“Happiness may well consist primarily of an attitude toward time”. — Robert Grudin
Is this not a BFO? A Blinding Flash of the Obvious?
Recently, I shared with our son that I’m especially challenged this year to spend time with him.
I feel it, but can’t tell if he does. He most likely does, even if he can’t put his finger on it.
Figure it out Jeff. You need to figure this out. The clock is ticking. He just turned nine. You only get a nine year old for one year. Then they turn ten.
This question is vague. And also vague sometimes, is my courage to admit I’m at mid life and that the clock is ticking.
If I’m to do something great. If I’m to make a difference. I’m I’m to quit making excuses. If I’m to leave my comfort zone behind.
I must start now. The reality of these simple truths is just the tip of the iceberg. Here’s a short, and fairly insignificant You Tube video from three weeks ago as I viewed my very first actual icebergs near Greenland:
Did I mention the clock is ticking? Carpe diem, jeff noel
“People tend to follow the beaten path. The difficulty is that the beaten path doesn’t seem to be leading anywhere”. — Charles M. Mathias, Jr.
Just wanted to share this because it begs the question, “If the path leads nowhere, why are we following it”?
I know exactly why? Because we get into a poor habit of “going through the motions“. Click hereto see what You Tube offers to see & hear the song.
This video song has the power to change your life, but only if you watch and listen.
Most of us also have a poor habit (it’s one of my worst) of being insanely busy.
You know what, don’t watch it. Go ahead and continue on your pitiful path, the beaten path. But please don’t try to tell me you’ve done your best if you can’t invest four lousy minutes.
Choice is yours. Always is. Always was. Always will be.
“What if 1.2 million (just 3%) male Baby Boomers did something uncommonly great before they died”?
And then their influence, in the process, inspired others to think about their own responsibility to leave the world better than they found it?
And it started to trickle over to women baby boomers, and then Gen X-ers and Gen-Y and then Millennials, and so on and so forth until it rippled all the way down to our young children in elementary schools.
That the seeds of mental, physical, spiritual and financial responsibility were planted by great examples, their teachers, parents, relatives, neighbors.
“I want to challenge the top 3% of the male Baby Boomers to do something great before they die. As small as mending an important relationship, to helping raise money until a cure is found for an incurable disease”.
There, what was that, about 12 seconds?
Nearly eighty million Baby Boomers. Half are men. The top 3% of 40mil is 1.2 million.
These men, the elders, the movers and shakers, owe it to the world to leave it better than it is now.
They’ll have more discretionary income and certainly more discretionary time.
I challenge them to get off their butts and do something great.
Mid Life Thursday. We’ve been living in central Florida for 25 years. We even live within a couple miles of Disney’s Magic Kingdom and Disney’s Epcot Theme Parks.
Disney is the area’s biggest employer. and at Disney World, Thursday is payday. Some 60,000 pay checks every week, I think.
There are acronyms for the Disney Theme Parks. Take E – P – C – O – T:
Employee Paychecks Come on Thursday
Every Person Comes Out Tired
Every Parent Carries One Toddler
Experimental Polyester Costumes Of Torture
People have wild imaginations to figure these acronyms out.
I’d wanted to apply that same creativity and fun into figuring out my mid life crisis.
So, I tried. Here’s what I came up with back in the 1990′s – Mid Life Celebration.
Have fun today. Use your mid life imagination. And your mid life fun factor.
And make it a GREAT Thursday. If not today, when? Carpe diem, jeff noel
Mid Life Wednesday. Hump day is the traditional term many Americans use to describe the middle day of the work week.
Just get over the hump. Get through Wednesday. Then the weekend will be almost here.
There have been jobs in my life where I felt like that and jobs where I didn’t.
“My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can”. — Cary Grant
Mid life is sort of like hump day. We try to get through life as best we can. If we’re careful, we can get to mid life and have a good grasp on who we are and where we’re headed.
However, if you’re like me, you’ll find yourself asking, “Is this all there is? There’s got to be more”.
Whether it’s hump day, Monday, Friday or even the weekend, I promise to live in the moment. As best I can, I make that promise with good intentions.
What I have discovered, by the way, is that there is so much more than I ever thought was possible.
I’m the CEO of Me, Inc.
Same with you. It’s up to you to feel this way. Mid life is about accepting responsibility for your outcomes and then working very hard to choose the right path for the outcomes you seek.
During my college years 1977 – 1983, there was a classic rock station in Philadelphia, WMMR 93.3. Zeppelin, The Who, Doors, Rolling Stones, Eagles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Genesis, Foghat, CCR, BTO, ELO, REO, Bad Company, Black Sabbath – you get the picture.
Tuesdays were a double shot, or two songs by the same artist for the price of one. Here ya go, two-fer Tuesday:
“One’s action ought to come out of an achieved stillness; not a mere rushing on”. — D. H. Lawrence
“I think in every country that there is at least one executive who is scared of going crazy”. — Joseph Heller
Makes me wonder, “How many people are walking around, just a few steps away from a meltdown”?
If we can’t learn to be still, we can’t heal ourselves from the mid life crisis that leads to going crazy.
If not today, when? If not this week, when? If not this month, when? This year? Then when?
