Ten useful Suggestions on Improving the Quality of Your Life

Ten useful Suggestions on Improving the Quality of Your Life
by
Bill Cottringer
“Our egos are utterly convinced that ‘quality of life’ is found in the ‘domineering of life.’ And a very simple way to effectively destroy the whole of your life is to live by this for the smallest part of your life.” ~Craig D. Lounsbrough.

1. Uncertainty. This first suggestion may be the most difficult one to apply because you can’t think your way out of a belief’s certainty, which you felt your way into, and usually for keeps. So, getting to the point of even considering accepting the reality that all you think you know may not necessarily be so, doesn’t come about before some painfully frank and courageous self-doubting of vulnerabilities. In the meantime, it is okay to feel a little uncertain, especially about how to live your life, because it is all trial and error, even with the sensible rules and guidelines that have survived time.

2. Acceptance. The “more is better” mantra of our commercial culture machine has brainwashed us into believing more is always better and less is always worse. However, this may be a priority reversal where we have placed the cart before the horse. Consider accepting less of what you think you want and appreciating more of what you have and see if this doesn’t improve the quality of your life. Acceptance is not weakness in giving into life, because it takes more strength, courage and smarts to see the wisdom of this suggestion.

3. Happiness. The pursuit of happiness is a long and winding road full of dead ends with no place to turn around. One of the problems with seeking happiness is that great unhappiness must be experienced first, before you can recognize and appreciate great happiness. The other problem is you can never quite get enough happiness. The key to feeling genuine happiness is to always use the right means to get to the right end, which can only occur with unconditional, virtuous behavior. The greatest source of unnecessary unhappiness to avoid, is in assuming the outcome of your story, because what you really want is a surprise.

4. Control. Happiness, as one measure of the quality of our life, is intimately related to the degree of control we sense we have over our lives and what happens to us. But the truth be known, we have already made the choices that have determined where we are at right now. So, the only present choice to worry about is how to manage our interpretations and reactions to the things that happen to us, in a way that improves the quality of our lives, especially the bad, painful events, which are the real test.

5. Standards. How we define and measure things like success, happiness and truth, determines how much or how little of these things we actually have. If you want to get to the finish line quicker, there are two ways to do that—run faster or bring the finish line closer. You can accomplish both by prioritizing the right values by which you measure the resulting quality of your life. And when you get there, you will know it for sure.

6. Growth. As a driver of the “more is better” commercial culture brainwashing, the self-improvement industry is making trillions of dollars for an impossible goal that leaves everyone empty-handed most of the time. Real personal growth is not becoming better by getting more of what you want, especially being more right with your beliefs, but learning to be less wrong, each day. This change of growth focus is guaranteed to get immediate results. It lines up with the paradox of backward thinking to get forward.

7. Identity. Self-consciousness is both a curse and a gift. As a curse it convinces us that we have a separate self or personal identity apart from everything else. This makes us feel special and entitled, which we aren’t, and it leads to uncomfortable feelings of division and alienation. But at the same time, the gift of self-conscious is the only way back to unity and belonging to something greater. The more something threatens your identity, the more you will try to avoid it, but don’t.

8. Rejection.

Rejection is inevitable and it usually happens when you least expect or want it. It can often attack our very core identity of who we think we are and that is unnerving. The only antidote to rejection is resilience, and it is a good idea to plan ahead how to do that—before it happens when things are good, rather than after it happens, and things are bad. Pay close attention to the people who reject you, because they are usually trying to tell you something you need to hear and heed.

9. Failure.

The “more is always better” mantra applies radioactively to success. But, we seem to learn more about how to be more successful, from acknowledging and understanding the whys behind our mistakes and failures. This important shift in perspective takes an open mind and willingness to first embrace and explore failure, rather than run from it, and then dig deeper for the valuable lesson.
10. Hope.
Hopelessness is the very worst feeling anyone can ever have. Life without hope takes away all reasons for living. Understanding what we should be hoping for is crucial to our quality of life. This involves having the right degree of trust in life giving us most of what we need to survive and an acceptable amount of what we want to thrive. When we hope for more of what we want, we are just stalling our progress in having a better quality of life. Simple suggestion for applying all the above: Don’t hope for better, just be better.
“A grand quality of life is what most people strive for, but only a few stumble upon it, maybe just to let the rest of know it is real.” ~The Author.

William Cottringer, Ph.D. is retired Executive Vice President of Puget Sound Security in Bellevue, WA, along with being a Sport Psychologist, Business Success Coach, Photographer and Writer living on the scenic Snoqualmie River and mountains of North Bend. He is author of several business and self-development books, including, Re-Braining for 2000 (MJR Publishing); The Prosperity Zone (Authorlink Press); You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too (Executive Excellence); The Bow-Wow Secrets (Wisdom Tree); Do What Matters Most and “P” Point Management (Atlantic Book Publishers); Reality Repair, (Global Vision Press), Reality Repair Rx (Publish America); Thoughts on Happiness; Pearls of Wisdom: A Dog’s Tale (Covenant Books, Inc.) Coming soon: A Cliché a day will keep the Vet Away (Another Dog’s Tale). Bill can be reached for comments or questions at (206) 914-1863 or ckuretdoc.comcast.net.