Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinion drown your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs

If your answer to any of the above is a no, maybe, or not sure, that means you’re not living your life to the fullest. Which really shouldn’t be the case, because your life experience is yours to create. Why settle for anything less than what you can get? You deserve nothing but the best. In the past years of my life, especially since I started pursuing my passion in 2008, I’ve been living every day to the fullest, filled with joy, passion, and rigor. It’s an amazing experience that I want you to experience too.

Here is a list of 101 timeless tips I use to live my best life, and I hope they’ll help you to do the same too. As you work on these tips, you’ll find yourself becoming more conscious, more alive, and more importantly, experiencing life on a whole new level. Be sure to bookmark or print out this page and refer to it daily.

Here are 101 ways to live your life to the fullest:

1. Live every day on a fresh new start. Don’t be held back by what happened yesterday, the day before, the week before, the year before, or even decades ago. Life is short, so live in the present moment.Be true to who you are. Stop trying to please other people or to be someone else. It’s better to be an original version of yourself rather than be an exact duplicate of someone else.
2. Quit complaining. Don’t be like the howling dog, always howling and never doing anything. Stop complaining about your problems and work on them instead.
3. Be proactive. Stop waiting for others around you to do something and take action yourself instead.
4. Rather than think “what if,” think “next time.” Don’t think about the things you can’t change. Instead focus on the things you can act on. That’s the most constructive thing you can do in any situation.
5. Focus on WHAT vs. How. Focus on WHAT you want first, before you think about HOW to do it. Anything is possible as long as you set your mind, heart, and soul to it.
6. Create your own opportunities. You can wait for opportunities, or you can get out there and create your own. The latter is definite and much more empowering.
7. Live consciously each day. Stop sleepwalking through life. Your life is something to be experienced, not coasted through.
8. Be committed to your growth. Take courses. Self-reflect. Build on your strengths. Don’t rely on the feeling of familiarity but focus on what will enable you to grow the most.
9. Know your inner self. This means knowing who you are and what you represent. Be clear of your personal identity. 
10. Discover your life purpose. Set the mission statement for your life, one that will drive you to live your life to the fullest. 
11. Live in alignment with your purpose. What can you start doing immediately that will let you live 100% in alignment with your purpose? How can you live true to your purpose within every situation you are in, every second of the day?
12. Set your life commandments. Define your personal commandments to live your best life. What adages and principles do you want to follow in your life?
13. Discover your values. Values are the essence of what makes you, you.
14. Hold yourself to the highest conduct. Every one of us have our own set of ethics and principles. Live true to them every day. Also, live in full alignment with your purpose (#12), commandments (#13) and values (#14).
15. Stop putting life on hold. Are you putting any parts of your life on hold? What is one area of your life you have been putting off, avoiding or denying? Uncover that and start working on it.
16. Create your life handbook. Your life handbook is your personal manual to live your best life, containing your mission statement, values, goals, personal strengths, blind spots, and action plans. Start off with a few basic pages, and then build on it.
17. Design your ideal life. What is your ideal life? Design it. Firstly, assess your life via the life wheel. Then, ask yourself what it takes to live a 10/10 life. What is the life that will make you shout for joy? There are no limits in life — only those you set for yourself!
18. Set your goals. After you design your ideal life, set your 5-year, 3-year, and 1-year goals. The more specific they are, the better!
19. Take action on your goals and dreams. Create an action plan for your goals and work on it!
20. Create your bucket list, which is a list of things to do before you die. Then, get out there to achieve them.
21. Don’t do things for the sake of doing them. Always evaluate what you’re doing and only do it if there is meaning behind them. Don’t be afraid to quit the things that don’t serve your path.
22. Do the things you love because life is too precious to be doing anything else. If you don’t enjoy something, then don’t do it. Spend your time and energy on things that bring you fulfillment and happiness.
23. Discover your passion in life. What sets you on fire? Go out there to discover what you love to do. 
24. Make your passion a full-fledged career. Then, start pursuing it. Stop working in a job you feel passionless about. Quit your job when you are ready to do it full-time. 
25. Turn your passion into a huge success. Turn your passion into a multi-million dollar business. Better yet, make it a multi-billion dollar one.
26. Learn from criticism. Be open to criticism but don’t be affected by it. Criticism is meant to help you be a better person. Learn from it. 
27. Be positive. Is the glass half empty or half full? What if I say it’s neither? It’s actually all-full – the bottom half is water, the top half is air. It’s all a matter of perception. Take on perceptions that empower you, not those that bind you. If you can see the positive side of everything, you’ll be able to live a much richer life than others.
28. Don’t badmouth other people. If there’s something you don’t like about someone, say it to his/her face — otherwise, don’t say it at all. It’s not nice to badmouth others, and it also reflects a small mind.
29. Be empathetic. If everyone only sees life from his/her own perspective, we’ll forever be close-minded and insular. See things from others’ shoes.
30. Be compassionate. Show compassion and kindness to everyone around you.
31. Develop 100% self-belief. Believe in yourself and your abilities. Remove your limiting beliefs and replace them with empowering ones. If you don’t believe in yourself, how can you expect others to believe in you? 
32. Let go of unhappy past. This means past grievances, heartbreaks, sadness, disappointments, and anger.
33. Forgive those who have done you wrong in the past. This includes backstabbers, those who took credit for your achievements, and those who have done you wrong. “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and realize it was you.” — Lewis B. Smedes
34. Let go of attachments. Don’t get fixated with achieving a certain status, fame, wealth or material possessions. These are impermanent and will ultimately disappear one day when you die. Focus on growing and living life to the fullest instead.
35. Let go of relationships that do not serve you. That means negative people, dishonest people, people who don’t respect you, people who are overly critical, and relationships that prevent you from growing.
36. Spend more time with people who enable you. Hang out with people whom you compatible with: like-minded people and people who are positive, successful, and positive for your growth. You are after all the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.
     
