If you knew you had only one year to live, what would you do, and how would you spend your time?
What matters most to you?
I love to ask myself this clarifying question, as it’s so easy to get stuck in a rut, or diverted and hung-up on things that don’t really matter.
We can live life out of habit, of doing what we’ve always done, or what we think we’re supposed to do, instead of living the life we want to live.
We can forget, we’re always at a point of decision, and we can make a different choice.
I love the story of a man who’d been given a terminal diagnosis. He was called into the doctor’s office months later for some good news; they’d made a mistake and he wasn’t going to die.
The doctor was shocked at the man’s response; he was furious. He wasn’t mad at the initial mistake. He was mad to find out he was going to live.
As the story goes, the man, when faced with imminent death, had finally given himself permission to live the life he wanted, and he was enjoying life for the first time.
He now felt he had to return to living a normal life, bound by expectations and duty. In finding out he was going to live a longer life, the ‘excuse’ of limited time to do as he wanted, was gone.
He was now faced with making a decision; a decision to continue really living, or return to a life he didn’t enjoy.
We can believe we have no choice, but in reality, we’re always at a point of decision.
Years ago, Raymond Charles Barker’s book, The Power of Decision, awakened me from a stupour of living life by accident, to one of conscious decision.
For many years, I’d lived life as I thought I was supposed to, never asking the question about what I really wanted my life to stand for. I lived what I called an incidental life, like a support character in my own life.
I let life live me instead of really living my own life. I’d followed along in what I thought was expected of me, quite prepared to live a cookie-cutter life, based on erroneous assumptions.
It was like sleep-walking through life, following the footsteps of others who’d gone before me. It was pretty comfortable and safe to stay in the rut I’d carved out, but it wasn’t going to allow me to live to my full potential. Before then, I’d never stopped to consider what I really wanted my life to be.
We have choice in how we live and spend each day, but sometimes we forget. We aren’t what happens to us in life, we are what we do with what happens.
We can follow along in the rut that seems carved for us, or we can make a decision to step outside the rut, and carve our own path.
It’s said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
While it may not be insanity, it’s curious indeed how easy it is to get stuck in a rut and stop living a life of conscious choice.
We can feel like we’re drifting through life, pulled forward by life’s demands and the habits we’ve created.
There’s power in making it a practice to reflect on our lives and ask ourselves what we’d really love to do.
Don’t let your song die unsung. Again, if you knew this was the last year you had to live, how would you spend your time?
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.