Midlife heartbreak or midlife opportunity. Pretty simple. Two choices. You get to pick one.
If you and your spouse (and yes, want to acknowledge some readers will not be parents), worked hard all your life and played by the rules, and you gave birth to a child without eyes and never able to walk, which would you pick?
Mid Life heartache or mid life opportunity?
Well, there was a Family that had to make this choice. They were featured on ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition as well as numerous other media pieces, including a heartwarming You Tube Video feature, about 6 minutes long, available at the end of this post.
One of my “secrets” to unspeakable joy is the daily effort to read, listen, watch, experience, think, do and reflect on the countless blessings that surround my ordinary life.
You have all these blessings too. But in order to feel the Peace and Contentment that are the fruit of these blessings, you must become fully aware.
You must become willing to invest time everyday. Even if it’s only six minutes. Will today be another day to postpone your new beginning?
Yes. There are choices all day, every day. Like yesterday, when I posted about the person making snide remarks. My patience was quickly evaporating by the lack of what I would call “personal respect”.
There was a mid life crisis moment of choice – take the high road or take the low road.
So all I can hope to do is make good mid life crisis choices when I’m faced with the high road or the low road. Always take the high road. It’s uphill and more work. But the view is spectacular.
“Be not afraid of going slowly; be only afraid of standing still”. – Chinese Proverb
I just wrote a blog post at jeff noel.com about this very subject. About wondering if now is the right time, if the current approach is the right approach.
This type of potential self-doubt and potential fear, can sabatoge us from breaking through to something we can be great at. And something we should be great at. It’s just that we are late bloomers and are playing catch up.
This time delay – from creating a compelling vision - to it actually materializing, takes way longer than most people can comprehend. This is why people give up and stop,
So, be not afraid of going slow. Be afraid of stopping.
“Beware of the naked man who offers you his shirt”. — Harvey Mackay
By now, we know that there are many people who make tons of promises. Same with businesses, with marketing, with the Internet, and so on. False promises.
The real question is, to me, “What promises am I making to myself that are false promises? Promises to be wary of”?
This is one of the main reasons we find ourselves in a mid-life crisis.
We start with good, well-intended promises, but in reality, they were really only false promises:
Get healthier
Spend more time with Family
Learn more
Forgive more
Save more
Be a better example
No one should feel alone reading this. We all suffer from this. We’re human. That’s what we do, we fail. Over and over again.
So now, consciously reminded of this, “What are you gonna do about it? And I mean specifically, what are you gonna do today”?
“If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make a living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances”. — Albert Einstein
Meanwhile in my zip code, there’s a sea of upscale vehicles, yet the 1990 Toyota suites me perfectly.
There’s even a dinner-plate sized dent on the driver’s front fender. Was going to have it repaired until I realized how much that road-rage induced dent signified how lucky I am to still be alive.
In America, we are constantly tempted to keep up with the Joneses. Why? Because we are afraid of who we really are.
Would you rather be loved for who you’re not or hated for who you are?
“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.
