Ways We Are Wasting Our Lives

Habits make up the routines that determine how we spend our time; and time, of course is life.

Our life is measured by time-from the seemingly insignificant second to the quite noticeable minute, and the obvious hour.

Just know that as time is ticking so is life.

What and how you invest you energy, time and resources will determine the quality of your life.

How do you know if you’re making your life worthwhile or wasting it?

Below are some ways you’re wasting your life without knowing it.

Holding on to past hurts

I don’t think there’s anyone in life who has never been or will never be hurt by others.

What makes a difference is how you deal with it, letting go of the pain or holding on to it and let it control your life.

As long as you deal with people, you’ll always be hurt in varying ways.

The most important thing is not to let whatever role control you.

Because you can never control what people will say or do to you.

You can only control how you treat others and how you’ll respond to how you’re being treated.

Holding on to past hurts is a sure way to waste one’s life without knowing it.

The one who hurt you has probably moved on.

Letting go is not a favour you do unto others but a way to secure your own peace and happiness.

It’s proof that you value your happiness above whatever anyone does to you.

Holding on to past mistakes and errors.

I’ve had my own share of past mistakes in life and I know it can be hard not to wish things were different.

But the truth is, the past is past and there’s nothing you can do about it.

You’ve have to stop wishing you’d done things differently. You have to stop wishing you could turn back the hands of time.

Because you can’t.

Learn from your mistakes and move on. It’s difficult, I know.

But keep trying.

Internet/social media addiction

So many people are guilt of this. I am too, I cannot lie. I spend hours playing meaningless games on the computer every night. I am working on how to stop doing this. I believe it can be done. We just have to stop.

Technology has shaped our lives in was unimaginable that we start to wonder how we managed to live without it in the first place.

If you’re in a public place, take a look around. You’ll see that a larger percentage of people are on their phones.

Family time our/ couples hangout is no longer the same because everyone is updating their social media statuses and checking Social media updates.

We are constantly distracted by the incessant notifications on our phones that steal our attention from the people that are dear to us.

While it’s inevitable for some people (blogger, social media influencers, internet entrepreneurs, digital marketers) to spend more time on social media, it becomes a problem if other areas of life are negatively affected because of too much time spend on the internet.

We need to strike a balance in life so that we won’t wastrel our lives while trying to keep up with every news and update on social media.

Keeping unprofitable friends.

If your friend’s make you a negative person, or they don’t value you in every way. Show you care and respect you. If your friends bring you down in every way, they are wasting your life.

Building a friendship takes time and effort. And don’t forget that time is life.

If you have negative friends around you, you’ll spend your time and effort keeping such friends while your life is wasting without you even knowing it,

Stay away from friends that influence you to engage in things that waste your time.

Procrastination

To be honest, this is a weakness of mine. I dislike doing some things so much, I find other things to do that I enjoy. But then I’m still aware that the thing I’m trying to avoid still needs to be done. We need to conquer procrastination in our lives.

Procrastination robs us of some life opportunities.

Procrastination is simply putting off things until a later time. This is a big time waster.

We need to understand that life doesn’t wait for anyone.

Plus, we live in a highly competitive world, if you want to achieve success, you have to give it all it takes.

No one will throw success in your lap, you have to go out and get it.

Procrastination will not let you do this, and before you know the opportunities will keep slipping away from your fingers.

Addiction

Whatever you’re addicted to that makes your life unproductive is a time waster.

As I addiction recovery advocate, I see every day how many lives have been wasted as a result of addiction to drugs and alcohol. Every time I walk into the addiction recovery center I work at. I see lives wasted.

I see many young and promising men and women who couldn’t live a normal life because of addiction to drugs and other substances.

Engaging in harmful behavior that ruin your potential is a sure way to waste your life.

Yes, it might make you feel good while your doing it but, for how long? Is it worth wasting your entire life over?

What addictions are ruining your life? Gambling, sex, porn, social media, addiction etc.

Get help and strive to live a better life.

Comparison

As human beings, we are always faced with the temptation to compare ourselves with others, especially in this age, where everyone seems to be fine.

Comparing yourself to others will only make you lose focus on your own life potentials.

Comparison can lead to unnecessary competition.

Is it worth the effort?

Lack of goals

What is life without set goals to achieve?

As a matter of fact, having goals to achieve makes life interesting and meaningful.

What are your life goals! You can break them into daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals.

If you don’t have goals that you can measure your life and effort with, you’ll surely be doing a lot of time-wasting without knowing it.

