“We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
It is incredible how much of our precious time and energy focus on differences instead of aligning on similarities and commonalities.
Once we recognize that we are all in this life together and that our dreams for life are more similar than different, we can get a lot more done. Grab an oar and row, time to move the boat forward…
“What will your life have been, in the end, but the sum total of everything you spent it focusing on?”
Oliver Burkeman
As I have written before, one of my favorite questions to ask myself when faced with an emotional response to a situation or circumstance is, “Is this useful?” It can be incredibly clarifying and helpful in focusing life’s precious energy on what is and isn’t beneficial within a particular moment. Zooming out, I am thinking through applying this same question when faced with a decision about the investment of energy towards a project, initiative, or goal.
“Is this useful?”
I guess the answer depends on whether or not you know what you are focusing on and why. In the end, how you answer this question will determine the impact your life has had on others. These are three simple words, yet they hold so much power when asked and answered.
“Is this useful?”
“Do not let making a living prevent you from making a life.”
John R. Wooden
One of my all-time favorite quotes comes from the Reverend Billy Graham, “I never saw a U-Haul behind a hearse.” I love this because it is such a stark reminder of what is meaningful. No matter how many different ways there are of “keeping score” here on earth, you won’t be taking it with you.
So why spend your life pursuing things when instead you could be creating a life of real meaning and impact? If you do it right, your life’s work could last for generations. If you do it wrong, someone else is going to be hooking up your U-Haul…
“I am old but I am forever young at heart. We are always the same age inside. Know that you are the perfect age. Each year is special and precious, you can only live it once. Do not regret growing older, it’s a privilege denied to many!”
Richard Gere
The key to living a life of perpetual youth is to embrace the opportunity to learn and grow each and every day. If you aren’t learning, growing, seeing the world as if through the eyes of a child, then you must by default be dying.
Life is just too short and precious to waste. Every single moment we have is a gift for ourselves, and more importantly, for others.
Choose to learn, choose to grow, choose to live. Why choose to die before you have to?
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life and don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. Most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”
Steve Jobs
The four most important words from the quote above are, “Your time is limited.” If you understand and embrace those words, everything that follows has meaning. If you don’t, then the rest is merely good advice.
If you recognize that your time is limited, why would you ever choose to live someone else’s life?
If you understand that your time here is temporary, why would you choose to let your voice squelched?
If you accept that your time here is finite, why would you choose cowardice instead of courage? Why would you choose to ignore your gut?
When one chooses to accept your mortality, you unlock the keys to a life of meaning and fulfillment of God’s purpose.
So the choice is simple. Choose to embrace the beauty of YOUR life, or choose to live in a state of denial. It’s up to you. Either way, your time is limited…
“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.”
John Lennon
Which life is richer, one with fewer friends but more years or one with fewer years and more friends? Which life will attract more friends, one focused on smiles or tears?
“Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.”
Josh Billings
One of the most profound lines from J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Fellowship of the Ring” is uttered by Bilbo Baggins. “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”
I have always loved this line, probably because it hits so close to home for me. Butter spread too thin doesn’t add much value to the bread. How much of our lives do we waste trying to spread ourselves too thin, attempting to “do more,” and instead of creating more value, we end up barely making the impact we are truly capable of delivering.
Rather than trying to cover and be everything, perhaps we should learn to use less bread? Maybe we simply need to learn to say “NO?”
Think of it this way; how does the bread taste when it has too little butter on it? Does it create an appetite for more? Instead of accomplishing our desire to “do more,” we might just be turning people off to what we have to give…
“The adventure of life is to learn. The purpose of life is to grow. The nature of life is to change. The challenge of life is to overcome. The essence of life is to care. The opportunity of life is to serve. The secret of life is to dare. The spice of life is to befriend. The beauty of life is to give.”
William Arthur Ward
The richness of this quote is in the questions it brings to mind. These are just some of the questions that I pondered as I read through. What questions come to mind for you?
The adventure of life is to learn. – What have I learned today, this week, this month? What efforts am I taking to continue the experience of learning?
The purpose of life is to grow. – How have I improved myself over the past year? What areas of my life need further growth and development? Where is my purpose leading me to grow in new and different ways?
