“The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open. Do it. Throw yourself.”
― C. JoyBell C.
How do you know if you are living your life in the best way possible? Have you spent time evaluating your own progress through life or are you just going with the flow?
Have you thought about your life plan (if you have one)?
What do you think your purpose is? Your purpose for work, life, relationships, personal growth, finances, health/fitness, relationships and spiritual perspective, have you defined what you want to be doing in those domains.
I think it is important to focus on those core life elements and strengthen them. It helps create a greater sense of peace in your life so that you aren’t just existing, but existing with purpose. With a well defined purpose you have a starting point from which to define goals that enable you to realize your purpose.
What are your major goals that you want to achieve?
What is stopping you from setting new more powerful and exciting goals for your life? When do you think you’ll take that step to define your future in a way that aligns with your purpose?
“Be thankful for a breath of fresh air to be alive and well. Allow love and happiness to penetrate throughout your mind and soul. Take time to relax and live in the moment, the now, the present. Enjoy today.”
― Amaka Imani Nkosazana
Did you know that most people don’t live their dreams? Some people live the dreams that others have for them and live a life of regret. Others don’t have a dream to push towards and live each day as it comes and live a life of regret. Whose dreams are you living for?
Someone asked, “Write a story.”
“A story about what?”
“A story about your life”
“A story about my life – what is there to tell.”
If someone asked you to write your story or to tell your story what would you say? What do you want to say? What do you want to write?
Wouldn’t it be nice to write, “I lived my dreams.”
“What were your dreams … tell me more.”
“Umm, I didn’t live my dreams … I ….”
Now, do you want that to be your story? Do you want your story to end with, “I didn’t ….?” Most people don’t want their story to end at a dead end street. I am thinking that you don’t want your story to end their either.
So, why not build a story by living out your dream. If you don’t have a compelling vision of your future then it’s time to create one. It’s time to start writing your story that doesn’t end with “I didn’t”.
“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
Are you living the life you want to live? A lot of people aren’t living the life they want, they are existing but not living. As a coach I get to talk to many people who are struggling and want to live a life that is different than the one they are living.
People are looking for a “secret” something that will improve their finances, fix a relationship, boost their career, help them lose weight, help them believe in themselves, repair broken relationships or to find joy and happiness in their lives. There is no secret formula for creating the life you want without putting in the effort to get what you want.
Maybe the secret is a massive amount of work on the things you value the most. The secret is starting and doing something that will lead to better results for you.
The point is that unless you do something different today your tomorrow won’t be any better than it was yesterday. If you are waiting until conditions are perfect, until you have that one missing thing, before you start you’ll never ever start.
Your better life starts when you stop making excuses and decide to transform each day from now on.
How important is your health?
How important is your family?
How important are your relationships?
How important is your career?
How important is your personal and professional growth?
Take a few minutes and write down what is important to you. Are you honoring what you value?
Many people choose to live a life of misery to show to their neighbors and friends how successful they are. We equate success with finances and it isn’t working. There are many, many people who have great bank accounts who are living in personal poverty. What is your life really like? (Feel free to comment … share your story)
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” Joseph Campbell
Hero‘sJourney
Epic in nature, it is your journey through change and life. It’s your story and it is about your outer world, the one you see, and your inner world which remains hidden.
As we figure out what we want we have to make choices that involve what we can do and who we are. The hero’s journey is about discovering who you are to do what you want.
The journey involves facing some of your deepest fears and when you are able to face those fears and battle with making a change then you are able to grow. Tackling your fears is where having someone with you to identify what is holding you back is beneficial.
Where are you in your journey? Are you struggling and not sure why? Are you stuck or trapped and need a helping hand? Are you growing or are you staying put?
“Nobody ever talks about the pyramids that weren’t built, the books that weren’t written, the songs that weren’t sung. Stop letting your fear condemn you to mediocrity. Get out of your own way. Your dreams are a poetic reflection of your soul’s wishes. Be courageous enough to follow them. There is no greater time than now to experience the full power of your potential. Make this the day you take the first step in the beautiful journey of bringing your dreams to life.”
― Steve Maraboli
To be so strong that nothing
can disturb your peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness, and prosperity
to every person you meet.
To make all your friends feel
that there is something in them
To look at the sunny side of everything
and make your optimism come true.
To think only the best, to work only for the best,
and to expect only the best.
To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others
as you are about your own.
To forget the mistakes of the past
and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear a cheerful countenance at all times
and give every living creature you meet a smile.
To give so much time to the improvement of yourself
that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear,
and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.
To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world,
not in loud words but great deeds.
To live in faith that the whole world is on your side
so long as you are true to the best that is in you.”
Think of ways to add peace to your life, for your good and for the good of others. Think of ways to add a good deed to your life for your good and the good of others. Think of ways to smile at a stranger for your good and for the good of others. Think of ways to say a kind word to a person who needs to be lifted up for your good and for the good of others. In this way you’ll find peace in our life for your good and for the good of others.
“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.”
― Eric Roth
People lament the fact that organizations don’t change in the right way. Personal growth, professional growth, individual habits, weight loss, a better outlook on life, career, or relationships don’t change until you decide you want them to change. All to often we wait for something else to change in the world to make us feel better. It is really the other way around. We have to change to feel better in the world.
There is nothing that will satisfy you or fill you up with happiness or joy unless you are open to letting new things into your life. It means you may need to make changes in your life in order to experience life the way you would like to experience it. Want a better career than you have to be the person that is capable of having that better career.
If you are wondering what will make you happy then find out how to make other people happy. You grow into happiness, happiness doesn’t appear and happen to you, you have to be open to happiness.
