So, you decided to get your life together. Congrats! That’s a big realization. It probably took you a lot of courage to take responsibility for your life. So.. Now what?
Changing your usual way of living isn’t that easy. Where do you even start? If you’ve never been taught healthy coping skills, emotional intelligence, and self-love, you won’t just get this “sacred” knowledge out of thin air. You need a profound change.
Meet your needs at the lowest tiers and gradually work your way up to self-actualization. This article will show you the exact steps to get your life together with examples.
5 Steps to Getting Your Life Together
A short background: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a pyramid that describes five categories of human needs: physiological needs, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.
The main message of this pyramid is that without basic survival and safety, self-improvement is hard or close to impossible. Before chasing big goals, it’s more helpful to build stability in the ground areas, like physiological needs and safety, that will support everything else.
Luckily, in the digital era, there are tools for every taste that can support you in this process. One of them is a free iOS/Android app, Breeze Wellbeing, which features help you break personal growth into smaller, sustainable habits. In the steps of getting your life together, we show how you can build routines that support self-improvement instead of relying on motivation solely.
Step #1: Take Care of Your Body
The very ground of Maslow’s pyramid is physiological needs: nutrition, sleep, and clothing. Without this foundation, there simply will be no motivation for you to self-improve.
People who don’t meet their essential needs and are sleep-deprived, dehydrated, meal-skipping, etc., are twice as likely to experience depression symptoms, which takes away the desire to do anything (Wu et al., 2023, Frontiers in Public Health). It’s literally the body’s way of energy preservation.
Following a healthy lifestyle to a T is hard because most of us have jobs, families, responsibilities, hobbies, and only 24 hours a day. So, rather than trying to change everything at once, focus on a few simple habits you can repeat consistently.
What’s important here is to keep your expectations realistic. Start with something you know you can actually maintain, even if it’s something small like one extra glass of water a day. It’s important to make a habit so automated that you don’t spend too much mental energy on it in the future.
Step #2: Adopt a More Positive Mindset
The second tier of Maslow’s needs is safety. Of course, it means physical safety, but also financial and emotional security as well.
Feeling like your life is falling apart doesn’t always mean it actually is. Emotional safety is subjective; more about this is in the article about personal tolerance. If your mind turns every mistake into proof that there is something wrong with you, you’re the one who puts yourself in emotional “danger.”
A more positive mindset doesn’t mean smiling when your life is falling apart. It means being a little more self-compassionate towards yourself and a little more confident that you’re strong enough to overcome routine setbacks on your way. You can use journaling for that:
- Try gratitude journaling to help you notice and appreciate overlooked good things that happen in your life.
- Try anxiety dumping to see where your anxiety comes from and externalize your worries so they don’t turn into overthinking.
- Freewriting can help you separate what happened, what you’re afraid might happen, and what you can actually control.
Instead of catastrophizing every single issue you stumble across, you learn to break down problems into small steps that you handle one at a time.
Step #3: Reach Out
The third tier of Maslow’s needs is love and belonging. Yes, it’s one of the basic human needs to be loved, to belong, or to see that you’re understood.
CDC claims that feeling lonely is as harmful to the body as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Here are some examples of what you can do to feel less lonely on a daily basis:
- Read stories of other people on social media or in books, or listen to them in the theater/church.
- Write comments and feedback online and communicate with other users.
- Read an expert-written article that boosts your empathy and communication.
One extra tip: the connection shouldn’t stop inside the app. Remember that you don’t have to do this all alone. Reach out if you struggle. Asking for help in routine tasks doesn’t make you weak. Connection is also in the presence of other people: go out there in a park, movie theater, or concert, and see for yourself that you’re not alone.
Step #4: Build Confidence Through Evidence
The next tier on Maslow’s hierarchy is self-esteem, which comes from achievements and feeling needed and respected.
Many people think confidence is something that appears out of the blue. In reality, self-esteem is built through action. Who said, “Action comes first, then comes the confidence,” is actually so right.
Confidence grows from repeated experiences that show you, “I’ve done something difficult before, so I can do it again.” The more evidence you collect of handling challenges, the stronger your self-belief becomes.
