where are you going?

“Man is not born perfect. He is born incomplete, he is born as a process. He is born on the way, as a pilgrim. That is his agony and his ecstasy, too; agony because he cannot rest, he has to go ahead, he has always to go ahead. He has to seek and search and explore. He has to become, because his being arises only through becoming. Becoming is his being. He can only be if he is on the move.”  Osho

Have you spent any time at all planning out what you’d like the next 10 years to look like?

What do you really want to happen?  Do you believe that you have the power, skills and abilities to create the future you want?

It’s time for your mid-year check-up.  It’s time to evaluate the progress you hoped to make.  It’s time to forge a new set of objectives if your current ones aren’t working for you.   Create a list of things you want to accomplish this year.

In what areas do you want to grow and improve?

Are you focused on exercise, diet, sleep and mindfulness?

• How much sleep are you getting?
• How is your diet?
• How much exercise are you getting?
• Relax, take a deep breath or a few and restore your energy.

Are you living the life you want to live?  Are you aligned with your purpose, goals and dreams?

Spend some time and check-in with yourself.  Journal some thoughts that you’ve had.  What is working?  What isn’t working?   Make the adjustments and finish the year strong.

 

 

 

survive or thrive

“Only you can decide how far you get to travel in life. Therefore, you definitely owe it to your future self to be courageous and ambitious enough to strive and thrive without limitations.”
― Edmond Mbiaka

Take time to hit the pause button on your life.

How did you do today?   Did you just survive the chaos of the day?  What was it like?  How does it feel to be spending your time and energy only to just survive the day?  It doesn’t feel so good does.  It can feel draining.  It can be filled with anxiety, stress and turmoil.   A lot of people are just surviving the day.   Careers go sour when the focus is on just surviving.  If I get through today then I’ll be OK.

Are you one of those who are just surviving the day?   Do you find it hard to get out of bed in the morning?  Do you feel drained and used up by the end of the day?  Do you believe what you do matters?   Does your boss believe you matter?  When was the last time you were complemented on your work?  How many hours are you being asked to work?  How much time do you have off?

What does it mean to thrive?   Araianna Huffington wrote, “Nothing succeeds like excess.”  We live in a world where “more” and “having more”  drives us to be doing more, working more hours, earning more money, filling the day with more activity.  At the end of the day – there is nothing left – there is no more.  Day after day of pushing yourself to the limits doesn’t result in a better life, it results in a battered life.  Thriving isn’t about just surviving the day-to-day race.  Thriving is about living a rich life, and by rich meaning a life that includes time to relax and find peace.  A thriving life is one that has time, enough time for family, friends, personal growth, contribution and time for you.  Thriving means that you do have time and you don’t feel rushed and you don’t feel that the day has to be absolutely packed with activity.

Part of the reason to completely fill each day with activity is because everyone else is doing that, filling their life with stuff.   Eating becomes a quick stop at a fast food restaurant and the food is consumed as you drive to the next event.   Sleep can be reduced to just a few hours, maybe 4 or 5.  It is no wonder people are totally exhausted much of the time.

What would it take for you to thrive every day?   What would you want to change to feel like every day mattered more than yesterday?   What can you take out of your day that will give you time to relax and recover?

what’s missing?

“If you think something is missing in your life, it is probably YOU…”
― Robert Holden

Have you ever had that feeling that something is missing in your life?  Have you taken the time to find it?

For some people life is a struggle.  It’s not that it has to be a struggle it is just the way they believe things are.   I’ve heard, “I just can’t do this kind of work.”, and they lament the very fact that the work is challenging instead of looking at how they could make those challenges smaller.  They could learn more or dig into the material that they don’t understand and find ways to learn the material.   In other words they could chose to attack work rather than letting work attack them.

“I don’t have enough time to do all the things I want to do.” and I’ll guess that you’ve uttered those words when the amount of things in life just seem overwhelming.   The list of things to do just keeps growing and it is starting to crowd out what you really want to do.   I’ll ask those people, “what do you really want to be doing? or what is most important to be  done now.”   After a few minutes a list of important things becomes visible and the unimportant things also become visible.  From there it is a choice – “what do you want to do with what you have on the list?”   Prioritization and making sure that the list of things to do are the things that matter most.   Figure that out and there is time for you.

Are you struggling?   Not just having a difficult time but really struggling to be your best self.  What are you doing about it?  What is missing in your life?

For some people it is motivation and they aren’t finding the energy to do something.   When you’re not motivated what do you do about it?   What keeps you in the game?

Do you have problems just getting started on something?   Is it easier to wait, for another few minutes, hours and then days?  Pretty soon that project, that idea, or inspiration just falls into the heap of the undone and unnoticed.

Where are you?   Do you have all the things in life that you want to have?   What’s missing?

 

 

in the pursuit of meaning

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
― Jane Goodall

Pursuit of meaning is like …

What makes you life a life you want to live?   What are you doing, seeing, feeling, touching and tasting that is making your life exciting, interesting, and valuable?  When those questions are asked many people don’t have a good answer to the question.

What makes you life a life you want to live?   What are you doing, seeing, feeling, touching and tasting that is making your life exciting, interesting, and valuable?  When those questions are asked many people don’t have a good answer to the question.

Too often people retreat from life making a variety of claims that suggest that they are victims of their work, the relationships, their health, their finances and the world, that life is against them and the opportunity to live fully, expressively and with a sense of aliveness that is exciting is not available to them.

At the beginning of your day and at the end of the day how much positive energy do you have?   Are you excited about what the new day will bring and are you feeling like you made a difference at the end of the day?   Are you feeling strong, vibrant and alive or are you feeling down, depressed and hopeless?  You might even be somewhere in between the extremes of full participation and being fully checked out.

What would it feel like to know that what you did today matters and to believe that what you do will matter?  What you do does matter.   The biggest change you can make is a decision that says every day I’ll do my best to be authentic and passionate about all that I do.  Now, it doesn’t mean that bad days will just go extinct, it means that you’ll acknowledge the bad days and step back and reflect on what the issues are and do something about them.   Complaining to others, or just feeling down doesn’t solve the problem or problems you are dealing with.  Sure, it might feel good to complain once in a while but if complaining is chronic then you have a choice to make.   Do you drag down others around you or do you lift them up?   Be the later.

Where does this all lead?   It leads to living a life of meaning and chasing the most important things that really matter to you.  If you decide to pursue meaning in all that you do you’ll find that life becomes much more robust, it becomes more joyful, it means you feel more alive and it means that you are living life with purpose and on purpose.   What would that feel like?