What is your boulder?

I recently saw the movie 127 hours, which is based on the story or Aaron Ralston who was a hiker and adventure-seeker, who got trapped at the bottom of a crevice on a trail in Utah. The how he was trapped and what he did to escape is the compelling part of the story. His hand and lower part of his arm got wedged between the wall of the crevice and a boulder when some sheetrock broke free. He literally could not move the boulder for all of his trying and he was stuck in the middle of nowhere; a place nobody would ever come looking for him.

This makes for a great read and if you ever have time you should check out the book. It does not make for a great movie in my opinion as you basically suffer with him for the 127 hours he was stuck at the bottom of this crevice wedged by a boulder. He eventually breaks his lower arm and then proceeds to cut it off in order to escape and survive. It speaks to the human spirit as he truly had to choose survival without part of his right arm or death.

Of course this got me thinking? Would I be courageous enough to do that and at what point do you consider this option? But that led me to a deeper line of thinking: we are all trapped by some type of boulder in our lives, how is this holding us back and what would or should we do to escape and get on with our lives?

Now I am not suggesting that we are all trapped, but we do sidestep personal issues that hold us back from truly living life to its fullest extent. My greatest boulder is my need for personal time to re-charge, but at this stage of my life that time is hard to find. As a result I end up having two huge shortfalls. The first is I neglect my body - I don't take time to work out and keep my body strong and fit. The second is I lose touch with my soul. This disconnect with my higher self usually ends up with losing perspective on what is really important in life. I let small things throw me off course.

Another classic movie that relates to this is It's A Wonderful Life. A scene I think all parents can relate to is when George Bailey comes home after his uncle loses the $8,000. He is stressed out and feels like his world is coming to an end. He does not consider the endless reach his life truly had and had stopped appreciating the joy and laughter that his kids were having. Let's face it, adulthood can get very intense and full of gravity at times and we lose touch with the joy of just living. We lose our ability to just appreciate and enjoy living.

In many ways lately this has become a large boulder in my life as I have lived through the most intense year of my life. Personally, the death of my mother-in-law has sent my personal life reeling in endless directions that I had no way to prepare for. No one is prepared to see the ones you love to go through depression. No one is prepared for decades of family traditions to get thrown out the window. Nobody wants to see the ones they love simply crumble as a result of a broken heart. I have added the stress of a 60+ hour a week job that has me trading my personal life at nights for a personal computer and email.

To say this is not what I signed up for is the understatement of a lifetime. But I am sure this story is tame compared to what so many others this year have gone through. With over 10% unemployment, record foreclosures, and futures washed away due to the recent financial collapse, stress in the world has to be at an all time high.

So how do people cope and overcome their personal boulders? Do we all have to cut off our arms to move forward? Is there another way to move on without such a huge sacrifice? Can't we just decide to confront what afflicts us and move forward with life? Or is it more of a process where it takes time and reflection?

All I know is I don't want another year like the one that I just lived through. I have reached the point where I am ready to make changes to my life. I want to welcome back joy and laughter to my life. I want more time with friends. I want to enjoy more time with my kids.

What comes next?

This is the question we all face and yet so few of us ever truly want to spend even a moment pondering what comes next. Because to ponder this question is to face the ultimate fear head on with no real answers. However, in line with my last post about managing your space, it would naturally make sense that if we are all safely diverted with our fast paced, technology-driven lives, who really has the time, perspective or courage to grapple with the ultimate question.

I just found out that a friend I knew in business school is possibly in the final days of her existence due to a brain tumor. She can only be mid to late 40's max and has three kids. We all walk around in complete denial that our time too will come to an end. Even fewer of us even realize that our days in this life are but a precious few. We lose sight of what is really important in life as too often we get caught up in the ugly side of life. We take the days for granted and live for an endless promise of tomorrow until tomorrow is today and it is our last.

