5 Things I Did Differently to Have the Best Year of My Life So Far

I had my birthday last month.

I measure my life in terms of my birthdays. So, instead of setting up new year resolutions on 31 December, I set them on my birthday.

This birthday when I contemplated whatever happened in the last year, I was surprised to see that this year has been the most fruitful, peaceful, and meaningful year of my life.

To name them, here are a few major incidents that happened in my life:

I became a teacher/coach

My boss fired me for not coming to the office on a Sunday. It happened exactly a year ago.

But before getting another job, I asked myself, what’s something I really want to try in life? 

I wanted to try teaching. I had been working as a digital marketer. So I thought maybe becoming a digital marketing trainer would satisfy my curiosity about teaching. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) there wasn’t any vacancy nearby for this post.

I had been writing online for 4.5 years, and successfully had a humbling audience of a few thousand readers across social media platforms. Here’s the question that changed so many things for me. I asked myself — “What is the best topic I can teach someone?”

I always wanted to teach and share my experimentations with living peacefully and meaningfully. And that’s what I did. I launched a free 5-day course. 300+ people enrolled in it within the first week of launch. 

Yes, I admit, having a background in digital marketing has been a secret sauce of a lot of my successful ventures. 

I always wanted to teach and share my experimentations with living peacefully and meaningfully. And that’s what I did.

Quitting my job in the mid of this pandemic

My workplace was getting toxic. Our company wasn’t ready for this WFH culture, and the managers were seeking opportunities to bring others down. It’s only been 8 months in this company, but I knew I had to leave.

Meanwhile, I had been selling my courses and even practicing being a life coach. When my colleagues were losing their jobs in the mid of this pandemic, I decided to invest in my own coaching. 

I worked with my business coach Liz Huber, and we strategized how to make my coaching business viable enough to quit my job in the coming months. And that’s what we did.

It was scary but equally rewarding.

When my colleagues were losing their jobs in the mid of this pandemic, I decided to invest in my own coaching.

Having the best financial months in lockdown

To give you an idea, I earned more income in the past 5 months, than what I earned in the previous 12 months.

Money comes to you easily, when you do what’s obvious to you. And I saw it happen when I listened to my intuition and became a life coach.

What’s in this post for you?

In this post, I’ll mention 5 things I did differently to have the best year of my life so far. 

Along with all these points, I’ll mention the action steps so you can try them in your life as well.

Stop Treating Your Characteristics

Last year, I sat down with my mentor and he asked me, “Dipanshu, for how long will you keep treating your characteristics as your issues?”

This question changed the world for me.

I have this quality of detachment. For so many years, I had been treating detachment as an issue. And in my romantic relations, I was probably trying to find someone who could help me out in repairing this.

Guess what? I couldn’t repair it. Because it’s not an issue in the first place; it’s quality. 100% of the people I talked to about this told me how lucky I am to have this quality.

But maybe I was just trying to fit in.

For how long will you keep treating your characteristics as your issues?

As soon as I started accepting things for what they were, a lot of issues in life magically disappeared.

We all need a sweet balance in self-acceptance and self-improvement. This was my wake up call to finally start practicing self-acceptance.

Acceptance has been proven to radiate higher vibrations than shame or guilt (see the chart below). And that’s the reason why I felt so elevated once I entered the acceptance zone from being in the guilt/shame zone.

Suzanne Adams explains the whole mechanism in her TED talk — 

Action step

Make a list of all the issues about yourself you want to treat right now. Spend some time analyzing them. Question yourself if they are really issues, and you haven’t been observing them for too long.

This however doesn’t mean you will always be living in acceptance. But this is about how quickly you can shift your focus from guilt/shame to acceptance and love.

Take Command to Design Your Own Life

I have been chasing inner truth and peace for a while now. On my last birthday, I visited a Buddhist monastery in Dharamshala, India. I saw hundreds of Buddhist monks there roaming around the town, praying, chanting, doing their rituals.

I am not sure if I can explain this — but for the first time, I ‘saw’ peace on someone’s face. I always thought you can’t see peace, you can only feel it. But that day, I saw peace on someone’s face.

And I decided to start living like a monk. I am not sure if I will be a monk someday, but I for sure wanted to live with that kind of peace. So I asked myself, what would it take to be a monk? If I were a monk, what would I be doing, how would I be living my life?

I always thought you can’t see peace, you can only feel it. But that day, I saw peace on someone’s face.

I ended up writing these qualities — 

I am really proud of who I am after 1 year of practicing all this. I am nowhere close to being perfect, but looking at the journey, I am impressed with my growth, and I plan to continue this for now.

“According to research on mental rehearsal, once we immerse ourselves in that scene, changes begin to take place in our brain. Therefore, each time we do this, we’re laying down new neurological tracks (in the present moment) that literally change our brain to look like the brain of our future. In other words, the brain starts to look like the future we want to create has already happened.” 

Dr. Joe Dispenza

Action step

Who is a hero in your world? Who is already having the kind of success you want to achieve? Name them. Brainstorm all the qualities they must have had to reach where they are right now. One by one, start developing those habits in your own life.

This seems super tough and imaginary exercise, to begin with. With time, as Dr. Joe Dispenza has mentioned, “the brain starts to look like the future we want to create has already happened.”

Abstain From Romantic Relationships

I was jumping from dating one girl to another with a thought that someone could make me feel complete. Or maybe this dating game was just a distraction I created for myself. I didn’t want to look at how faulty I had been. I was hiding away from personally painful but true facts.

Last time I had a breakup, I went on a date with someone else exactly an hour after breaking up. Sipping coffee, talking to this new date, I realized I am doing something terribly wrong. All of this needed to be stopped.

