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Are you frustrated with how your life is going? Here are 33 signs you are doing better in life than you think you are.
1. You have savings
Financial stability is one of the biggest contributors to content and prosperous life.
Suppose you don’t constantly have to worry about whether or not you have enough money for rent or fuel. In that case, you can spend your energy and additional cash on pursuits to elevate your life or, at the very least, ease issues as smoothly as possible.
There will always be unexpected bills that pop up in your life. Perhaps your washing machine breaks down, or you unexpectedly lose your job.
Having savings in place as a buffer to still comfortably maintain your lifestyle when these problems hit is a huge sign that you are doing better in life than you think you are.
Right now, you might not have much savings, but give yourself some credit for getting started. That’s more than many people can claim.
2. You are increasing your knowledge every day/week
We’re living in the informational age. Many things that you learn today will be outdated in a relatively short time.
The only way to stay afloat is by being a student for life. If you stagnate, others will pass you, and your hard-fought-for success will diminish.
As grave as that sounds, increasing your knowledge continuously is possibly one of the most beautiful tasks of humans.
The knowledge you have shaped the way you think and see the world.
If you are already in a routine of consciously seeking to increase your knowledge, you are doing better in life than you think you are.
3. You have at least one close friend
Social media has given us hundreds or even thousands of ‘friends,’ yet rarely do we ever meet them face to face or even care about their life beyond their Insta or Facebook Feed.
In the face of that, your life is going better than you might think if you have at least one close friend.
4. Your relationship with your family is good
Relationships with relatives are often sadly more than a little bit rocky.
But in a way, it makes sense. The older you get, the more your mindset and way of life drift apart from your family’s.
At some point, you may be such different people that you would never consider spending your free time with them if you weren’t related to them.
At to the mix, strong emotions and history and what you get can often be explosive.
If you manage to navigate those issues, focus on the love that binds you to your family, and actually enjoy spending time with them, you are doing far better than many people.
5. You’ve spent some serious and realistic thought on what to do with your life
You can’t plan your life from beginning to end, and some amount of spontaneity is necessary for a happy life.
However, you should at least have a vague idea in which direction you are going and what you are hoping for in life.
Knowing the answer to this question will help you to get there sooner and with fewer detours.
Most people’s thoughts don’t go further than ‘I want to be a lawyer, marry, have kids, a fancy car and big house.’
6. You know how to ask for help
You know the saying: If you want to go fast, go alone if you’re going to go far, go together.
There are multiple points in life at which you need help to progress.
But you shouldn’t wait until those moments to seek out help. Instead, find a mentor sooner.
It will make your life infinitely easier if you have people to guide you. But you need to learn that they don’t just appear out of thin air.
You have to take the initiative and ask for help.
If you know how to do that, you are doing much better in life than you think.
7. You are working towards something or about to do so
Having a clear goal in mind beyond reaching the weekend or your next holidays or purchasing the newest iPhone is more than many people can claim.
Somewhere along the way, they seem to settle for their lives and rarely strive towards big changes.
If you still have that fierce drive, you are doing better than you think you are.
Read also: 11 Goals For Your Early 20s Bucketlist
8. You know your values and priorities
To make decisions that will create the lifestyle you want, you must know your values and priorities.
Most people rarely take the time to think about their values and priorities, which reflects in their decision.
If your priorities time over money, you might decide to buy a faster laptop. However, if you still think money is more important to you, then you might continue to use your old snail-like laptop and despair over it daily.
If you know your values, you are doing better in life than you think you are.
9. You don’t need to be around people constantly
Everyone lies somewhere on the scale between extroversion and introversion.
While many introverts discover the joys of spending time alone early on, some extroverts might struggle to not be around people.
Being alone with your thoughts and feelings can be scary because you can’t avoid them anymore.
But these moments, whether you spend them journaling, meditating, or walking through nature, are important because they bring clarity.
They help you sort through all the thoughts and feelings in your heart; they allow you to solve problems and formulate clear goals.
If you know how to spend time alone, you are doing better in life than you think you are.