There are so many days, weeks, months and now even years that fade into each other like some passing blur. I hear more and more people question "where did that week go?". Or worse yet, they are so unhappy with their lives that they yearn for the weekdays to pass by so they can get to the weekend.

On a normal day I might share this desire to have free time, but is it really worth trading 5 for 2 week after week? Is it really trading 50 work weeks for 2 vacation weeks? Are we all so caught up in life as we know it not to stop for one minute and ask, "what if tomorrow does not come? What does this life really mean? What comes next?".

I have spent time pondering these questions, but I often lose touch with them when I am fully locked into day to day grind of life. These questions become almost inconsequential when you are trying to meet a tight deadline, race home only to be stuck in traffic, or just handling the daily chores of life. Worse yet, we all too often get stuck complaining about life as we know it instead of appreciating the blessing of life. We complain about our jobs, our commute, the driver that cut me off, the struggles we have with relationships, how to get from paycheck to paycheck, and so on and so on. You know the drill?

But in those moments of self-reflection, when I find the space and time to take a step back, I have always been filled with a strong spirituality and faith that this life is not an end. How can it be?

You might ask, how can I be so sure? Well here is my proof: the soul. We all have a soul, some are nice, some are not, some are old and some are new. But we all have a soul that we can get in touch with and explore. Where does that come from and how can it just vanish when we die if it is not really material or tangible? How can we just ponder our existence and find answers to our questions like we have bottled up wisdom stored deep inside of us?

I often ponder that I have two sides of me, the physical and the spiritual. The body and the soul. I know that I spend far too little time in the realm of my soul seeking wisdom and answers that will help unlock the hidden pathways to a brighter tomorrow and more meaningful today. Why do so few of us stay in touch with our souls? Are we too busy or are we too distracted? Is life moving too fast that our souls cannot keep up?

Personally, I feel there are too many distractions and my soul just does not operate at the speed of the modern world. My soul likes a slower pace where I can take it all in and as cliche as it is "suck the marrow out of life". Sadly my soul does not pay the bills so I am forced to live in my body more than my soul. But there are moments in my week where my soul goes to work; especially when I manage other people. These are unique opportunities to make the lives of the people around me better. Sure, some love to manage by fear, but I have always felt that a clear goal and a kind heart go much further than a loud voice and a big stick.

But when I live in the realm of the soul, I feel a deep connection to the bigger world out there. I know there is more to life than what our five senses tell us. There is a continuum beyond both this planet we call home and this life we know. Personally, I look at this life as Earth School, which I read in a book years ago. We are all here to work on different facets of our life. Some of us make bigger leaps forward than others while some take steps backwards. But in the end we are all here for a reason even though that is not quite evident at the time.

There has to be more than that though. So how do we all live for a better today and be focused on the soul? I believe there are so many events in our daily lives that have the potential to keep us in touch with our soul, but we need to have the awareness to make this conscious connection. While this is not an exhaustive list, it is a start and I encourage others to think of what keeps them connected to their soul: loving, hugging, praying, cooking, reading to our kids, teaching others, playing, laughing, helping others, gardening, enjoying nature, the sunset, the stars, the moon, music.

So I don't have any real solution, but I think we all need to spend a little more time appreciating the days we have with our family, friends, and loved ones. As one of my favorite artists Dave Matthews Band sang in one of my favorite songs Pig, "Don't burn the day away". I will link to the video Pig by Dave Matthews Band here:

And the lyrics are worth the read below. I hope this gets you a little more connected with your soul and you spend even a few minutes tomorrow not only being thankful for today, but also do one thing to connect with your soul (and ponder that connection as you are doing it).

Pig by Dave Matthews Band
Oh, isn't it strange
How we move our lives for another day?
Like skipping a beat
What if a great wave should wash us all away?
Just thinking out loud
Don't mean to dwell on this dying thing
But look at my blood
It's alive right now,
And deep and sweet within
Pouring through our veins
Intoxicate moving wine to tears
And drinking it deep
Then an evening spent dancing
It's you and me...

