Have you ever heard that old saying, “never put off until tomorrow, what can be done today?” My guess is yes. Admittedly, when I first heard it, it didn’t resonate with me.
I had that “tomorrow” or “next time” mentality. I wasn’t overly fired up about my life, so I saw no need to rush. But, as I got older, I started to realize what the heart of that saying really was, regret.
Obviously, there was some youthful ignorance there, but what’s the excuse for adults? This awareness and conscious acceptance of that truth didn’t happen for me until I was in my mid 20’s struggling with depression.
The time factor
I recently read several articles that were talking about the biggest regrets people said they had in their lives, and the one thing all of the responses had in common was time.
Truth is, no matter how your life plays out or what your regrets are, at the end of the day, your wish is that you could control your time, so you could take the things you’ve learned and use them to make your life that much better.
Like how great would it have been to know how to build that successful business, that came in your 50’s, back in your 20’s?
How much deeper would you have loved if you knew exactly which people were going to die much too soon?
Would you have stopped playing so small and gone all in on your dreams if you knew that all of your “tomorrows” or “somedays” would become “nevers”?
There are only so many minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years in a lifetime. Unfortunately, we don’t get to know at the beginning when our clock is going to run out.
But, we all get the knowledge that it will. And, we get to make the choice to use that knowledge, or throw it to the back of our minds, like that class project you’re going to put off until the very last minute, then live with regret later on.
The power to choose
Did you catch the key word in that last sentence? If it’s not obvious, let me just tell you, it’s “choice.”
The biggest separator between people with a laundry list of regrets and those with just a few, is choice. Choice is your greatest power. And when it comes to how you are going to spend the limited amount of time you have in this life, you get to choose.
Most people, if we’re being honest, choose every day to just be alive. They’re not truly living their lives. They choose to use their time playing it safe, staying within their comfort zones, and conforming to the standards that others set for them.
The sad reality is, most people have to come face-to-face with their own mortality before something clicks, and they start to understand the value of those choices.
We’ve all heard the stories – people get into horrific accidents, recover from stage 4 cancer, or some other near death experience, and suddenly they understood the value of every minute of their life.
That’s how my life was for the first 26 years. I woke up everyday thinking that life was happening to me, not for me. I was a victim, and never thought that I had any power or control in my life.
What I didn’t realize was that I had been making a choice all along – just not the one I wanted. During that 26th year, I suffered a severe anxiety attack that forced me to make another choice.
After six months of waking up every day dealing with a variety of debilitating symptoms and undergoing a ton of medical testing, I was told that it was all physical manifestations of stress and anxiety.
After believing in my heart that the doctors were wrong, I then became pissed off. But you know who I was pissed off at? Me!
How could I be so weak? How could I allow myself to fall to this level? How could I ever live a decent life if I couldn’t even control my own mind and body? Those were the questions I was constantly asking, and beating myself up over.
You know the funny thing about questions? They provide perspective. I love what Tony Robbins says, “the quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions you ask.” For me, I was asking all the wrong questions, therefore, I had the completely wrong perspective and was getting all the wrong results.
All of my questions were focused around my weaknesses, therefore, I believed I was a weak, powerless person. But, one day something clicked, and I asked a different question.
Instead of asking how I could be so weak, I asked myself these questions, “what if those physical manifestations were proof of the power of your mind? If you have the power to build the life you don’t want, shouldn’t you have the power to build the one you do?”
Immediately, everything changed. My perspective switched, and I understood that I am an abundantly powerful being. From there, it came down to my choice. Do I step into this new truth, and start living the way I’ve always wanted, or do I keep doing things the way I’ve been doing, and keep getting the same results?
I realized how valuable my time was, and knew that I didn’t want to spend another minute taking my life for granted and living from a place of fear.
The difference between UNCOMMONERS and others, is that we’ve been awakened to the value of our choices and our power, and decided to consciously take control of those choices to design and build the lives we desire to live for however long we get to live it.
Putting it all together
Life is hard. Can I get an Amen? But, it’s also an adventure, and the greatest blessing we have. I mean think about all the things that had to go right in order for you to be here reading this today – A LOT! And, in case you haven’t realized it yet, YOU ONLY GET ONE OF THESE! There’s no redos or mulligans in the game of life. UNCOMMONERS get that. So, if you want to live your UNCOMMON Life, rather than one filled with regrets, you need to stop waiting until tomorrow, and start living today! Comment below with how you plan to start doing that.
