Are Your Days Adding Up To Your Life?

See if this sounds familiar: you roll out of bed and hit the alarm, feeling groggy, feeling like you didn’t get enough real rest. You deal with three family problems before you start your commute to work – the kids, the spouse, even the dog seems Allure Beautycounter to be in a negative mood. Traffic is hell. The first meeting of your day turns into a gripe session, and is followed by more griping in impromptu “breakouts” around the office or shop. You have plenty to gripe about, and it’s tempting to join in.
Times are tough (and likely to get tougher), and everbody knows it. So pressure mounts from all sides. Maybe you own your own business, and the competitors are getting vicious. Maybe you’re a manager, and customers are cranking up the heat – and you’re feeling it from your bosses, and from the colleagues on the team you’re leading. Feeling over-stressed, you finally get in the car for the commute home… traffic’s hell again… and the news on the radio is depressing and scary.
When you get home, at least one of the kids is in trouble, the spouse had a run-in with a neighbor about some inane thing, and the best\ thing on TV (your one distraction) Chemotherapy For Blood Cancer is some idiotic “reality” show that has nothing to do with reality. By bedtime, you’re too worried to fall asleep until a couple hours of staring at the ceiling.
How you spend your time is how you spend your life. Eventually, your days add up to the life you’ve lived. Add up enough days like this, and your life will have gone miserably wrong.
You need to remember your sense of purpose, and start – little by little, at the beginning – making your days live up to that purpose.
What’s your mission at work? I bet it isn’t to gripe about all the pressures everyone faces in today’s tough climate. Everyone ventilates, from time to time, but you know people for whom griping seems to have become a full-time career. Don’t be one of them! You were not meant for non-stop negativity. You were meant to be a beacon of optimism, of energy, of inspiration for everyone around you – bosses, employees, customers, everyone. Find something good to talk about, and start by refusing to join in the negative discussion.
Many a person who ended up as an inspirational leader started simply (and lowly) as the one “ball of energy,” the one optimistic, positive person in the office or shop. People are drawn to positive energy… and they will follow your lead, if you keep your chin up.
And the same infectious joy is what’s needed at home, too. Maybe more so. You won’t change the neighbor, but you might inspire your spouse to handle the interaction better. You won’t change the teacher or the rules at school, but you might equip your kid with something positive to draw upon in getting through the day. Turn off the TV, and pet the dog.
Get back to the life you were meant to live – to the you you were meant to be. Start dropping joy all around you, and watch the ripples!
Inspiration Depends On Keeping Your Sense Of Purpose
by Michael D. Hume, M.S.