12 Empowering Ways To Reclaim Your Life

Do you ever feel like you’re just going through the everyday motions of life barely existing? Like you’re just breezing through your days on auto-pilot? If so, please know that you have the power within you to reclaim your life and finally start living!

You’re certainly not alone in feeling this way. For years, I feel like I have been constantly living my days on autopilot. I was constantly feeling down and so unfulfilled and I felt like I was just stuck in this constant loop of self-destruction.

I was living through my days feeling empty and just so mentally and emotionally drained. Every day, it felt like I was constantly being swept away by my negative thoughts and worries.

I was unhappy and to be perfectly honest as each day went by, I was feeling more and more hopeless about ever being happy again.

I knew that life was just passing me by. I knew that time was fleeting and life was far too precious to waste it by just spending my days unhappy and unfulfilled and if I just keep letting myself live this way, making the same bad decisions, doing the same thing, change won’t happen.

I needed to reclaim my life and do the things necessary to improve it. If you’re in the same boat, I want you to know that it is possible to reclaim your life and turn it around for the better.

Yes I know, doing this may sound almost impossible. Especially if you’re struggling in life. I felt that too and that’s why I want you to know that it is possible to improve your life and finally live the life that you want.

It is possible to break free from unhappiness and really start living every moment of our lives.

In this post, I will be sharing with you the steps I took that drastically helped me reclaim my life and find happiness and purpose again. I hope that these steps will help you on your journey too!

How To Reclaim Your Life

1. Revisit Your Goals And Priorities

One of the most important steps in reclaiming your life is having clear goals and determining your priorities. Some of us are guilty of spending so much of our time and effort on the things that no longer align with the life that we want to live.

We continually waste our time on those things and end up taking the most important things and people in our life for granted along the way.

Determining your goals and priorities will make it so much easier for you to manage your time wisely since you already have a clear vision of where you need to concentrate your efforts on.

Take the time to really sit down and envision the life that you want. What are your values? What are your beliefs? What kind of person do you want to become?

Be prepared to ask yourself the hard questions and be honest with yourself with your answers.

2. Create A Realistic Plan

This goes hand in hand with what I’ve mentioned above. Now that you have determined your goals and priorities, the next step is to create a realistic plan.

Now what I mean by this is, you have to create a plan that is suited for you. Like for me, doing so much all at once can easily become too overwhelming for me to a point that I actually become paralyzed by it all and I end up not doing anything.

So, it’s very crucial for me to break down big tasks into small manageable tasks. Doing this makes it less overwhelming and actually easier for me to follow through.

3. Stop People Pleasing

This is possibly one of the hardest things for me to do. I was and if I’m being honest sometimes I still am, guilty of people pleasing.

I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve overextended myself and said yes to things that I never wanted to do just to gain the approval and validation of other people.

I kept saying yes to other people without realizing that by doing this I was also constantly saying no to myself. I thought that for me to be enough and to be worthy, I needed to continuously prove myself to others.

But of course, that was a mistake. Living that kind of life was exhausting and mentally draining. Regardless of how hard you try to please everyone or how much effort you put into something for someone else, there will always be people who will reject and criticize you.

And if you spend so much of your time trying to convince those people, you are only setting yourself up for disappointment and heartache and not to mention how it will negatively affect your mental health and self-esteem.

Always remember that the only validation that you will ever need is your own. Life is by far too precious to just spend it pretending to be someone you’re not just to please everyone.

Know that you don’t have to prove anything to be enough and worthy. You are enough and worthy just as you are now, and never let anybody tell you otherwise.

4. Let Yourself Feel

I have always been guilty of running away from what I feel. Instead of facing the heartbreak, pain, and disappointments head-on, I had always chosen to put those emotions on the back burner.

I thought that by choosing to bottle up my emotions, I was preventing myself from being hurt. So I did that for years, I pretended to be okay and happy even on those days when I’m truly not.

I never realized just how it negatively impact my mental health and how it also prevented me from truly living every moment of my life. It made me withdraw not just from the pain but also from happiness.

We can choose to bottle up our feelings but in the end, it will all catch up to us. We can’t truly heal, move forward and reclaim our lives, if we are still being hunted by our past pains and heartaches.

Know that allowing yourself to feel is never and will be a sign of weakness. For what it’s worth, it takes great courage and strength to be vulnerable.

5. Set Healthy Boundaries

Are you guilty of constantly over-extending yourself? Always putting your needs on the back burner? Constantly saying yes to other people without any regard for how and what you’re feeling?

I have always been guilty of this. I was so afraid of saying no to other people, especially to the people that I love thinking that doing this will disappoint them, regardless of how exhausted and drained I was feeling.

If you do feel this way too. Please know that saying no to other people is not a bad thing. In fact, you are allowed to say no without any explanation if it means saying yes to your needs and mental health.

I’ve learned that the more I said yes to other people and overextend myself to them, the more it negatively impacted my mental health and happiness and the more resentment I felt toward them.

I know that creating boundaries can be a big step for some people, like me, the first step that I took to help me ease into it is by practicing saying no to things that make me uncomfortable and that no longer align with my goals and priorities.

6. Let Go Of Toxic Habits

Reclaiming your life also means letting go of the things that were holding you back and were only sabotaging your happiness and well-being.

I know this part can often be difficult. Truth be told, I was guilty of constantly trying to justify my toxic habits. I sweep them under the rug and I kept pretending that those behaviors and mindset were all justifiable.

But of course, they weren’t. They were only keeping me unhappy, they were only feeding my anxieties and stress and they were only holding me back from living the life that I really wanted.