This love will open our world
From the dark side we can see a glow of something bright
Oh, there's much more than we see here
Don't burn the day away

Is this not enough?
This blessed sip of life,
Is it not enough?
Staring down at the ground
Oh, then complain and pray for more from above,
You greedy little pig
Stop, just watch your world trickle away
Oh, it's your problem now
It'll all be dead and gone in a few short years

Just love will open our eyes
Just love will put the hope back in our minds
Much more than we could ever know
Oh, so don't burn the day away
Don't burn the day away

Come sister, my brother
Shake up your bones, shake up your feet
I'm saying open up
And let the rain come pouring in
Wash out this tired notion
That the best is yet to come
But while you're dancing on the ground
Don't think of when you're gone

Love, love, love, what more is there?
'Cause we need the light of love in here
Don't beat your head
Dry your eyes
Let the love in there
There's bad times
But that's okay
Just look for love in it

And don't burn the day away...

Look, here are we
On this starry night, staring into space
And I must say
I feel as small as dust lying down here

What point could there be troubling?
Head down wondering what will become of me?
Why concern "WHAT" we cannot see
But no reason to abandon it
The time is short but that's all right
Maybe I'll go in the middle of the night
Take your hands from your eyes, my love
All good things must come to an end some time
But don't burn the day away
Don't burn the day away...

Come sister, my brother
Shake up your bones, shake up your feet
I'm saying open up
And let the rain come flooding in
Wash out this tired notion
That the best is yet to come
But while you're dancing on the ground
Don't think of when you're gone

Love, love, love, what more is there?
'Cause we need the light of love in here
Don't beat your head
Dry your eyes
Let the love in there
There're bad times
But that's okay
Just look for love in it

Managing Your Space

I was recently in the Stanislaus National Forest living for a week among some of the tallest trees you will ever see. I noticed how there is a natural spacing between the trees and wondered - how does nature know how to space itself out? If so many pine trees are dropping pine cones and pine seeds, what controls which take root and which do not? If they all took root there would be no space between the trees and they would not thrive.

True to my theme in this blog, I quickly thought how does this apply to my life and the human condition? Just like trees and pine seeds, not all human seeds take root. I read somewhere a long time ago that the odds of just being born are somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 in 350 billion. Stop and think about that for a minute - the very fact that you are here reading this means you are one of the lucky ones. What this also means is that all 7 billion people walking the face of the planet have all won the lottery of human existence.

Just like the trees, some of us will grow and thrive while others will not. So much depends on the circumstances we are born into and the circumstances we create for ourselves. Most humans are much more in control of their circumstances than most other parts of nature, but the general rules of nature still apply. What makes a tree grow? Fertile soil, sunlight, water, and space. What makes a human grow? Well, I could dig at that question for a long time - and grow vs. thrive is another long chapter. Generally speaking it has a lot to do with basic nutrition, sleep and avoiding disease. But so much has to do with meeting emotional, physical, and psychological needs. Another level above that to me is having a purpose in life and as Viktor Frankl once wrote in Man's Search for Meaning, if you have a why to live for, then you will figure out the how.

How does space relate to this discussion? Well I strongly believe that we all need a certain amount of physical, emotional and mental space to thrive. Have you ever had a day or moment in time that you just need your own space? I often get this way and just need to literally recluse myself in order to move forward. That is probably the hardest part of the life we lives we lead today, there is so much competing for our attention and taking up our space. Life was not always this way for me, but with kids and the information revolution, it is harder and harder to find space.

But when I do find space, I find my soul waiting for me. And with my soul I always find wisdom. Wisdom that is usually well beyond my years which makes me then believe that in those moments when I find space and I can plug into something bigger than my small little life, I actually connect with God and the bigger part of nature that we are all part of.

More and more I am finding it harder to get into space. Modern society is consuming us minute by minute, email by email, and tweet by tweet. Free time when we find it is filled with entertainment of all sorts. Whether it is television, computers, internet, email, FaceBook, Twitter, or those deadly time killers called Apps, our lives are more tethered to technology than ever before.

