How to Love the Life You Already Have: A Guide to Becoming the Person Life Is Demanding That You Be - Paperback

by Luke Norsworthy (Author)

If you are interested in accepting the challenge to "love the life you already have" I hope you will allow Luke to be your guide. He begins with the struggle we all share, to believe and accept that we are loved unconditionally. And then, with generous amounts of grace, he introduces us to some of the shared realities of life that break our hearts. Luke invites us to walk beside him through the pain of disappointment, the perceived protection of resentment, the fear of loneliness, the necessary work of taming the ego and the peace of accepting what is ours to do. You won't regret the journey.
Suzanne Stabile
author of The Path Between Us

How to Love the Life You Already Have thumbs its nose at the one of the most pressing cultural lies of our time: we are broken, not worth being loved, and our happiness will be found in achievement, performance, or always grasping for more. In a world that tells us the good life is always just out of our grasp, Norsworthy provides clear and practical steps for facing the ugliness of life, metabolizing disappointments and grief, and ultimately finding joy in the stability of God, community, and presence in a world that tells us we're all alone. In a world that doesn't have a psychology for the word 'enough, ' Norsworthy challenges us to choose reality, own the brevity of our time here on earth, and make daily choices to find true joy, regardless of the challenges life drags us into. How to Love the Life You Already Have inspired changes in my personal life before I even finished reading the last word. It's a must read.
John Delony, PhD
2x WSJ #1 Best-selling Author

For you to love the life you already have, what must change first isn't the version of the life that you have, but the version of yourself that inhabits your life. Real flourishing isn't about your external circumstances, but your internal character. The true secret to experiencing flourishing is tapping into the Spirit that enables you to meet the six demands of life so you become the type of person who can love the life you already have.

First, life demands that we decide what resides at the core of our existence. Is the essence of our existence built upon striving, achieving, and merit or is the core of our existence receiving a freely given gift of grace? Everything flows from how we answer this question.

Second, life demands that we carry the inevitable disappointments. Will the disappointments make us devolve into a bitter shell of ourselves or will we harness grief as the means to be reborn into the version of ourselves that can carry the weight of disappointment?

Third, life demands that we live within community. So will we develop the strength to be fully seen so we can experience the abundance that only occurs in community?

Fourth, life demands that we make peace with the brevity of life. Will this fleeting nature of our existence drive us to despair, or will it drive us to savor the joys of this life?

Fifth, life demands that we fight for our flourishing, not as a way to make our life lovable, but as an expression of the love that we already have for our life. Will we express our love by intentionally fighting against the ego which doesn't want to grow? Will we fight to take captive our thoughts so our thoughts don't take us captive? Will we fight for how we are called to give our life away, or will the brokenness of life leave us closed off and unable to give our own gift to the world?

Finally, life demands that we become the type of person who can be fully present to our reality. Being present isn't a momentary choice, but the result of many choices in the past. To learn to be present isn't a decision one makes in the moment, but rather it's the cumulative effect of saying yes to all the demands life gave us leading up to right now.