That's the day I am going to die. I know it sounds crazy but if you take the average lifespan for your demographic and add it to your birthday, you have it. Now, you may be asking yourself why on earth would anyone want to know that? But, trust me it is a little liberating. The idea is that if you know how long you have to live how would you spend your time? What would your priorities be? What battles would you fight? 2009 was a very challenging year on many levels and I can only hope to apply the lessons learned to keep from having to repeat the same things over and over again.
By my calculation I have just over 40 years left to live my best. I can see the world changing around me at breath taking pace and I struggle to keep up at times. I want to spend the short time I have enjoying my time, doing the things I love and interacting with people I enjoy.
I know that I have very little to complain about and even when I face an unexpected twist in the road it usually is for my best interest. I have learned tons about my tolerances this past year, and I have realized that I cannot help a majority of people even if I want to. If I divide my time up into three categories I would classify them as bad, good, and great.
An example of spending my time in a bad way would be fighting with someone over what's right or wrong, trying to get people to eat better when they don't want to, or questioning people's decision making processes. I know that these things are a waste of my time so it's up to me to quit doing it.
Good time is spent doing the little things in life that you can't dismiss. Taking out the trash, paying the bills, cleaning the gym/house, you get the picture. These things are not terrible in and of themselves and besides being necessary there can be a measure of reward in doing them.
The best of all is the things that you love to do, aka great time. Great time is really all about the things you love. For me that is helping someone who really wants it and seeing the happiness and sense of accomplishment they feel. Examples are spending time with my daughter, fixing someone's plumbing when nobody else will, teaching a person how to lift weights, working with new people in the gym and making the experience first class no matter what their limitations are. Other examples of great time for me are working with Avie, regardless of where or what we are doing, the time we are together is great because we are best friends and most of the time we are laughing. Life is truly an adventure when we are together. I also love to sleep, on most nights I get 8-10 hours of sleep and I am extremely proud that my lifestyle will allow me that. There are countless other things that I absolutely love to do and it is so important to do these things the bulk of the time.
I have found that if I allow the bad time to get out of control it really affects my great time. Now that I have faced the limits of my lifespan I intend to spend as much time as I can doing great things, the things I love.
I would ask you if you knew how much time you had left to live, what would you do? How would you spend your time? And what would be important to you?
Don't waste your time it's the one thing you can't get back.
0 comments:
Post a Comment