The Fine Life is the Exciting Life: How to Make it Thrilling This Year

Every year the goal is to have a better year than what came before it. Though there are ups and downs in everyone’s personal life, there are attitudes and actions that you can change to make it better every year. If you want to lead a fine life, you need to conquer what is holding you back, what is making you unhappy, and what is leading you unfulfilled. A great way to do this is to simply bring in more excitement into your life. Bringing excitement, however, is not the only step you need to take. The attitude you bring towards the new place, activity, or dish will greatly affect how you feel and what you take from it.

To lead a fine life, you need to be wowed, dazzled, and in love with life. That is why you should aim to be thrilled, but to do it for yourself, not others. This means reconfiguring your relationship with social media, especially when you travel. It means making healthy habits more fun and adventurous. It means spicing up the ordinary. To have a great new year, consider the following:

Travel Tips for More Fulfilling Travel

Social media has defined our lives and has changed the way we think, interact, share, and gain content online. It has also changed the way we travel. Too often you will see perfectly curated Instagram posts and poses on your travels that are there to inspire wanderlust. It’s a way to show off, and that’s fine! The only problem with this method of travel is that it is also detracting from your experience. It’s detracting so much from your experience that not only are you less likely to remember the trip as a whole, but you’re wasting time when you could be out there and genuinely experiencing something.

Travel and social media naturally go hand-in-hand, but following and copying what everyone else is doing is not how you will enjoy the trip authentically. If you want to turn your travels into a commodity, do it on your own terms because following what the other top Instagrammers are doing is only how you will fade into the background. How often do you see incredible travel pics on Instagram? When was the last time you could definitively and immediately state who created them? Be yourself and enjoy travel more by working on who you are and what your personal brand is.

If you are posting for yourself and your friends, keep it real. Use Instagram as your very own journal as to what happened. You’ll better keep your memories of the trip, and you’ll be able to share what you have done with those you care about. Use it as a digital diary, and you’ll find that your trip is much more fun than worrying about which pose to post.

If, however, you use Instagram for business purposes, consider reinventing yourself. This doesn’t mean concoct a fake persona, but rather create a unique one. Try to find your photographic voice. Be as real or as distant as you want to be in your captions. Generally, try to stay away from a chronological feed – that way you can enjoy your life without going through the natural gaps where you don’t have any great pictures to post. It’s how you’ll keep up your brand and still enjoy your travels. It’s also how you stay safe. When you have a public account, you should never post your current position. Only post retrospectively!

Living Tips for At Home

Travel, however, is a treat. Though we get to see some amazing places, eat incredible food, and even splurge on exciting activities, traveling nonstop is not sustainable. Even if your job allows you to travel the world and never settle down, this lifestyle is not sustainable. You can make a lot of friends on your journeys, but you cannot nurture those relationships without the stability that they need. Home can be just as thrilling, only instead of befriending strangers and seeing foreign lands to you, you can deepen your bonds and explore your home.

There is no place like home, but that doesn’t mean that you should settle for a boring home life. You need to make it just as exciting and thrilling as when you travel. Cities in particular, can and never will be discovered entirely by just one person. The only difference between city living and visiting a new city is the fervor in which you go out and explore.

See new shows, go to openings, exhibits, and events. There is a huge market out there for adults to have fun in. Theatrical and exhilarating experiences aren’t just for kids anymore. You can go to eclectic bars, you can have fun with your friends or even co-workers in some epic escape games, and so much more. Look for Escape Rooms that have an interesting twist to them, so you and your friends can all enjoy a thrilling evening out. Stay in the know about your city by following your neighborhoods social media accounts. Get your friends out there with you. Have the time of your life out and about, but don’t forget your home.

Home is where the heart is. It is also where you should be able to go and relax after a hard day. Just as it’s not sustainable to travel nonstop, it is also not sustainable to go out every day. You need to bask in the glory of "me-time", but that doesn’t mean you should ever allow yourself to be bored at home. Use your at-home time to work and further your hobbies. Try new meals, different outfit combinations, and more. There is so much to do at home, you just need to put effort into making your alone-time as worthwhile as when you go out and explore.

This year, don’t make your resolution something you’re bound to break. Instead, work on making your life more exciting by simply doing what you already want to do, better. Stay up to date with what is going on in your city, and take those skills and habits with you abroad so that you can have a better experience than ever before. The exciting, thrilling life is possible, you just have to reach for it.