How to Start Living for Yourself: 7 Practical Steps

Originally published July 3, 2023. Updated September 14, 2026.

Living for yourself means giving your own values, needs, limits and ambitions a real say in the decisions that shape your life.

It doesn’t mean ignoring everyone else. It doesn’t require living alone, refusing help or pretending that responsibilities disappear. You can care deeply about other people and still stop giving them the deciding vote on choices that are yours to make.

That distinction matters, because a lot of advice about “taking control of your life” assumes you have unlimited money, energy, health and freedom. Most people don’t. Disabled and chronically ill people certainly don’t need another lecture about simply wanting something badly enough.

Living for yourself starts somewhere more practical: recognising where other people’s expectations have become louder than your own voice, then changing what you can.

Living for yourself doesn’t mean doing everything by yourself.

What does living for yourself actually mean?

At its simplest, living for yourself means making choices you can genuinely recognise as your own.

That doesn’t make every choice easy. Sometimes what you want conflicts with money, health, work, family responsibilities or promises you’ve already made. Sometimes the option you would choose in ideal circumstances isn’t available.

The point is to stop treating your own needs and preferences as irrelevant.

You may want to look more closely at how you’re making decisions if:

• you routinely say yes before checking whether you actually have the time or capacity;
• avoiding somebody else’s disappointment drives many of your choices;
• you feel obliged to justify rest, boundaries or personal preferences;
• you can explain exactly what everyone expects from you but struggle to say what you want;
• major parts of your life feel inherited rather than chosen.

Those are prompts for reflection, not a diagnosis.

Here’s where to start.

1. Work out whose expectations are driving the decision

Other people’s expectations can become so familiar that they stop sounding like other people’s expectations.

A career is considered sensible. A relationship has reached the age when it is apparently supposed to produce marriage. You should be more sociable. More ambitious. Less ambitious. More grateful. More productive. Less difficult.

Eventually, “What do I want?” gets buried under “What am I supposed to want?”

When you’re facing a decision, separate those questions.

What would I choose if nobody else knew about this decision?

Then ask:

Whose reaction am I most worried about?

Those two answers can reveal a lot.

This doesn’t mean automatically doing the opposite of what your family, partner or colleagues want. Other people sometimes have useful advice. The aim is to notice when advice has quietly become permission.

2. Decide what matters to you under real conditions

Forget the imaginary version of your life where you have unlimited time, perfect health, endless money and no obligations.

What matters in the life you actually have?

That question is more useful than constructing an idealised future and then feeling inadequate because Tuesday afternoon doesn’t resemble it.

You might want more time alone. More interesting work. More stability. Less social obligation. More time with particular people. A quieter home. A different relationship with work. Space to create something. Permission to rest without turning rest into another achievement.

Values don’t have to sound impressive.

Try finishing these sentences:

• I want more of...
• I want less of...
• I keep doing ______ because I think I should.
• If I stopped trying to impress anybody, I would...

The answers don’t need to produce a five-year plan. They give you somewhere to start.

A life can be self-directed without being unconstrained.

3. Set a boundary before resentment sets it for you

Boundaries become easier to understand when you stop treating them as declarations about what another person is allowed to do.

A useful boundary describes what you will do.

“I’m not available on Sundays.”

“I’m happy to talk about this, but I’m not discussing my medical history.”

“I can help for an hour, but I can’t take responsibility for the whole project.”

“I won’t answer work messages after 7 p.m.”

Clear is usually better than elaborate.

Long explanations can become negotiations, particularly if you’re explaining yourself to somebody who already believes your time belongs to them.

There will be situations where the conversation itself is difficult. URevolution’s guide to how to start an awkward conversation goes further into handling those moments directly without turning them into a confrontation.

Research on work and non-work boundaries also gives us a reason to take this seriously. A 2018 study of work-life boundary practices found that greater intrusion of work into non-work life was associated with less recovery activity, greater exhaustion and poorer work-life balance. That research concerns work-life boundaries specifically; it doesn’t prove that every personal boundary automatically improves mental health.

4. Stop apologising for needs that don’t require an apology

Apologies matter when you’ve hurt someone, broken an agreement or made a mistake.

Having a need is different.

Notice how often “sorry” appears before a perfectly reasonable request:

“Sorry, but I need to leave early.”

“Sorry to be difficult, but could we sit somewhere quieter?”

“Sorry, I can’t come tonight.”

“Sorry, but I need more time.”

Often, nothing has happened that requires an apology.

You can simply say:

“I need to leave at six.”

“Could we sit somewhere quieter?”

“I can’t make it tonight.”

“I need until Friday.”

This is especially relevant when disability, chronic illness or neurodivergence means you regularly need to ask for accommodations, rest, flexibility or a different way of doing something.

You don’t have to perform guilt to make a legitimate need more acceptable.

A boundary can be polite and still be a boundary.

5. Let other people be disappointed sometimes

This is one of the harder parts.

If you’ve spent years measuring good decisions by whether everybody else approves of them, somebody’s disappointment can feel like proof that you’ve done something wrong.

It isn’t proof.

People may dislike a boundary because the old arrangement suited them. A parent may wish you had chosen a different career. A friend may be annoyed that you declined an invitation. A colleague may prefer the version of you who always says yes.

Their reaction matters, particularly in relationships you value. But it is one factor in the decision. It does not automatically settle the decision.

There is an important line here.

