The Bucket List: How to Live Life to the Fullest
November 3, 2011
BY CARMEN M. HUBBARD
It’s fascinating to discover just what it takes to motivates people to live life to its fullest. Usually losing a loved one or experiencing near death first hand jumpstarts us. At least that was my experience when my father passed away four years ago.
We weren’t close by any means. Our relationship had been estranged since I was a little girl at three years old when my folks divorced. By the time I was turned eight or nine, he moved back to his hometown near Boston. We lived in Ohio or as my half-brother likes to call it, a “fly-over” state. I visited my dad twice in Boston while growing up, and he might have called only a handful of times to check on me.
It wasn’t until I graduated from college that we established some form of communication by phone and occasional visits. He casually mentioned being diagnosed with prostate cancer 13 years prior and remained very active until the last two years of his life. It was during that time we came to terms with our relationship. We both realized we missed the opportunity to get to know each other years ago. Instead of living with regret on both parts, we made the most of the time he had left.
Even for a brief moment, our relationship went from estranged to reconciled to a healthy father and daughter connection until he passed away. My relationship with my dad made me realize how angry I’d been as a girl and through my early 30s. I wasn’t living life to the fullest and knew my attitude had something to do with it. I was just getting by on my job, in my marriage, with my friends, family and finances.
It’s a shame it takes a brush with death or the loss of a loved one to help us realize how important it is to live our best life. But it does. Sometimes it’s the kick in the pants we need.
Life coach experts say changing your attitude is the first step toward developing a meaningful life as well as setting and achieving goals that matter most to you.
“Your attitude reflects in everything you do and everything that happens to you,” counselor and life coach Tamara Baruhovich says. “The Law of Attraction is basically a concept which explains that you attract what you think of the most, so whatever you put out comes back to you.”
Baruhovich of San Diego, Calif., is the publisher of an e-zine called “Abundance4Me” and owns the Web site called, “Tools for Abundance.”
Changing your attitude to the positive takes practice. It can be difficult to stop running to negative thoughts, according to experts.
“You must start by believing in the idea that your attitude affects your life and what happens to you,” Baruhovich said. “The first step in making your attitude your ally is to change your way of thinking. You have to believe in the idea that positive attitude equals positive results.”
The benefits of a positive attitude can change a person’s perspective toward life and his or his surroundings. Problems and difficulties will still occur but being better equipped to handle them makes for good living and accomplishing goals.
“You will be able to handle adversity better. You will be able to overcome things that before would have dragged you down,” Baruhovich said.
Once an attitude adjustment is in place then expectations for the better are set.
“If you have the attitude and the expectations of being confident and successful, you are going to feel confident and successful already now,” life coach Piercarla Garusi says. “It is simply a shift in your consciousness.”
It’s one thing to know what changes to make another knowing how to create goals and set them so they’ll materialize.
“I find that most people don’t know how to set the ‘right’ goals and they need coaching to understand the intricacies of how to break these goals down into meaningful chunks so that they have steady feedback along the way to accomplishment,” life coach and author Caroline Adams Miller says. “If you haven’t yet created a set of your own goals, this is a terrific opportunity to start.”
Despite some scary moments — such as quitting my dead-in job and starting my own business — needed to make the necessary adjustments to live meaningfully, I feel so alive. I try not to look back at what I could have, should have or would have done differently. But when my mind drifts to what I didn’t get from my father, perhaps the most important lesson he taught me was to live.