Dad passed away last month. I know that’s probably not the most graceful way to begin a post like this, but it matters. Because one of his greatest legacies to me was a single question he asked often: “Are you happy, Candis?” He started asking me in my mid-20s, when I think he suspected I wasn’t.
At the time, my bank account ran on empty more often than not, I was living in a beat-up inner-city apartment in Chicago owned by a slumlord who refused to fix a sewer problem that left the place reeking of shit every day, and though I dragged myself to the gym daily, I was far from healthy. To top it off, I was married to a man I loved but who seemed perpetually annoyed by me.
Still, I didn’t want to stress Dad out. So whenever he asked, my answer was always: “Yes, Dad, I’m happy….” I wasn’t.
It wasn’t just the conditions I was living in. I wasn’t happy on a deeper level either. I definitely did not love my life. Deep down, I knew that learning to love my life, despite my circumstances, was the only way I’d ever truly be happy. So I set out to do it…
Mostly so I could stop lying to Dad.
How to Start Loving Your Life
Trying to love your life when nothing seems to be working feels like an impossible task. For years, I would wake up with a sense of dread about the day ahead, anxiety gripping my chest like a vice, leaving me suspended in a haze. I felt stuck in limbo, powerless to change the present and overwhelmed by bleak thoughts about the future.
Then one day in 2013, my then-husband, tired of watching me mope around, sent me a motivational YouTube video of a speaker named Les Brown. In it, he said something that fueled the small spark Dad had already planted in me:
“It has been said, most people die at age 25 and don’t get buried until they are 65. Make an effort to live your life to the fullest.”
That line hit me right in the heart. Something in me wanted to wake up.
Every day after that, for years, I listened to those kinds of videos. First Les Brown, then Abraham-Hicks, who spoke about the science of deliberate creation and the art of allowing. Slowly, I began to believe that I could recreate my life through the power of intention. And over time, as I changed my thoughts about my life, my whole life began to change.
Related: How to Love Yourself: From the Diary of a Self-Loving Woman
5 Practices for Loving Your Life
Looking back, I can see that what really changed my life wasn’t a single quote or even the hours of motivational talks I consumed. It was the practices I began to thread into my days and the perspectives I started to embody over time. Loving your life isn’t about waiting for circumstances to magically improve; it’s about creating moments of joy, freedom, and meaning right where you are. Little by little, those small practices reshaped not just how I thought, but how I lived.
1. Look for Things to Love (aka Be Grateful for Something)
It really is true that what we focus on grows. The way we choose to see our lives really matters. When I first started this journey to love my life, I was living through some of my darkest days, figuratively and literally (those bitterly cold, overcast Chicago winters felt endless). The one thing I managed to find gratitude for were the morning motivational videos I listened to on the train downtown to my job as a commission-based leasing agent. Those videos nourished my soul, gave me something to look forward to, and in the many rags-to-riches stories I heard, I found hope.
Today my gratitude looks simpler. I notice the sun streaming through my window, the sound of birds in the morning, the sweetness of waking without an alarm blaring before daybreak. What I’ve learned is that even when it feels like nothing is working, something always is. The question is, can you see it?
2. Slow Down Long Enough to Smell The Roses
The motivational videos were great. They lit up a vision of a future that felt much happier than my present. And for a long time, I was unrelenting in the pursuit of that new life. I devoured knowledge, built my business, and pushed myself to be better so I could have better. I became the poster child for hustle culture, proudly working from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m., desperate to “build an empire” that would prove my life meant something. I had decided that was what it meant to live life to the fullest.
By then, I had moved to Miami alone, which was a desperate, faith-fueled decision after some relationship revelations that rocked me. My living conditions improved, but my spirit was still in disarray. I had simply traded numbness for burnout, chasing a dream that always seemed just out of reach.
Somewhere around the end of 2021, I realized I was missing my whole life. In the pursuit of happiness, I was missing happiness. In the pursuit of my dreams, I was missing the dream. Because the life I was so desperate to build—the beauty, the joy, and the meaning—it was already here, pulsing in and around me. I just had to slow down long enough to notice it. To experience the people I loved, the flowers lining the streets in my neighborhood, the simple ways I had already “arrived.”