37. Build genuine, authentic connections with people around you — friends, family, colleagues, business partners, customers/clients, and acquaintances. Spend time to know them better and foster stronger connections.
38. Connect with an old friend. There is no end to the number of friends you can have. Reach out to people from the past.
39. Do a kind deed a day. What is something you can do today that will make the world a better place? Go and do it.
40. Help other people who are in need. Volunteering is one outlet. You can also start with your friends and family.
41. Help people when they least expect it, without reason. You don’t need any reason to help others. Do it because you want to. Share the love with everyone.
42. Go dating (if you’re single).
43. Fall in love. ♥ ? 
44. Review your life. Set a weekly review to assess how you are doing for your goals. Review your purpose once every 3-6 months so that you know you’re on the right path.
45. Overcome procrastination. Procrastination is a huge waste of your time (and your life). Get rid of it once and for all. 
46. 30 minutes a day. Set aside at least 30 minutes every day to work on a Quadrant 2 goal that, when you achieve it, will bring about the biggest fulfillment and happiness in your life.
47. Get out there and make new friends — whether at your workplace, online, with friends’ friends, or in social groups. 
48. Make deeper connections. Beyond making new friends, aim to make deeper connections. 
49. Be your advisor (from the future). Imagine you’re the future you from 5 years later. How would you advise yourself? Write this advice down. Now, apply them.
50. Write a letter to your future self. Envision how you’ll be like in the future, one year from now. Write as long as you like. Now, seal it and put it in a safe place. Set a calendar appointment one year from now, so you’ll know to open when it’s time. Self
51. Declutter. Start from your computer, then proceed to your workdesk, your bedroom, and your home. When you throw unwanted stuff away, you make room for new things and new energy to enter your life.
52. Keep learning. There is something to learn from everything you see, hear and experience. This includes your mistakes and past misshaps (if any). Learn to interpret each event objectively. Focus on what you can learn from it so that you can apply the lessons moving forward.
53. Keep developing yourself. Equip yourself with a huge breadth of knowledge. Learn different skills, pick up different hobbies, study different fields.
54. Keep upgrading yourself. Equip yourself with a huge depth of knowledge. While you can usually only reach level 99 in video games, in real life you can level up to infinity. Go for further studies if need be. Develop your skills. Level up. Invest your >10,000 hours in each skill.
55. Try new things. What is something you would normally not do? Get out of your comfort zone to try something different. It can be something simple like taking a new bus route, trying a new food item, picking up a new hobby, or something bigger like studying in a different field, learning a new skill, and traveling to a country you’ll never visit. There are no limits (except whatever is illegal and morally wrong of course)!
56. Get yourself out there. (a) Get out there geographically. Go out, travel, and explore the world. Set sail into the sea. Go backpacking by yourself and visit as many countries as possible. Get on a road trip and visit all the places that come up in your trip. (B) Get out there situationally. Stop sticking to routines and comfort zones. Try something different. (c) Get out there in life. Stop watching TV and living vicariously through the TV characters. Go and live the life of your dreams.
57. Be the absolute best in what you do. Go for the #1 position in what you do. If you want to spend your time doing something, you might as well be the best in it!
58. Don’t settle. In the same vein as #58, don’t settle for less. Don’t settle for someone you don’t like as your partner. Don’t settle for a job you don’t like. Don’t settle for friends who make you feel like a lesser person. Don’t settle for a weight you are unhappy with. Go for what you really want.
59. Stretch yourself. What are you doing now? How can you achieve more? Set bigger goals. Explore your limits and break them.
60. Embrace new ideas. Don’t mentally limit yourself. Let your mind be a breeding ground for new ideas. 
61. Create your inspirational haven. Turn your room into a place you love. Do the same for your work desk. Get rid of things that make you unproductive. Surround it with things that inspire you and trigger you into action. 