What is even more bizarre is we are more connected with each other than ever before, but I feel less connected to the people in my life than ever before. How strange is it that I can know everything my friends are doing without ever spending any time talking to them? Is that true connection? Is that our new human existence?

This all brings me back to where I started. I would say 30, 50, 100 years ago we all had plenty of space. Life was harder in some ways, but much less compressed. The demands on our time were far less than they are today. Sometimes I look at my personal email inbox as more of a burden than a benefit. If I wanted to get in touch with a friend far away 20 years ago, I would probably send them a letter or call them if I could afford it. There was a natural rhythm to corresponding via letters. You would write and mail a letter and it would take up to a week for it to get to your friend. By time they wrote back and it arrived, 2-3 weeks of your life would go by. By then you had a good amount of material built up to write the next installment. Email is so wham-bam-thank you ma'am, that the back and forth happens within a day and then you go on with your life for a few months before someone gets the impulse to write again.

While I make my living off of technology and in particular all things that torment me in terms of technology and speeding up my life, I do yearn for a simpler time. If we are all spending more time on the computer and cell phones than we were before, and if we have not given anything up, then we have lost our space. In losing that space, we are disrupting the laws of nature because we all need our space. Basically we are overpopulating the forest with trees and as a result most trees will not have the natural sunlight and space to grow.

I believe that will be the final result of this experiment called social networking. We will all feel super connected, but will have far less time to simply ponder our existence. Without truly taking time for self reflection, we will not know ourselves as well as we could and we will not get as much out of life as we could. Without understanding where we have been, how can we figure out what we want to change to move forward down what we believe is a meaningful path? Therefore, in the absence of space and time for self reflection, we will all grow a lot less than we should and as a result there will be far less meaning to our lives.

My Higher Self

Through all of my years filled with numerous experiences and lessons of life, I always come back to my higher self this time of year. I am sure everyone has a different version of their higher self, but mine is this lofty place where I am close to God and in grounded in a life filled with purpose and direction. When I manage my life from this place, my decisions are clear and decisive, my thoughts are compassionate and caring, my motives pure and high.

I often hear myself tell others that it is best to take the high road. When I operate from the high road, I feel noble, regal, and close to God. I feel like I am living the good life, a life filled with a caring soul, a loyal disposition, a pure heart. I have the best of intentions for myself and for the other people in my life. I live a life with no regrets because I did right by other people.

I have found that I live most of my life on the high road, but recently I have found it harder to find the high road and take the high road. The world of sadness and depression entered my family six months ago and sent me totally reeling. Part of me thinks it has been in my life in many ways longer, but the obvious impacts have left me scrambling for my higher self, my center, my foundation.

I have learned that depression is not rational. It operates from a place that is nowhere near the higher self and it does not listen to the wisdom of the higher self. I have tried from months and probably years to reason with it, but it does not heed the call. Instead it resents, rejects, and refuses the outsider. It pushes it away...hard.

I am now working on removing depression from my house. Taking it by the hand and showing it the door. I am hopeful that in time I can begin to climb the high road in my life again. I can again lift my life up and begin to reconnect with my higher self. I can live a life filled with integrity, happiness, love, laughter, and wonder.

Does a bear forget how to hibernate?

I find it interesting that the human species can circumvent the natural rhythms of nature. From time to time we get stuck in our own lives. We forget what is most important and we lose our ways. As civilization has evolved, we have lost touch completely with the natural world and live a life so unlike the other animals and plants that surround us. We are fooled into believing that we no longer are part of nature.

But what would happen to a bear that forgets to hibernate one winter? What happens to the tree that does not blossom one spring? It is unfathomable and it would be akin to a bear or tree choosing death. Yet humans do some of the most unnatural things day in and day out.

Take for example some of the things humans do not do on a daily basis.

