Recently I had a conversation with “The Art of Living Beautifully” publisher, Lauren Palmer (LISTEN HERE). During this conversation, she shared her definition of the term “art of living beautifully” and I was intrigued. It got me thinking about what it looked like for my life and how others could discover it for themselves.
Lauren defines the art of living beautifully as “your own personal culture”. For us to fully understand the enormity of this definition, we must first look at the word CULTURE. Though there are a plethora of ways to interpret this word, I choose (for the sake of this blog post AND with the context of my conversation with Lauren in mind) to use this one: “the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations”.
This isn’t just about habits and preferences, it’s about legacy and heritage (as I see it anyway). The idea of an “integrated pattern of human knowledge” implores us to examine our decisions and scrutinize our choices more intently. Because we are the sum of our experiences, it stands to reason our art of living beautifully would come from a place of influence, inspiration, and self-awareness. With this in mind, I’ve come up with these 3 tips to find the art of living beautifully in my life and I think you will find it a good start for your own life as well:
- Find your center – I know this is a loaded tip but, the truth is, we can’t fill ourselves with anything beautiful until we empty the ugly. Whatever this process looks like for you, it’s important to tackle those skeletons, demons, and/or insecurities early. There will be periods in your life where they will rear their ugly heads and cause you to go off the rails. Because of this, it’s imperative to have a center that helps guide you back on track, faster.
- Love yourself enough to be yourself – The sooner you do tip one, the faster you will tap into your value. When you know how valuable you are, that you are desirable and have esteemed characteristics, you’ll require others to respect you as such. Your experiences will be about quality over quantity, therefore you will be able to “Create Circumstances of Optimal Success”. In other words, you’ll be shaping your life beautifully.
- Be intentional with your passion – I believe our passion(s) (that thing or those things we can do with our eyes closed, our hands tied behind our backs, out of a deep sleep and would do for FREE — if we didn’t need the make money, lol) are the vehicles in which we use to discover our purpose. As we live our lives with (and sometimes for) others, we shouldn’t allow our own dreams and goals to get lost in the hustle and bustle. We have to be intentional about what we want our life to look and feel like; especially if we want it to be a beautiful one.
Ultimately, the art of living beautifully, the way I understand it, is found from honesty and authenticity. It seems to me, you can’t create beautiful art from your life if you are busy imitating that of another. How are you carving out a beautiful life for yourself? Are you showing those around you how to treat you?, how to respect and love you? Start creating circumstances for optimal success RIGHT NOW!
These were my thoughts on how I have found my art of living beautifully, but Lauren had some ideas of her own.
Grab her checklist HERE
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