Don’t Live Without Passion.

It doesn’t take much thought to realize that life really is too short, so you just have to live every day with more passion! Time squandered, is time wasted.

Most people, when looking back at their lives, are in more pain over the things they didn’t do rather than over the things they failed at while trying to do them. Yes, I do believe most of us would rather try and fail than never try at all. Why is that? I think it’s in our nature as humans to want to receive long lasting and deep satisfaction from struggle and hard work, because even if we fall short of our objective, at least we know we tried.

I’ve certainly had my share of failures and tragedies. But I wouldn’t have it any other way because, in most of those failures, I’ve learned so many huge lessons that, in the long run, greatly enhanced my life.

Let me briefly tell you my own story. It was a “Sudden Death Wake Up Call”.

I had a pretty ordinary beginning into this life. Born in Portland, Oregon in 1944 (that means next year I hit the big 80 mark!), I was the second born in my family, so I was always trying to prove myself, to measure up to my older brother.

My life and my mindset were forever shocked and changed when, at the age of 15, my older brother died, literally, at my feet, while playing basketball. We were in an outdoor stadium halfway around the world in Ankara, Turkey. That one life-shaking event permanently altered my way of thinking, something that is with me to this very day, yes, even as I write these words. As I express myself and think about the big picture of life, it helps me understand that life can be gone in a moment. It’s a sobering thought.

Yep, we all have an end to our life, or as some people say, “Nobody gets out of here alive.” It doesn’t matter how rich or powerful you are, you and I really have a fairly short time to be here on planet earth. So, all of us need to live with passion right now and go after the things in life that we really want. Not only will you get more out of life, but it will also give you a great and powerful lift to your mind and body.

Next week I am going to write more about this event with my brother and how it pushed me to see the bigger picture of life and death. It makes me much more accepting of our hardships and every day it pushes me to live in this “right now moment”. I’ll write more about my early life and goals that I set for myself, some of which I reached but not all of them!

Our Changes in Fortune

Wow and double wow! I never expected the huge and heartfelt response I received after my closing comment on my last week’s blog, asking people to send their best wishes and love to little 2-year-old Kate who had just been diagnosed with leukemia. So, at minimum I want to take time right now to give a HUGE THANKS to all you beautiful, wonderful people who cared enough to take time to send your heartfelt wishes to little Kate and her family. That means so much to me, her parents, the rest of the family, and to little Kate and her twin sister Ellie. I’m thinking that Kate and her twin sister could feel the love and the caring that was sent to them. I sure could!

We all know that life has its big bumps, surprises, and setbacks. And, yes, it also has many wonderful, fun, exciting, and pleasurable moments as well. It behooves all of us to constantly remember to live in the great “right now” moment. I’ve written a lot about this previously and most people know they should try to live more in the “now moments” and not spend too much time worrying about the future or beating themselves up for the past mistakes and or bad decisions. But, if you are like me, you have to keep reminding yourself to think more in the “now”. That kind of thinking can be very critical for our mental and emotional health and our great enjoyment of life. Meditation can help with this. Meditation works because, if you do it right, you truly are living in the moment!

Knowing all this and preaching it to others, I still wake up worrying about what I need to get done in the immediate or not too distant future as well as fretting a bit over what I missed out on doing yesterday. I have noticed, however, if I take time to write down my next day’s plans and actions the night before I go to sleep, I usually wake up much more likely to just get out of bed and get going on my to do list. My mind seems to be so much clearer and my thoughts are much more positive in the “now moment”.  Of course, we all need to think about the future and make plans, much of which is very fun and exciting like when planning a trip to Disneyland with the kids, or a vacation to Europe, etc. It’s the same with the past – we enjoy taking time (but not too often) to relive our great experiences and the really memorable moments in our life.

Talking about great moments in time… did you read about the older lady in Paris that recently discovered that one of the paintings she had hanging on her walls — one that she wasn’t even particularly wild about — was very, very rare? She sold it for a shocking $26 million dollars. I sure hope she’s not like so many jackpot and lottery winners that have never had a ton of money. So many of them have lost everything years later, making the news again because, not knowing how to handle tons of money, they spent it all and/or were scammed out of it. Whether fortune smiles on us or we have a ton of bad luck thrown at us, we need to learn how to handle our changes in fortune. I want to talk a bit next week about the smarter ways to handle money when good fortune comes your way.

 

Keeping Your Mind in the Moment

Some very wise person once said, “Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.”  I’ve thought about and written quite a lot about this thing called “living in the now”.  I think I keep writing about it because it motivates me to live in the moment more often. As you might have experienced, living in the moment is very hard to stay conscious of and to do on a frequent basis.  But if you concentrate and keep trying to live in the moment, you are likely to do more and more of it.  And yes, I think it’s a great idea to write that down as a goal because, as you probably know, if you commit your goals to paper or on your phone or computer, you are much, much more likely to do it.

In Ernie J. Zelinski’s great book, The Joy of Not Working, under a section titled “Mastering the Moment”, the author says, “In some cultures, a moment can last the entire afternoon. Activities have natural starting and ending times not dictated by the clock. People don’t limit their conversations to fifteen or thirty minutes. Conversations start when they start and end when they end regardless of the number of clocks in the immediately vicinity.”

He goes on to cite a study that I found really surprising, and even a bit shocking. The study and research showed that most couples in North America spend only about 18 minutes a week in real conversation.

Zelinski also noted, “Out of 500 people surveyed by World Tennis magazine in a sex/tennis pool, 54 percent said they think about sex while playing tennis.” Wow, I play a lot of tennis and I don’t think I fit at all in that 54% group. Those tennis players obviously haven’t learned to live in the now, and I am quite certain if they did, they would win a lot more matches. I wonder how many people think about tennis when having sex. I think that might make it much harder to finish the sex round.

Ok, next week I want to write more about Zelinski and give you a few quotes from him and this subject of “living in present moment”, or the way I say it, “living in the great right now”.  I am also, due to feedback from readers, going to move my blog from Friday mornings to Sunday morning. This should give you some time to really ponder the subjects I bring up. So, look for the follow-up to this post next Sunday!