Sunday 17 April

A large part of the human condition constructed by today’s society is complacency. We often jump to moan about all that we don’t have, what we want to have and what we hope to have in the future. Being present and living in the here and now is something which is highly overlooked. It is a practise that not many of us do, but it is something that perhaps we should start to act on.

We spend a lot of the time writing “future plans” and “bucket lists”. With friends and family we throw around ideas of what we want to do together in the near-future, plans and events. These examples are just surface level. It’s the complacency that we put on ourselves, the constant wishing that we were somebody else.

Why not change that mindset into something positive? Write down all the things you are and focus on all those positive attributes that you have: your true disposition. Instead of thinking about the dream car and house that you may or may not have at all in life, write down everything that you do have. You may then realise that materialistic things, like your favourite clothes or makeup products, are nowhere near as beneficial or important to who you are as a person as abstract concepts are, such as family and who you are.

Enjoy the journey you are on and stop trying to stray from the path and think that that will lead to a brighter destination. All the paths you think are in front of you will lead to the same destination, and that destination is as simple your future. It’s not necessarily a sunny beach with palm trees and salty aromas, it is simply a blank canvas which will be added to as you live life.

It is up to you to define what a life well-lived means. Society has constructed it to mean someone who has lots of money, who has “succeeded” in the business world, but what does life mean to you, what’s your purpose, abstract or not? Success, too, as an abstract concept, is defined by you and you only. Success does not equate to having wealth. Succeeding in life may be having a family or finding your dream partner. It depends person to person. Learn not to accept society’s standards as your own standards and create the life you want to live and the standards you want to live up to.