2 days after that incident, I went to travel the Buddhist monastery and I decided to abstain from romantic relations for a year. It’s been a year now. Wow! I didn’t date anyone for a year. This is such a big shift for me.

I went for a few hookups in the first few months with a reason (read: excuse) “I won’t do anything serious, let me have some fun.” But that was again doing the same thing for me — distracting me from exploring the hard and real truth. So I stopped doing that after a few months too.

Abstaining from romantic relations gave me enough space that I could realize all the mistakes I had done in my past. Dating someone is no longer a compulsion/need for me. And if I want, I can live a complete life without dating or marrying anyone. 

I realized I don’t need anyone to fix me. Being single gave me more peace than being in a wrong relationship. Maybe that’s the truth I needed to explore.

However, this could be hard for someone who hasn’t taken a break from dating willingly. So, proceed with caution. And like any other skill, with will and intent, even abstinence can be practiced.

I am still not done with this, and I am pushing it for another year — a year more of abstaining from romantic relations. I’m 24. I don’t think I’ll be too late to get married if I practice this for another couple of years.

Being single gave me more peace than being in a wrong relationship. Maybe that’s the truth I needed to explore.

Action step

If you are someone like me who’s hoping from one romantic partner to another, maybe take a break. 

Even otherwise, deciding to abstain from romantic relations for a few months or a year will help you move on, get space, and closely observe how relationships work. So maybe you can start by practicing abstinence for 3 months. Think about it.

Research even suggests that teens who practice sexual abstinence are less likely to have depression and less likely to attempt suicide.

Align Components of Your Life

I once dated a girl whose love language is touch. She expresses her love with “touch,” aka hugs, cuddles, handholding, etc.

My love language is quality time. I like to spend time with others. Just being there. Probably not even doing anything. Or doing typical random day things like eating and cooking and watching Netflix. But I also do seek my personal space.

The issue was, whenever we were together, she always used to seek touch, handholding, hugging, etc., and I felt like she’s intruding too much of my personal space. Our love languages and core values didn’t align.

And we were too young to figure out why aren’t we happy together.

The same goes for any career. If my core value is quality family time, and I am working in a job where I have to travel for five days a week, I would probably not be happy in my life because my core values and my job don’t align with each other.

Alignment can resolve so many issues of your life.

Seek alignment in — 

• Your and your partner’s core values and love languages.
• Your life purpose and your career goals.
• Your thoughts, actions, and emotions.

Everyone gets out-of-sync every now and then. The challenge is to get in-sync with alignment as quickly as possible. 

Action step

Design an imaginary compass for your life. Be self-aware of who you are, what are your core values, your standards, and expectations, etc. Set this imaginary compass in the direction of your life purpose. Deliberately choose your decisions from here.

Whenever you need to decide anything, like dating someone, or a career opportunity, put in on this imaginary compass, and see if it aligns with your life purpose and core values.

If it does, go on and get it. If it doesn’t, just let it go.

Ask Yourself Better Questions

Life is nothing but seeking answers to your questions. The better questions you ask, the better your life will be. I owe everything to the kind of questions I asked myself in the past year.

Word of caution: I might be making all of this sound so easy because it is really easy if your life components are aligned with one another. 

It’s alright if you feel you don’t have answers to these questions. Try to answer them nonetheless. There are no right or wrong answers; there are just your own answers and answers fed to you by others.

Life is nothing but seeking answers to your questions. The better questions you ask, the better your life will be.

Here are three questions that you might want to ask yourself, for starters.

“If money and approval from others aren’t the issues, what would you do, who would you become?”

When I asked myself this question, my answer was — I would become a life coach, and I would quit my job and write daily. This happened in January. And so I started preparing for it.

I listed all the qualities I needed to be a life coach. Being a good listener was one of them, and honestly, I hadn’t been a good listener in the past. So that was a starting point. I learned how to be a good listener. And then I became one.

“What am I avoiding right now?”

I was afraid that people might not take me seriously as a life coach if I am only 23 years old. My 200+ clients would certainly disagree with me on this now.

This is what I was avoiding — criticism and trolls. And then I reminded myself — I am not going to be a fake guru. I will teach you what is obvious to me.

“What is something I can’t shut up about?”

For me, it was life philosophy, peace, mental health, happiness, etc. So I knew this is something I want to teach online, or this would be my arena of coaching. 

I have been a digital marketer for 4 years. I graduated with an honors degree in Biotechnology, but I don’t think those are the topics I can’t shut up about.

Summary 

Here are the 5 things you can do differently to have the best year of your life so far — 

1. Stop treating your characteristics. Make a list of all the issues about yourself you want to treat right now. Spend some time analyzing them. Question yourself if they are really issues, and you haven’t been observing them for too long.
2. Take command to design your own life. Who is a hero in your world? Who is already having the kind of success you want to achieve? Name them. Brainstorm all the qualities they must have had to reach where they are right now. One by one, start developing those habits in your own life.
3. Abstain from romantic relations. If you are someone like me who’s hoping from one romantic partner to another, maybe take a break. Even otherwise, deciding to abstain from romantic relations for a few months or a year will help you move on, get space, and closely observe how relationships work. Think about it.
4. Align the components of your life. Design an imaginary compass for your life. Set this imaginary compass in the direction of your life purpose. Deliberately choose your decisions from here. Whenever you need to decide anything, like dating someone, or a career opportunity, put in on this imaginary compass, and see if it aligns with your life purpose and core values. If it does, go on and get it. If it doesn’t, just let it go.
5. Ask yourself better questions. Life is nothing but seeking answers to your questions. The better questions you ask, the better your life will be. Start by asking these 3 questions:

“If money and approval from others aren’t the issues, what would you do, who would you become?”

“What am I avoiding right now?”

“What is something I can’t shut up about?”