62. Behave as your ideal self will. All of us have an ideal vision of who we want to be. What is your ideal self like? How can you start to be your ideal self now?
63. Set your role models in life. With role models, you become much better than you can be by yourself. I am personally inspired by Oprah Winfrey (for how she has impacted millions of lives), Lady Gaga (for her talent and not being afraid to be different), Leonardo Dicaprio (for his dedication to his craft and his commitment to environmentalism), and many more. Seeing them and what they do reminds me of what I can be and what I can do, so they drive me to greater heights.
64. Get mentors/coaches. There’s no faster way to improve than to have someone work with you on your goals. Not only will they drive you to achieve more, but they’ll also share important advice which you can use to create even more success for yourself. Many of my clients approach me to coach them and the net result is this: they achieve significantly more progress and results than if they had worked alone.
65. Uncover your blind spots. The more you uncover, the more you grow, the better you become. 
66. Increase your consciousness. Having a high consciousness level means being able to transcend beyond fear-based reactions and to make wise choices that create the most positive impact on both you and others.
67. Ask for feedback. As much as we can try to uncover our blind spots (#66), there will be blind spots that we cannot identify. Asking for feedback gives us an added perspective about ourselves. Some people to approach are friends, family, colleagues, boss, or even acquaintances, since they have no preset bias and can give their feedback objectively. 
68. Generate passive income. Create passive income streams so that your income is not tied to the time you spend on work. Of course you’ll still continue to work, but only because you want to and not because you have to.
69. Help others live their best lives. There is no better way to grow than to help others grow. Ultimately, the world is one. We are all in this journey of life together.
70. Get married / Start your family / Have kids!
71. Improve the world. There are many things in the world that need your help and attention. Poverty. Disaster recovery. Illiteracy. Children in need. Depleting rainforests. Animal rescue. Endangered species. How can you do your part?
72. Spearhead a humanitarian cause or organization that you are passionate about.
73. Give more value than you receive. There is so much unspeakable joy that comes from giving. And when you give, you’ll find that you actually receive a lot more in return, in spades.
74. Be big-picture focused. You can either set your eyes on the big things or get hung up by the nitty gritty details. The former will help you get a lot more out of life than the latter. Focus on your big rocks and put first things first.
75. Be clear of your end objective. What is the end goal you seek? Is the task that you’re working on bringing you there? If not, put it aside. As long as you keep working on tasks that match your end goal, you’ll eventually reach there.
76. Go the 80/20 route. For every goal you have, there are different paths to achieve it. Pick the 80/20 path, i.e. the most effective path that brings you to your goal with the least amount of effort. 
77. Work on the 80/20 actions (Prioritize). As you embark on the 80/20 path for your goals, focus on the important tasks and cut out the less important ones. Work on the 20% actions that give you the 80% results.
78. Live in the moment. Do you often have a very busy mind? Calm your mind down. Be present. The only time you’re ever living is in this moment. Meditation helps remove mental clutter. 
79. Relish in the little moments. Snuggling under warm covers on a rainy day. Having ice cream on a hot day. A kiss with your loved one. Being with your best friend. A walk by the park. The breeze on your face. Quiet, alone time. Watching the sunrise/set. Soak in all these little moments of life. They are what make up your life.
80. Take a break. Being the best also requires you to take breaks when needed. Make sure you rest when needed. Doing so lets you walk the longer road ahead.
81. Stop wanting things a certain way. I have a 3-part series on the downsides of perfectionism and how to overcome them. Be firm on your end goals and ideals, but let go of the obsession to have things done a certain way. You’ll realize that when you do so, you achieve what you want. 

