We have it all backward. We spend our work hours helping someone else build their dream, and spend our free time watching TV and surfing the internet. We think we enjoy these things – but this is a lie.
The truth is that these mindless things distract us from achieving the things we really want to achieve in life. They make us forget that time is the most precious and irreplaceable commodity in the world.
When your final countdown begins, you cannot buy more time. Not even if you’re a billionaire (Steve Jobs died at 56!) The time you’ve spent is all there is.
What’s scary? You don’t know when that final countdown will come. It may be fifty years from now, or ten years – or tomorrow. You’ll never know…
If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costumes and come back as a new character… Would you slow down? Or speed up? – Chuck Palahniuk
Every time you choose to put off your dreams – to avoid speaking your truth, or taking a risk on a better career, or backing down from talking to a beautiful woman – you are locking away your own happiness. You are your own jailor – and you hold the key to your imprisonment.
So many men live in a constant state of worry. They put themselves under intense amounts of pressure to live up to an ideal of “success” that you didn’t even create for yourself.
Most of us are so anxious about the future that we forget to live today. Next thing we know, decades have gone by – and we realize we forgot to smile, laugh and be happy.
Men waste their entire lives worrying about what others think of them. They place themselves in a destructive comparison trap, hung up on the achievements of others, while forgetting that millions of people would kill to have the exact life they’re living right now.
While you’re wishing you were someone else, someone else is wishing he was you.
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” – Epicurus
We have forgotten how to be present and have fun.
Think about a young boy you know. He’s 100% play. Even his work is playful. This is the natural state of man. We are not meant to dream of lives we don’t have – we are meant to be fully present and play our hearts out in this great big sandbox called life!
Somewhere along the line, though, many of us unlearn this natural instinct to play and have fun – then those people turn on others, and do their best to beat the fun instinct out of others around them. Many of us dream that someday if we attain some arbitrary level of success, we’ll be “allowed” to play and have fun again.
But that time doesn’t come unless we intentionally create it for ourselves.
You can play and have fun right now. The only person stopping you – is you.
Give yourself permission to enjoy each moment for its own sake. Life is full of little pleasures; fun moments; exciting surprises. All you have to do is open your eyes and let yourself see them.
Look, there is no pretty way to say this so I’m going to be real blunt with you:
To live life with no regrets, you need to live life with a higher sense of urgency. This is your life – and it’s ending one minute at a time.
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