Are You Ready For Today?

Lists. Top ten lists.  Mid life.  Midlife lists. Midlife top ten lists.

Mind, Body, Spirit, Money.

Life’s Big Four.  Life’s four big decision areas.

All day long we make decisions around these four very simple concepts of mind, body, spirit and money. Mostly unaware.

Having answers to critical questions empowers us with a peace that is unknown to people still searching.

What they are searching for and why they pass by the obvious, is understandable and it is also sad. Humans are conditioned to complicate life. Complicated does not get us closer to peace.

Only discernment, organization and finally, determination to be focused and disciplined.

I know well. It’s taken me 50 years to figure it out.  Ok, I’m slow. But also determined.

There is hope for you and your dreams. If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a million times – there is no shortcut.

Rethink, Reprioritize, Recommit

Happy Monday everyone.  Hope you had a great weekend. I actually worked Saturday at my “real job” – yes, I’m a career employee at a large company.

This whole five daily blogs thing is like a hobby, like growing a garden or something. And as any avid gardener will tell you, “It’s a labor of love.”

Quite literally, a labor of love – for a child.

Anyway, back to the updates:

1.  Erika Liodice’s Mid Life Celebration Guest Blogger post yesterday was a first here. Please check out her site, Beyond The Gray, if you want a midlife perspective from a not yet 30-year old.  Erika gave me “my first big break” as a Guest Blogger.

2.  The numbers thing the other day. (gulp) Well, that was sort of like a time capsule to look back on later.

3.  February is about Peace. Peace to me means –  tranquility, balance, solace, contentment, harmony, simplicity, acceptance.

Spirit

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?

If it’s not, click here.

Google Alert

OK, good morning world.  How do you start your day?  Same way every time, or each day different?

Is it a chore?  Are you anxious or worried about all that will be expected of you?

Is it exciting?  An adventure in which you get to help others by what you do?

Each morning begins the same for me.  On my knees, three prayers. Kiss my wife and son as they sleep. Turn on all the computers. Head downstairs to make some coffee.

While coffee is brewing, head back upstairs to check emails on two computers.

Google alerts come in every day around a few key words.

Close Up

Facebook Page

The point is this, in case you haven’t figured this out yet: An idea virus (credit to Seth Godin) is something good that spreads because of the Internet.

It spreads much faster, and much farther, than without the Internet.

You get this right?  It’s common sense but not common…..

PS. Never asked them to post this on the company’s Facebook page. They did it anyway. Seems it was a good idea that spread.

Mid Life: A Celebration or Crisis?

Is it?

I mean seriously, humans have complicated life, in a noble attempt to simplify it. Haven’t we?

Perhaps greed is the underlying thread that has made simplicity so complex.

No matter, we continue our search for the meaning of life and the peace we hope to gain from embracing it – if only it would be revealed to us.

Tell you what, I’ll reveal it to you tomorrow and all your challenges will vanish.

Meanwhile, mull on this overnight:

If a child asked you, “What is the meaning of life?”, what would your immediate answer be?

Leadership Pair-of-Boxes?

Midlife leadership paradox, or, midlife leadership pair of boxes?

Pete Blank used to work as a Leader at The Walt Disney World Resort. Now, he’s an entrepreneur and Leadership coach and professional speaker.

I subscribe to his blog and wanted to share one that is particularly relevant as we pursue a mid life celebration.  Click here to read.

As we try so desperately to simplify, we apparently have complicated things and actually made them much worse.

Is this possible?

“I have no gift to bring, pa-rump-a-ba-bum….”

“….that’s fit to give a King, pa-rump-a-bum-bum….”

While thinking about what to write on a day like today, it’s incredibly humbling, and immensely joyful and glorifying to know that “I got nothin” on a day like today.

“Shall I play for you, pa-rump-a-ba-bum…..”

Evergreen - Finland

What Joy it is to simply be alive to experience Christmas Eve one more time.

It is so easy to take the gift of life for granted. Would you agree?

As we count our blessings for making it to mid life, let us endeavor to help others learn from our successes and our challenges.

You have my commitment. I’ll continue to write five daily blogs to help bring a balanced approach to life’s four big choices:

1. Mind
2. Body
3. Spirit
4. Money

What will you commit to?

Hey, I know its challenging to read all five every day. It is not an expectation, only a wish.

If I didn’t believe reading these each day would help others make the world a better place, I wouldn’t do it.

But I do believe.

And may I put it in a different perspective? Think about what it takes to write them, let alone simply read them.

Enjoy this Christmas Eve, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, please know that I wish you three simple things:

1. Peace in your Soul
2. Joy in your Spirit
3. Love in your Heart

Pretty cool.  Saw it engraved on a trophy at somebody’s desk a few days ago.

Clever, isn’t it, to engrave it on a bronze plate and put it on a trophy? No boundaries.  No limits. Nice reminder.

However, it doesn’t seem worth the effort to try something without limits, simply because it’s probably, if not entirely, impossible.

Why waste time on something that can’t be done?

But thankfulness, now that’s a completely different story. Anyone can give thanks.  For anything.

There is never a point where we can’t go farther with our thankfulness. Ever.  If you challenge this, I’ll challenge you. You see, every day you wake and try to tell me I’m wrong, is one more thing you can be thankful for – breathe in your nostrils and the ability to make a choice.

His confession was nothing alarming.  You see, we recently made an agreement that if he reaches a certain goal (with one of his daily chores) by the end on this month, he can pick out some Lego pods from the Lego store at Disney World (we live next door to Disney World).

However, while I was in Anchorage, Alaska this week, my wife got him one of these Lego pods.  They are small and inexpensive, in the big picture.

He was worried that he broke some sort of deal with me.  He did not. Not as far as I’m concerned anyway.

What he really did though, was remind me how thankful I am to have placed so much time and energy (worry) on developing honesty as a core value.  “You will never get in trouble for telling the truth”, is the mantra he’s heard over and over again.

This also makes me thankful for repetition.  Over and over again. Repetition is the “mother” of all learning.  It is the root of evil and the root of goodness.  But only if we focus on it, over and over again.

I must also be the most thankful person in the world so our son will understand how thnakfulness works.

Celebrating Thanksgiving every November, or going to Church once a week to give thanks simply doesn’t cut it.

I must become the most thankful person in the world.

There is no other way.

Not me.  So what can a person do?  Why not “roll with it“.  A phrase I learned a long time ago.  It means to take whatever you are given and “roll with it“, or make the most of it.

If you can’t change what you are given or presented with, why not make something good from it?  Because if we don’t, then we are destined, it would seem, to complain.  Who wants that? Here, let me demonstrate how simple this concept is. Please pay attention, it’s over in ten seconds.

What is at the heart of this, I believe, is that children provide adults with an opportunity to finally have someone in their lives more important them themselves.

This is a feeling that literally defies explanation.

And yes, there are readers here today that do not, and will not, have children.  That’s ok.  We are all blessed in wonderfully unique ways.  I am so thankful my wife and I are blessed to be parents.

“We learn as much from sorrow as from joy, as much from illness as from health, from handicap as from avantage – and indeed perhaps more”. — Pearl S. Buck

Maybe.  Maybe not.  What do you think?  Many mid life adults are too busy to even contemplate this kind of thinking.  I know full well the medicinal affects of a busy schedule. It can be used as a shield to protect us from painful truths.

“In youth we learn; in age we understand”. — Marie von Ebner Eschenbach

Mid Life learning?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

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.