Live An Inspirational Life

“There are two primary choices in life:  To accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them”  – Dr. Denis Waitley

You can choose to be affected by the world or you can choose to affect the world. This little girl is not thinking consciously about affecting someone’s life, but she is doing so nonetheless. When you are walking down life’s path it is not just coincidence, happenstance, and luck, that you experience. It is an unexplainable, magically chartered course. That is what you see when you look at this girl. 

The girl in this photo isn’t seeing any limitations about what she can see, be or do. She hasn’t yet bought into the story of limitations. For her life is still simple. It can be that way for you too. You don’t have to make everything be complicated. It can be fun, instead of an adrenalin fueled drama of “guess what happened to me today?” It can instead be a joyful, “Guess what happened for me today?” 

Same story, just a different way of looking at it. If you just take a moment to step back from what is happening and say silently to yourself, “I wonder what happens next?” You give your brain a chance to go into curiosity, instead of drama, and you experience a better life.

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make” -Jane Goodall

Every person who is, or ever has been a part of your life, changed your life, and you changed theirs. You could put labels on the changes, and call them positive and negative. The truth is that most are simply neither. The story that you tell yourself about them, is what gives them the positive or negative charge in your memory.

“If you’re not making someone else’s life better, then you are wasting your time.  Your life will become better my making other people’s lives better”  – Will Smith

You never know what will happen in your life.  Sometimes something horrible and unforeseen happen.  You go to a peace rally and a terrorist plows his car into a crowd of people and takes the life of a beautiful young woman.  Her parents and friends lose someone they loved and were so proud of.  At the service, they talk about what a wonderful person she was.  You can see how much she meant to so many.  The circumstances of her death have in fact projected her into being a hero.  Someone who stood up for others.  Someone who cared about others, and had a true moral code she lived by.  That is how it plays out in so many peoples lives.  We stand up and talk about them after they are gone. 

From what you hear and read about this young woman, she fits this quote because her death is certainly waking up humanity:

“If you want to awaken all humanity, then awaken all of yourself.  If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself.  Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self transformation”  – Lao Tzu

But how much do we communicate about the important things to our friends and family while they are here?  My Uncle Paul got a thank you post on his Facebook page from someone that was best friends with his son when they were growing up. It reminded me of how we all have memories of someone special in our lives that affected us in such a way, that they changed how we saw the world,.  They changed who we chose to be in the world by their actions. Most of the time we never know how we affected someone, because they don’t think to express it. 

Most of the time, our family finds out about it at our funeral, when they feel moved to talk about what we meant to them. This post reminded me of how important it is to say these things to people while they are still alive to hear it.

I edited it slightly, but here is the post. “Hello Paul, hope things are going well for you. I am sending you this note because I wanted you to know that I think of you often. I have never shared this with anyone before, but I have always considered you as my second father. I have tried to model myself after special traits from both my real father and from you.. One of your many special traits that I recognized early on was your very high degree of patience. One example that I think about often, is watching you make constant repairs to your hay bailer. When that damn thing broke you always were ready to fix it with huge degrees of patience, no cussing and no throwing of wrenches. Just fix it, even if the project took all day. And fix it you would. That has to be another one of your special traits, you seemed to be able to do anything and fix anything with confidence. You played a huge role in developing my love for the outdoors. So thank-you for that important role.”

He does a wonderful job of describing my uncle. He is a mechanical wizard. He is very methodical and I don’t remember him ever losing his patience with us, and we certainly did things as young kids that would have tried it. 

What I really loved about this heartfelt expression is that it was just my Uncle being his authentic self that impacted this young man. It wasn’t some heroic act, or awesome talent, it was how he handled himself on a daily basis as he worked on his farm. It was how he made this young man feel.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Dr. Maya Angelou

The lesson here is to be your authentic self.  To live on purpose in everything you do in your daily life.  To pursue what sets your soul on fire.  But how do you go about chasing those dreams you have?  Because when you are doing that, you are living a truly magical life.  An inspirational life.  A life that truly impacts and changes not only those you know, but the millions of people around the world you don’t know around the world.  Why?  Because living your life on purpose fulfills your God given destiny.