Plugged in

Your life is seventy to eighty years generally, but let's call it fifty good years because the first twenty you're a child and after seventy (if you make it that far) things start to fall apart generally.

Are you plugged into it?

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Quite frankly, I don't give a shit if you're not; that's your own business and your own choice.

I care about my own though and so I work very hard at being plugged into it - living it the best I can, making smart, sensible and productive decisions, working on relationships, myself and living in the present while planning the future.

Those things are different for everyone - some are happy with mediocrity, comfortable playing the victim and some are happy living a life of expectation and entitlement - I am none of those.

Here's nine of the many personal mindset choices I've made in my life which have contributed to a good life, comfortable, successful and fulfilled:

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• Strength of mind and character: Staying strong when challenges and adversity strike helps a person push forward.
• Identify the right mentors and influences: Learning from the right people all the way through life is my ethos.
• Health as a priority: I mean physical, emotional and mental health here - it's critical.
• Be true to your word and reliable: I do what I say I'll do, I "show up" and I do so with integrity as I see it.
• Gratitude and thankfulness: This incorporates being responsible for my own life and thankful for what that responsibility and effort brings.
• Grow and develop: When these things stop life stops, or so I believe.
• Fix, don't blame and complain: Ownership and discipline is the vehicle that carries a person forward more than complaining and blaming ever will. Find solutions.
• Calculated and clever risks: If a person never tries a person will never succeed. Cast off the fear of failure and embrace the moment knowing that failure is simply another lesson to learn from.
• Goal setting: A person with no clear, measurable, realistic and time-oriented goals is floundering in the dark. Learn how to set them and make plans to attain them.

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Many things combined to deliver the life I have but it's not gone completely to plan. I didn't come from a privileged family - we were quite poor actually. It's not been easy and no, I've not gone from one success to the other. I've tasted failures on a massive scale, felt unable to carry on, been beaten down so hard I thought I'd not recover...but I stood up and kept going, difficult though it was.

I celebrate the good and learn from the bad. I shun negativity and negative people. I take ownership and follow a solutions-focused ethos and I work hard at what I do including the fun things like travel, relaxation, hobbies, my relationships and such things; they are valuable and so I treat them as such.

I'm plugged into my life, I feel comfortable to say that due to my efforts and I feel happy for others who say the same.

What about you? Are you plugged into your life?

What of the nine items above do you employ to improve and maintain your life? What others do you have and if you're not doing any of this then why and how has that impacted your life. Also, the things I write above don't take any money to do so for those living in third-world countries with poor economies don't have an excuse not to do them...just putting that out there.