Many of us live humdrum lives, unaware of the shimmering beauty all around us. And quietly give up and ` fill coffins’ before the age of thirty five! 

That was quite a strong statement, don’t you think? But sadly it happens. Why? How come? 

Well let me explain it this way:

1. All those years at school we dreamt of what type of lives we would have when we leave school. What type of career and lifestyle, etc. 
2. It isn’t long before we realize we can’t get the job we hope to have, for whatever reason. 
3. We didn’t intend to get married straight away, but it happens quicker than we envisioned. 
4. We work at a jog we don’t like, or we land up having children, and devoting all our time to them. One treadmill after another and it never seems to stop. Each day follows another, and everything turns out humdrum. 
5. One day you wake up and find out you’re already 30 or 40 years old and you haven’t achieved any of the things you so hoped to achieve or do.  
6. Where did time go and how did things happen the way they did?! We realized we were too busy doing our duty, filling each day keeping to a schedule, pleasing everybody else, etc. 
7. Some of us realize we need to make a change. And some of us accept our lot and continue to just exist; doing the same old thing from day to day… burying ourselves alive. 

There are ways of changing your life for the better:

Ask yourself what you really like to do most. If you are worried about finances, there are ways of obtaining or doing it without money. 

Practical: 

• Do some research on your particular topic. Find out more about it and make notes. Often while doing research, you’ll find another or more opportunities arise, one way or another. 
• Plan your moves and take action, even if it means doing something smaller to begin with. 
• Learn a new skill, something that supports your topic.
• Take up a creative hobby. Hobbies often turn into business. 

Spiritual:

You achieve more if your mood is lifted. 

• `Stop-to-small-the-roses’: Train yourself to see the beauty in everything. Do something that puts beauty in your life, like growing flowers. 
• Change attitude: Think and talk positively. Whatever you think goes to the heart. And from there things begin to happen.
• Find reasons to Laugh more often. Play and listen to happy uplifting music.
• Now don’t laugh at me. But I often do a little happy jig. It’s fun to twirl around in a garden or forest with your arms out stretched. I can tell you, it lifts your spirit no end. Privately of cause, in case someone thinks you’re slightly `off-your-rocker’! 

Love life:

Live life to the full. 

• Observe life around you more closely. See what the `bees-and-ants’ are doing. Things most people don’t see in their busy lifestyles. As an artist, we do this all the time. How sunlight beams through the atmosphere, making haloes on grass seeds, etc. Taking time to watch sparkles shimming on water, dewdrops on fence wire or on flowers, etc. How the sparkles of highlights, rim-lights bring your paintings to life! 
• You may not be able to travel by car or by air. Even if you don’t have a bike, you can get out there and take walks, to see the deeper things of life.

I can hear you ask the question: 

How will all that help?

1. You will have more to write about on Steemit for starters! It also helps to write more exciting stories. 
2. And I promise you: Your life will broaden and expand beyond your present understanding.