These are some ways to know if your wasting your life away. Now that you know, find ways to improve on yourself and be a better person.

You can do it!

Goals To Grow

Goals without plans to achieve them are simply ideas. In order to achieve a goal, we have to change our habits and patterns and regularly and chick in on our progress. We need to be working towards your goals on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, but it is also a good to take a little more extended time every 3 months for a self-check.

Here are some steps to get going:

Step 1- Pray and still your heart. When we are staying still while praying we are more apt to hear God’s voice. (James 1:5)

Step 2- Set your mindset as one of honesty with yourself. (Romans 12:2)

Step 3- Be a does and build upon a firm foundation by remaining intentional with your goals and asking yourself a few questions that dig into your success and challenges. (Matthew 7:24-25)

Ask yourself have I applied my new year (2021) goals to my daily life. Example: Am I actually working toward these goals or were they just an idea I laid aside?

What changes do I need to make,nor continue to make, over the next 90 days? If you want something new to happen you have to Do something different.

Am I happy with the transformation I am seeing? If you are happy-keep pressing forward. If you aren’t happy, what do I need to do to feel more satisfied?

How do I feel about the areas of my life I set my goals-Spiritual, financial, joy etc… and do I feel aligned and balanced?

Did I keep my priority areas a priority?

Did I leave my non-priority items on the side lines?

Have I surrounded myself with a good team to encourage me in my journey? Am I growing and are they growing with me?

What are my next steps of application or change towards each of my goals in the next 90 days?

1- Spiritual:

2. Physical:

3. Financial:

4. Joy:

5. Other:

Everyone Must Learn To Be A Leader.

We may look to managers and visionaries as leaders, but each one of us has the potential to be a leader. These are the five key features that we call all work on so that we can each direct our own destinies:

S- Solutions. A leader looks for the solution.

O- Opportunity. A leader turns a liability into an asset.

L- Long-term picture. A leader has a bird’s eye view.

I- Influencer. Leaders leave an impact by taking initiative.

D- Direction towards a destination. Keep the end in mind.

Truths That Put Your Life Into Perspective

Stop waiting for life to be kinder, for the storms to calm, for your big break to magically appear, for your white knight to come around the corner or a fair maiden to come and fulfill your every desire. Stop betraying yourself. Stop betraying your dreams.

The Seasons Will Always Change.

Whatever it is that’s keeping you up at night, tossing, turning, sweating, or medicating, will eventually pass. You might be in a storm, but even seemingly endless storms do not last forever. A rainbow will always appear after the rain. The sun will shine again, spring always follows winter. Inevitably the season is going to change. Adaptability is what sets the warriors apart from the defeated.

Life is a cycle of never-ending chances, and you must process the ability to adapt to those changes. Do not be frightened of them. Do not cling to whatever season you are in, and do not try to return to a season of yesterday. Some seasons are only planting seeds and some are for the harvest. So taste the fruit and drink the drink of each. Whether bitter or sweet it, too shall pass.

Don’t Be So Dramatic; Your Problems Are Probably Not So Tragic.

I realize there are exceptions to this, however I once heard that if people could dump all their problems out on the street for trade, the majority people would want their own problems back. Perhaps you have a friend you talk to every day for the purpose of downloading your problems on. The truth is all of us have problems. Perhaps they simply don’t choose to download their problems on you. Everyone is faced with obstacles, including the girl or guy you are absolutely certain has it all. So, if your problems are a matter of consequences of your own mistakes, don’t be so dramatic. You are not a victim of a hex, but perhaps hexing yourself with your own mindset. The truth is, you are equipped to handle the hand you’ve been dealt. So, dust off your knees and start believing in your resiliency.

One Day, If You Live Long Enough, You Will Eat Your Lunch Alone.

You know that quiet old man you saw eating alone yesterday? He is so much more than a quiet old man eating alone. Perhaps he is a boy of 16 who participated in his baseball team winning a state championship. Perhaps he is a man of 22 who returned from the war only to find himself facing the memories of being shot at or bombs going off and killing his friend right in front of him. Perhaps he lives that nightmare over and over every day. Perhaps he is a of 30, who as awed at witnessing his first child being born, only to have his child die from cancer at age 3. He may be sitting alone eating with calloused hands, bad knees and an arched back, but he is a see of stories. He is a living, breathing textbook of history with the energy of thousands yesterdays still alive and well. So be patient and walk behind him. Silently congratulate him for having lived so long on the earth for such a length of time.