If we want to reclaim our lives and improve them, we have to be willing to be honest with ourselves and have the courage to take the necessary steps needed to change our lives for the better.

Take a moment to reflect on what those behaviors and mindsets are. Remember that you don’t have to change all of them at once, tackle one thing at a time, and take small steps if you have to.

The important thing is to be consistent and to keep going.

7. Don’t Be Afraid To Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

I was never good with change. For years I’ve allowed myself to be stuck in the same old patterns regardless of how unhappy and unfulfilled I was because I was so afraid to open myself up to new things.

Well, there’s no denying that change can be scary and most of the time stepping outside our comfort zone can be pretty terrifying and overwhelming but the more that we allow ourselves to hold on to the same patterns, the same habits that are holding us back, the more we are keeping ourselves from growth and from living our best life.

You don’t have to take huge leaps and make drastic changes all at once. Remember that it’s perfectly okay to take small steps and open yourself up to one new change at a time.

Remind yourself that doing this will pave your way to growth and progress.

8. Stop The Negative Self Talk

When I was going through this journey, one of the biggest lessons that I learned is you can’t reclaim your life if you keep doubting yourself and still talking negatively to yourself.

I know how easy it is to constantly criticize ourselves. Often, it’s even so much easier to motivate and lift other people up using our words than ourselves.

We constantly beat ourselves up for every little mistake and every little flaw without realizing that doing this is negatively affecting our mental health and self-esteem.

The more we talk negatively to ourselves, the more we start to doubt ourselves and question our capabilities. It’s time to put this pattern behind us.

Learn to be kind to yourself. Be your very own cheerleader and best friend.

9. Make Time For Self Care

When we have so much on our plates, the last thing on our minds is self-care. Well if we are really being honest, most of the time, it’s not even on our to-do list.

We constantly put ourselves and our needs on the back burner thinking that they are just a waste of time.

I used to think that too but I realized how awfully wrong I was. Putting our needs first and practicing self-care is far from being a waste of time, as a matter of fact, I’ve learned that it is a necessity.

I know that sometimes we feel guilty about making time for ourselves, we think that that time is better spent doing something else.

But what we forget is the more that we take care of ourselves, the more we will be able to continue showing up for others.

Remember that self care is never selfish. Self care is necessary for us to continue thriving and to find peace and lasting happiness.

10. Remember That Mistakes Are Proof That You Are Trying

When you reclaim your life, it’s easy to start thinking that you want to get everything and I mean everything right.

I know this mindset all too well. We want everything to go according to our plan but when things fall apart and we end up making mistakes or going back to our old toxic habits and mindsets, we feel so disappointed in ourselves and start believing that mistakes and failures are signs that we can’t really do it.

That you can’t change and reclaim your life. But for someone who had felt like taking one step forward and five steps back a hundred times during this journey, I’ve learned to not be afraid of mistakes.

We are all bound to make mistakes. No one is exempted in that area. The thing that I’ve learned is the only way that we can avoid making any mistakes is if we stay still and don’t try.

Sometimes mistakes can mean that we are actually trying. That we are actually doing something to achieve our goals and improve the quality of our lives.

If we keep being afraid of making mistakes, we are only keeping ourselves stuck.

When you feel discouraged every time you make a mistake and you feel like you just can’t do it, remind yourself that mistakes are proof that you are trying.

So don’t stop. Keep going, you will make it.

11. Be Mindful and Present

How many times have you found yourself constantly living in the past or worrying about the future? How many days have you spent just going through the motions of life on autopilot?

I was guilty of this for the longest time. I was so caught up on either constantly worrying about the future or just going on about my days existing mindlessly without realizing that by doing this I was robbing myself of the chance to experience all the good things that were actually happening in my life.

Life is by far too precious to just waste it clinging on to the past, worrying about the future, or just living it on autopilot.

One of the most powerful things that you can do to reclaim your life is to learn to be mindful and present.

Mindfulness does not only allow you to build more meaningful connections with the people in your life but it also helps you appreciate the present moment and find happiness even in the little things.

Here’s a great post from Verywell Mind that’ll help you learn how to become more mindful.

12. Embrace Change

How many times have you chosen to just stay still and stuck thinking that it was so much easier than opening yourself up to change?

I couldn’t even begin to tell you the number of times I was guilty of choosing this and to be honest, sometimes I still catch myself doing this.

I was always so afraid of change and all the uncertainties that I chose to stay stuck in my old patterns for years regardless of how unhappy I was already feeling because for me it felt safe and comfortable.

I thought that it was the best thing to do but I was completely wrong. There’s no denying that change can be uncomfortable but we have to remind ourselves that change is necessary for us to break free from unhappiness and toxic habits.

It is necessary for us to move forward in life, to grow, even heal and find new opportunities, and be more fulfilled.

Embrace the journey of life and all the uncertainties that go along with it. Remember that change doesn’t need to happen all at once.

You don’t always have to take huge leaps. Take small and easy steps, this way it will make it less overwhelming and a lot easier for you to keep going.

Final Thoughts

In today’s day and age, it’s so easy to get swept away by the noise of life, all the unrealistic expectations of how we should live our lives, and lose sight of the things that are truly important to us. It’s time to break free from it and reclaim your life.

When you are reclaiming your life, I want you to remember that this is not something that you can easily master overnight or even in a week. It is a process and it’s important to give yourself love and compassion during this journey.

Remember that it doesn’t matter if you make mistakes along the way, the important thing is to keep going, take small steps, and reclaim your life one day at a time.

You can do this!