10. You know your bad habits, and you are working on overcoming them
Becoming aware of your bad habits is the first difficulty. The next and possibly bigger is to get rid of them.
Most people know they should eat less junk food, stop smoking, drink less alcohol, or procrastinate less, yet their attempts at overcoming these habits rarely succeed.
If you keep an eye out for your bad habits and know the best systems to overcome them, you are doing better than most people.
Read also: Atomic Habits Book Review | 15 Lessons + Actionable Ideas + Quotes
11. You take responsibility for your mistakes and decisions
It’s very easy to find some else to blame for pretty much everything that goes wrong – the government, your parents, your teachers, the incompetent service hotline guy.
No wonder so many people push around the blame in a merry game.
But taking responsibility is important. First of all, because you grow through it. You learn to clean up after your mistakes and not to repeat them.
Also, if you aspire to ever become a leader of some sort, you need to be able to take responsibility because the sheep surely won’t do it, but they’ll follow someone who does.
12. You take care of your health in a conscious way
You put thought into the foods you eat, you care about the ingredients of your hair and skin care products, your workout, and try to move your body instead of sitting around all day.
Also, you make regular doctor appointments listen to your body when it tells you something is wrong, and know the importance of good sleep.
You don’t just take care of your body because you want to live a long life. You take care of your body because you want to live a great life even with older age.
13. You read books
Reading books increases your empathy, vocabulary, and knowledge. You also keep your brain fit and practice concentrating.
14. You don’t waste your day on social media
Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day. Some people carefully curate habits and routines to get the most out of these 24 hours, while others just go with the flow and find themself losing hours on social media.
Once in a while, that’s perfectly fine. But as long as you are a consumer and not a creator who earns money through social media, you should seriously consider how much time you spend on these platforms.
If you keep track of your time on social media and make sure to not overdo it (whatever that might mean to you), you are doing better in life than you think you are.
15. You prioritize sleep and have a regular sleep schedule
We spend around a third of our life sleeping. Our sleep is not only important for our physical health, but it also is a core component necessary for retaining information effectively in our memory.
16. You don’t have any huge regrets
Regrets in life are like a constant dark cloud that follows you around. It can take a lot of work to get rid of them.
You can feel lucky and proud of yourself if you don’t have any big regrets waying down on your conscience.
17. You let yourself feel and process your emotions (all of them!)
Recently, our society seems to be promoting that we should strive to feel a ‘high vibe’ all the time.
This concept sounds beautiful; after all, who likes to feel sad, depressed, anxious, doubtful, or any other ‘negative’ emotion?
The problem is that this is not how life works.
We need the darkness to notice and appreciate the light. Bad days make us strive for better ones. If everything were all sunshine and rainbows, nothing would be a ‘high vibe’ anymore, and we would stagnate in our growth.
Furthermore, suppressing negative emotions will sooner or later backfire. It can show its ugly face through physical ailments or heavily fluctuating emotions.
If you are emotionally mature enough to feel and process all your emotions, no matter how uncomfortable they might be, you are doing better in life than you think you are.
18. You are aware that the energy you embody attracts the life you live
Whether you believe in the law of attraction or not, there have been enough studies that prove the effect your mindset and general attitude have on your life.
Just think about the placebo effect, where simply believing you’ve taken a healing medication or gotten surgery cures you of your ailment.
The point is your thoughts and emotions are more powerful than most people give them credit for.
If you consciously curate your energy each day, you are doing better in life than you think you are.
19. You know and accept that nothing is entirely black and white
It is tempting to look at the world in a black and white way. It is tempting to put everyone and everything into neat little boxes.
In reality, though, rarely is anything entirely black and white.
Everything is full of nuances that take a lot of time to dissect. And once you do, you can’t make decisions quite as easily anymore; neither can you judge others for their choices as easily.
If you are open-minded and responsible enough to accept the nuances of issues, you are doing better in life than you think you are.
20. You are being authentic
Authenticity makes you stand out.
Authenticity is magnetizing and draws people to you.
If you’ve learned to be authentic in everything you do, you are doing better in life than you think you are.
21. You disciplined enough to bring things to an end
If you are excited and motivated for a new project, it is easy to get started.