The nature of life is to change. – What changes in my life am I please with, and what additional change is needed? Because change is constant, how do I become more at ease with the changes going on around me?
The challenge of life is to overcome. – What significant challenges have served to frame the person I am today? Where have I fallen short, and how can I pick myself up and start again?
The essence of life is to care. – Am I demonstrating care and concern in my outward behaviors towards others. Do people know that I care?
The opportunity of life is to serve. – How much of my life is dedicated to serving others versus serving myself? What should this ratio be? What options do I have to help more?
The secret of life is to dare. – What great adventure is right there just waiting to be embraced? What secrets are waiting to be unlocked if I can only dare to dream big enough?
The spice of life is to befriend. – Who are those friends that have added to my “spice of life?” Am I giving the same value in return?
The beauty of life is to give. – When this life is over, what will people remember about me? What things I had or what gifts I gave to others. How much of myself can I give away?
“Reading is a way for me to expand my mind, open my eyes, and fill up my heart.”
Oprah Winfrey
There is almost nothing better than a good book, and a quiet time and place to read. I have been fascinated with books and reading since childhood. I read EVERYTHING I could get my hands on growing up and reading has continued to be an important throughout my entire life.
Some of the reasons that I love to read are to learn and grow but as I get a little older and perhaps wiser I have come to realize that reading is the best possible way to come close to realizing all the potential that God had in mind when he created us.
I have long felt that I could have had a hundred different careers that I would have been both good and and thoroughly enjoyed. Through reading I have found that it is possible, if only temporarily and within my own mind, to embark on different journey’s and embrace the different facets and aspects of my personality.
A couple years ago I started keeping a list of the books I read throughout the year. I desperately wish I had done this for my entire life. Not so that I can show anyone else, but simply to reflect on all richness of the world we have access to, and to remember which books are worth rereading and really marinating in. I am sure that some of the ones I have read, and now forgotten, would be a great friends to pick up again.
The beauty of reading is that it allows the soul to expand and become a little bit more of what it is truly capable of. Whether you are reading for learning, reading to understand, reading to for joy, or simply reading to entertain your mind. Each book is an opportunity to live a touch more broadly and with greater flavor.
There is more life to live than we could ever achieve in a thousand lifetimes, but we can squeeze a bit more into the one precious life we have with each great book we read. So what’s on your reading list?
“We pass through this world but once.”
Stephen Jay Gould
How do you live life well? I find it useful to think of life as an exercise in debits and credits where Debits are the things you need to do less of and Credits are the things you do more of. Here’s a list of things to think about (this is my list, some of these certainly won’t apply to you, though they certainly could.)
Credits: Spend more time with those that you love and who love you. Spend more time doing things that excite and impassion you. Spend more time in the service of others. Make mistakes and learn from them. Give yourself grace. Write down your goals and dreams. Journal daily, reread what you wrote later. Spend time alone in meditation and reflection, write down what you learn. Read more books. Read scripture and pray. Find and spend time with friends that challenge you. Take care of your mind and body, you don’t get another. Practice mindfulness and be present in the moments that matter (they all do!)
Debits: Spend less time with those that drain you emotionally or burden you unfairly. Spend less time doing things that don’t add joy to your life in some way. Spend less money on things that don’t last. Spend less time in the pursuit of ego driven initiatives. Stop burdening yourself with negative emotions or self-perceptions. Those become self-fulfilling prophecies. Spend less time numbing your powerful mind with junk like social media, television, etc. Stop being a slave to what contemporary culture says is important.
Once through life is enough, if you live it well. 100 times isn’t enough if you don’t…
“What a wonderful thought it is that some of the best days of our lives haven’t even happened yet.”
Anne Frank
I can’t imagine thinking of life differently than it is expressed in this quote. Even during challenges and hard times the best is yet to come. It isn’t always the big or the grand things, it is the ability to appreciate the smallest elements of life that perhaps one never had time for before because you were too busy being busy…
It is the taste of a perfectly brewed cup of coffee during a few moments of silence and prayer on a cold winter morning. The laughter of the family around the dinner table at the end of a long day. A good nights of sleep and a morning without demands on your time. It is doing work that matters and helps people alongside people you trust and respect. It is a million little moments that happen every single day.
