourself. Go out to the woods, play, read or do something that will recharge your battery. Communicate your needs and borders.

And after the communication and defining what the eaters are, cut them off.

Make strong parts from the weakest

Everyone is trying to hide something. Some wounds, some good things or some bad things as well. We are raised as someone that should be in the middle. Be a part of the group, don't stick out. Hide your needs and your opinions that would be out of a "normal" zone. This is just making us average. And we don't want to be average, we want to stand out and left the mark on the peoples hearts, or somewhere else, you choose.

Now, you were hiding something all your life in you. It doesn't have to be that bad that it needs hiding. Maybe its your voice, that you don't like. So you hide it, you are not talking that loud and you may hide it and you may not say something just because you didn't want to expose it.

Now try to embrace the weak spot in you. Take the responsibility of owning that part of you. In the end it is a part of you that you should accept and love it as well as the good parts. You can forgive yourself that you may have this weak spot and you may hold it open for others. You will gain soo much confidence out of that, people around you will start to feel more safe as you will expose the weak spots, you will acknowledge that you are not perfect, no one is and never will be.

So go out, take the bad spot in yourself and light it up. Don't be average as everyone else. Stick out with all the things that makes you you. Then you will lose your constraints and you can be on the begging of the route to the real and better life.

Be selfish

This chapter is about taking care of yourself and putting you on the top of your priority list. You may already take this as an attack on you. On how you should be a priority on the list, when you have children and family that you need to take care of? Well I really don't care if you feel attacked. You should do it anyways. Because if you don't follow the first chapter and you put everyone else above you, it will destroy you in the long run. You can't be good parent if you are used by your children and you can't be a great father if you don't know your value and do everything for others.

I'm suggesting starting small as learning to say no to things that doesn't correspond with you. Maybe you would like to be at home alone, but friends are calling you out. Then you would go just to satisfy their needs of having you out there with them but you would not respect yourself and your needs.

The main thing from this is to respect yourself as well as you respect others. And if you don't like anything in your life, be so self centered that you will eliminate it even though someone would not like it. Let's take something that you don't like in your life. Take it and change it, maybe you are doing something just to please someone else. Tell them that you don't want to do it, that it is not something that you want to do, be strict and resentful. Again, create a border and respect it. Find the people that respect it as well and stick to them. Friends or people that doesn't respect you and your borders doesn't deserve you in the first place.

Acknowledge and find your needs

Maybe this chapter should be as the first one as a lot of things depend on this. Find the difference between I need and I want. You can see the difference in the end. If you don't have what you wanted or that you thought that you needed and nothing changed. It was most likely just the I want thing.

Huge point that should be stressed out from this part is to stop wanting others to fulfill your needs. You should be self sufficient person that fulfill his needs by himself. If you will put the burden on satisfying your needs on someone else, you will be constantly complaining that that person is not giving you enough of it and you will need more and more and it will never be enough. If you are doing this, identify it and try to fulfill from yourself. The best examples are the relationships that we are having. Why do you need some relationship at all? What it does for you and for your needs?

If you are feeling a strong emotions, use them as a navigation. They always come hand to hand with your needs. And for better navigation in the needs, here is a list of the from the book and the definitions:

Needs

1. Self-transcendence - is a personality trait that involves the expansion of personal boundaries, including, potentially, experiencing spiritual ideas such as considering oneself an integral part of the universe.
2. Self-actualization - is the highest level of psychological development, where personal potential is fully realized after basic bodily and ego needs have been fulfilled.
3. Aesthetic needs - appreciation and search for beauty, balance, form. Always in search never in reach.
4. Cognitive needs - knowledge and understanding, curiosity, exploration, need for meaning and predictability.
5. Self-worth - knowing or feeling that you are a good person who deserves to be treated with respect
6. Love and being a part of something
7. Security - clothing and shelter for body warmth and protection.
8. Physical needs - food, water, oxygen, activity, or sensory and motor stimulation, including sex, physical exercise, and rest.

Be kinder and be more human

These times are run by social media, where everybody is posting their beautiful life. No one has any flaws, everything and everyone is perfect. So you try that as well. You are trying to be better and you are taking the acknowledgement of others as a drug. This can be good, but there is the other side of the coin and that in the long run, it is not perfect.

