30 Ways to Waste Your Life and Not Realize It

In my opinion, a wasted life is an average life. Unfortunately, it’s incredibly easy to be the average citizen our society pushes us to be. Here are all the ways to be average:

• 1. Dwell on past mistakes so much that you can’t look forward to the future.
• 2. See things in a negative light—even the opportunities you are lucky to have.
• 3. Have friends who are just company, not contributors, to your life.
• 4. Let your stress pile on so high, you can’t complete the tasks you need to get done.
• 5. Allow the anxiety over a three-minute event ruin your entire day.
• 6. Wake up late, rush your entire day, and come back wondering why you are so zapped of energy.
• 7. Try to change your habits, but burnout and revert back to your old self.
• 8. Dream of traveling to a poverty-stricken village somewhere in the world, but when you get enough money, buy tickets to a cruise instead because you’re so exhausted from work.
• 9. Create a habit of not asking questions and fearing confrontation with those of supposedly higher authority.
• 10. Let your thoughts about tomorrow ruin today.
• 11. Be mentally engaged in your phone when your company expects you to be present.
• 12. Follow what others want for your life because you want them to be accepting more than you want yourself to be happy.
• 13. Make your main responsibility in life be your 9-5 job that offers little to no life or satisfaction.
• 14. Build habits that are destructive—the sort of behaviors you know you should change but don’t because you’re fine with the way things are.
• 15. Stick to what’s familiar because it doesn’t challenge you to be better.
• 16. Be scared of the future, though your life has proven in the past to work out for the best.
• 17. Don’t rally people in the vision of something greater. Lay low. Skate by unnoticed.
• 18. Overspend to feel better or cure boredom.
• 19. Go to a job you hate and only spend one hour being productive. Spend the other hours planning what you’ll do once you get off.
• 20. Enjoy that people pat you on the back and welcome you because you’re not disrupting anything. Have no one disagree with the mediocrity of your life.
• 21. Applaud others on their achievements instead of creating some of your own.
• 22. Spend years blaming your student debt for why you can’t make meaningful financial decisions—like giving to charity or vacationing more.
• 23. Avoid sleep because you’re too “busy” doing something that doesn’t actually matter.
• 24. Get a degree in something you don’t enjoy. Land a job you don’t enjoy because of your degree. Pay off student debt for the degree you didn’t enjoy.
• 25. Avoid having a mentor for your life. Believe you can learn all of life’s lessons on your own.
• 26. Feel guilty about everything you eat while not initiating any exercise to counteract it.
• 27. Continually set goals you abandon one week later.
• 28. Accumulate a lot of “stuff”. Shove them in a closet. Wait a few months, and then wonder why you accumulated things you didn’t need. Sell or give them away, then continue the pattern.
• 29. Don’t apologize to people you know you’ve wronged. Wait for time to supposedly heal all wounds.
• 30. Wonder why everyone’s life is better than yours, and then continue not changing anything.

The truth is, there’s a way to not waste life being average. It comes with living simply and intentionally.

Set goals and actually achieve them. Create habits that add health to your bones. Build relationships that can withstand many of life’s bombs. All of these options are available to us.

We just have to answer for ourselves: can I rise above the average? Can my life be extraordinary?

The answer is yes. If you’re unsure about the journey, start here.

Photography by Mikaela Hamilton