10 Things You Need to Know About Real Love. (7)

7. Live with purpose. Spend some quiet time alone each day, without interruption, to think about your life and how it's structured. Think about what you need to do to "get better" in different areas. Learn to meditate by getting quiet and relaxing. Meditation is not sitting on a pillow chanting—it's just learning to calm down and go inward without distraction. Living purposefully is the opposite of living randomly. It's thinking about what you're doing when you're doing it. It's about not looking at your phone every 10 minutes, or mindlessly checking Facebook 200 times a day. It's about having your head where your feet are. Look around, and see what's going on where you are at this very minute.

Learn to be disciplined and control your urge to be tied to your phone, to dive into ice cream when you're not happy, or to do anything without really thinking about it. It's about doing the "tough" things, like sitting with your feelings, going to the gym, or eating healthy. Spend some time each day thinking about your impulses and mindless behaviors. and ways in which you can improve your self-control and self-discipline. Quiet time each day is so important to building a healthy life. Try to stretch it out. Set goals for building the amount of time you can spend every day in quiet meditation and purposeful action (and purposeful inaction). Having a say in everything you do and everything you don't do is important to being healthy and being capable of giving and receiving real love. (It is also important, when you're in a relationship, to continue to cultivate this practice and to have your own "me time" and alone time every day.)

To be Continued...