How Are You Treating Life Today
— June, 2026
Written by Francine Van den Acker — Founder of SoulRise Global
There comes a moment in life when the deepest question is no longer, What is life doing to me? but rather, How am I treating life today?
It is a simple question, but it asks for honesty. It asks us to stop looking only at circumstances and begin looking at our way of living. Not with guilt, and not with self-accusation, but with truth.
A life is not built only through big events, dramatic turning points, or rare opportunities. More often, it is built quietly: in the tone with which we speak to ourselves, in the care we give or withhold from our body, in the standards we accept, in the decisions we postpone, and in the small daily choices that slowly become the structure of our existence.
When Life Becomes Something, We Merely Endure
And often, without even noticing it, we begin to treat life poorly.
We rush through our days without really inhabiting them. We speak to ourselves more harshly than we would ever speak to someone we love. We postpone what matters most and then wonder why we feel disconnected. We neglect our health while longing for strength. We stay in confusion while saying we want peace. We wait for motivation, certainty, rescue, or a better season, while life is already unfolding in the ordinary hours we keep undervaluing.
This is how a person can become absent from their own life without ever truly leaving it. They are still functioning, still responding, still carrying responsibilities, and yet inwardly they are no longer standing beside themselves. They are enduring life, managing life, surviving life, but not fully living it.
That is why this question matters: How are you treating life today?
Are you treating it as something precious, or merely something to get through? Are you living as though your days matter, or as though your real life will begin later? Are you feeding your future with intention, or quietly weakening it through neglect and postponement?
The Quiet Ways We Abandon Ourselves
Self-abandonment is rarely dramatic. It usually happens in ordinary ways. It happens when we keep dismissing what our body needs. When we continue speaking to ourselves with contempt. When we tolerate what diminishes us. When we keep delaying the conversations, decisions, changes, and boundaries that we know are necessary.
We do not always betray ourselves through one big act. More often, we do it in small daily moments of disconnection. We stop listening inwardly. We stop protecting what matters. We stop taking our own life seriously. And because these gestures are quiet, they are easy to ignore — until one day we realize we feel tired, fragmented, emotionally flat, and far away from ourselves.
That distance does not happen all at once. It is created slowly, through neglect repeated often enough to feel normal. Are you feeding your future with intention, or quietly weakening it through neglect and postponement?
Life Responds to the Way We Meet It
Not always immediately. Not always dramatically. But deeply, over time, unmistakably.
If we meet life with resentment, passivity, and inner defeat, life begins to feel heavy and closed. Everything seems harder than it should be. Clarity weakens. Energy drops. Hope becomes distant and abstract. We begin to think life has abandoned us, when often what has happened is that we have slowly withdrawn from life ourselves.
But when we begin to treat life differently, life often begins to answer differently too.
Treating life well does not mean pretending that everything is beautiful. It does not mean denying pain, forcing optimism, or smiling over what hurts. It means refusing to live in permanent inner neglect. It means deciding that even if this season is difficult, you will not become careless with your own existence.
Change Begins in Ordinary Acts
It begins by getting out of bed and opening the curtains. By drinking water before coffee. By taking the walk you said you had no energy for. By answering the email you have avoided. By preparing a nourishing meal. By going to bed earlier. By telling the truth. By setting a boundary. By taking the next practical step.
None of these acts look dramatic. But life is rarely transformed through dramatic gestures alone. It changes through rhythm. Through repeated acts of care. Through the quiet dignity of doing what supports life instead of constantly feeding what weakens it.
This is where something begins to shift. Not necessarily in outward appearance at first, but inside. Something that had become passive begins to wake up again. Something that had become resigned begins to rise.
When Life Starts Answering Back
Life does not always answer with noise. More often, it answers by awakening something that had gone quiet inside us: a forgotten strength, a clearer gaze, a steadier way of standing in our own days. At first the change may seem almost invisible, but it is profound. We begin to feel less like victims of our circumstances and more like participants in our own becoming.
That is no small thing. It is the turning point.
Life may answer by restoring our sense of direction. It may answer by making us see more clearly what is draining us and what is nourishing us. It may answer by helping us feel where we have become too passive, too fearful, too disconnected, and where we are now being invited to become more present, more honest, more deliberate.
And sometimes life answers in ways we do not immediately recognize as grace. Sometimes it answers not by granting what we desire, but by stripping away what can no longer sustain us. By revealing where we have been living against ourselves. By closing the doors we kept knocking on out of habit, fear, or illusion.
Sometimes life loves us too much to continue supporting our self-betrayal. Sometimes what feels like emptiness is actually the making of space. Sometimes what feels like delay is the preparation of foundations that will not collapse later. Sometimes what feels like rejection is life’s way of refusing to let us build our home in places that cannot hold us.
The Turning Point: Returning to Yourself
When a person truly begins to return to themselves, life is no longer experienced only as a wall in front of them, but as a field that can still be cultivated. They remember that they are not here merely to endure time, manage problems, and survive disappointment. They are here to shape a life. To bring intention where there was drift, truth where there was confusion, and presence where there had been absence.