• Eat a nutritious diet
• Exercise
• Get enough rest
• Breath
  

The list could go on but you get the point. I wonder how we forget the basic elements of life and all but decide that these are optional in order to sustain and prolong our lives?

I believe we easily lose our way because part of the human experience is to make sense of what life is all about; yet so many people never spend enough time defining what this means to them. They are never forced to do this and the society we live in now does not help them define this. Where would you learn this - school? As educational funding has declined, we are lucky if they get basics like reading, writing, math and science, much less philosophy of life.

Then most of us enter our 20's and while we should have the time, we are distracted by starting a career combined with active social lives. Add to that the increasing demands of our modern technology-based society - I see it in myself even. We are addicted to email, texting, calling, games, and music. We fill up every single millisecond of time and don't leave ourselves any time to sit back and just think about life.

We have lost time for reflection and pondering the journey we are on and how we want to make the most of the journey ahead. Maybe we need to start instituting technology breaks where we put down the computers, cell phones and televisions just long enough to ponder what life is all about.

I was fortunate that I took this time in my 20's to sort my life out and I am incredibly grounded thanks to long hours of reading and writing about the topic. I know what my life is all about:

• Starts with getting out of myself and helping others, I feel most alive in the service of bringing the most out of other people.
• Be your own best friend - that means do something nice for yourself when you are having a bad day and don't be overly self critical.
  
• Balance - don't get too high or too low.
• Cast a grand vision and chase it fiercely.
• Keep moving forward and don't leave any stone unturned, but be smart about the order in which you turn over the stones.
• Respect the rhythm of life and flow with the ups and downs.
  
• If you don't like your life, change it or shut up and stop complaining.
• Attitude is everything.
• Put it out there - tap into the grander energy of the universe and if you put your well defined hopes and dreams out there, the universe will send you what you need (but it might not be what you want).
• Greet every day with a smile - nobody likes to be around grumpy, moody, and mean people.
• Reflect on life and learn from your mistakes and experiences.
  

I refer back to this core all the time, but I dug it out of the ground. I know so many people that just wander aimlessly and when life gets really difficult, they have no foundation to interpret the world around them. Plus life in our 20's is simple, but the 30's and beyond are met with an increasingly complex world filled with intense jobs, relationships, children, aging parents, and so on.

My life moves at a pace that I can barely keep up with now and there is no time to just chill out and just take it all in. Plus by time I am done with my day my brain is simply fried. I would be hard pressed to have meaningful thoughts about figuring out the meaning of my life at this point.

The only answer I have is to take technology free vacations. Put down the cell phone and get reacquainted with a different side of our brains. Don't check email for a week and see what happens. Don't watch television for a week and see what happens. I believe our brain chemistry would be altered and we would realize that while having access to more information is making us smarter in some ways, it is no doubt coupled with very serious side effects. We are losing touch with what life is all about and potentially the lack of time pondering life is actually making us dumber about understanding what life is all about.

There is something very appealing to the idea of just checking out of the technology rat race and getting back to basics. Slow down. Write a letter instead of an email. Slow down. Read a book instead of staring at a computer. Slow down. Check email three times a day vs. three times an hour. Slow down. Have dinner with my family and spend more than 15 minutes at the table. Slow down.

At the end of the day, we should all be looking for ways to slow life down because who really wants this to go any faster than it currently does?

The 21st Century Human Experience

Life was so good for 20th century humans living in the United States; especially those that hit adulthood from 1950-1980. There is no doubt that if you were a middle class family, you only needed one of the two parents to be working to not only subsist, but also get ahead. You sent your kids to a good public school, you could let your kids go out and play in the front yard and did not worry about their safety, you saved for retirement, your house was appreciating, and even the stock market was somewhere you slowly but surely got ahead. You also had enough time to cook real food for your kids instead of living on the fast food driven economy with too little time and too many bad, fast, inexpensive food choices.

