How do you live the life you have as gratifyingly as possible?

Meditation helps me a lot.

^^^Yep

By enjoying the moment without worrying thinking about the past or future.

Learning to meditate is something I must do.

@wunday, I suspect most people want to be happy and satisfied with where they are in life but external pressures can hinder the ability to really be happy with our lot. Pressure from your boss to achieve more, pressure from family members to earn more, pressure from banks, creditors and the like to pay more. Many of us are increasingly time poor. It takes a lot of courage to step off the merry-go-round and say ‘this is where I want to be and I am happy to stay in this place and just be satisfied’.

One way is not to try to live up to others’ expectations of how you should live. And, as Pema Chodron said:

As long as we’re caught up in always looking for certainty and happiness, rather than honoring the taste and smell and quality of exactly what is happening, as long as we’re always running from discomfort, we’re going to be caught in a cycle of unhappiness and discomfort, and we will feel weaker and weaker. This way of seeing helps us develop inner strength. And what’s especially encouraging is the view that inner strength is available to us at just the moment when we think that we’ve hit the bottom, when things are at their worst.

I’ve learned the value of the present and of self love.

I’ve found the more I can focus on the needs of others, the happier I am. Granted, I can be as self-absorbed as anyone else, but I take pleasure in doing things that benefit others.

It can be as hopelessly unAmerican as I’d like it to be seeing as I ain’t American.
Just sayin’.

I like helping other people when I can, but lately that’s been harder to do than it used to be due to personal unforeseen circumstances (mostly health related). So now it’s just trying to get myself back together again and trying not to take it so easy that I’m asleep most of the time.
And then there’s the missus. She helps a lot too.

When she’s naked and in my bed

Therapy helped me so much. Coming to know and accept myself was a huge factor in accepting my life. It helped me be able to acknowledge how things are, while still working towards making things better. I’m just not so miserable about it all anymore.

I don’t. I try and accept it as it comes.