“You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die, only how you are going to live.”
(Joan Baez, song writer and singer)
For the first 48 years I believed I was living. For the next 20 years, I realized I had been dead for the first 48. Now at 68 and just retired, I choose to live with purpose.
Everyone tells you what it means to succeed in life. Even as we chase after success and perhaps catch it, there still is an emptiness. When you live by someone else’s expectations and definitions, you have died to yourself.
If I had listened to others, I would be in a loveless marriage, I would be working at a job I hated but loving the paycheck, I would be angry and held back by the ravages of aging. But I was offered a better way, albeit a harder way.
Living depends on how well one cares for and develops the mind, the body, and the spirit. Living is an intentional process. Try these 12 exercises to discover how you might live.
- Know thyself. This is the hard part.
- Define a purpose for your life that has noble qualities. Simply put, a noble purpose is any purpose that attempts to lessen another’s suffering.
- Live while affirming others.
- Cultivate a diverse group of friends and listen to their opinions.
- Spend time each day in silence. Listen for your next step.
- Read everything you can to help you understand others.
- Embrace criticism as your most revealing teacher.
- Find something greater than yourself in which to believe.
- Wrestle with difficult questions – is there a God? What’s after death? What I am here for?
- Laugh out loud with folks, not at folks.
- Engage in vigorous exercise. Push your limits.
- Master one new skill each year.
Seek out and surrender to the divine spark inside you. Honor that same spark in others. When you die, hope folks will say of you-they lived with noble purpose.
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