In order to visualize that evidence, do this:
- Track your mood to look back and see that you’ve already made it through stressful days that once felt impossible.
- Track your goals, especially your small wins that are easy to overlook, whether it’s maintaining a habit for a week or completing a task you had been avoiding.
- Learn more about yourself to normalize your experience.
- Challenge critical self-talk to believe that the good things about you are true.
Healthy self-esteem means believing in yourself and trusting that in whatever given situation, you’ll do the best you can, even if it means failing.
Step #5: Invest in Personal Development
At the top of Maslow’s hierarchy is self-actualization—the desire to become the fullest version of yourself and realize your potential. Many misinterpret this need as a pursuit of self-improvement, but it’s actually about living a genuine life. This need is probably what led you to this article.
Therapy is generally the most effective for self-actualization because a trained mental health professional can assess from the side what in your life holds you back from realizing your potential: social conditioning, past traumas, lack of self-awareness, etc.
If you’re not ready for therapy yet or want to explore your inner world even deeper, some things we already mentioned do really help you feel better in the moment:
- Mood tracking can help you recognize which activities, environments, and relationships align with your needs and values.
- Diving into psychoeducational content helps you better understand mental health and personal growth, to later use this knowledge in your own life.
- Taking self-discovery tests reveals what brings meaning personally to you.
As your basic needs become more stable, your focus naturally shifts from simply getting through the day to asking bigger questions: What kind of person do I want to become? What gives my life meaning?
The path to self-actualization doesn’t have an end destination. Exploring these questions is a lifelong process, considering that we, as people, constantly evolve. So, a search for a more authentic and intentional life is something we should enjoy, as it is probably our lifelong mission.
What Does It Mean to Have Your Life Together?
Having your life together means achieving stability and confidence in your present and future, which makes you feel satisfied with what you do each day. For most people, getting their life together includes:
- Earning a steady income
- Being consistent with their routines
- Having a positive relationship with themselves
- Cultivating enriching hobbies
- Living an authentic life
- Feeling inner peace daily
- Successfully dealing with challenges
Someone who has their life together makes decisions that support their values. For example, someone who values family above all else might take a day off work to help a family member.
The biggest difference between someone who has their life together and someone who hasn’t is that the latter takes everything personally. Every bad day feels like an existential threat. But someone who cultivates a positive mindset relies on self-trust and the belief that they can handle challenges, no matter how difficult they are.
What Else to Remember When Getting Your Life Together
It’s easy to believe you need to completely transform your life as quickly as possible, but lasting change usually happens through small, consistent actions. As you work toward becoming a healthier, happier version of yourself, keep these principles in mind:
- There is nothing inherently wrong with you right now.
Wanting to improve your health, relationships, or daily routines is a positive goal, but don’t fall into the trap of believing you’ll finally be “good enough” once you achieve the next milestone.
Psychologists call the phenomenon of constantly chasing better and better opportunities the hedonic treadmill: after reaching one goal, we quickly adapt and start chasing another. It’s not worth postponing your happiness until some future version of yourself exists. Appreciate how far you’ve already come as you continue to grow.
- Change will take time to notice.
Sustainable progress is a gradual accumulation of small actions that eventually add up to a significant shift. Emphasis on “sustainable” because you can try to change the way you live overnight, but you’re most likely to burn out and run out of motivation.
Relying on willpower requires significant conscious focus. Consistency, though, bypasses this by turning actions into subconscious habits that require almost no mental effort.
- Don’t pressure yourself or mock yourself for slow progress.
Personal growth is personal. Some days you’ll feel motivated, while on others you might even struggle with getting out of bed. Just remember that: one step back and two steps forward is still moving forward.
It’s much better to put in 70%, 50%, or even 20% rather than 0%. Celebrate what you’ve already achieved, and accept that there will be days when you’ll need to celebrate 20% because that’s all you have at the moment.
Getting your life together isn’t about becoming perfect. It’s about moving in the right direction, one realistic step at a time, while treating yourself with the same patience and encouragement that you would offer someone you love.
