Words offering good advice are easily spoken. In an attempt to understand, we read, watch videos and listen to podcasts suggesting a bazillion methods to live our best lives with ways to solve our problems and find purpose, happiness and fulfillment. The truth is we learn by living, and there can be no doubt that our lives offer never-ending challenges to create opportunities for personal growth and new awareness to live better. Once we accept that life is intended to be unpredictable, often confusing, sometimes unreasonable and painful, and always complicated, we are less affected by these inherent circumstances.

For all of us, every moment of our lives is processed from inside through our unique thoughts, emotions and intuition. Essentially and no matter our circumstances, we are living an individual life shared with those around us. I believe that the purpose of our worldly experiences is nothing more than to make us more conscious about ourselves and the world to feed our own unique perspective and our contributions to the world. We learn from living our lives, and we make all of our choices influenced by what we know in that moment of time. The information we read, see, and hear certainly provides us with insight creating new awareness, but ultimately, it is the actions we take as a result of a decision that define our reality.

How do we become better versions of ourselves? I have listed a few of my answers to this question to stimulate your thoughts.

• Love yourself and become your own best friend because once you have a connection with yourself, you don’t have the need to pretend to be someone you are not, nor is there a need to seek fulfillment from outside yourself
• Know your vulnerabilities, your truth, and who you trust.
• Think for yourself, make your own choices, form your own conclusions, and know when you are being manipulated.
• Choose forgiveness when you can; when you can’t, choose acceptance so that you can move unencumbered past what you deem unforgivable.
• Respect and love others with compassion, knowing that life is not easy for anyone.
• Listen more than you speak.
• Master self-discipline with flexibility.
• Be defenseless amid criticism. Determine what is useful and forget the rest.
• Know that acceptance of every moment just as it is can minimize suffering.
• Make your choices in life with the conscious intent of choosing right over wrong, no matter how hard it is to do the right thing.
• Know when your insecurities are limiting your life and do what you fear.
• Let your past positively inform who you are today because your past no longer exists and who you were then doesn’t either.
• No matter the circumstances, assume responsibility for all you say and do and know that assigning blame achieves nothing.
• Realize that shame limits life and great things can be achieved when we are willing to be vulnerable.
• Grasp the concept that there is no one else like you in the world. Your uniqueness is what makes you special.
• Whatever they are, share your gifts freely with others.
• Know that we are all the same, we are here to learn, no one has an easy ride, and every person has value in the world.
• Become extraordinary by loving your life, despite its many annoyances.
• No one of us is better than another, no matter what we look like, how we speak, or what we do.
• Be honest with yourself and all others because honesty allows you freedom to be who you are.
• Believe in something greater than yourself.