Living for yourself doesn’t excuse breaking commitments without regard for the consequences. It doesn’t mean treating other people badly in the name of “protecting your energy.” Your choices still affect people.

The difference is that somebody else being unhappy with your choice is no longer enough, by itself, to make that choice wrong.

That is also the more useful version of “breaking the mold.” Sometimes the box you need to get out of was built from other people’s expectations. Our article What Does ‘Break the Mold’ Mean? explores that idea further.

6. Make the next change small enough to survive real life

A dramatic declaration feels satisfying.

Sustainable change is usually less cinematic.

You might:

• decline one commitment you genuinely don’t have capacity for;
• reserve one evening a week that isn’t automatically available to other people;
• update one section of your résumé rather than announcing a career reinvention;
• ask for an accommodation you’ve been avoiding;
• make the appointment;
• start the conversation;
• stop doing one task that exists mainly because you’ve always done it.

For some people, the most useful planning tool isn’t another to-do list. It’s deciding what they will deliberately not do. URevolution’s “Do Not Do” List offers a simple way to think about that.

Capacity matters here.

If disability or chronic illness makes your energy unpredictable, a plan that only works on your best day isn’t a very useful plan. Build around the life and body you have rather than using somebody else’s productivity routine as the standard.

Small doesn’t mean unimportant. It means you have a chance of doing it again.

7. Keep the support. Keep the authorship.

There is a strange idea buried inside a lot of self-help advice: that a properly independent person should be able to do everything alone.

That is neither necessary nor particularly realistic.

You can ask for advice. Receive care. Depend on family. Use disability support. Work with a therapist. Need practical help. Share finances. Rely on a partner. Change your mind after somebody gives you information you hadn’t considered.

Support and self-direction can coexist.

The better question is whether the people around you help you make your own decisions or routinely make those decisions for you.

A useful support system should leave room for you to say:

• “This is what I want.”
• “This isn’t working for me.”
• “I need help with this.”
• “I’ve changed my mind.”

Sometimes living for yourself requires becoming more comfortable with receiving help rather than proving that you don’t need any.

Living for yourself when your choices are constrained

Some self-help writing treats personal freedom as though it were simply a matter of confidence.

Real life is less tidy.

Health can limit what you can do. Disability can affect where you can go and how easily you can do things other people barely think about. Money closes options. Care responsibilities matter. Discrimination exists. Workplaces aren’t infinitely flexible.

Pretending those constraints don’t exist doesn’t create freedom.

Agency can still exist inside them.

You might not control whether your body requires rest, but you may be able to stop treating that rest as a personal failure. You might need assistance and still have firm opinions about how that assistance is provided. Your disability can affect your choices without giving other people ownership of those choices.

Kate Jennings explores some of that tension from lived experience in Does Your Disability Define You?, including the ways illness and disability can shape daily decisions without providing a neat answer about where disability ends and identity begins.

There is no universal formula here. That is partly the point.

What does the research actually tell us?

Research does not give us a seven-step scientific formula for living for yourself.

It supports a narrower idea: autonomy and authenticity matter.

A two-week diary study involving 116 participants found that on days when people reported greater authenticity and satisfaction of needs including autonomy, they also reported higher self-esteem, even after researchers accounted for positive and negative affect.^[1]

Research associated with self-determination theory also distinguishes between autonomous regulation, where people experience their behaviour as self-endorsed, and controlled regulation, where behaviour is driven more heavily by pressure. Reviews of that research have linked autonomous regulation with outcomes including persistence, affective experience and well-being across a range of settings.^[2]

And, as noted earlier, research into work-life boundaries has associated stronger work-to-life integration with less recovery and poorer work-life outcomes.^[3]

None of those studies proves that saying no, changing careers or disappointing your parents will make you happy.

They do give us good reason to take autonomy, authenticity and recovery seriously without dressing them up as life hacks.

Start with one decision

You don’t need to redesign your entire life this week.

Pick one decision where somebody else’s expectation currently seems to have more weight than your own.

Ask yourself:

• What do I actually want?
• What constraints are real?
• What would this choice cost me?
• What am I afraid another person will think?

Then decide what the next honest, workable action looks like.

Maybe it’s a conversation. A no. A request. A change of plan. Or a decision to stop spending energy on something you never chose in the first place.

That is what living for yourself looks like in practice: your own life, with your own needs and values allowed into the room.

About Brendan McDonald

Brendan McDonald co-founded URevolution in 2018. He is a disabled Australian living with chronic illness, he previously worked in UN humanitarian and emergency-management roles.

Research cited

[1] Heppner, W. L., Kernis, M. H., Nezlek, J. B., Foster, J., Lakey, C. E., & Goldman, B. M. (2008). Within-Person Relationships Among Daily Self-Esteem, Need Satisfaction, and Authenticity. Psychological Science, 19(11), 1140–1145. PubMed record.

[2] Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2006). Self-Regulation and the Problem of Human Autonomy: Does Psychology Need Choice, Self-Determination, and Will? Journal of Personality, 74(6), 1557–1586. PubMed record.

[3] Wepfer, A. G., Allen, T. D., Brauchli, R., Jenny, G. J., & Bauer, G. F. (2018). Work-Life Boundaries and Well-Being: Does Work-to-Life Integration Impair Well-Being through Lack of Recovery? Journal of Business and Psychology, 33, 727–740. Research record.