On an average we more or less live to see our 75th birthday. So, which means we have 52 Saturdays a year X 75 gives us 3900 Saturdays in our life time. So, if you are 25 years old, you have 2600 Saturdays to go. And if you are 35 you have 2340 Saturdays left. You get the equation.

A good exercise I’d like for you to take on is to visit a toy store this weekend and buy some marbles pertaining to how many Saturdays you got left. Then put them in a Jar and every Saturday, take one out and throw it away. You will get a sense of your time remaining on this planet, as the jar begins to empty. This should put things in perspective if the last post had not given you a jolt to focus on what’s truly important to you. Life is truly precious and you have one shot at it, and it is entirely your choice what you make of it.

As the saying goes “You control your destiny or someone else will do it for you”

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Are you really present to the downside of not living a life on purpose?

Today, we will explore the art of living life fully and powerfully. The key ingredient in making that happen is to pursue your calling. As simple as it sounds, in my experience what I have noticed is often times people are not bought into pursuing their passion. What I mean by that is, we don’t really believe that we can live a life doing what we love and be successful at it. And then we can come up with myriad of reasons to justify our excuse – circumstances, don’t have the skills, lack of money, competition is too fierce, don’t have the know-how, if it wasn’t for their parents, or the last boyfriend or their mother-in law and the list goes on and on. The alternate approach then is to take on a position or job that pays the bills, and in some cases pays handsomely. By then, one gets used to the lifestyle and comfort zone, that doing something different or stepping outside of the ordinary doesn’t seem like a practical option. Yes, we may occasionally toy with that idea of what life would be like if we were pursuing our passions, but then circumstantial evidence pulls us back into status quo, and the dream is put on the back burner. Years roll by, and one day we are lying on our death bed with one regret and that is only if I had pursued my calling?

A little dramatic, yes, but you get my point.

So, before attempting to identify how we go about finding our passion, it is imperative that we understand what the impact is of not pursuing our passion. Below are a few of the top 5 reasons:

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Welcome back!
Hope you have had a chance to take the time to do the exercises of identifying the principles and values that are important to you. If not, I highly recommend you do that now. This post can wait, it’s not going anywhere and you can come back to it later.

If you have gotten clarity on your top 10 values and principles, then Congratulations! We will take the next step towards building a proficiency in a set of tools that will accelerate your progress towards success. Success as I define it is a logical progression towards worthy goals. There is in reality nowhere to get, even if you spent the rest of life not achieving anything, you may survive, and perhaps be totally fine. But, that’s not the point, it is not a destination to get to, but the person you become along the way. Hence success is defined as a journey and not the destination.

Let’s get to the tools. I will share my top three aces in my tool kit when used consistently will produce extraordinary results. The importance of these three skills cannot be overstated.

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Problems are a sign of life. As Norman Vincent Peale once casually remarked that ‘The only people on this planet who don’t have problems are the ones in the grave’. Your perspective and your world view make all the difference in how you go about handling it. For instance, two people could experience the same problem, and yet one would use it as a launching pad to breakthrough to a higher realm of opportunities, where as the other may wallow in self-pity. Is one approach more right than the other? I don’t think so, because when one takes the path of judgment, then we tread into the space of morality – good/evil, right/wrong. And, really morality is quite subjective; it is an agreement reality that exists today passed on from generations to generations to maintain social order and harmony. And some of it works, and some doesn’t but yet I would refrain from making it right or wrong or good or bad.

My primary objective is to ensure that as a human being we live a life of power, freedom and full self-expression. Living a life that embodies our highest values and dedicating ourselves to a cause greater than ourselves. And any approach that aids in that direction is effective and the one that takes me away from the person I want to become is discarded. So, the next important question becomes, how do I know if I am making the choices that are effective? Well, the best manner that I recommend to my clients is to go through a self-introspection workout at the end of which one gets clarity on the principles and values that are important to us.

If you haven’t taken the time to reflect and identify your principles and values that you stand for – then life can be a tumultuous journey, like a ship at sea with no rudder and no map. Directionless, subject to life’s ups and downs, with no learning derived from events and more than likely to repeat the same behaviors and attracting the same kind of pain. Have you noticed how we attract the same kind of person in personal relationships? The same threshold of financial success? The same challenges of well-being? In some cases we do better than the other, but nevertheless the pain persists, even if we camouflage it with an escapist attitude. I want you to take this moment to become present to the impact now and the cost of living like this into the future..5 years, 10 years from now. Also, become present to the impact on others. You could continue living like this, a mediocre existence or you could choose to live an extraordinary life.

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Yes – And here’s how -

Firstly, it is important to remind ourselves and get grounded in the distinction that: ‘Life is whatever meaning we want to give it’. So, in every situation we do have a choice of what interpretation we give to an incident. However, very seldom do we remind ourselves that we have a choice and consciously choose a response. We tend to go on auto-pilot and let the neurons in our brains fire and take over. We tend to collapse the stimulus and response, and give it a default meaning. The default meaning arises from the years of conditioning we have had, the experiences, the role models, the events in our lives, the results we have produced etc, which is nothing but the past. This results in a context that gets created around the content, which suddenly takes the power away from us, the possibility of inspiration which we had prior to the setback vanishes and we find ourselves being victim of the circumstances. In other words, consider that context is decisive. What changed prior to the setback was the context. The content may have very well altered, but the inspiration is not a product of the content, it is directly proportional to the context that you operate in.

For instance, majority of us operate in the following realm:
If X seems possible, then Y is present and if X seems impossible, then Y disappears

X: Content
Y: Context

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We all need an occasional jolt to shock us out of our comfort zones. Many of us have been so caught up with the day to day chores at work or at home that we have lost sight of what is truly important to us. Some of us have become resigned and cynical about ever getting to living a life of our dreams. And the rest of us are waiting for circumstances to change someday so that we can then truly begin to live life fully. I ran into a woman at one of my seminars – who has been wanting to become an actress and sing professionally for the last 20 years and has been waiting for circumstances to change.

Here’s something radical that I am going to share with you – it ain’t going to change and you will continue this way for the rest of your life. And that you will survive. How do we know that? – because you have managed to survive so far. Unless we make a conscious effort towards getting in touch with ‘What’s truly important to us?’ and then executing a sound strategy we won’t be able to break out of this vicious cycle of survival.

Before we even get to what’s important to us. It is really important to first become aware of the survival mode that we are in. Consider that we are going through motions day in and day out and have reduced our life to a mere existence. How do we know we are surviving and not thriving? The ultimate litmus test is to check-in to see if you are living life powerfully, being fully self-expressed & joyful. If not, then take it on that you are surviving, in other words merely existing.

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