You Are Going To Die.

Someday someone will plan your funeral. They will select the songs that are played, lovingly selecting the most appropriate ways to commemorate your life. They are going to read through journals, go through your stuff, empty your wallet. Someday someone is going to replay your voicemails and long for just one more laugh or embrace you.

There are as many as seven billion people inhabiting the earth, however there have been approximately 106 billion people that have been born and died. That is 106 billion expiration dates with 106 billion tales, some tragic and some triumphant. That’s a lot of tears and final breaths.

Someday your life will contain an expiration date. All that you will be remembered for will be contained within it and your birthdate. Someday your life will be a collection of stories. Write them wisely. Write them in color. Write them so that the may bless others.

You’re Not Dead Yet, Though.

Stop waiting for life to be kinder, for the storms to calm, for your big break to magically appear, for your knight in shining armor to come or for a fair maiden to come and fulfill your every desire. Stop growing bruises. Stop being offended by everything . Stop seeing yourself as a victim. Stop wallowing on the floor, crying out and waiting for the clouds to divide The rain down with answers. Wake up, get up and live.

Personal Values

What is your most important person values? Do you actually value what you say you do? And just who are you anyway.

Personal Values are the measuring sticks by which we determine what is a successful and meaningful life.

When someone says, “I want to be good,” that definition of what is good is a reflection of what they value. Some will see “being good” as attaining money. Others will see it as building a family. Others will see it as having a lot of exciting experiences. Whatever it is, it is determined by our personal values.

Therefore, you cannot talk about self-improvement without talking about values. It’s not enough to simply grow and become a “better person.” You must decide in which direction you wish to grow.

A lot of people don’t realize this. A lot of people obsessively focus on being happy and feeling good all the time, not realizing that if their values suck, feeling good will hurt them more than help them. If your biggest value in the world is doing drugs well, then feeling better is just going to make your life worse.

You have to talk about values and not just what they are but why they are. Why we find certain things important, what the consequences of the importance are, and how we can go about finding and changing what we find importance. It’s not a simple task.

You Do What You Value

Every moment of everyday, whether you realize it or not, you’re making a decision of how to spend your time, of what to pay attention to, of where to direct your energy.

Right now, you are choosing to read this post. While there are an infinite number of things you could be doing, but right now, you are choosing to be here. Maybe in a minute you’ll decide you need a cold glass of water, or maybe someone texts you and you decide to stop reading. When those things happen, you are making a simple, value decision: your phone or that cold glass of water is more valuable to you than this post. And your behavior follows that valuation accordingly.

Our Values Are Constantly Reflected In The Way We Choose To Behave.

This is critically important, because we all have a few things that we think and say we value, but we never back them up with our actions. I can tell people (and myself) until I’m blue in the face that I care about climate change or the dangers of social media, but if I spend my days driving around in gas guzzling Vehicle, and constantly refreshing my newsfeed, them my behaviors, my actions tell a different story.

One thing is sure Actions don’t lie. We believe we want to get that job, but when push comes to shove, we’re always kind of relieved that no one called us back so we can retreat to our old lazy selves, play video games, or on social media for hours a day. You can tell your boyfriend/ girlfriend we really want to see them, but the minute our friends call our schedule opens up, and suddenly something came up, and we can’t see our boyfriend/ girlfriend.

The Great Value Disconnect

Many of us state values we wish we had as a way to cover up the values we actually have. In this way, aspiration can often become another form of avoidance. Instead of facing who we really are, we lose ourselves in who we wish to become.

Put another way: we lie to ourselves because we don’t like some of our own values, and we therefore don’t like a part of ourselves. We don’t want to admit we have certain values, and it’s this discrepancy between self-perception and reality that usually gets us into trouble,

That’s because our values are extensions of ourselves. They are what define us. When something good, happens to something or someone you value, you feel good. When you mom gets a new car or your spouse gets a raise, you feel good- as though these happened to you.

The opposite is true as well. If you don’t value something, you feel good when something bad happens to it. People took to the streets cheering when Osama Bin Laden was killed. People threw a party outside the prison where the serial killer Ted a Indy was executed. The destruction of someone perceived as evil felt like some great moral victory in the hearts of millions.

So, when we are disconnected from our own values, we value playing Video games all day yet believe we value ambition and hard work our beliefs and ideas get disconnected from our actions and emotions. And to bridge the disconnect, we must become delusional, about ourselves and about the world.