     

82. Focus on creation. Think about what you can bring to the world and create that.
83. Don’t criticize or judge others. Respect others for who they are.
84. The only person you can change is yourself. Stop expecting others to behave in a certain way. Rather than demand that others around you change, focus on changing yourself. You’ll be happier and live a more fulfilling life this way.
85. Practice gratitude. Be grateful for everything you have today, and everything you will get in the future.
86. Express gratitude. Let the people who’ve touched you know about your gratitude toward them. You’ll be surprised what a little act like this can do. If you don’t tell them, they’ll never know.
87. Let loose and have fun. Sing at the top of your lungs. Dance in the rain. ? Run barefoot and feel the ground underneath your feet. Hug everyone you know. Release yourself of your self-imposed shackles and be free! ?
88. Get into nature. Many of us live in concrete jungles. Get out of the urban city environment and soak in the beauty of nature.
89. You have a choice. Recognize you always have a choice in how to live your life.
90. Laugh more. ? Are you reading this with a straight face? Smile and have fun. ?
91. Embrace change. The only thing that’s constant is change. Change means growth. Rather than resist change, learn to be versatile such that you can make the best out of the changes that come. In fact, become an agent of change.
92. Be more risk-inclined. Don’t be afraid to take risks. The bigger your risks, the bigger your return.
93. Embrace mistakes. The more mistakes you make, the more experience you have, the higher your chances of success. Make sure to identify lessons from each experience so that you can build on them.
94. Embrace disappointments. Many people try to avoid feeling disappointed. They develop a negative relationship with disappointment. However, disappointment is part and parcel of being human — it reflects your real emotions. Don’t resist it — instead, embrace it. Learn to channel into your disappointment, emotions, to create more in life. 
95. Challenge your fears. All of us have fears. Fear of uncertainty, fear of public speaking, fear of risk… all these fears keep us in the same position and prevent us from growing. Rather than avoid your fears, recognize that they are the compass for growth. Address and overcome them. 
96. Maximize your mind, body, heart and soul. Living your best life requires you to maximize yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. If you are highly successful, have lots of money, have a big circle of friends, and are very spiritually aware but you neglect your physical health, that’s not living your life to the fullest. The same for other scenarios where you block off a part of you. Maximize all 4 aspects of you.
97. Be your best self. It's all about being your best self and achieving your highest potential. It’s by being our best self that we can live our life to the fullest.
98. Love yourself. You are the one constant in your life. Remember to always treasure and love yourself. ♥ You deserve nothing less. 
99. Love others. Be grateful to all the people around you because they help you grow. They enrich your life experience. Without them, your life would not be the same.
100. Last but not least: Love life. I find living to be a fascinating experience. How we’re all on earth with millions of species, 30,000 different life forms, and over 7 billion people, and everyone is thriving in their own way, existing, co-existing, and co-creating. There’s so much we don’t know out there and so much to be experienced that it’s just wonderful. As you live on earth, remember to love life. It’s the only way we have to live.

Mark Twain's Top 9 Tips for Living A Good Life

You may know Mark Twain for some of his very popular books like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He was a writer and also a humorist, satirist and lecturer.

Twain is known for his many – and often funny – quotes. Here are a few of our favourite tips from him. 

1. Approve of yourself. 

“A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.” 

If you don’t approve of yourself, of your behaviour and actions then you’ll probably walk around most of the day with a sort of uncomfortable feeling. If you, on the other hand, approve of yourself then you tend to become relaxed and gain inner freedom to do more of what you really want. 

This can, in a related way, be a big obstacle in personal growth. You may have all the right tools to grow in some way but you feel an inner resistance. You can’t get there. 

What you may be bumping into there are success barriers. You are putting up barriers in your own mind of what you may or may not deserve. Or barriers that tell you what you are capable of. They might tell you that you aren’t really that kind of person that could this thing that you’re attempting. 

Or if you make some headway in the direction you want to go you may start to sabotage for yourself. To keep yourself in a place that is familiar for you. 

