Maximizing Your Life vs. Survival

What is it to have truly lived a full life, or put a better way by William Wallace, "Every man dies. Not every man really lives."  So many of us get stuck just existing, piddling away our days or more likely getting distracted by the day in day out events our either our lives or the the lives of the people around us.  My life the past 2 years has reflected this arc where due to a death in my family, my wife sunk deep into depression and has basically had to piece her life back together.  Meanwhile my kids are at a great age where their lives are simply exploding with all sorts of activities and adventures.  For many years I have anticipated this phase of my life where I get to coach teams and truly soak in life through the eyes of children. There is no doubt that the world is a magical, mysterious and amazing place to a 4 year old.  Every day is met with a combination of excitement, innocence and adventure.  But life also does not go the way any of us want sometimes.  For a 4 year old this means dropping your drink on the ground if you don't like how it tastes and then breaking down crying.  For an adult we encounter and cope with all types of things we don't like.  Unfortunately our version of dropping the cup looks a lot different.  The pain and suffering usually happens on the inside and only in time does it manifest itself on the outside.  We buffer the disappointments, the pain and the suffering. Some are better at coping than others and life's obstacles make us stronger or at least more philosophical over time. 

We spend so much of our lives just trying to survive and this has been true for most generations of humans.  Simply staying alive for most people is an accomplishment.  However, I have always taken a different tact on life; I wanted to see what my life would look like if I truly tried to maximize my life.  Call it living life to its fullest, being a Rennaisance Man, or attempting to be the greatest version of myself that I can be - striving to do life the right way.  What does that mean to me:

• Greet each day with a positive attitude
• Be good to other people; be charitable; take care of those less fortunate than me
• Apply all of my skills and talents
• Seek out life's adventures through travel and exploration
• Consume the world's creativity through books, music, movies, and art
• Never stop playing
• Challenge myself physically; be fit; eat right; exercise

There is no doubt that I have done some of these things the past few years, but I have also felt like I have fallen short because I was simply in survival mode.  There was not enough time or energy to take life to the next level.  Why is it so easy to get off track and so hard to stay on track?  We simply take our eye of the prize and before we know it weeks, months and years fly by without even noticing that we have transformed into a mere shadow of our highest selves.  Our lowest selves are that part of us that simply wants to sit on the couch and not work out, or just say yes to that little piece of cake at a child's birthday party, or even forgetting what makes us happiest in life.  For me, writing has always been the one thing that has made me happy and centered.  I am most connected to my higher self when I put pen to paper and connect with my soul.  We all carry around so much wisdom inside of ourselves that we don't know how to tap into. If we just think about it we know the next right thing to do or how to react to situations. Where does this wisdom come from?  What is our higher self?  Is this a connection to our soul or to God?  In the book Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss, he touches on this subject of tapping into the wisdom of all the previous lives we have lived.  This also touches on the concept of new souls vs. old souls.  People that take life in stride are move evolved in some way or maybe they have just done this more times so they have more experiences to draw upon.

There is no doubt we all aspire to live a great and grand life.  We do want to suck the marrow out of life and experience all that life has to offer, but we also don't want to lose sight of what is more important - truly appreciating what we have and the time we have with loved ones.  How we go about figuring that out is truly a personal choice.  For me, that means finding time to get perspective and then re-entering life and giving everything I have to make the most of this precious life. 

Facing Adversity

This is a large topic and one that in the stage of life I am in right now seems like a topic I revisit on almost a daily basis. I am not sure it is the age I am at, but guessing it has something to do with it.  My parents and my friend's parents are getting older, some have even died at what seems like a young age for our society, I have a young family, my career is hitting its stride, my marriage is 10 years old, and I am starting to see a future filled with challenges around financing my life, education for my kids, and my retirement. 

In my 20's and 30's, the adversity I faced was so different, but no less stressful.  Career and family were where I focused a great deal of my time and energy.  Life outside of those was consumed by friends and fun.  I wanted to see more of the world and I slowly but surely chipped away at that.  There was always the hope that I could turn a big idea into a quick million, but I chased peace of mind more than a large wallet.  I had not established a career and that was something I tirelessly pursued into my late 20's.  While I waited for the right woman to show up in my life, I did a ton of soul searching and inner work.  I read, I wrote, I thought, I stared and sometimes I just questioned.  But through it all I persevered and built myself up.  I had answers to most questions and where I did not have answers I had philosophies and points of view.  I had dug deep inside myself and challenged the world around me.  I built character and developed my world view.  I grappled with my faith and searched for my own higher power and did not limit my search to my upbringing.  I looked at different religions from all over the world for perspectives I had not considered.  I assembled various threads of truth and purity to weave together my fabric. Through it all I got a true sense of who I was and who I wanted to be in the world.  I sketched bold lines in my life and tried like heck to not cross them at all costs.