This generation also cared little or spent much time concerning themselves with the future of the planet, the food supply, or the interdependent global economy. Government for the most part worked well enough and was investing in the right things to keep the country at the leading edge - education, infrastructure, job creation, and social safety nets. Tomorrow was going to be better than yesterday and nobody ever doubted it.

I would have to say that as someone who lived through this period of time as a child, I have always thought the future would still be better than the past, but recently I am starting to believe differently. So many trends point to this: global economic meltdown, our planet is literally melting, our food supply is increasingly being compromised, our schools are not able to keep up with the demands of the 21st global economy, the haves are getting over on the have nots every minute of every day. And to top it all off, our government at all levels is paralyzed by interest groups, left vs. right, factions on all sides, and few if any people who think pragmatically about how to fix any of our problems with long term solutions. At every turn they choose the 50% solution when we need the 100% solution more than ever.

To say the least I am pissed off and feel like I have nowhere to turn. There is no doubt that I can carve out a decent life for myself, so no complaints there, but more and more I feel that if I am not super wealthy, then all I will do the rest of my days is just squeak by. Past generations left us with a heap of problems and because they were able to kick them down the road, they benefited by having somewhat easier lives with less to worry about. They no doubt benefited financially by this lack of responsibility.

So I ask the question, how do we view the generations before us that created a world that consciously or unconsciously shirked their responsibility to invest in the future of the country? Instead of think of tomorrow, they lived for the moment and gambled away the future. Two books I have read recently highlight how my generation needs to be more responsible in various aspects of our lives.

Anyone who reads Hot Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman, quickly realizes that our country has exported a desire to live like 20th century Americans to the rest of the world. If China and India decide to do this, it will all but cripple our planet. My concerted efforts to live with a lighter footprint by using CFLs, driving a hybrid, recycling, and embracing the "inconvenient truth" are but a drop in the bucket. I now have to be more responsible than my parent's generation when it comes to taking care of the Earth. Are they really the Greatest Generation? How will planet Earth survive the growth of China and India? Now I have to think more about the resources I use from energy to paper to even the packaging that comes with all that processed food. Can I live a sustainable life without leaving a heavy footprint? Are we the proverbial frogs slowly getting boiled?

Another book points more to the food supply we now subsist on. In Omnivore's dilemma, I am faced with increasingly difficult choices when it comes to what I put in my body. We are surrounded by a huge corn field filled with high fructose corn syrup. When you don't have the time or the energy to make a decent meal, the quick options out there will basically kill you faster over time. Therefore, I have to be super responsible with my food choices.

More effort, more money, and more self control. This is the mantra of just feeding myself every day. Was it easier when we had to grow or hunt for our food? If nothing else, we knew what we were eating. If you take out packaged goods with more than 5 ingredients, you remove 85% of most markets. This is becoming the fight for our health and the human body. I know it is not consciously happening, but it is easy to believe that the food industry is in cahoots with the health care industry. They make me fat so they can serve me up to the health care industry?

So I ask myself this, when will we wake up and truly do something smart as a country? When will be stop fighting about ideology and start being grown ups? Where is the push back that is at the foundation of this country? Or are we all too busy, fat, and lazy to care anymore? Have we been lulled to sleep?

At the end of day, if you saw your children always taking different sides of an issue , you would not tolerate it as a parent very long. You would teach them that nothing good comes from always fighting with each other. This is our government. Who is the parent in charge to tell them to start getting along? When will the rest of us start to take control?

