16 no bullsh*t ways to live a more interesting and exciting life

The 21st century is probably the most exciting time for humanity. We live in a world of never-ending stimulation – it feels like there’s always something to do.

So how come you’re feeling like life is a bit monotonous and predictable?

It’s not that you want to do something drastic or transform your life into something completely new.

But you do want an injection of excitement to make life a little bit more fulfilling.

The good news is there are things you can do to make your life feel exciting, complete, and vibrant all over again.

After all, there are always interesting ways to reignite your fire, whether it’s big adventures or small fixes to your routine.

In this article, we’re going to go over 17 ways to live a more interesting and exciting life.

Let’s go.

1. Step out of your comfort zone

Comfort zones feel safe and secure. This is why most people remain in their comfort zone without ever really growing or improving.

But guess what? Staying in your comfort zone can also be really boring.

You don’t experience or learn anything new.

So if you really want to live a more exciting and interesting life, you need to step out of your comfort zone every once in a while.

It really is the most effective way to liven up your life and grow as a person.

And no, getting out of your comfort zone doesn’t mean you have to do something huge or scary.

It just means you do something that isn’t normal to you that makes you a little bit nervous.

For example, starting a conversation with a stranger is a way to get out of your comfort zone.

Or perhaps for you, it’s riding a bicycle to work instead of taking public transport.

Little things like this are excellent ways to step out of your comfort zone and live a more interesting life.

2. Travel to new places

It certainly hasn’t been a great year for traveling, but traveling doesn’t mean you have to go somewhere internationally.

It could mean exploring a new park or hike.

Perhaps there is an area near you where you can go stargazing?

Or maybe there is a new cafe you can try that you haven’t been to before?

If once a week you set yourself a goal of exploring somewhere new, you’ll definitely begin to live a more interesting life.

3. Think about the future again and aspire

Whether you’re still in school or you’re in the middle of your career, life has a strange way of teaching us to stop thinking about what we can become.

We have to focus so much on studying for tomorrow’s test, writing up a report for the next meeting, or doing something that is now the most important thing in the world for only the next few days, before moving onto that next something.

We get so caught up in the next test, the next paper, the next project, that we forget to think about the real future.

The future where our lives are radically different; where we not only slowly climbed the career ladder but truly built a life we can be happy within all aspects. We forget to dream.

So dream. Aspire. Think of what your life can look like in just a year or two if you make the best choices for yourself.

4. Stop waiting for life to happen

The way most of us live life is that we try our best to fall in line.

To become passive observers of our success rather than active components pushing our lives forward.

And we can’t help it; we’re taught this from an early age — we sit in class, do well on tests, and we move onto the next grade.

We eventually fall into a career, do our work, and wait for our promotions.

And while passive living might be enough to build a decent life, it’s not enough to build one that you are truly excited about.

You are teaching yourself to do nothing beyond what you’re told; to just wait and hope that a superior has your best intentions.

Live for you. Make choices with you in mind, nothing else. Push yourself forward, and push your life forward.

Stop waiting and stop giving yourself the opportunity to be bored because you’re so busy building the life you want.

5. Don’t psych yourself out

Nobody wants a boring life; we all want to wake up happy and excited, to live with passion and desire.

But we psych ourselves out more often than not and convince ourselves that we either don’t deserve the lives we want or we can’t achieve the lives we want.

But how do you know if you don’t really try?

The popular saying goes, “Shoot for the moon; even if you miss, you’ll land amongst the stars.”

Life isn’t about achieving your dream, as much as the trip isn’t about the destination.

The trip is about the journey, about trying to achieve your dream.

And living knowing you tried will give you a thousand times more fulfillment than living knowing you never did.

6. Set yourself some mini-goals

Mini goals are an excellent way to get moving and create progress in your life.

It could be goals you want to achieve over a week, a month or even a year.

It could be something as simple as setting a weekly goal for the amount of km’s you want to run, or perhaps a daily goal of learning five words in a new language.

Whatever it is, set those goals and get yourself moving.

The more you knock off small goals, the more you achieve in a year or even five years.

7. Don’t live life waiting for the next event

There’s such a thing as being too forward-thinking.

If you’re the kind of person who only finds happiness in the next thing (the next trip, the next job, the next time you see your friends, the next milestone in your life), you’re never going to find peace in your life.

Even when your life is at its best, you’ll always be looking out for what comes next. This kind of mindset is damaging to the things you already have and currently built.

Instead, look at what you have now. Take pleasure in knowing that whatever is currently happening in your life is good enough, and the rest that will follow would just be a bonus.

8. Discover new things to love

A life built on love is a life well-lived. Finding one new thing to fall in love with (a new book, a new pet, a new recipe, a new routine) is bound to revitalize your life again.

And it doesn’t have to be anything particularly big. Finding a new show to watch or new music to listen to can be extremely exciting.

Learning to find joy and love in the simplest of things makes you more excitable and, by extension your life more exciting.

Not sure where to start?

Seeking out hobbyists online and influencers could help you understand what excites other people in their lives.

The idea is to find these happy people and use them as a basis for your own discovery of things you love.

9. Don’t be afraid to reinvent yourself

Boredom as an underlying feeling can mean many things.

Maybe you’re tired of your routine; maybe you’re desensitized to the things you experience every day.

But sometimes it’s a bit bigger than that; sometimes boredom is a sign that you’re ready to be someone new, different, and better.

If you feel like your boredom encroaches on every aspect of your life with no chance of excitement or revitalization, dig a little deeper into the source of your boredom.

