Certain mindfulness practices exist under different titles, depending to your beliefs and groups you identify most with.

The practice of ‘life-taking’ or ‘life-giving’, also referred to as ‘spiritually-focussed self leadership’ or the Examen of Consciousness - all depend on your religious or spiritual perspective (or none), but basically centre around the same process of moving towards who or what is important, while moving away from the obstacles we can put in our own way.

Whatever philosophy you gravitate towards or whatever you call it, you can focus on choosing next steps and working out where you want to go.

Regularly consider (daily if possible) what encouraged you most and gave you pleasure and joy that day.
Then think about one thing that sapped your happiness and reduced you during that day too.

Try to stay in the present and don’t ruminate over yesterday, or project towards tomorrow. Only consider today.

Try to identify the circumstances and events from the feelings and expectations. You will soon be able to see what gives you joy, and what steals your peace.

When you know that, the next logical step is to move towards those things that bring joyfulness, as these will be the things you want. Unless you are a masochist, most of us want our lives to be peaceful and joyful.

For example - the thing that boosted you the most today was taking some time to read that book you’ve held on to. Perhaps your next step is realizing that you haven’t given yourself enough time, and that you need to carve some more out in your life.

Or you did something you really didn’t want to do, and it sucked the life out of you - and when you really thought about it, it was something you didn’t HAVE to do, but misplaced guilt made you feel it was necessary.

Living with self-realization is helpful, and makes you live in a way that’s less knee-jerk and reactive. You can go forward with a lot more honesty and integrity towards yourself and other people, away from the constant nagging of “should” and towards “could”. Away from the things that don’t work or serve you well.

Sometimes it’s difficult to realise that you need to let some things go, but life has a funny way of filling those gaps that you might fear.

And this time they are filled by the joyful things you have chosen, things that repair rather than those that make you despair.