How do I live my life to its full potential?

Aspire for a better quality of life and take the most important step to achieve it.

The subject of mental health evokes a range of reactions. From denial to othering. From apprehensions to confusion. Rarely do we find someone acknowledging the need to prioritize our mental wellbeing in our life. After all, it’s such an intangible aspect to make sense. We believe that we are mentally healthy by default and we don’t have to particularly do anything to stay healthy.

We go about leading our lives, enjoying our work, spending time with loved ones, and experiencing fun over weekends, not realizing that there’s much that we could leverage from our lives than the routine. There are moments in our life when we aspire for more, and greater experiences.

We want more from our lives. “Oh, the vacation was just fine. I wish it was even better.” “My presentation could have been a bit better.” “I wish I could handle the conflict better.” The truth, however, is that our mental wellbeing, intangible as it is, has the power to change the way we experience and live our lives.

All the resources at our disposal, our skills, talent, and experiences help us live our life’s moments. They help us make decisions and strive to achieve our goals. However, in order to live our life to its full potential, we need a key catalyst. And, that is our mental wellbeing. Staying mentally healthy is like an icing on the cake that has all other ingredients perfectly blended.

Leading our life to its full potential is about leading life 100% and feeling that way. It’s this constant experience of being in control, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. It’s about nourishing those positive moments of our lives and feeling good about them.

One of the challenges we face in acknowledging the role of mental wellbeing in leading our life to its full potential is that we see life as a single entity. Some of the common expressions we hear are: “Oh, my life is not going anywhere.” “I need to reset my life.” What, in fact, we need is the capability to see our life in the moments we live.

That’s when we realize that the next moment of our life could be lived to its full potential. Prioritizing our mental wellbeing and adopting its best practices will help us live every moment of our life to its full potential. It’s also about realizing that we have the potential. That we can indeed lead our life to the fullest. And, feel that way, too.

Staying mentally healthy will help us realize the immense potential that each of us carries. The potential to experience those positive emotions and take control, emotionally, when situations demand. Mental wellbeing is a practice that needs to be added as a discipline in our lives. Including mental wellbeing practices in our day-to-day life is about one step at a time. One small step,

every single day will bring discipline. When the practice becomes a discipline in our life, we will slowly begin to see the changes in our life moments. Staying mentally healthy also gives us the capability to deal with those adverse moments in our lives.

We have a better chance to take control of those difficult and challenging moments when we build emotional resilience, which can be cultivated by practicing mental wellbeing techniques. Staying mentally healthy allows a shift in perspective of the situations we experience. It helps us build the capability to pause and reflect, and become self-aware of our emotions, thereby allowing us to make better decisions.

It's time we see mental wellbeing not just through the healthcare lens but as a catalyst to achieve our life goals. For us to get better results from the efforts we put into meeting our life goals, we must prioritize our mental wellbeing. Take the first step today.