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Perhaps you’re at a point in your life where things aren’t swell but aren’t horrible either. A middle plane, with your daily comings and goings steady like a mill and well, not so exciting.The exciting stuff is coming. You know - when you make that deal, when you finish school, when you lose 50 lbs…when you find the right man..
And so you wait.
And wait.
You’ll be happy one day - it just has to happen.
So you wait some more.
And what you aren’t realizing is while you’re waiting for that good thing to happen so that you can start your fabulous new life, the life you have is passing by. Days you can’t reclaim and that were loaded with the potential to make you feel good about being alive.
Maybe you’ll be super lucky and that day comes quickly for you. So you’d be exempt of wasting your days, skipping in glee.
Those odds are there for the taking so yeah - maybe you’ll be lucky - so you’ll wait.
Would you bet your life on those odds?
CLICK!
Have you ever seen that movie Click starring Adam Sandler? The general gist of it is he has this remote control and he’s able to fast forward through the unfun, not-so-savory bits of life. What a concept!
Life sucks today. Fast forward.
Uh oh, I hate this part of life too! Fast forward.
I can’t WAIT until I’m in my 30’s and successful! Fast forward.
…Forties and successful! Fast forward.
You keep clicking for the rest.
What happens to all the time you spend wanting your life to be different and living in the waiting zone the same? You lose it.
You may not realize that you’re waiting to live - but do any of the following examples sound familiar?
- “When I make more money, I’ll be happy”
- “He will love me again one day. I just have to…”
- “I’m not at home much but I’ll spend time with them soon”
- “I’ll start my new business soon and things will be great”
It’s more than have those undefined goals that have no time stamp. It’s pausing your happiness until those things are completed that risks letting plenty of life seep through the cracks. If you have it ingrained in you that your happiness is dependent on an event of success, you just may be robbing yourself blind.
How to Live for Today
I find that if you invest in making every day one that is a pleasure to live (to the best of your abilities of course) you propel yourself into accomplishing that happy day you’re waiting for. This discovery has come to me in slow motion (think sap from a tree) but I’m glad it came. Thinking you have to suffer until something happens is a farce. The journey towards success can be just as enlightening as it can be soul sucking. You just have to choose which side of the road you rather travel on.
You start with your destination in mind. You’ve got a little black dress with your name on it? Savor that baby and know that’s where you’re headed. Look at it, touch it, feel it, buy it. Visually reinforcing what you want is so powerful. Who hasn’t had a good ole time driving on the block with the really pretty houses? You just KNOW deep down you will own one one day and the grass will be greener on your lawn. You can entice your senses with the anticipation of getting what you want by making it your business to take a nice longing look at where you’re headed. It can be as simple as creating a vision board - cutting out pictures and phrases of your hearts content and arranging them on a page or book where you can look on a regular basis. For the technology inclined, you can create incredible GOAL MOVIES. Clay over at TheGrowingLife (one of my favorite blogs) wrote a post explaining how you can create a movie of things that you want for yourself - with music, pictures, and everything. Excite your senses. See what you want.
Increments girl, Increments: What are you doing today that is helping you get to where you want to go? You may not be in the position to saunter into a nice new office space and say “I’ll take it” - but even if you could. Do you know what to DO with that space? Are your ideas written down? Did you get yourself some of the skills you need to know what to do? Did you rub shoulders with those who can help you? Are you working on making some of the money that you’re going to need? Are you building the credit that will help make it happen? What do people who are in the position that you want to be in have that you don’t? What do they know that you don’t? Grant yourself the edge with the time that you have while you’re waiting for life to drop you a gift-wrapped special - Take a good look at what you DON’T have to make your dream a reality and get it. Get the guts. Get the classes. Get the right foods. Get whatever it is you need. Even small increments are steps forward. If you really have somewhere to go, you will use every day you have now to help you reach your destination
Appreciate the Perks: I challenge you to hate life at the very same time you are thanking your lucky stars that you got the day off today. When you are too busy looking for the good things in your life, the “at least I..”, you’re state of mind shifts to a positive aspect and you need that. A positive attitude enables you to brainstorm what to do next when things aren’t looking so sweet- and find a solution that just might work. If you can be grateful for what you have, you won’t allow self pity to stall your ascent to the top. It’s so true. Appreciate the ones who love you and support you - and let them know about it. Love them out loud. A support system is a terrible thing to waste. Find something good, no matter how small, and count those points into your day. With that slice of gratitude every day, you actually build strength and tenacity. You learn how to spin things into your favor. You find the goods to salvage in a pile of drama and most importantly, you feed your mind the sweets flavor instead of the sour lemons in your life. That’s so much easier to swallow.
Live Like You Made It
Uh uh. This isn’t permission to go shop beyond your means. No, what I mean is: you want to be the femme fatale CEO who walks with grace and confidence one day. Step into her heels and start exuding that grace and confidence now. Regardless of what you do for a living, you can inject quality into your work, confidence into your attitude, eloquence in your speech and basically raise your standards of living. Since when does a title give you the skills you need to claim it? It’s the other way around. The skills you have bring you the title! So you walk and talk with authority, you’ll find yourself being treated with the respect an authority commands. If you take care of your appearance and carry yourself with an air of beauty both inside and out, people just won’t be able to ignore it. They’ll gravitate to the charm in your eyes that sparkle with your smile. A pleasant attitude and charisma is so very attractive. You want to become a doctor one day, you make it your business to submerge yourself in the world of health-care. Find out what’s going on - keep up with the times. Surely, you won’t arrive to medical school and say
“Soooo…. what’s a heart?”
You want to be READY for opportunities! *Grimace* - I can only cringe when I think of what would happen if your day that you waited SO patiently for comes in the form of an opportunity and you can’t take it because you’re not ready! Because you didn’t operate in increments - because you don’t have the vision needed to turn a bad situation around by finding the silver lining!
Ouch!
No - you want to be ready for your big day. You want, when that right man (hubba hubba!) with his big heart and eagerness to love you comes, to be in a place where you are ready to accept love. You want to already be in love with yourself so that you can love him freely instead of spending a whole lot of time trying to cover those flaws quick! You don’t want to sabotage the chance of a beautiful new relationship with someone because you never cultivated a beautiful relationship with yourself.
Life is not about perfection. While you’re waiting for a new Monday to come to start your new diet because you messed up, again, what’s happening behind the scenes is slowly but surely killing you by blocking the ways to your heart. You can do better than that. You can decide to make your next meal a better one. Your next workout a tougher one. Healthy food doesn’t have to be gross and workouts don’t have to be boring. You find the spices to bring the flavor and the music to bring the life. You are so much closer to feeling better than you might think!
THAT way, when you DO get those abs, you know how to keep ‘em.
Strive to Be Alive
Chances are, what you’re looking for is deeper than the goal itself. You want to win a marathon because you want to feel like a winner and prove to yourself that you can push beyond the ordinary. You want to lose weight because you want to feel attractive and be healthy. You want to be in love because you know you’re worthy of it - you just would like some proof of that. You want to be the hot shot because heck, why can’t you own the spotlight?
If you can pinpoint the reasons behind your goals, all the steps mentioned before can help fulfill those reasons even before you reach that goal. That fulfillment that you’re looking for can come in all its exciting richness. It isn’t the end results that get you the satisfaction you seek - it’s all that work you did to get there. When you get there, it’s that much more satisfying.
So no, you don’t have to wait to live.
Strive to be alive from this point on. Cloak yourself with the essence of possibilities and make that trip to the top one where you can feel each rising level.
Don’t wait for life to happen to you. It can take it’s sweet time - when that time can be yours.
