Life Begins When You Do

Life Begins When You Do
by Mary Anne Radmacher

Nearly everyone postpones one grand thing or a collection of mighty hopes and dreams.

Between the quote marks of our lives are phrases like these: "When things slow down...when I finish my degree...when I get certified...as I acquire a deeper knowledge base...when I have kids...when the kids are grown...when I get well...when I marry...when I divorce...when I retire...when I get that promotion, that raise, that job, that house, that whatever the fill-in-the blank is for your specific postponing of life..."

Your Life Begins When You Do.

You may think you are postponing the longing of your soul until life aligns itself with your vision, until elements conspire to be more favorable...but as it happens, life just lolls along at the same remarkable consistent and disinterested cadence. Life is impartial. YOUR personal, subjective life (dreams, satisfactions, contentment, achievements, vision, fullness, passion, aspirations) begins when you begin.

From my teens into adulthood, I said, "I want to be an artist." One day I changed the sentence to, "I am an artist." My view changed. Life began. I looked behind me and saw that I had been accidentally living as an artist. I had been laying down a path that was only now visible to eyes that had begun to see. Beginning my life as an artist made my heart's longing and the small, tentative labors of my hands - visible and tangible. I began by opening the door and simply believing that I could live my dream. I began living that dream by seeing that I could.

Your purpose, that thing that among the many to-dos of your days, is what you must do. Embrace the truth of your purpose each minute of your precious life...for how very true it is that life begins when you do.

If you would dream it
BEGIN it.

If you have an idea
OPEN it.

If there is longing
ACKNOWLEDGE it.

If there is mission
COMMIT it.

If there is daring
DO it.

If there is love
SPEAK it.

If there is resource
USE it.

If there is abundance
SHARE it.

What's Important?

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Appreciating Impermanence

I saw a cartoon in a recent New Yorker magazine in which two people were finishing their dinners at a Chinese restaurant and had just opened their fortune cookies. One fortune read, “You are going to die.”

If you let this fact sink in — that life is short, and we all die — it can actually act as a powerful motivating force to help maintain focus and priorities. Everything changes and is impermanent, so are we fully present and making the most of this fleeting moment? Are we fully aware of what we are doing? Appreciating impermanence clarifies priorities, and it helps us identify any frenetic, shallow and ineffective activities we’re being distracted by. We see clearly the things that exhaust us and distract us from experiencing the blessing and opportunity of each particular day.

In Zen practice it is often said that the span of our lives is like a dew drop on a leaf — beautiful, precious, and extremely short-lived. Life is remarkably unpredictable. Whatever you want to accomplish, whatever is important to you, do it, and do it now — with as much grace, intensity, and sense of ease as you can muster.

None of us knows what life will bring. In any moment everything we take for granted can change. We must be careful not to dwell on impermanence constantly, to the point that we become paralyzed with fear of loss, but we can use an awareness of change on a deep and wise level to focus our priorities and increase our appreciation of the sheer beauty of existence.

As life seems to be moving at an ever increasing pace, I believe it's important to schedule think/reflection time at the beginning or end of each day. This could be no more than silent, focused thoughtfulness over a cup of coffee, during a walk, or even while lying in bed.

In any case, commit to giving yourself this daily gift of a few moments to sit quietly and gather your thoughts. These can be some of the most pleasurable, precious, and practical moments of the day. They can help to reframe your focus and energy in unexpected ways.

Personal Power

	Lao Tzu, famous Chinese philosopher living over 2500 years ago, stated that the biggest problem in the world is that individuals experience themselves as powerless. Powerless individuals feel helpless, negative, lethargic, frustrated, resentful, and often live in fear, enslaved by circumstances they perceive as beyond their control.
	The opposite of powerless is an inner awareness, an internal state of being , referred to as "personal power" in the emotional intelligence field.
	People with a highly developed sense of personal power have a quiet self-confidence that they can set the direction of their lives, and they do. They are able to distinguish among circumstances over which they have some control and those they do not. They define themselves from the inside out (for example, their internal self-talk includes messages like "I am a capable person, I can manage this setback, I'm good at managing conflict, I'm creative")
	The biggest barrier to success in almost any endeavor is powerlessness, negativity, helplessness and inertia. Mahatma Gandhi had no army, never held or accepted political office, never used violence. He was a small, frail man, yet he defeated the armed might of the British Empire, driving the British out of India without firing a single shot! ** Laura Besten** It's possible to gain personal power through doing a lot of reading and applying (practice, practice, practice!) learned principles to daily life. Most of us, however, benefit greatly from working with a coach....better, yet, a series of coaches throughout one's life. This person might be a coaching professional or it could be simply a person who inspires you and is willing to share his/her knowledge with you.

How Do You Want To Feel?

How do you want to feel today? You can create whatever feeling you choose, with your actions.

Your feelings are not imposed on you from the outside. They occur because you exercise strategies to make them occur. Yes, some of those strategies may include the way you choose to respond to events beyond your control. Yet it is the response, the chosen response within you, that creates the feeling, not the outside situation.

So how exactly do you wish to feel today? Then act like it. The actions you take will create the feelings you seek. If you want to feel happy, and empowered, and fulfilled, then go through the physical motions of being happy, empowered and fulfilled. It really is as simple as that. When you act like it, you are. (Ralph Marston) -

All Choices Count

Every choice we make today, no matter how casually, will affect the choices available to us in the future, in, perhaps, far more pressing times. All of our choices count!

-An Excerpt from
The Butterfly Effect
by Andy Andrews

Not long ago, I finally told the story of when, at the age of twenty-three, homeless and scared, I was given guidance in a most unusual fashion by an old man named Jones. What the old man told me did nothing less than change my life and my future. He said..."With a little perspective you can live a life of permanent purpose."

When I asked what he meant, the old man answered with a question. "Do you sometimes find yourself unconsciously judging your actions by level of importance?" I frowned a bit, not certain I understood. "For instance, "he continued, "the time you spend with friends is important, but the time you spend with family, is more important. You might rank an hour fishing as very important, thirty minutes visiting a sick friend in the hospital much more important than the fishing, and a sixty second conversation with a convenience store clerk as not very important at all."

"When you know that everything matters - that every move counts as much as any other - you will begin living a life of permanent purpose. A life of permanent purpose will make you a better parent, a better spouse, and a more valuable friend. Your productivity and financial success will soar to new heights while the old days of uncertainty, doubt, and depression fade into the past."

Simply put, when we understand that every action matters, every result of our actions immediately improves!

Just Say YES

When we say yes to the universe, we enter into a state of trust that whatever our situation is, we can work with it. We express confidence in ourselves, and the universe, and we also express a willingness to learn from whatever comes our way, rather than running and hiding when we don’t like what we see.

The question we might ask ourselves is what it will take for us to get to the point of saying yes. For some of us, it takes coming up against something we can’t ignore, escape, or deny, and so we are left no choice but to say yes. For others, it just seems a natural progression of events that leads us to making the decision to say yes to life. The first step to saying yes is realizing that in the end it is so much easier than the alternative.

Once we understand this, we can begin examining the moments when we resist what is happening, and experiment with occasionally saying yes instead. It might be scary at first, and even painful at times, but if we continue to say yes to every moment through the process, we will discover the joy of being in a positive conversation with a force much bigger than ourselves. from *The Daily OM"


To paraphrase Byron Katie, "It hurts too much when we argue with what IS, rather than accepting it." Since I had been taught to change what I didn't like, this concept used to confuse me. Now I know that we must fully see and accept what IS before we can set about living life differently.