Yesterday I went to the beach. I was present for the entire day. I didn’t look at my phone and I focused on enjoying nature. I saw parrots, amazing ocean views, endless mountains and met a dog that kept licking my face.
All of these things have been at my disposal each day. The problem is we ignore them. We forget that there ain’t no rewind button on life.
We either enjoy these simple pleasures now or run the risk of never getting to experience them fully. I sat there yesterday and thought to myself “What if this is all there is?”
I pondered that thought all day until I realized that as long as I don’t want to rewind my life because of regrets I have, I’m happy.
Making the most of it
“As long as I can wake up and say I made the most of it, then I’m happy”
What I want you to realize is that making the most of it is not as difficult as it sounds. Sometimes this phrase sounds like a throwaway line like a lot of clichés.
The difference here is that making the most of it means saying yes to opportunities. I would never have gone to the beach yesterday unless I decided to make the most of it. My friend has a lot of wisdom to share and I got access to that. Let’s face it, I had nothing else locked in any way.
Okay, the drive was long, but how can I complain about driving in a nice car, on a beautiful day and watching nature do its thing. On the way, there were some incredibly strong winds and the rain was bucketing down. Then at the end of the day, there was this beautiful sunset with that golden colored sky. The ocean never looked so beautiful.
Have fun
There’s this illusion that we can have fun later. We think “Hey I’m hustling now to make money so I can have fun later.” Why wait, though? Why not have fun now?
By having fun right now, we give ourselves the motivation to push through the challenges that a lot of us decide to let stand in our way. You can’t rewind your life and insert fun in all the places where you left it out.
I’m guilty of this more than anyone. I spent seven years doing nothing but working without a single day of leave from the office. Yeah, I got lots of business skills from this hard work, but I also got this big gaping hole in my heart caused by the lack of fun I was having. During this time, I traded life for work.
“I became a robot on autopilot to society’s idea of success”
I thought I could outwork my unhappiness and have fun later. Now that I think about it is having fun when you are sixty and retired as fun as when you are 25? Hell no. At 25 you can run like Usain Bolt.
You have this energy and fire within that burns the brightest it’s ever going to burn. Now you can still do cool stuff when you are sixty; it’s just that it will be a different sort of cool stuff. Only having one flavor, and one time period of cool will cause you to want to rewind your life.
Smiling
Walking through the shopping mall the other day, I realized that adults don’t smile that much. I’m always the guy that is too serious and so laser focused on the next task for the day. And for what? So I can achieve more tasks than the guy sitting next to me eating a Cherry Ripe?
Concentrate on having variety in your life. There’s no reason why you can’t work hard, have fun and smile every day. Grab each of these spices of life and mix them together in a delicious bolognaise sauce now. Then, enjoy that bolognaise sauce with all aspects of your life mixed in daily.
Banker John
So there’s this banker I worked with. Real nice guy, family man, four kids. He always did a good job and I said to myself, “When we finish the current deal we are working on, I’m going to acknowledge and appreciate him.”
Guess what? He died the following week after I had that thought. I never got to say what I thought to him. Now he’s gone to a better place having never known the impact he had. There’s no rewind button for me to go back and say “Mate you did an excellent job and I love your passion for our mutual clients.”
Nope, he’s gone, never to return. Maybe we’ll meet someday as caterpillars in another life. Otherwise, I now know, and you now know, why you have to stop delaying sh”t.
A helping hand
“When I make a million dollars then I’ll lend a hand to someone else’s business. Then I’ll go and help out at a homeless shelter.”
These are the stupid lies we tell ourselves. If we’re not willing to lend a hand now, we won’t when we get the million dollars. The reason being that we will never have enough money or success. It’s what you do at the start of your career, business, life, that determines what you’ll do when you hit the big time buster!
“The worst feeling in the world is getting to the end of your life, when you are on your deathbed, and realizing you helped no one”
You had so much value to give to the world and you did nothing. Okay, you lined your pockets and got your family all they wanted, but who did you become?
Lending a hand gives us meaning in our life. This kind act allows us to transcend our problems caused by selfishness, and cure ourselves and others, through the heartfelt act of helping out.
The regret of selfishness will come when you get older. By then, you’ll have less time to lend a helping hand. There’s somewhere you could go right now, where you could add tremendous value. That value is often masked in the stories, habits and achievements from the movie of your life.
It’s hard to believe, but people find value in what you think is irrelevant. I always thought my life story was stupid. Then I started sharing it and people found value in it. I didn’t get money from sharing my story; what I got was meaning for my life. I got the chance to lend a helping hand.
In case you forgot; there ain’t no rewind button on life.
