Live A Life
An underlying principle by which I live my life is “...and then you die.” Everyone has a life with the same end result, there is no avoiding it and it’s inevitable. Sad and Scary? Yes, but true. A question my sister and I are always answering is - ‘What are you doing with your dot-dot-dot?” It helps us put life in perspective. Are you wasting time lamenting over something of no consequence? Do you spend time contributing to the world? Do you appreciate small moments in life? Is life passing you by minute-by-minute? Are you only a pawn in someone else’s game? Do you have a game of your own? We both spend focused concentration on making sure our dot-dot-dot is full and hearty with the hands we’ve been dealt. The importance of all this being “Live a Life!”
I said to my husband once, “I hope God knows, I’m really working hard. I’m doing my best to leave it all on the table.” (I love that my husband puts up with my crazy, but I really do hope God know this. I know.) I work in a cubicle. It’s grey in a grey room in a grey building. It’s not ‘Joe the Volcano’ depressing (although at one point it was), but it’s standard and every day. And it’s what I need at this point to feed my family and gives me the stability to make the major shifts in my life to get me what I want - freedom. The important thing is that I’m shifting - pivoting, which could seemingly be difficult given the environment. I’m surrounded by people. There are those that “Live a Life!” and more importantly recognize it. Then there are those that “Live a Life!”, but don’t recognize it and their living has become a part of their routine. And then there are those that are hardly living at all because they have decided to allow the grey box to confine not only their physical, but mental and spiritual being. They are limited in their thinking and all I want to do is pull the covers off and say “Wake up! Don’t squander you dot-dot-dot!”
My car’s steering wheel has taken many beatings and shakings as I’ve pleaded with the heavens that this can’t be my forever. Along with my grey cube life, I have an hour both-ways commute attached to it and there are some days that I’ve had my fill. However, it’s with these long drives that my sister and I worked out our first book outline, and our second outline. We’ve discussed our future of Tulips and Poppies and where we are going. These frustrating bumper-to-bumper dailies for the past seven years have served as a such a blessing to me and it’s only because I “Live a Life!” that I’m able to recognize it.
So, that brings me to Tony Robbins and the documentary on Netflix that my sister recommended I watch. Tony discusses the need for a mission statement and this is nothing new to someone who has followed Tony Robbins. However, this time with a lot of thinking and mulling over, I was able to really granulate into one sentence what my mission in this world is at this moment: It is my mission to help others wake up to the life around them and lovingly provide tools for others to be creative using my God-given skills and abilities. With these two principles in mind, I think I’m able to focus my dot-dot-dot in to contributing objectives that in a weary world could add to the light that tends to flicker.
My first simple step is to nightly before I go to bed, I write a tweet that recognizes the points in the day that I lived then tag it #LiveALife. This practice so far has helped me not only give gratitude at the end of what would could be perceived as an ordinary day, but has given me good practice in recognizing the magical moments throughout. I hope you will join me with #LiveALife, I would love to see what simple or impactful things are influencing your daily existence. For now, I’m single bobber floating in the ocean of twitter shouting out “Live a Life!” Imagine what it could be if it was a fleet.