Then came my 40's and life took on all types of new challenges that have tested what I have constructed.  I am not sure how I would have survived the adversity of the past few years without my foundation and my faith. Everyone faces adversity, but is part of the human condition to struggle?  Do we truly grow in the face of adversity?  Is it possible to build character without facing life's challenges like death, working at relationships, creating financial stability, and stoking career ambitions? 

I guess another way to look at this is what makes us look deep inside ourselves?  Because only by turning and looking into our deepest beliefs and motivations do we find faith.  I truly believe that we all carry around God within us, but few of us set out on the quest to discover and unlock that relationship.  Only when we are at our weakest do most of us turn to our faith for guidance.

Is the truest test of all what we do in the face of adversity?  In my case, I have chosen to stand as tall as I can and stare adversity in the face.  I have decided to put all that I know and all that I have learned to the test.  I have decided to fight my way through it and not give up on those people closest to me.  I truly do not know why I have done this as I know many in similar situations who took the easy way out or in some cases had it far worse and the only answer was to run...as quick as you can in the other direction.   In many ways, if I run away from the adversity I am facing, I am running away from all of my core beliefs.  Namely:

1. God would not give me more than I can handle
2. Always take the high road - the view is much better in the short and long run
3. Be loyal to other people
4. Remember where you came from
5. What you do in the face of adversity shows what type of person you are
   

When all is said and done, I contend that most of the lessons we have learned are found in the face of adversity. The challenges we face and overcome fuel our souls and propel our lives forward. How we handle failure is far more important than how we handle success for in those moments when we are filled with doubt, regret, pity and possibly a loss of will is when we best understand who we are as people. We know who are friends really are. We understand if our core beliefs are validated. We understand and want to explore the greater truths of the world.

My Compass

We all have a natural built in compass but so few of us know how to read our compass. Many people simply never take the time to look at it because we are too busy with our lives. Finding your compass requires us to reflect on life, understand where we have been, chart where we want to go and then figure out how to navigate our ways to our destination.

Some of us are not even bold enough to plot a direction. Why is that? I think it is all based on fear as committing to a direction means we are not also committing not to take our life in other directions. The fear of choosing 1% over the 99%. What is everyone so scared of? Realistically none of us will get to our destinations 100% of the time, but even if you get 80 or 90% of the direction correct, aren't you better off than not even starting the journey? Life has a way of shifting and humans have a unique ability to adapt as we proceed through the journey of life. We need to have faith that as things shift along the journey, we will shift as well and still make our way along the path to our intended destination.

This shifting is the challenging and oftentimes enjoyable part of the journey. Life throws all types of barriers in our way and how we adapt and continue to move down the path is in many ways the reward when we look back. Oftentimes, I am amazed at how I had the ability to overcome what life has thrown in my way and my ability to handle adversity and persevere.

Why do we persevere?

I think the key to perseverance is having an incredibly meaningful reason why you want to accomplish a goal or reach a destination. The stronger that desire the more willingness we all have to overcome adversity along the way. It all comes to a why - why are we chasing what we are chasing? If that why is incredibly powerful and meaningful to you, then the full commitment of your will power is stronger than anything life can throw in your way. There is a no stopping a fully committed person.

So how does someone get fully committed?

The key here is so yes to one thing and no to countless other possibilities. You need to separate the wheat from the chafe and have singular focus on a goal. From there you are dangerous so to speak as you can fully align your day to day decisions in alignment with achieving that goal. The hard part is simply saying yes to one thing.

If we all took just one thing and got fully committed to that singular goal, I have no doubt lives would change for the better. In my own life, when I used this in my personal and professional life, I saw dramatic changes. When I start out on a job search for example, I define in explicit detail exactly the job I am looking for which focuses and centers what I consider. What happens next is absolutely fascinating as all types of opportunities arise, but most of them are simply distractions. Saying yes also requires us to say no quite a few times. Life can be incredibly distracting and if you don't have a clear connection with a goal and your internal compass, then you will invariably sway off course. Given time and some focus, eventually the right types of opportunities that are in line with our goal do present themselves. Then you can actually start to make progress towards your eventual goal.

I am not saying it is easy. It takes a great deal of faith to pull this off as there are many dark days where you question if the right opportunity will ever present itself. But if you have the lens through which you look at the world - your lens - then life will be much clearer. You can filter out things that will create a lack of focus and in other cases opportunities are very close and you can mold those to be more in line with your goal. However, you can only do this when you know what you are looking for.

One last thought here, I mentioned faith. I have always felt we bring the energy, people and opportunities into our life that we ask for. There is no doubt this touches on your sense of spirituality and I have felt that if I know what I want and do the work to define the why, then this creates some type of energy in the universe. Invariably when I put this energy out, it comes back to me within a matter of days. I guess some call this faith, serendipity, or simply luck. But for me it is reinforces my underlying assumption that there is a bigger force in the universe that governs everything we do in and after our lives.