Try to answer these questions and be as honest as you can, maybe you will find places, where you are playing some roles and where you are not being authentic:

1. When was the last time you admitted a mistake and be proud of it?
2. What is it in your life that you don't appreciate?
3. Who is the one that you would not like to think something bad about you?
4. What are your weak spots?
5. How do you talk about them?
6. What is it that you take too much personally when it rises up in a conversation?
7. What is it that make you likable for others?
8. How should the real male/female behave?
9. What is the reason that might cause someone to dislike you?
10. What is it that you definitely will not do in front of your parents?

On how to be more kind, start from your inner voice. Maybe you are thinking that being hard on yourself is the key for the better performance. You are wrong. Try to exchange the inner thoughts from the negative attitude to the positive. Be kind to yourself. Know what is good for you and what is not. Acknowledge your flaws, do not try to hide them. The path to real and better life is from being authentic, from knowing yourself and from being kind to others and to yourself.

Live in the present

This chapter is really great and it reflects the problem of today's society. We are living fast, we are trying to be everywhere and most importantly, we are trying to get a better life in the future. This is the problem, we are having the perfect life right now. If we are saying things like, after the kids will leave the house, after I graduate and everything that is somehow conditioned will stay the same. Because our future is the perfect picture of our present. If the present is perfect and we can enjoy it as it is, we are going to have a better future that we can enjoy as well.

Main thing that we should learn from living in the present and how to do it is to learn how to stop in the moment. Deep heavy inhale. Stop. Scan your body, scan your feelings and emotions. Make the most of the present situation, even though it can be bad. Maybe it is not what you hoped for, but from every situation we are able to learn, we are able to to look at it from the different angle and see the bright side.

The other issue that we are casting on ourselves is that we are having the expectations. We expect someone or something to change, or to make us feel somehow that we want to feel. But the only thing how we can live better life is to get rid of expectations or communicate them properly. If we don't, we are just casting pressure on everyone around us and ourselves as well. Only when we allow ourselves to surrender the perfect imagination, only then we are able to live with more ease.

Happiness is equal to reality without the expectations.

Get the fulfilled life, not just impressive style

What we need or want is strongly influenced by the social media and our surroundings. The marketing companies are telling us what we need, want and desire and we adopt their thoughts and make it our own and we don't even know about it. The defense against this is really hard, as we are hardwired to fit in order to survive. And as we are going through life, we are changing our style in order to fit into groups that we are part of. Maybe you are thinking that you are above this, that you are not slave of a marketing companies, huge brands and so on, that you are good enough to with second hand clothes batik t-shirt and converse shoes. Well you are part of that particular group as well and you are adopting their style.

What you should get from this is that you should be very conscious about who do you surround yourself with. Those people will most likely influence you. And as always, the energy that you are emitting will attract people with the same energy. Your relationships will be perfect mirror of yourself. So this implicates that you can change your energy and your style and attract exactly what you want.

How to test what you really want. Make a list of 101 things that you want. Whatever it can be. Have a coffee in some coffee shop, travel somewhere, buy new shoes, buy that new laptop. Monitor yourself while you are writing those things, do you feel the enjoyment, are those things yours or did you get them from the social media, surroundings or different people?

Be present and enjoy the details

In everyday life, we are missing the importance of being in the exact moment. We tend to be in the future living with anxiety or we tend to be in the past punishing ourselves for the things that we done or reliving the good or the bad things that happen. But we are not living in the future or in the past, we are living in now. Being in the "right now" moment can be hard and it needs to be practiced.

If we will practice this skill then we can enjoy the little details. The details that are soo important in our relationships, because that is what a great relationship has. A lot of details from day to day. When you buy flowers, or just make a nice gesture as complimenting the looks, the smile or active listens and explore your partner. But be careful, expecting those details is not healthy as everyone has different level of detail awareness and expecting your partner to see every detail can lead to disappointments.

How you can try to learn to enjoy the little things:

1. Name your focus: If you say, what you are now focusing on you can trick your brain to really start to work on that.
2. Start with small steps: Your focus needs training. You may do the mistake that you set enormous goal for yourself. Start with small steps, write a sentence, not a book.
3. Feel more: When you are doing usual things, focus on your senses. If you are writing, listen to the keyboard. If you are playing with kids, focus on the smiles and sparkling eyes.