Returning to yourself does not mean becoming selfish or self-absorbed. It means becoming inwardly aligned again. It means remembering what you need, what you value, what you can no longer tolerate, and what kind of life you want to stand for. It means reclaiming the quiet authority to choose how you will live, even before circumstances fully improve.
This does not mean life suddenly becomes obedient to our wishes. There will still be seasons of uncertainty, grief, delay, and loss. There will still be chapters that ask more of us than we feel ready to give. But once we return to ourselves, we no longer meet those seasons in quite the same way. We meet them with more coherence, more dignity, and more inner steadiness.
When that happens, something practical starts to change. Health is no longer a vague wish, but a relationship to rebuild. Work is no longer only a burden, but a path to shape with intention. Relationships are no longer places where one keeps hoping for scraps of recognition, but spaces in which honesty, reciprocity, and emotional truth must have a place. The future is no longer a fantasy one dreams about from a distance, but something one begins to construct through repeated acts of courage, order, and trust.
Then, one day, you look back and realize that life has been answering all along. Not always through miracles, but through transformation: through the way your mind has grown steadier, your body has begun to respond to care, and confusion has slowly given way to direction. Your home, your energy, your boundaries, your hopes — all begin to reflect a deeper decision: that your life is no longer somewhere else. It is here. And it belongs to you.
This is one of the most beautiful answers life can give: not perfection, but partnership. The feeling that you are no longer estranged from yourself. That your inner world and your outer choices are beginning to speak the same language. That your effort is not disappearing into emptiness. That every honest step is creating ground beneath your feet.
Today Is Not a Waiting Room
At that point, the question is no longer abstract. It becomes intimate and concrete. It enters the way you wake up in the morning, the way you care for your body, the way you manage your home, your time, your energy, your money, your boundaries, and your thoughts. It enters the standards you accept. It enters the way you let others speak to you. It enters the way you speak to yourself when nobody is there to hear it.
Because this is where life is actually lived. Not in distant dreams. Not in grand declarations. Not in the version of ourselves we imagine for “one day.” But here — in the texture of ordinary days. In the choices that seem small but are never without meaning. In what we nourish and what we neglect. In what we repair and what we keep postponing. In whether we meet our own existence with reverence or with carelessness.
That is why today matters so much.
Today is not a waiting room. It is not an insignificant bridge between a difficult past and a better future. It is part of your life itself — living, breathing, asking something of you. The way you meet this day is not neutral. It is already shaping the quality of your tomorrow.
Every act of honesty strengthens something. Every act of care restores something. Every boundary kept, every truth told, every practical step taken, every moment in which you refuse to abandon yourself becomes part of the life you are building.
Life Begins to Change from Within
Perhaps that is where change begins in its deepest form: not when everything is finally clear, but when you decide that your life deserves to be met differently now. With more sincerity. With more steadiness. With more compassion, yes, but also with more responsibility. With the courage to stop living as though your days are disposable.
To treat life well is not to control everything. It is to stop approaching your own existence casually. It is to understand that your body is not a burden to drag, but a home to care for. That your mind is not a battlefield to poison every day, but a place that needs truth and gentleness. That your time is not something to throw away in avoidance, but a form of life itself. That your future is not built in one heroic leap, but in the seriousness with which you meet what is already in front of you.
You do not need to have all the answers in order to begin. You do not need to be fearless. You do not need to feel completely ready, healed, certain, or strong. Most meaningful beginnings do not arrive that way. They begin in imperfection. They begin in uncertainty. They begin when a tired human being decides, quietly but firmly, that they will no longer participate in their own abandonment.
And that decision is powerful.
Because from the moment you stand beside your life in a truer way, something starts to gather: strength, direction, dignity, trust. Not all at once, but enough to take the next step. And then the next. Until one day you realize that what once felt out of reach was not built through force, but through faithful presence.
That is where life changes. Not only out there, but within. And once that inner shift begins, the whole direction of a life can change with it.
A Final Invitation
Returning to yourself requires more than insight. It asks for honesty, structure, consistent action and the courage to rebuild your life from the inside out.
RINASCI™ XL is a twelve-session coaching journey for those who are ready to make that deeper return. Together, we explore what has brought you away from yourself, clarify what truly matters now and translate that understanding into grounded choices across the areas of life that need to change.
This is not about forcing yourself to become someone else. It is about standing beside your own life again — with greater clarity, self-respect and direction — and creating a future that reflects who you are becoming.
You do not need to have everything figured out before you begin. You only need to recognise that the way you have been living can no longer carry you where you want to go.
Important Notice
This article is intended for information, personal development and reflection. It does not constitute medical, psychological or psychotherapeutic advice and is not a substitute for qualified professional care. For further information, please refer to our Terms & Conditions, section 3.5.