You Are What You Value

We all know the story of the middle class, educated person with a decent job who has a mini “freak out” and decides to take a week or ten day’s (or ten months) and cut all content with the outside world, run to some remote part of the globe and find themselves.

Here’s what people mean when they say they need to find themselves: they’re finding new values. Our identity is the thing we perceive and understand as the self is the aggregation of everything we value. So, when you run away to be alone somewhere, what your really doing is running away somewhere to re-evaluate you values.

People leave to get perspective on what in life matters to them, what should matter more, what should matter less and then ideally return and get on with it. By returning and changing your priorities, you change your values, and you come back “a new person.”

We are defined by what we choose to find important in our lives.we are defined by our prioritizations. If money matters more than anything that will define who we are. If getting drunk or taking drugs is the most important thing in our lives that will come to define who you are. And if we feel like crap about ourselves and believe we don’t deserve love, success, or intimacy, then that will also define who we are. Through our actions, our words, and our decisions.

The Power Of Truth

One of the most powerful weapons we have against the enemy is our words. No matter what the circumstances are in our lives, we Always have the choice to either speak life or death over our situation. When Satan tries to tell us lies, we have to fight back with the truth. When you believe the lie, you empower the liar. Speaking truth over our lives is so important, because we do not want to give satan a foothold in our lives.

In this post I want to highlight how to speak truth over your life.

Before you can start speaking the truth over ourselves . We have to find the root of the lie. But, maybe we don’t even realize the lies you are believing. If your not sure what lies you are specifically holding onto, start asking yourself some general questions to help you identify the lies. Sometimes a lie can be as simple as “Everyone thinks your ugly,” so you start telling yourself “I am ugly nobody even wants to be around me.” The lie someone said about you has opened that door to you believing you are ugly. The door opened to let Satan sneak in to start destroying your life.

Example: During my childhood I was told I was ugly among other things. I was told this lie over and over until I started believing it. When I started believing it opened a door to Satan to enter my life, and he nearly destroyed my life, because of those lies. It wasn’t until I started believing I was wonderfully and beautifully made that I was able to start pushing out all of the hate I had for myself and everyone else around me that things started going positive for me.

So whatever that lie you are believing, identify it so you can combat it.

Know The Truth

You can’t speak the truth over your situation if you don’t know the truth. Take the time to dig into the Bible and find out what God says. If you are struggling with finances, not feeling loved, knowing your worth, pain, find out what God says.

Many people think the Bible is just a old folk story or fairy tale. But truth be told is it’s a instruction book on how to live a wonderful life. I am proof my situation would have changed until I started reading this instruction manual.

Write And Memorize Truth

This step is key. When Satan comes to attack you with lies, you want to be prepared. Write God’s truth down somewhere. When I first started doing this, I had index cards all over my house, that way if Satan started with his lies, I could speak truth right back at him. Do whatever you have to do to have these weapons constantly at your disposal.

Speak Your Truth Out Loud

The words, we declare over our lives are powerful. Something happens when words are audibly spoken. When you start to feel the enemy whisper lies get out your truth statements. No only does speaking truth tell the enemy to back off, speaking truth is a act of faith. The best time to speak truth over your life is when you are struggling to believe it.

Repeat It Until You Believe It

Aligning your heart with God’s truth is a daily process, but I promise you if you keep practicing this method you will start seeing changes in your life.

You may feel silly speaking it out loud for the first few times. But each time you do it you are able to believe it more each time. Remember when you stop believing the lie and start believing the truth you are taking away the power of the lie from the enemy.

Speaking truth is an incredibly powerful tool.

I did something when I was a new Christian, that some people told me was wrong. And i kind of feel silly even talking about it. But here it goes. I met a lady, who was rude and was always saying nasty things to people. I didn’t have the option of staying away from her. So, every time I seen her I would quote Bible scripture to her when she would speak lies about people. There was talking to this person, she was full of hate and was obnoxious about it.

After about a month of doing this. She began talking politely to people. Her husband actually told me she was better at home than she used to be, not so bossy. And she had actually started reading God’s word. He wanted to thank me.

This was the last thing I expected I was expecting her to just start ignoring me. After that she stopped being rude and obnoxious. People could actually tolerate being around her. Later I was able to visit her and her husband on occasion. They were completely different people.

Start speaking truth, to yourself to others and it will make the enemy flee.

James 4:7 says submit yourselves, to God. Resist Satan and he will flee from you.