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.

Don't Drop It

“The Juggling Act of Life”

By Erika Liodice

As we get older, life, it seems, becomes increasingly filled with commitments and responsibilities. Most days I find myself running from one task to the next: eating lunch in my car as I frantically run errands over my lunch break, squeezing in phone calls to family and friends during my ten minute drive to work, and agonizing over work assignments and deadlines while I sleep. My car is my virtual office, my Facebook page is my only connection to my loved ones and I tend to think of life in key strokes, wishing I could CTRL + Z (undo) my error in judgement the other night when I added too much detergent to the laundry and found myself swimming in a sea of bubbles. Sometimes it feels like my mind and body never truly rest. And I’m not even 30.

Former CEO of Coca Cola Enterprises, Brian G. Dyson, describes it best, “Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. You name them – work, family, health, friends and spirit – and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – family, health, friends and spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.”

So how can we all do a better job of maintaining balance in our lives? Here are a five simple rules I try to live by:

1. Decide what’s most important in your life and don’t take those things for granted.
2. Learn the beauty and the power of the word “no.”
3. Respect your time; don’t waste it on things that don’t matter to you.
4. Do your best and learn to accept when that’s just not enough.
5. Don’t take anything personally.

Erika Liodice is the author of Beyond the Gray, a motivational blog for anyone chasing a dream, and a regular contributor to travel e-zines Lehigh Valley Insite and The Savvy Explorer.

Graphs?

Some simple numbers to show the possibilities when giving up isn’t an option, and neither is dreaming small dreams.

1. 30,000+:  Number of Monthly Visits
2. Five:  Number of Daily blogs written
3. 200:  jeffnoelmidlife You Tubes uploaded, in past 8 months
4. Hundreds of thousands of Monthly Page Views
5. First:  Google Page display for all five blogs
6. Last:  Where I want to be (humble, least, meek)

Raising enough money to find a cure for an incurable disease.

Impossible is nothing.

Thank you for your visits.  There are enormous plans for Mid Life Celebration. This is just the beginning. Together, we can and will help shape the world in a way that teaches young children personal responsibility, beginning in elementary schools.

Relax and Enjoy?

“What can be added to the happiness of a person who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscious?” — unknown

If ever there was a logical goal in life, perhaps this one should be near the top.

Simple.

Elusive.

Impossible?

This is probably where we take a wrong turn. Somewhere. Somehow. It happens.

But we are completely unaware.  For a long time. A really long time. Maybe a couple decades.

We somehow miss the turn, get lost, and then end up at the proverbial midlife crisis.

It’s a ton of work to overcome decades of status quo.

It’s a ton of work to start a business. It’s a ton of work to get healthy and stay healthy. It’s a ton of work to save enough for retirement. It’s a ton of work to have a peaceful and contented spirit.

Everything is a ton of work.

It’s very similar to the early pioneers. This is the follow up video to the one from a few weeks ago. It was the burning sunset that prompted me to stop.

Unscripted and one-take, the way You Tube videos are traditionally done.

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.

No Easy Answer

Two simple choices:

1. Ease up and just deal with whatever comes your way
2. Proactively, relentlessly pursue a cure

They both have pros and cons.

Welcome to life – the real world.

Two Simple Choices. Pick One.

As Simple As Common Clover

Do you often feel overwhelmed?  Me too.

And if you don’t, you’re either brilliant or clueless – I’m guessing anyway.

Human tendency is to complicate things. More is better.  Keeping up with what others have or do.  Newer.  Bigger.

Here’s how I alleviate, not eliminate, the stress of our daily burdens:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Simple. Wise. Powerful.

But there is a complexity we must break through in order to get to simplicity.

And it may take us a lifetime.

Life's Big Four

Do you lie to yourself?  We all do.

So?

So what are you going to do about it and when are you going to stop?

Mid Life Crisis.  Mid Life Celebration. Mid Life lies.

Life is about balancing life’s big four.  Life’s big four?

Yes. Life can be broken down into four basic segments:

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

It’s simple.  People think simple isn’t important. Simple is the most important of all.

That’s why no one has focused on it relentlessly.

Until 1980.

Children Watch Everything We Do

Have you ever done something you weren’t supposed to do?  And in order to do it, you had to do it in a sneaky way?  And often, there was a close friend who had already done the thing, and they helped you?

Smoking, drinking, stealing, bad pranks, and so on.

Seriously, these are things adults do not make a conscious effort to teach children.  Can you imagine a Mother saying, “Come here son, it’s time you learned how to smoke cigarettes.”

Heard a Chantix commercial last night. Chantix helps smokers quit. Let me set the scene:

Mom comes on saying, “I smoked a pack a day for 25 years. I could not quit smoking, no matter how hard I tried.”

Until one day……

“I told my son to promise me he would never start smoking.”

He said, “Promise me you’ll quit.”

And the Cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon.  Little boy blue and the man in the moon……he turned out just like me…..my boy was just like me….

Cats In The Cradle

It was hard wasn’t it?

How can you pick one single solitary song, when there are ten’s of thousands, if not hundred’s of thousands of songs to pick from?

So, after re-reading the list from yesterday’s blog post, it just hit me this morning.

“Cat’s In The Cradle“, by Harry Chapin is my all-time favorite song.

Our son will turn out just like me. This song reminds me everyday to be careful what I say and do.

What about you?

Simplicity is Complicated

Simplicity is an elusive goal sometimes.

Ok, simplicity is elusive most of the time.

But so are a lot of things that are important.  Should that stop us from our pursuit?

There is only one, resounding answer to this question.

And maybe by tomorrow I’ll have my movie soundtrack song(s) to share with the world.  This was a fun, and frustrating, exercise.

And anything but simple.

Should have seen it coming.

Chicago Tribune Building

Ever heard someone say what you say, but in a different way?

How’d it feel?

Some might feel threatened, because they thought their thoughts were original.

Some rejoice because it validates their thinking and belief system.

For me, it’s the latter.

Click here to go to Brian K. Rice, and his LeadershipConnextions blog. Brian quotes some of Gail Sheehy’s thoughts on Mid Life.

The purpose here today is simple – provide you with links, offering the same thing using different words.

PS. Tomorrow, we’ll revisit yesterday’s question.

They Could Ask You At Any Moment

“Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence.” — Saint Peter

Perhaps hope is elusive to us during a midlife crisis.

Perhaps hope surrounds us during a midlife celebration.

All this time, I’ve been asking you to think about your answer to the simplest, but most important question a young person may ask you.

Are you inspired enough now to come up with your own unique and special answer?