Positive Thursday: A Guide to an Extraordinary Life

Last updated on June 9th, 2012 at 09:45 pm

One week ago, I was blogging about the highly anticipated Royal Wedding in my post, Positive Thursday Royal Wedding Edition: Keep Calm and Carry On and how the 20s are a pivotal time in life to learn, grow, evolve and fall in love with yourself. In that post, I wrote:

May today be the day you don’t compromise who you are and what you want based on what people say or think. May today be the day you chose to be calm, cool and collected. Breathe, relax, tell yourself “good job!”

Today I want to talk about the word extraordinary. I’m talking about extraordinary people, extraordinary relationships, extraordinary dreams, extraordinary living.

According to Dictionary.com, the word ordinary is defined as: “common, no special quality, plain, undistinguished.” In contrast, the same website defines extraordinary as “exceptional in character, remarkable, noteworthy.” In this post, I am going to discuss just HOW to live an extraordinary life.

All of us have the potential for greatness, but often it is overshadowed by our doubts and fears. Until we overcome these obstacles, we won’t actually see what is offered to us. The big picture. The full and abundance life. I found this article that talks about ten steps to an extraordinary life and while I don’t agree with all ten, I think a few are worth noting:

• Discover your potential: figure out who you are, what makes you unique and who you want to become!
• Identify your life path: map it out, figure out your vision in life and plan how you can turn this into reality. Use your resources, past experiences and other dreamers to set goals
• BEGIN your adventure:
• Overcome your obstacles: I actually posted a quote on my Twitter yesterday that reminds me of this step. The quote reads: Fall down seven times, get up eight.
• Face your challenges: take life head-on and live it actively. Rather than passively watch things happen to you, actively MAKE them happen to you.

Sometimes it’s important to sit back and access what you have going on in life and how you honestly, truly feel about it. Be real with yourself! This is a huge step to turn your ordinary, mundane life into a purposeful, extraordinary life.

I think a lot of times when we set goals and dreams, we often think about the future. This is important, but not as important about enjoying and embracing the moment and day you are in.

Are you strategizing and planning to someday reach that point in life where you feel peace and joy, or do you actively do things and take steps every day that bring you peace and joy right here and right now?

Rather than treat life like a to-do list, treat life like a gift. I know, I know….that sounds cheesy. But it’s true – you absolutely positively have no idea what could happen tomorrow. Rather than live life through completing your daily obligations and tasks, live life by passionately enjoying what you are doing and take small steps toward your dream.

Below is an image I have on my wall at home:

• Living the extraordinary life means seizing opportunities when they are presented, being passionate about what you love, enjoying the people you are surrounded by.
• Living the extraordinary life means sharing your journeys with others, in hopes that they might learn and grow from your battles.
• Living the extraordinary life means treating life like the absolutely beautiful, crazy experience that it is and not taking anything for granted.

In closing, I want to share one last quote/phrase I enjoy. I actually found it on a greeting card.

Love your crazy, unbelievable, challenging, side-splitting, spontaneous, improbable, unpredictable, exasperating, big-hearted, absurd, delicious, abundant, inspiring, joyous, daring, jaw-dropping beautiful life.

Our lives are full of ups and downs, positives and negatives, silly and serious times….but taking each experience and moment and accepting it for what it is will really force us to enjoy life.

Life is a wild adventure, and I absolutely love it.