If your life isn’t as fulfilling as you’d like, you probably aren’t making fulfillment a high priority. To maximize anything in your life, whether it be your health, income, or fun, it has to be a priority.

You can restructure your life and make fulfillment one of your most important objectives. Fulfillment might be a lot closer than you realize!

Get more of what you want out of each day with these strategies:

1. Identify the things that bring you fulfillment. It’s hard to have a life overflowing with fulfillment if you don’t even know what makes you feel fulfilled. What do you currently find fulfilling in your life? What have you found fulfilling in the past? What other things do you believe you would find fulfilling?

2. Identify the things in your life that don’t bring fulfillment. What are you currently spending time on regularly that doesn’t really matter to you? Most of our days aren’t particularly fulfilling, so your list of things might be quite long.

Pay special attention to those things that are optional. If they aren’t fulfilling, ask yourself why you do them.

3. Eliminate as many maintenance activities as possible. Most of our lives are filled with maintenance activities. These are things that are necessary to keep our lives on track, but don’t necessarily create positive change. These items take a lot of time and typically aren’t fulfilling to the vast majority of people.

Maintenance tasks include items like shopping for food and clothes, cooking, cleaning, laundry, and mowing the grass. These items need to be done, but they don’t necessarily need to be done by you.

As your finances allow, consider paying others to do these tasks for you. Use the extra time to find something more fulfilling to do. Unless, of course, you find trimming your hedges fulfilling.

4. Scrap the unnecessary. Things you don’t need in your life take up time and space that could be better spent on other items and activities.

Go through your house and your schedule and eliminate as many things as you can that you either don’t need or don’t love.

5. Make time each day for your passion. Everyone’s life gets shorter each day. Avoid believing that you’ll have time in the future to pursue your passions. Begin making time today for those meaningful activities and try to do them every single day.

6. Have goals for each day. Each day can be made more fulfilling just by making yourself feel like you made the most of it. Most people merely survive each day and have little to show for their time and effort. Have a plan for each day and strive to complete it. You’ll feel great at the end of the day.

7. Have longer term goals, too. Long-term goals are important, too. They provide an overall theme to your life. When your life is about something, and you’re diligently working toward it, you’ll feel more fulfilled. Most people lack short-term and long-term goals.

8. Surround yourself with the best people and avoid the worst. You’ll feel inspired, energized, and supported when you have great people in your life. You become a better version of yourself when you have wonderful people around you. Cut away the dead weight and make room for more great people.

To have more fulfillment, you must prioritize fulfillment. This simple fact escapes many people.

Does your life have a primary objective? Most people prioritize surviving, which is important, but rarely leads to fulfillment. Have a higher purpose and make your sense of fulfillment a daily goal. Make the most of each day.

Life isn’t as complicated or as scary as you might think. With just a few, simple truths, you can make your life a lot easier, more productive, and more enjoyable.

Most of us are worried about things that don’t matter. If we could see the reality of the situation, we’d worry a lot less.

We’re also making life more challenging than it needs to be.

Change your perspective with these simple truths, and your life will change, too:

1. The Universe doesn’t care. Sometimes it seems like the sun, the moon, and the stars are plotting against you, but it’s simply not true. The universe doesn’t play favorites. It doesn’t care. It’s up to you to create the life you desire.
2. Ninety-nine percent of the people in your life don’t really care, either. Most people aren’t that concerned with your happiness and success. They’re too busy worrying about themselves to worry about you. So, their opinions don’t really matter.
3. In the long run, your mistakes won’t matter. If you’re worried about messing up, making an incorrect decision, or a mistake you’ve made, ask yourself if it will make a difference in a hundred years. If not, you can avoid worrying about it.
4. It’s important to be choosy with regards to friends and romantic partners. Your life is incredibly important to you. Consequently, it’s important to be incredibly selective about who you allow into your life. The people in your life can make it significantly better or worse.
5. Things beyond your control don’t deserve your attention. If you can’t affect it, what’s the point in worrying about it? Put your attention on something you can influence.
6. Happiness and success don’t have to happen at the same time. There are successful people that are miserable. There are happy people that are struggling. Becoming successful won’t necessarily make you happy. If you seem to be failing left and right, it doesn’t mean you can’t be happy.
7. Making a mediocre choice is better than making no choice. Even if you don’t make the best choice, at least you’re moving forward. When you fail to make a decision, the decision will ultimately be made for you, and it won’t be in your best interest.
8. It’s often surprising what people will do if you’ll just ask. Most people are more accommodating than you might think. Instead of trying to take on the world alone, considering asking for some help now and then. You never know if you don’t ask. If your request is refused, you’re not any worse off.
9. Make your health a priority. We’d all be better off if we had made eating nutritiously and exercising a habit in our teenage years. It’s not too late to start. The sooner, the better. Decide to make your health a priority today. If you wait for a health crisis to take your health seriously, you’ve fallen way behind.
10. How you spend your time matters. The quality of your life is determined by how you spend your time each day. Spending time on frivolous activities doesn’t add value to your life. Think about how you spend your time. If you’ll use it more productively, your life will be more fulfilling.

Understanding the basics of life makes the whole game easier. Life becomes complicated when we ignore these basic ideas. For example, if you believe the universe is fundamentally against you, and you let just anyone into your inner circle, where is your life likely to end up?

Accept responsibility for your life, realize what matters to you, and spend your time wisely. Allow these truths to set you free.

• 1. Self-confidence is situation specific. You can have a lot of self-confidence regarding your ability to do math, host a great party, or to play basketball. You can simultaneously have zero self-confidence in your ability to cook or sing.

• 2. Self-esteem is general impression you have of yourself. Self-esteem is a form of self-love. It’s how pleased you are with yourself in general. You can have a lot of self-confidence and very little self-esteem. The opposite can also be true.

• 3. Self-confidence is easier to build. Self-confidence is the result of preparation and success. For example, if you prepare well for an exam, you’ll have confidence in your ability to do well on that exam. When you have a history of doing well at something, you’ll develop self-confidence in that area.

4. Self-esteem can’t be built with achievements, but self-confidence can. A wall full of trophies and awards can really boost your self-confidence. However, it may do little for your self-esteem. You can be great at something without valuing yourself.

Building self-confidence is work, but the work that needs to be done is quite clear. If you want to be confident at shooting free-throws, shoot 100 of them each day until you’re consistently successful. Practice giving speeches until you’re good at giving them and you’ll develop self-confidence in that area of your life.

Learning to love yourself more will help you build self-esteem.

Practice these techniques to build your self-esteem:

1. Identify your values and use them to guide your decisions. List your values and refer back to your list often. Think about changes you can make to your life to live according to your values. Failing to adhere to your values is a leading cause of low self-esteem.
2. Reject perfection. If you’re trying to be perfect, you’re going to fail. If you consistently fail at living up to a standard, your self-esteem will suffer. Lower the bar to something achievable and give yourself the chance to be pleased with yourself.
3. Volunteer. Spend some of your time each week helping others that are less fortunate. This is a great way to show yourself that you’re a kind and giving person. Find an organization that serves a cause that you feel empathy for.
4. Manage your self-talk. If you spend all day insulting yourself, it’s tough to feel good about yourself. There’s no way to permanently shut down your inner vocalizations, but you can manage them. Stop yourself when you notice negative self-talk and turn it to something positive.

You can have one without the other. But it’s much more powerful to have both than to only have one. You can be wildly successful with just self-confidence, but your successes will never make you happy or satisfied. Both work together synergistically to create a life experience that can’t be duplicated any other way.

Build self-confidence in the areas that serve you. Build your self-esteem so you can love yourself.