Slowing down became the single most powerful thing I’ve ever done to transform my life into one of joy, freedom, and happiness. Not only did it help me see my life, it made space for the breakthroughs that lifted me effortlessly into my next chapter.
3. Live in Your Body, Not In Your Mind
A couple of years before I decided to slow down, I made my word of the year Embodiment. It sounded like a great word, but the truth was, I had no idea what it actually meant to be embodied. What I didn’t know at the time was that you can’t think your way into your body. Needless to say, I didn’t live in my body that year, or in many of the years that followed. I lived entirely from the neck up, moving through my days with thoughts crowding my every move.
Living in my body has meant being intensely present in my life. It’s noticing the sensations of emotions rise and fall in my chest, my belly. It’s noticing where tension builds when I’m stressed, and knowing how to relax it. It’s feeling the sun warming my skin and the breeze brushing against my face, even now as I write this post from my perch on the balcony. It’s surrendering to the rhythm of my hips as I dance in my living room, without judging myself for how I might look.
It has meant allowing my body to be more than just a vehicle dragging my mind from place to place. But rather a powerful holder of wisdom, beauty, and pleasure, and a guide that brings me into direct contact with the inherent joy of life itself.
4. Do Something Creative, Every Day
I really believe we were all born to be creative. It’s the thing that makes us feel most alive. Too often when we think of creativity, our minds go straight to paintbrushes and palettes, instruments and microphones. But creativity lives in the smallest, simplest choices too.
It can be adding a scatter of microgreens on your morning toast, braiding your hair instead of pulling it into the same messy bun, or walking a new route on your daily stroll. Creativity isn’t only about making art; it’s about engaging your life in fresh, playful ways.
For the past month, my friend Sofia has practiced this by doing one small thing differently every day. One week she rode the bus instead of taking her car. Another day she ate with her left hand instead of her right. And together, we jumped into my pool during a coworking break on a random Tuesday afternoon, just because.
Creativity is about engaging fully with my life in ways that feel new and adventurous. It’s how I keep myself awake to possibility. What’s it about for you?
5. Love People, And Leave Them Alone
Growing up, my mum absolutely loved to host. She thrived being surrounded by people, catering to others, and kicking it with whoever came through the door. If you want to know what a social butterfly looks like, look no further. Sometimes she was so eager for company that she’d ask people again and again to come around, even as they resisted her invitations.
I can still hear my dad, frustrated, telling her: “Leave that man alone! He doesn’t want to be bothered.” He said it often.
As an adult, I found myself carrying that same inclination as Mum, chasing after people who just didn’t want to come around, or trying to get others to buy into a vision they just didn’t share. Over time, I learned the hard truth that wanting people to do something other than what they want to do, or expecting them to show up in some way other than how they are, is just a recipe for frustration and disappointment. I think Mum probably learned that somewhere along the way, too.
Loving my life has meant fully accepting what is, including the people I love. The irony is that loving and accepting people fully sometimes leaves me with no choice but to walk away. And when I do, I trust that if they’re meant to remain in my world, Life will make a way for that to happen with little effort on my part.
As I love people and let them go, even when it’s hard, I find that I become a little happier, a little more peaceful, and a lot more free.
Living a Life You Love, Right Now
Today I live in my dream studio in Miami Beach, coaching clients remotely from the comfort of my coconut-scented home (no more shit for me. Literally, haha!). I’m healthier, happier, and feel sexier than I ever have. I make more money with far less effort. And yes, I’m living my life to the absolute fullest, as a single woman.
A couple of months before Dad passed away, as he was growing more and more tired, he asked me one final time: “Are you happy, Candis?” And I had the deep honor of telling him, in complete truth and earnestness: “Yes Dad, I’m happy. And this time I really, truly mean it.”
Although my life today feels magical, the real transformation began long before these circumstances. It began back when I had every reason not to be happy. When I chose to find appreciation and gratitude for the smallest things anyway.
The thing about living a life you love is that it doesn’t start when conditions are perfect. It starts the moment you begin, slowly and deliberately, to focus your gaze on the beauty that’s already here and to open your heart to what’s possible.
So let me ask you: Which of these practices is calling to you most right now? And what’s one small step you can take today to begin making space for it?
