“You have as much life left as you let yourself live,” unknown.  We need this reminder to stop being our own limiters.  We live a life of contradiction—dream big but we pursue those dreams in the same old way.  If we have different dreams, we have to acknowledge that thinking we will get those dreams in the exact same way is ridiculous.  Different dreams/goals require different pursuits and energy and focus and effort.  We also tell people they can have it all but then tell them what will and won’t work.  Life is what we make it, and the more we let if flow through us, the more we get to experience it.  A few months back I wrote a piece on living the same year for 90 years and calling it living and that is important again here- just because we are alive doesn’t mean we are living.    

As cliché as it sounds, it isn’t always the number of years we have, it’s the life we put in those years.  No one can determine or put a value on what something means to us so we assign that meaning ourselves.  If we live in the shadows and limits of what’s possible, we are living a partial existence.  It’s our job to define what we want and eliminate the should’s and must’s that we put on ourselves because those expectations in themselves limit what could be and blind us to what we’re really feeling.  We get stuck in the idea that we are meant to live as someone else—or for someone else.  I know that’s the trap I put myself in.  I thought it was my job to make others happy doing what they wanted me to.  It was only ever my job to connect and find what I wanted to do. 

Life is a bold adventure and it’s meant to be unique for everyone.  Eliminate the power plays and the things we convince ourselves are important and suddenly what’s actually important reveals itself.  We see what matters.  I’ve witnessed multiple lifetimes/generations of people lament how they weren’t allowed to live/do certain things and I know to them that was a very real experience.  I also know that it’s a total crock.  They lived that way because they were too afraid to do what they wanted for fear of what people thought of them. To this very day they would miss out on what precious time they have and claim victim rather than partake in what they want to do.  The mind can convince us of some incredible things—don’t let it convince us that we’ve had enough when we’re just getting started or that what we really want is someone too far fetched.  Live loud, often, and completely and don’t worry what others say or feel about it.