Apparently there are 4 ways in which you can ruin or sabotage your life. Yes neglecting your health is a surefire way to sabotage your life, and that is in the literal sense. Often people see or experience beginning symptoms of what could be an ailment but they either ignore it altogether or delay seeing someone. They could be avoiding it because they don’t have the funds or health insurance to cover medical expenses. Or they are just so busy with work or taking care of other people that they simply don’t have the time to take care of themselves.

Often they feel that if they need treatment, the recovery time alone will be a hindrance to them working or deter them from being able to look after other people. Those people could be a parent, sibling, child or spouse and they feel that their health will only be attended to when they have time. Unfortunately time waits for no one and it may well get to the stage where their ailment is not as easily treatable had they sought a medical diagnosis earlier.

So, yes, neglecting your health can damage your life both in the literal sense, if the ailment is serious, and in the metaphorical sense, if the ailment was treatable but you were acquiescing. Now, some ailments may not be physical. You may have stresses in your life that go beyond being able to verbalise the enormity of both the stress and its causes. The word ‘stress’ is diminishing the nature of what you may be going through because it no longer has the impact that it is supposed to. And because of the lack of words to describe it, you may actually put up with it without doing something about it. But by doing so, you are, in fact, ruining the quality of your life, or allowing someone else to ruin it for you. So my advice would be to find a moment to relax and to nip whatever may be causing your stress in the bud. If you do not, who knows how much worse things can get.

Another way to ruin your life, at least according to experts, is to cut yourself off from your social network. To be honest, sometimes things in life just happen to be the cause of losing in touch with close friends and, sometimes family. You might have to move to another city or even another country. In the days before we had the internet and social networking sites, losing contact was the easiest thing to do. Once you lost someone’s phone number or address or they changed both, finding them was impossible. Sure you could ask around but most of the time no one knows anything. Cutting yourself off means you have no one close with whom you could speak to about what’s going on in your life or to learn what happening to them, to give you some perspective. Loneliness can be very painful to your heart and your mind. Having a good network of friends means you have a support system to share your bad and good times. And people with whom you can share a coffee or lunch. Being friends with people on Facebook and other social networking sites is not socialising. To be helpful to your life, socialising needs to be face to face.

And one of the most obvious ways you can ruin your life, in the literal sense, is by mismanaging your money. Overspending is a prime suspect. Nowadays people just buy things on a whim. They never go shopping with a list, or a plan, which is a very deterrent to needless shopping. I’m not referring to food items or toiletries. I am referring to non-essentials like endless electronic devices, clothes or shoes you’ll never wear and handbags you’ll never carry.  A lot of high spenders have so many of these items in their cupboards and wardrobes that they could start a shop of their own.

And, finally, the last way experts believe you could be ruining your life is by ignoring your personal development. I actually don’t believe this to be the case for everyone. If you are working and hoping to grow in the organisation in which you are employed then, yes, it is important to make sure you continue to learn and develop your skills. But if you’re not working, or have retired, then what kind of personal development do you need to do and why? I do believe, however, that everyone should find a hobby that they love, and work on that. It will give you a reason to get up in the morning and occupy your thoughts with something other than the stresses in your life. And who knows, maybe it will develop into something big…