So you need give yourself approval and allow yourself to be who you want to be. Not look for the approval from others. But from yourself. To dissolve that inner barrier or let go of that self-sabotaging tendency. This is no easy task and it can take time.

2. Your limitations may just be in your mind. 

“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” 

So many limitations are mostly in our minds. We may for instance think that people will disapprove because we are too tall, too old or balding. But these things mostly matter when you think they matter. Because you become self-conscious and worried about what people may think. 

And people pick up on that and may react in negative ways. Or you may interpret anything they do as a negative reaction because you are so fearful of a bad reaction and so focused inward on yourself. 

If you, on the other hand, don’t mind then people tend to not mind that much either. And if you don’t mind then you won’t let that part of yourself become a self-imposed roadblock in your life. 

It is, for instance, seldom too late to do what you want to do.

3. Lighten up and have some fun. 

“Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.” 

“Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.” 

Humor and laughter are amazing tools. They can turn any serious situation into something to laugh about. They can lighten the mood just about anywhere. 

And a lighter mood is often a better space to work in because now your body and mind isn’t filled to the brim with negative emotions. When you are more light-hearted and relaxed then the solution to a situation is often easier to both come up with and implement. Have a look at Lighten Up! for more on this topic.

4. Let go of anger. 

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” 

Anger is most of the time pretty pointless. It can cause situations to get out of hand. And from a selfish perspective it often more hurtful for the one being angry then the person s/he’s angry at. 

So even if you feel angry at someone for days recognize that you are mostly just hurting yourself. The other person may not even be aware that you are angry at him or her. So either talking to the person and resolving the conflict or letting go of anger as quickly as possible are pretty good tips to make your life more pleasurable.

5. Release yourself from entitlement. 

“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing.It was here first.” 

When you are young your mom and dad may give a lot of things. As you grow older you may have a sort of entitlement. You may feel like the world should just give you what you want or that it owes you something. 

This belief can cause a lot of anger and frustration in your life. Because the world may not give you what expect it to. On the other hand, this can be liberating too. You realize that it is up to you to shape your own life and for you to work towards what you want. You are not a kid anymore, waiting for your parents or the world to give you something. 

You are in the driver’s seat now. And you can go pretty much wherever you want.

6. If you’re taking a different path, prepare for reactions.

“A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.”

I think this has quite a bit of relevance to self-improvement.

If you start to change or do something different than you usually do then people may react in different ways. Some may be happy for you. Some may be indifferent. Some may be puzzled or react in negative and discouraging ways.

Much of these reactions are probably not so much about you but about the person who said it and his/her life. How they feel about themselves is coming through in the words they use and judgements they make.

And that’s OK. I think it’s pretty likely that they won’t react as negatively as you may imagine. Or they will probably at least go back to focusing on their own challenges pretty soon.

So what other people may say and think and letting that hold you back is probably just fantasy and barrier you build in your mind.

You may find that when you finally cross that inner threshold you created then people around you may not shun you or go chasing after you with pitchforks.  They might just go: “OK”.

7. Keep your focus steadily on what you want. 

“Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.” 

What you focus your mind on greatly determines how things play out. You can focus on your problems and dwell in suffering and a victim mentality. Or you can focus on the positive in situation, what you can learn from that situation or just focus your mind on something entirely else. 

It may be “normal” to dwell on problems and swim around in a sea of negativity. But that is a choice. And a thought habit. You may reflexively start to dwell on problems instead of refocusing your mind on something more useful. But you can also start to build a habit of learning to gain more and more control of where you put your focus.

8. Don’t focus so much on making yourself feel good. 

“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.” 

This may be a bit of a counter-intuitive tip. But as I wrote yesterday, one of the best ways to feel good about yourself is to make someone else feel good or to help them in some way. 

This is a great way to look at things to create an upward spiral of positivity and exchange of value between people. You help someone and both of you feel good. The person you helped feels inclined to give you a hand later on since people tend to want to reciprocate. And so the both of you are feeling good and helping each other. 

Those positive feelings are contagious to other people and so you may end up making them feel good too. And the help you received from your friend may inspire you to go and help another friend. And so the upward spiral grows and continues.

9. Do what you want to do. 

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did so. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. 

Awesome quote. And I really don’t have much to add to that one. Well, maybe to write it down and keep it as a daily reminder – on your fridge or bathroom door – of what you can actually do with your life.