What Am I Going To Do With The Rest Of My Life?
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Key Points To Consider
There are three key points to keep in mind when you are faced with making life-changing decisions.
1. Look before you leap.
In life, as in commercial marketing, "Buy now before this opportunity is gone!" is almost always code-speak for, "Buy now, before you have time to read the fine print." True, from time to time real, honest-to-goodness, amazing, once-in-a-lifetime offers do come around. But if you have laid down a foundation of well-considered choices and clear-minded focus before this happens, you will have the presence of mind and strength of purpose to know when to jump and when to pass, and be much more capable of telling the difference between a missed opportunity and a close call.
2. Life is no longer a "one chance per person" event.
The times, they are definitely a'changing, and one of the best things to come out of that change is that we now understand that people change as well and that not only is this normal, it is to be expected. The career or life that suited you perfectly in your 20's will most likely not fit the middle-aged you, no more than the same wardrobe or lifestyle would. Sometimes this is merely the result of the normal process of personal evolution we all go through as we age and mature, and sometimes it comes about suddenly in response to reality-shifting events and life-changing transitions such as living through a traumatic event, losing a job or getting married.
However change comes, be prepared to go with the flow. Don't worry about "all that time I spent in grad school," or what your friends and family will say. In the first instance, there is no such thing as "sunk costs" in life - 90% of nearly any education or life experience is 100% transferable to new situations and new outlets. In sports they call it "cross-training," and an athlete doesn't consider his or her training complete without in. In the second instance, well, if they love you they will want you to be happy and if they don't love you, then who cares what they think? Besides, they're not the ones who have to live this life - you are.
Also falling under this heading is the admonition not to trade a good life now for some nebulous "better tomorrow," such as spending your life zombie-ing through a career you hate for the promise of a pensioned retirement. All too often, these "tomorrows," if they ever do come, are no better than the "nows" you wasted. And as often as not the stress of living an unhappy life permanently cripples or even kills people, physically or otherwise, well before they can get to their imagined golden "tomorrow."
3. Trying to find your "one, true purpose" is a waste of life.
We are all put here on this earth for any number of reasons - some big, some small and most of which we will never understand or even realize we've participated in until well after they've become distant memory. Spending too much time trying to scry your "true purpose" in the tea leaves of life can take your attention and energy away from creating the kind of life that would actually support the accomplishment these purposes in the first place.
A far better is alternative to create what I call a "Groundhog Day-Proof Life." Based on the Bill Murray movie in which his character has to live the same day over and over, this concept involves creating a life that reflects your values, offers you opportunities to challenge yourself and is fulfilling enough and just plain pleasant enough so that if by some strange cosmic fluke you became trapped in any given day of your life, it would be a good thing rather than a tragedy. Living this sort of life virtually ensures that you will be who and wherer you need to be to fulfill any purpose you may have been sent here to accomplish, while at the same time providing you with a wonderful and rewarding "rest of your life" in the process.
(c) Soni Pitts
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Soni Pitts is the founder of SoniPitts.Com. She specializes in helping others reclaim "soul proprietorship" in their lives and to begin living the life their Creator always intended for them.
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