It all starts with a change of mindset, a new state of mind. The question is what will it take for you to make the changes to get more out of your life. It starts with a goal, your goal, for something better in your life.
Making your life better doesn’t start with something else change it starts with your change, your desire to make a change. It all starts when you decide that you want to make a change. There is no treatment, no magic bullet, no amount of “others” asking you to make a change that will cause a change to happen “in” you. It is a step that you have to make. It is that first act of courage that says, “I want to make my life better.” What will it take for you to take a step forward in your life today?
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
from New and Selected Poems, 1992 Beacon Press, Boston, MA
What do you want to do with your life?
What kind of success do you want to pursue?
Are you living a life according to your values or are you living a life aligned to your material desires? Are you intensely focused on what is most important for you and your life? Have you defined the right priorities for you and your life?
For the grasshopper being present is life. What about you? Are you being present or are you filled with so many things that you can’t possibly pause to enjoy life?
Honor your priorities. Honor your values. Be crystal clear on what is important to you and honor that and that will help you find value in your one precious life.
“I had my chance.’ He said it, retiring from a lifetime of wanting. ‘I had my chance, and sometimes in life, there are no second chances. You look at what you have, not what you miss, and you move forward.”
Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
What is missing in your life?
You do have a plan on how you want your life to unfold. You have a list of things that you want to do and you have started accomplishing those things. You have a career that is exciting and vibrant. You have the friends you have always wanted to have close by. You are continuing to develop your skills and talents. Your relationships are working well. Your fitness and health are great.
“We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.” Tara Brach
Living life without limits is not just for the few it is for everyone. Nearly everyone is struggling with some aspect of life. It might be financial, relationship, career, wellness, health, friends, family, or something that is sucking the life out of them. Maybe you know of someone who feels their life is being sucked out of them. What are they telling you?
Are they telling you how miserable life is and there is nothing that can be done to make life better. Their life is bad so their goal is to gain sympathy from someone else, someone who will agree with them that life is just miserable.
Have you met someone who is overwhelmed with life, with the daily grind of life? Maybe their career is not even close to what they really want to do so they suffer day after day earning enough that it keeps them locked into work they really hate. Each day they attempt to put on a happy face and walk into their place of employment with a little less energy than they had the day before. Who are they fooling with their less than optimal performance?
Life without limits means doing, being and living at what you are best at. It means allowing your strengths to be used fully and that you are passionate about what you are doing in life most of the time.
Let’s look at some ideas that John Maxwell shares with us that will help us live life without limits.
1. On Failing, Fail Forward – “‘Failing forward’ is the ability to get back up after you’ve been knocked down, learn from your mistake, and move forward in a better direction.”
2. Quit at the right time – “When to quit: (1) Quit something you don’t do well to start something you do well. (2) Quit something you’re not passionate about to do something that fills you with passion. (3) Quit something that doesn’t make a difference to do something that does.”
3. Forge a new attitude – “Whether you are eleven, forty-two, or sixty-five, your attitude toward life is still under construction. It’s never too late for a person to change his attitude.”
4. Be confident – “Affirmation from others is fickle and fleeting. If you want to make an impact during your lifetime, you have to trade the praise you could receive from others for the things of value that you can accomplish. You can’t be ‘one of the boys’ and follow your destiny at the same time.”
Use what you have right now and start living your life. Take a lesson from Nick Vujicic and learn what it means to live a life without limits.
Learn more about living your life without limits. When do you start, now, right now! Stop making excuses and start living a better life.
Where are you right now? Are you focusing in on what is on the horizon in the next few days or weeks or are you focused on the past and what has happened. Being present means focusing in on this moment and this moment alone.
Our culture is focused on “winning” and excelling in life and business and with such a high focus on getting results (or success) we often miss present. As a result many people are missing out on life and over time they become disenchanted with their life.
Being present is becoming a topic of greater and greater interest and has been written about by Peter Senge and most notably Mihaly Csikszentamihalyi. With our days being compressed by “duty” we rarely have time to reflect on the present moment and what is happening is people are feeling like their is something missing. That missing something starts to grow and grow and there is this moment that causes people to wonder life is all about.
Most people at some point in their life have found a moment in which they were fully present and it was magic. Mihaly writes, “Yet we all have experienced times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we do feel in control of our actions, maters of our own fate. On the rare occasions that it happens, we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like.”
It is those moments of exhilaration that people are seeking but are finding that daily living is sucking the life out of them and generating more stress than joy in their lives. The question that lingers in many people’s minds is “how do I start feeling more joy in my life?”
Part of the answer is taking time out of the everyday busyness to stop and really doing something that tests your limits. Busyness and routine work is draining but something that challenges ever fiber of your soul is what people describe as an optimal experience and this is what causes people to feel most alive.
What challenges the mind and body creates this sense of flow or being in the moment. The moment is a point in time where the conscious mind reflects on the challenge and has the experience of control, victory and freedom from the threat of chaos. That moment is experiential and joyous and fleeting. It is a moment that isn’t easily regained or easy to live over again through a similar experience. It requires a new challenge and a new experience and then that moment of reflection.
For example first marathon run by a runner is often the most memorable. Running the same marathon again even a year later has less of an impact than the first one did. A new challenge must be experienced in order to regain that feeling. Yet that experience can be recreated in the mind at any moment by learning how to be present right where you are. The mind has the ability to generate that feeling of presence. What will you do to be present in your life?
Obtaining flow or presence
1. Set goals
2. Become immersed in activity
3. Pay attention to what is happening.
4. Learn to enjoy the present.
Do something important today that will allow you to feel better about you.
Coach with Heart 