LIVING YOUR OWN LIFE

There are people that are highly motivated, energetic, accomplished multi-taskers. They are busy but are organized and energetic and often accomplish a great deal. I think they accomplish so much because they are able to concentrate and focus on reaching their goals.

Another type of person never seems to accomplish much of anything. They may even have a lot of projects they have started but, over time, it is obvious that few things ever get finished. I think that a lack of focus, when combined with a short attention span both contribute to a great deal of unfinished business.

I suspect that they may never have discovered a defining passion, interest or purpose. Because of this many things are needed to fill their time, but none of them interest them enough to work on something and complete it.

If however, you don’t take the time to discover something you want to do, to look within yourself to find what really interests and engrosses you, you are leaving yourself open to letting someone else do it for you.

A second hand way of living through somebody else is fine when we relax and read a work of fiction or see a movie. In real life however, how much of someone else’s life do we want to observe. Instead, with a bit of initial effort,  we might be enjoying our own lives and experience.

Steve Jobs the technology entrepreneur lived only a few years beyond the age of 50. At some point he is quoted as saying: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary”.

In the movie Avenue Montaigne one of the characters speaking to his son says: there comes a point in your life where you stop talking about the time ahead of you and start to think about the time left. 

Whatever your age, you can always think about the time ahead and what you want to do with it. A wise woman Marsha Sinetar wrote a book in 1987, called ‘Do What you Want, the Money will follow’; so will the life you want.