You are a ghost driving a meat-covered skeleton made of stardust, riding a rock, hurtling through space. What do you have to be afraid of?
Unknown
Put it in perspective.
You live on a speck of rock hurtling through our immense galaxy at 140 miles per second. If you’re lucky, you’ll live for 100 years. Out of the 250 thousand years that humans have been around (or even the 10 thousand if you fly that way), your one hundred years will be but the barest blink of the historical eye. Even if you became the most famous person in the world, your legacy would only last 4 thousand or so years and would have to be pieced together from the shards that are left behind from this society.
What is important to you?
You can choose to believe that the above perspective shift takes away your power by showing your insignificance. Or you can choose to believe that it puts the power in your hands to define what IS important and to create a world around you that matters TO YOU.
Take a moment, grab a sheet of paper and pen. Write down what is important to you when you stop thinking about the TPS Reports and how you are going to put food on the table. This is a list just for you, nobody else will see it. What shows up in your list?
Here’s what mine would look like:
- Helping people feel powerful
- Being in nature (and showing other people ways to be in nature)
- Creating community (I also refer to this as my family or my tribe)
- Sharing food with my community
- Following my self-defined values (being a good person)
- Personal reflection and growth (but not too much)
- Having fun (but not too much)
- Being a ‘good’ husband (according to my values)
- Laughing often
- Fixing ‘things’
- Taking time to just breathe
DO SOMETHING!
We sometimes get lost in the idea that we are ‘too busy’ to do the things we care about. We get wrapped up in succeeding instead of being. We get scared of failure and opt to do the ‘safe’ things instead of the things that actually matter to us. What if you chose something else, for just 30 minutes per day? What if you focused on just ONE item on your list and made sure to include that important thing into your life on a daily basis for the next month? How would your experience change? How would your short stint on this rock be better?
The world isn’t waiting for you to be great. Only YOU are waiting for you to be great. Take a tiny amount of time and do something to work towards that greatness today. It won’t be comfortable, but it will change you.
What is your something today?