When I take a step back though, I believe there is some bigger game being played here by those in power; however, I doubt they are really this smart. Think of it:

• Get your entire population striving to get ahead
• Get both parents working
• Extend them endless credit to fund the entire ride
• Give them no time to worry about anything more than making ends meet
• Feed them fast food so they have even more to worry about in the forms of disease
• Make quality healthcare more and more expensive to make it even harder to make ends meet
• Bet on them defaulting on their credit so when they do you own them even more
• Play issue based politics that has people voting against their best interests
• Defund quality education so that fewer of them have the tools to question authority and think independently
• For those that decide to pursue a quality education, make sure when they get done, they will be in debt for most of the next 20 years
  
• Control the media so all people here all day long is a narrow view of the "news" where there are two truths to every story - disinformation with rule the day
  
• Have less regulation on big business so they can do whatever they want to make money whether it is in energy, banking, health care, or the military industrial complex

This is a recipe for disaster and it is obvious we have all been duped by our Greatest Generation. We have big problems and nowhere to turn to fix them. Civilization is a total mess at this point and becoming increasingly unsustainable.

I just wonder if there will be a global event that somehow pulls the residents of the planet Earth together in some common cause that is not a war or terrorist attack. If the seas were polluted with millions of gallons of oil, don't you think the world would rally? If the seas were to rise 10 feet, don't you think the world would rally? If the planet were heating up and your home was being destroyed, don't you think you would not argue about if this was true or not and just get to work to fix it?

The pragmatist and optimist in me would think common sense will rally at some point, but I have seen so many events come and go and there is not but a pulse from the people of my country or our world. I think we have all but gone to sleep at this point and have become the can being kicked down the road by our leaders in government and business. I cannot believe we are too far gone, but when you are more concerned with maintaining power and less concerned with fixing problems this is what you get.

Wake up world - we cannot sleep much longer!

There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path

One of my favorite movies is The Matrix. The amount of philosophy dispensed in that movie is truly amazing to me since on first glance it is an action movie. One of my favorite lines from that movie that inspired this post was spoken by Morpheus, "there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path."

This really got me thinking when I first heard it and it resonates with me today. How many of us truly know the path? And of those, how many actually walk the path? I would have to think out of the billions of humans roaming the earth, less than 1% of us are truly walking the path. Why is that? And what is "the path" anyway?

To me the path is a way of life that leads to health, happiness and fulfillment. There are many things I do to be on this path, but as with all people it is kind of a pyramid with health being at the very bottom - it is my foundation. When I am sick there is nothing I crave more than being healthy, but when I am healthy oftentimes I take it for granted. I guess in some small way this is the part of walking the path - being conscious of your actions in support of your ultimate goals. Walking the path requires a series of conscious decisions that together all create an excellent life.

At the end of the day the path to me is trying to get the most out of this lifetime. Whether that is 5 or 50 more years, I want to make the most out of what life has to offer.

Walking the path starts with eating a healthy diet filled with fruits, veggies and low in fat. The path continues with exercise, which not only keeps my body strong and fit, but also clears my head and reduces my stress. From there the path gets a little harder to walk down because my fulfillment includes a wide variety of outlets, many of which I don't regularly have time for. Since walking the path takes conscious thought as to what the path is, I need time to just be with my thoughts. However, like most parents, by time I get some quiet time, all I want to do is sleep.

In my free time I spend the greatest amount of it with my kids since at their young ages, time with them is my priority. This is closely followed by time with my wife. Which leaves time for myself sitting in third position (and that is why I rarely write in this blog).

I think that his why so few people walk the path, they simply don't have time or make the time to think about living a fulfilled life. Instead they are busy just being on whatever path they are on. Which in a sense feels like you are not on any path. Instead you are simply punching the clock and the days and months fly by without ever thinking about, much less achieving your dreams, goals and desires.

This equates to an unfulfilled life, the proverbial path to nowhere. So knowing where the path is and walking the path takes effort, discipline and time management. You have to have a plan to make time to search for the path - which some days might be sitting with your thoughts and other days it is just making sure you workout. Every day comes with a different challenge and a different way to balance your life out.

At the end of the day, staying on the path comes down to balancing out your life. It is as much art as it is science. Balancing your life takes time and dedication to listen to your inner self and nourishing your body, mind or soul. Some days we are more balanced and centered than others.

There is no doubt that finding the path and staying on the path seems easy, but is probably the hardest thing we as human beings can do.