You have unrealized potential and know that you can live a more productive and fulfilling life, but you aren’t quite sure how to do so. If you want to be your best self, you have to learn how to discard what is holding you back and release your fears.
This simple checklist will help bring out your potential by changing your focus through mindfulness and self-awareness.
Changing your life for the better actually isn’t that difficult. It’s making the conscious decision to do so that scares people.
What Does it Mean to be Your Best Self?
To be the best version of your Self, you don’t need to suddenly become a saint or guru. Rather, it’s about being aware of your needs and doing everything in your power to evolve as an individual.
Are you taking care of your Self in body and mind? Are you making an effort to grow, accomplish your goals, and live your life’s purpose?
How to know when you are being your best:
- It’s easy to stay in a good mood.
- You feel accomplished at the end of the day.
- You aren’t bothered or stressed out by random events.
- There are clear indicators of your growth (more money, more friends, more knowledge).
- People seek you out for the comfort and wisdom you provide.
- You no longer identify with illnesses or bad habits.
- You no longer entertain toxic thoughts.
- You diffuse situations rather than exacerbate them.
- Strong self-confidence.
If you are living in alignment, you become a positive energy turbine. This means you are fully in control of your thoughts and emotions, you dictate the cadence of your day, and you understand contentment and happiness come from growth, not stagnation.
Most people realize that in order to be their best self, they will have to let go of certain parts of their identity or change their lifestyle in ways that aren’t comfortable.
Being your best also means leaving people you know behind, from a growth standpoint. This is a normal part of the Path that many of us face at some point, and it is necessary.
The fear of becoming “too much” for others may also be a sign that your ego needs to be reduced. It’s not your place to care whether or not others are ready for your growth. If they are worth having in your life, they will evolve to meet you.
Regardless, fear of change often keeps us from living a fulfilling life. We rather stay with what’s comfortable, even if it means holding onto negative emotions and limiting thoughts as well.
The idea of being your best self can be somewhat overwhelming. It’s hard to know where to begin, which is why we designed this checklist to help you focus your energy on what’s important.
The Be Your Best Self Checklist
- Open your Self up to the magic of the world
- Prioritize physical health
- Practice thought-gardening
- Work through your traumas and limitations
- Cultivate a healthy self-image
- Understand the Law of Attraction
- Align yourself with the natural world
Each of these points involves the creation of positive energy through right choice, which in turn will help you evolve into a better version of your Self.
Let’s dig a bit deeper into each of the items on this checklist so you better understand how to be your best.
Opening Your Heart and Living in the Moment
The very first step you should take if you want to be your best Self, is to free yourself from attachment to past and future, and learn to once again see the world for what it is: magical and full of possibilities.
A distorted view of the world will limit you from properly working within its rules and parameters. It’s like playing a game of Chess while wearing glasses that make you see the board and game pieces as though you were playing Candyland. Not only are you going to lose every time, you’re going to be continuously frustrated because virtually nothing you do will seem to work out.
This is how many people go through life, and it shows. You need to pull off those blinders and begin opening your heart once again to the vast array of possibilities that are out there.
Perhaps one of the most important steps you will ever take along the Path is the realization that the real world is more magical and wondrous than any realm of fantasy ever conceived. There is beauty in the most unlikely places, powers to develop, missions to embark on, and worlds to explore. If you would but open yourself up.
Physical Wellness and Life Balance
Once you have a healthy mindset that is better open to the possibility of change, change is indeed what will come.
In that respect, your next step is to begin changing the body.
Whether you like it or not, physical health plays an important role in the quality of our life. If you have lived up until this point with the idea that “exercise isn’t for you” or that you could “never eat healthy,” now is the time to ditch that mentality.
A lack of physical health can and will destroy your chances of personal fulfillment and happiness. In so many more ways than one.
It’s also not enough to just be “healthy,” as defined by this society. Are you actually building muscle, keeping your gut flora balanced, making sure you are getting plenty of optimized plant-based nutrition?
If you want to enjoy a better life balance, you need to begin to seriously invest in your own physical well-being.
Not only should you adopt a basic workout regimen, but you also want to consider a martial discipline or form of yoga as well. The connection between mind and body is such that one helps the other.
A disciplined body regulates the mind, just as a disciplined mind regulates the body.
How Mindscaping Leads to Personal Freedom
Mindscaping is the conscious act of deciding which thoughts you should actively keep inside your head. This might seem like somewhat of a foreign concept, but if you want to be the best embodiment of your Self, you have to take responsibility for the thoughts you keep.
Why does it matter what thoughts you keep inside your head? Because thoughts are things, and once they are created, their energy becomes a part of you, and can also influence the energy that you attract.