It is much harder to keep up the work when things get boring and other shiny things pop up.
If you have the discipline to bring things to an end when the motivation wears out, you are doing better in life than you think you are.
22. You know when to let go of a goal
Finishing what you started is important. What’s also important, though, is knowing when you should give up on an unnecessary goal.
Foolish stubbornness is only going to waste your time.
If you are decisive enough to find the line between going on and stopping, you are doing better in life than you think you are.
23. You recognize the role both hard work and luck play in the success
Every success is partly due to hard work and partly to luck.
We often deny the luck in our own success and the hard work in other people’s success.
If you are mature enough to recognize the role of both, you are far more likely to take advantage of opportunities and stay at the top once you’re there.
Read also: The Unfair Advantage Book Review | 11 Lessons + Quotes
24. You use your envy as inspiration and not as a fuel for hate
Most people are ashamed to admit their envy towards other people’s success. Some of those people don’t even realize it to themself and instead channel that envy into hate comments.
You are doing better in life than you think you are if you recognize your envy as a guiding sign.
It’s meant to show you what you should go after and give you the inspiration to do so.
25. You want to give at least as much as you take
Some people always want, want, want. They want more money, more success, more followers, fewer taxes, more support from the government, etc.
They don’t understand that you have to give before you can get. In fact, if you share freely, you often get back tenfold.
If you understand this and live by it, you are doing much better in life than you think you are, and it’s going to show.
26. You are not foolish but just naive enough
You need a bit of naivete to get started on a difficult journey. Many successful people say that their journey was much more difficult than they had anticipated in the beginning.
And we all know that the more difficult the path seems, the less likely we are to get started.
Of course, you shouldn’t start a hopeless and risky project, but enough naivete to start a difficult project is going to be in your favor.
27. You prepare for societal changes in time
Nobody can predict big historical events that will impact generations to come.
However, not all societal changes happen through such big and surprising events.
Sometimes, the change announces itself gradually over years before it hits us entirely.
You are doing better in life than you think you are if you have the foresight to prepare early on for these changes.
For example, you try to purchase an electric car early on instead of waiting until there are more restrictions for fuel-driven vehicles.
And you try to live more environmentally friendly early on before the environment deteriorates too much.
Another example would be choosing a college degree with a bright future and not one that is already becoming less and less relevant.
28. You have at least one hobby
There is more to life than work, work, work.
If you are not one of those entirely lost in their free time but have hobbies you love to pursue, you are doing much better in life than many people.
29. You don’t tell yourself that you still have a lot of time left
Time passes quicker than we think.
You tell yourself that you travel to that destination once you have more time and money.
However, before you can blink, your twenties have passed, you are already nearing the end of your thirties, and you still don’t have ‘enough time or money.
If you know how to live life in the present instead of always postponing it, you are doing better in life than you think you are.
30. You don’t try to resist change
Change is inevitable. In fact, the only true constant in life is the fact that it always changes.
It can be hard to let go of things that brought us happiness and comfort.
You are doing better in life than you think if you know how to do so with grace and ease.
31. You live more than you think about living
Nowadays, people praise each other for the big goals they set, the intricate plans they make, and the bright visions for their life they have.
All these are necessary to get started. However, none of these are of any value without turning them into action.
You can pat yourself on the back if you are one of the few who do more than they dream.
32. You know how to keep your head down and do what’s necessary
Ego has brought the mightiest to fall.
It makes you think that you are above certain tasks, that you are too talented or smart to work with these people, that you deserve more respect or at least common decency.
These things might be true even, but that’s not what matters. What matters is that you want to go places.
And to do that, you sometimes have to suck it up, keep your head down and do what’s uncomfortable.
If you know when you have to do that, you are doing better in life than you think you are.
33. You are not only reading content like this; you are also implementing it into your life
Devouring personal development content is a good effort but ultimately useless if you don’t implement your lessons in real life.
You don’t need to implement everything. Not everything might speak to you, and sometimes life is too hectic for you to do deep personal work.
But if you at least consciously decide to implement something once in a while, you are doing amazing in life!