Are you bored because there’s nothing to do? Or are you bored because you feel like you’ve done everything that can be done?

When it gets to a point that life no longer feels exciting, it’s worth asking yourself whether it’s time to reinvent yourself.

People change and grow over the course of many years but our lifestyles don’t always reflect changes in politics or values.

At the end of the day, what you might be feeling isn’t boredom but a discord between who you are now and who you actually want to be.

10. Get healthy: Exercise, eat right and sleep well

Embark on a journey involving new healthy habits. Every day, commit yourself to eat healthy foods, sleeping at the same time every day, and exercising.

At the end of the day, the body is just a machine. Feelings of plateauing or boredom might be chemical signals from your brain desperately telling you it’s experiencing an imbalance.

People who eat well, sleep right, and engage in regular physical activity are a lot happier than people who don’t.

When you fuel your body properly and give it the right stimuli to grow, it’s easy for your brain to translate those feel-good chemicals to feelings of productivity and self-love.

The next time you feel like you need to reinvent the wheel to find some happiness, consider making sure the wheel exists in the first place.

You’d be surprised at the fantastic difference being disciplined and employing good habits can make in your life.

11. Find something to live for that has nothing to do with you

Not everything you do has to be for you. It can be even more satisfying when you do things for other people.

This looks different for everyone.

Sometimes it’s caring for a loved one and making sure their basic needs are taken care of.

Other times it’s volunteering for an organization whose values you align with. Maybe it’s just tending a garden and looking after your new plants.

Excitement, love, enthusiasm – these things grow when shared with others.

Maybe the boredom you’re experiencing is just a yearning to find meaning, something you can be passionate about.

When you start living life for something other than yourself, you’re allowing yourself to experience the full breadth of the human experience and share that with people outside yourself.

12. Learn to love your own silence

Not all forms of stagnation are bad. Sometimes there’s just nothing new going on with your life and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Too many people can’t sit in silence, always searching for external stimuli to stay happy.

Whether it’s seeking out new experiences or filling up your calendar with social events, there is merit to learning how to enjoy your silence.

Just because you’re bored doesn’t mean your life is boring; sometimes there’s just nothing to do in the moment but enjoy the peace and quiet.

Learning to sit with silence is a crucial skill in the 21st century when we’re constantly being bombarded by pings and distractions.

Exposure to too much stimulation can easily convince us that life should be constantly filled with new and amazing things.

This way of living is not only unsustainable but might also breed problems concerning focus and clarity.

Expanding your life and taking on new adventures is fine but if you feel like this is the only way to live, consider learning how to sit with silence instead.

13. Cut out all the noise

Just because you’re bored with life doesn’t mean you aren’t doing anything.

You still have a multitude of activities that fill up your time, or else you’d just be staring at the walls 16 hours a day.

A big mistake most of us make is that we want to fix our lives and change our attitude, but we don’t want to stop doing any of the negative or unproductive things that fill up our lives.

We think, “I should start exercising or cooking for myself or reading more often”, but we don’t realize that adding these new activities to our lives requires dropping some of the current things that already fill our lives.

And when we’re faced with the choice of doing a new thing or resorting to our old habits, we all too often choose the latter, because it’s easier.

So cut out the noise, cut out the garbage.

If you spend 2 hours every morning on social media before getting out of bed, it’s time to spend your morning doing something else. Our lives are made up of the things we do.

14. Break down your days: What are you doing?

You find yourself bored because you aren’t working towards anything, but you aren’t working towards anything because you don’t know what to do.

But time, unfortunately, continues on regardless of whether you’re using it or not.

So for those who keep losing their days doing nothing, it’s time to track your time the way we often track our money: what are you spending it on?

Start being actively aware of the way you spend your days.

The most successful CEOs and athletes in the world have the same 24 hours you have, so why do they accomplish so much while you accomplish nothing?

Value your minutes; they’re the currency of your life, and they’re the one thing you will never get back.

Once you give yourself a bird’s eye view of the way you waste your time, you’ll stop being so reckless with your hours.

15. Trackback to your happiness

You didn’t always feel like this. Most people who are bored with life can recall a time when they were younger, happier, and more excited.

There were things you used to dream of accomplishing, places you wanted to explore, and skills you wished to learn and master.

But for one reason or another, you no longer feel the fire pushing you towards those things. So what happened?

Take the time to meditate and trace back your personal journey.

And it’s not always going to be a single dramatic, significant life event. More often than not, our road to apathy is riddled by potholes we barely feel, but break us down slowly over time.

These feelings are often unnoticed and unacknowledged because a part of us feels that they are each too individually small to care about.

But they weigh on us and make our journeys heavier, until we opt to stop moving completely, ending our journeys long before they’re done.

16. Appreciate every single day and appreciate the small things

Here’s an exercise you can do at home. Instead of focusing on the bigger things and the amazing adventures, shift your focus on things that are already present in your life.

This includes people, events, and current circumstances that already make your life great.

It’s so easy to get swept up in the current and take the things that are in front of you for granted.

You start looking forward instead of taking the time to appreciate things that you already currently have.

Practicing gratitude is a lot more simple than it sounds.

You can begin this exercise by listing out things that you were grateful for at the end of the day.

Find things in your life that make you happy, no matter how small.

It could be a good meal or even just the fact that the weather was nice today.

There are many things in your life right now worthy of attention and gratitude – find them and you’ll instantly realize that your life isn’t as boring as you thought it was.