The very first time I saw this phrase, it blew my mind away! Each word here has such rich meaning and when coupled together, the result is such a phenomenal concept, I can’t help but share it; because embedded in it is the key to living the kind of life you want.
You see, many people think of life in terms of how much they amass, or how much they are able to spend, and so end up living what I now call ”accidental lives”. Life simply goes past them. They never truly take charge of their lives and so end up blaming others for the way their lives turn out. These people are afraid to make decisions not realising that their acts of indecision, are inadvertently, decisions in and of themselves. They would rather sit back, or delay on an action till someone else, out of frustration, makes a decision for them-one which they may not like.
When we think of a word like courage, our minds immediately take us to war heroes, fire fighters, battle grounds. It almost seems like the word is reserved solely for times when some major battle has been fought. The way I see it, we are daily engaged in a battle. Not one of self-preservation, or against terrorist groups (though those do exist), but a battle for the preservation of our individual identities and for the emergence of our true selves. So many of us have become advocates of ‘playing it safe’ rather than proponents of change. We would rather maintain the status quo instead of, in the words of Anthony Robbins, unleashing the giant within. It’s not that we like to become wallflowers; I fear the problem may be because we fear that we may not be able to contain the greatness within us when it is unleashed. We do not want to be noticed because we know that such attention comes with its own responsibilities…and that is why we run.
Perhaps, as you grew up you were taught to avoid being too bold, too brave or too audacious. “It’s not the way things are”, you are told. “It’s too dangerous for you as a female”, you hear. Other warnings you are bombarded with are, “Don’t take unnecessary risks”; “Don’t draw attention to yourself in public”; “No woman in our family has ever done it before”. To that end, you are caught up in a job you hate, a town you abhor, a career path you absolutely do not fit into, because you want to maintain the status quo.
Today, I challenge you to live your life on purpose! Live your life, for the first time maybe, as though it were really your life. Be done with living someone else’s life or living by their dogmas. Be done with the self imprisonment of ‘accepting your lot’. This is not the time to ‘go with the flow’, to sit back hoping that the currents of life will move your boat in a direction that favours you. This is the time for definitive action. You’ve got to live your life on purpose.
Purposeful living begins with setting realistic and strategic goals for your life and ends with the achievement of those set goals and the pursuance of new goals. Purposeful living is a deliberate decision or resolve to make each moment of your life count. Don’t plan to sit in a retirement home wishing you had lived a richer, fuller life; wondering where the years went; trying to figure out why you could let your dreams dissolve into nothing.
You have an opportunity to live the life you want; you have an opportunity to decide to live a purposeful life. Make the choice now. Decide!
To your success!