
I’ve been thinking a lot about death after the passing of my 100-year-old Grandma which inevitably means I’ve been thinking a lot about life. Specifically, what kind of life are we living today? If you knew you only had five years to live…two years..one year to live, would you continue living exactly as you are right now? What would you do with that year – how would you live?
Most of us may come up with an elaborate list of bucket list items and dreams not yet achieved – how about that “dream job”, that vacation around the world? Maybe you have always wanted to learn an instrument or pick up a foreign language? Maybe you just want to sit outside in the mornings with a cup of coffee and a book and give yourself permission to do nothing. I venture to guess that most of our lists of adventure, unfulfilled dreams and trying new things would be wildly different from how we live day-to-day now.
Why is this?
If you had less life ahead of you, what would you do differently?
If you stayed stuck where you are right now, would you die happy with that?
How often do you do something because you feel that is what you should be doing?
Scared? What is the worst case scenario? How realistic is that? Could it be fixed?
What self-limiting beliefs can you let go of?
We live in a society preoccupied with more. We always seem to need more of something in order to go for what we desire: We need more time. More planning. More PTO. More skills. More certainty. More money. More of this, more of that.
Perhaps all of this more has distracted us from looking at what really scares us?
We live our lives as if we have all the time in the world. In fact, our obsession with more has actually caused us to live like we are immortal. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. When the end is near, life seems to take on more value: The less we have, the more valuable it becomes? This could be true with food, water, material goods, commodities..but is it also true of life itself?
What are you putting off, that you could do now?
What are you really afraid of?