Thoughts, like energy, can either be positive or negative. Many of us keep a giant library of false and negative thoughts about ourselves and the world, and you may liken this to a giant maximum security prison that is keeping you in bondage.
Holding onto negative thoughts will perpetuate a chain of events in your life that will keep you bogged down with the same drama, the same lessons, the same feelings of fulfillment and regret.
To actively be your best, you must be the gatekeeper of your own mind. Practice meditation and focus your awareness on the moment. Learn to discard useless and negative thoughts. Your quality of life will skyrocket.
Negative Emotions are Sabotaging You
Negative emotions occur when one physically internalizes a mental state based on a low vibration thought.
So much of our society is based on exploiting negative emotions for some kind of gain, be it financial or otherwise.
You can never be your best self while wallowing in negative emotions. In fact, anger, jealousy, resentment, and similar feelings are actually sabotaging you.
Negative emotional states keep you from seeing opportunity and don’t allow for growth. They are a psycho-spiritual prison that can only be unlocked by processing your trauma and working through all of your hangups.
Keeping a personal journal to track your emotional reactions can be helpful in this case. Emotional issues must be healed through logical application of the mind and its power.
Every time you feel a well of negativity, you should make the conscious effort to take a step back and record the incident. Ask yourself why, and try and find the trigger. Once you do, you can mindfully work through it and allow the real you to come forth.
Awareness of Self Creates Room For Growth
Personal self-image is an important aspect of being your best. How can you feel fulfilled if you aren’t happy with who you are?
Proper self-awareness is usually cultivated through a combination of physical, mental, and emotional work.
However, you can hasten the process of developing a positive self-image using techniques like mantras to tell instill in yourself the idea that you are worthy and successful.
This is also not to be confused with self-delusion. If you are physically or emotionally unhealthy, you shouldn’t delude yourself into thinking otherwise.
Rather than wallowing in self-pity, it’s important to be honest with your Self and fix the problem by engaging in self-mastery training.
Understanding that you are more than your physical body and emotional sheath is also important. Work to better these parts of your Self with the full understanding that you are greater than the sum of your “parts.”
The Magnetic Power of Thought
As mentioned previously, your thoughts hold power, so you must be careful with which ones you entertain.
You can use this same phenomenon to your advantage by learning about and implementing the Law of Attraction.
Although this concept has gone somewhat mainstream, that doesn’t detract from the fact that it is one of the Hermetic Laws of Reality and can be used to better your Self.
In fact, all thought is magnetic and will attract similar circumstances to the energy that the thought contains.
Just how magnetic is determined by the willpower used in the process of forming or sending the thought.
Once you gain a working understanding of the Law of Attraction you can use it to guide the course of your life. This is not anything revolutionary and shouldn’t be thought of as such, it’s something many people the world over, from famous athletes to big name CEOs, understand and use at least to some degree.
Nature Has The Answers
The final point you want to take note of is your relationship with nature.
Alignment with the natural world helps you keep everything in perspective, and can expose your life’s true purpose.
The positive energies of plants and animals, negative ions in the air, and the general atmosphere of beauty and power can inspire the inner parts of our being and help to promote healthy thinking patterns.
Throughout history, one of the tell-tale signs of an awakened individual has always been their love for and affinity with nature. Once you realize your place in the natural world and how connected we are to everything, it only seems natural to want to immerse yourself in it.
Nature can also assist the healing process of both mind and body, making it an effective and necessary self-mastery tool.
Your Best Self is Waiting
Being your best is a journey, not a goal. There is no magical day when you will wake up and suddenly be the best possible individual you can be, because there’s unlimited room for growth.
To make the most of the tips above, you should immediately adopt the mindset that the journey is itself the goal. You want to approach life with the mindset that every step you take toward your evolution is worthwhile, no matter how small.
To make best use of the checklist, tackle each point in order. Don’t start off trying to align with nature and implement the law of attraction, otherwise you’re just going to get discouraged and confused.
Start your self-evolution journey by opening yourself up to the possibilities around you. Embrace the idea of personal change and being your best Self, and then move onto physical discipline.
It doesn’t sound glamorous, but some of the best work you could possibly do for yourself right now would be to adopt a stringent fitness routine. Incorporate more fruits and vegetables into your diet, and as practice a bit of thought-gardening every now and then. This will lay the foundation of better things to come.
The founder of Digital Sages, Matt has an extensive background in self-mastery and has authored several books on the subject. His goal is to demystify important esoteric subjects and help people transform their lives through self-awareness and personal empowerment.
This was an insightful and well written post.