Perhaps the best days occur when you take the time to appreciate life, instead of simply existing. Every day can be one of those days, if you choose appreciation, gratitude and joyfulness. What a loss it would be if you had one of the best days, and missed it completely…
“For me and my family personally, September 11 was a reminder that life is fleeting, impermanent, and uncertain. Therefore, we must make use of every moment and nurture it with affection, tenderness, beauty, creativity, and laughter.”
Deepak Chopra
We should live every day with this realization. It is just so easy to get caught up in living a life that is over the horizon waiting for something else to happen. Every moment of life in this current moment in time is the one that truly matters.
I was thinking about this over the past weekend as I was watching my children play together. Being aware of the way their laughter sounded, the games they were playing, how they interacted together. It struck me that at that moment this would be the only time they ever did those exact things. The next time it would be different because they are always growing and changing and learning. They are never the same from day to day because life is never the same. Change is constant.
I write about this today because 9/11 is such a reminder of what is truly previous, valuable and meaningful in this world. Enjoy each moment, take nothing for granted and celebrate all the beauty. Life is impermanent, and when you take it for granted you miss the opportunity to truly live…
“…stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles. Instead, climb more mountains, eat more ice cream, go barefoot oftener, swim more rivers, watch more sunsets, laugh more and cry less. Life must be lived as we go along.”
Robert J. Hastings
These simple things are the ones that create cherished memories and how you know what it feels like to be truly alive. If you aren’t creating the space to do them intentionally then are you really living? I can’t think of one time where I have regretted spending time in the manner listed above. However, I can think of many times where I have missed out on, and now have remorse about, the truly meaningful experiences that I skipped in the name of “productivity” or “getting things done.”
If you don’t do the things that matter when you have the chance will you regret it later? What if you were to score your success in life based on how you have lived your life to this point than how successful have you been?
What would you need to change to improve your score?
“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”
Henry David Thoreau
This is so easy to forget when we are busy and in the thick of getting things done. Every decision we make about where to spend our time is a decision on where to invest our life.
How do you decide on where to invest? More importantly, how do you decide when to stop investing? In other words, how do you decide that something is no longer worth investing your time and energy, i.e, your life? Sometimes if we have been doing something for a long time we don’t even realize that we aren’t getting value anymore.
Where would, or should, you invest your precious life?
“Slow down and enjoy life. It’s not only the scenery you miss by going too fast — you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.”
Eddie Cantor
The Christmas season always seems to go by too quickly. It is an endless stream of activity and events and then you blink and it is just gone. I feel this way every year.
This is an example of life itself. We can become so focused on getting to the goal, that we forget to pay attention to what is going on around us. I can easily see where you might even forget where you are going, and why.
I am committed to slowing down a bit these next few days and really focusing on the WHO I am spending time with and WHY we are celebrating together.
Take it all in, the time will pass by far too quickly…
“Today is life — the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.”
Dale Carnegie
Remember the passion that you used to have to wake up on a Saturday morning as a kid? Perhaps it was cartoons, unlimited cereal, or playing outside all day long. There was such excitement for the weekend and the day of adventure that lay ahead.
Why does that feeling have to be relegated to a memory or a rare occurrence? The day ahead is an adventure, regardless of how old you are, or whether or not it is a day off or a day at work. The day holds promise and beauty if you simply choose to embrace it. Embrace today with gusto!
A beautiful rose is a product of its environment. The best seed won’t grow into its potential without the right soil, the right amount of water, the right sunlight, the right amount of intentional tender loving care.
No one is surprised if a garden looks ragged and overgrown when it isn’t cared for. Why should your life or leadership be any different? What part of your environment needs to be adjusted for you to achieve maximum potential?
Does your garden need to be tended?
“If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.”
Bruce Lee
How much time do we waste every day? It seems that in todays world everyone is busier than ever. But being busy does not mean that we aren’t wasting our time. How many hours do we spend doing things, being extremely busy, but when we look back we can’t see that any value was derived from the time we spent?
Do we tell ourselves that we are “busy” because that is an easier pill to swallow than to take a hard look at our time and see if we are being effective in how we spend it? Are we busy doing the right things?