202-Quality of life - Buddhism in daily life

Quality of life

What do you think, how can we recognize quality of life, and if we have recognized it, can we change it, improve it?

To judge the respective quality of life is possible only for each person himself. It seems impossible to make a judgment from the outside.

Each person knows very well how this quality is in his own life, can say exactly what is the matter. But hardly anyone has even a rudimentary idea of how this level of life can be changed. All right, I'll tell you.

If you change the way you live, the quality of your life will change.

Let me give you an example: If you start injecting heroin today, then within a year you probably got rid of your job, your apartment and your environment, the new habit has radically changed your life. Your circumstances have gotten worse, your new habit (drugs) has a massive impact on the quality of your being there.

And another example: You start going to night school, subsequently catch up on your high school diploma, then study successfully, get a much better job with incomparably more money. Your circumstances are better, your new habit (studying instead of chilling) has really changed everything.

In the end, it's only habits that have changed, but they had a significant impact. You are (still) the same person, your personal identity will only change over time.

Now, not all changes in your habits have such big effects as the ones above (in my admittedly rather drastic examples).

Let's say you focus on small changes in your life first, such as having chocolate from now on only if you eat an apple first. What would happen then? Not much would have changed at first, you would still get chocolate whenever you want, but you would now consume significantly more vitamins. And on some days you would only eat the apple, you wouldn't get to the chocolate anymore, because you don't have time anymore, something came up, or for other reasons.

Or you might intentionally form different, new habits that will then (one day) make up your new personality. Readers of my blog know that everything is a decision, nothing more, nothing less.

If you make the decision to learn a language, for example, and then subsequently form the habit of doing something for it every day, then in the not too distant future you will also speak this language, experience an expanded identity.

Your quality of life is a question of your personal resolutions, which then turn into habits, which in the end also have effects.

As always, the journey is the destination!

Surpassing the radiant qualities

- Buddha - honorary name of Siddharta Gautama - 560 to 480 before the year zero

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