“The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.” ~ Flora Whittemore

In a recent com­ment, Andy Bai­ley (cre­ator of the awe­some Com­mentLuv plu­gin used here) asked what the sound­track of my life would be.  It also brought back a post Stacey at Cre­ate A Bal­ance did on what song fuels your soul.  Music can be a pow­er­ful con­nec­tion in our lives.

And this really had me think­ing — what song does describe my life, and the life I desire?  In the end, I couldn’t get the list down to one.  Here are three that describe life as I see it.  They speak for them­selves, so I’ll just leave you with that for today.

“What a Won­der­ful World” ~ Louis Armstrong

“Stand by Me” ~ U2 and Bruce Springsteen

My wife had fun with this one too.  In fact, she was like a walk­ing, talk­ing idea gen­er­a­tor for this.  The selec­tion below is one of her addi­tions to the list, and one that really sums up what life is all about (thanks for the help on this one, honey!).  I’ve included the lyrics — and these are words that really describe liv­ing life on your own terms, and doing what “you” desire to do.  And isn’t that a pow­er­ful thought…

“Any­way” ~ Mar­tina McBride

“Any­way” Lyrics

You can spend your whole life buildin’
Some­thin’ from nothin’
One storm can come and blow it all away
Build it anyway

You can chase a dream
That seems so out of reach
And you know it might not ever come your way
Dream it anyway

(Cho­rus)
God is great, but some­times life ain’t good
When I pray it doesn’t always turn out like I think it should
But I do it any­way
I do it anyway

This world’s gone crazy and it’s hard to believe
That tomor­row will be bet­ter than today
Believe it any­way
You can love some­one with all your heart
For all the right rea­sons
And in a moment they can choose to walk away
Love ‘em anyway

(Repeat Cho­rus)

You can pour your soul out sin­gin’
A song you believe in
That tomor­row they’ll for­get you ever sang
Sing it any­way
Yeah sing it anyway

I sing
I dream
I love anyway

Do you have a sound­track that describes your life?

photo credit: clyd­eye

“Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and far­ther when the wheels are in per­fect align­ment, you per­form bet­ter when your thoughts, feel­ings, emo­tions, goals, and val­ues are in bal­ance.” ~ Brian Tracy

LIFE BALANCE

How do we achieve bal­ance in our lives?  Many of us live in a life that is con­sumed by more activ­i­ties, more demands, more com­mit­ments.  The one thing that hasn’t changed is the amount of time we have.   A day is still 24 hours long.  A minute is still sixty sec­onds in length.

We choose how we use that time.   We choose what our focus will be.

If we think about life bal­ance as a life bal­ance pyra­mid, we’ll see that the pyra­mid is made up of three dis­tinct focus areas.  Those areas are body, mind, and spirit.

Body is our phys­i­cal body, and it’s needs.  Mind is our mental/psychological/emotional needs.  Spirit is where we find deep mean­ing in our lives, the beliefs we have of a higher power, or of some­thing greater than ourselves.

Life bal­ance is about bal­anc­ing these three areas of our lives.

And we have to decide if the activ­i­ties we are doing are in align­ment with what this life bal­ance pyra­mid means to us indi­vid­u­ally.  For instance, if you are sit­ting down to watch your favorite tele­vi­sion pro­gram, is this in align­ment with your life bal­ance pyra­mid?  The answer is “it depends”.  It is if this is what you need to give your mind a rest, or if this brings you relax­ation.  It is not, though, if you are doing this to avoid some­thing else that would bring you into bal­ance, or if this becomes exces­sive, leav­ing you lit­tle time to spend on other areas of your life.

While the base pyra­mid is the same for every­one, what really makes up these three areas — what’s under­neath the sur­face — is a very per­sonal pyra­mid.  Deter­min­ing what those things are that are under­ly­ing the main areas of body, mind, and spirit is a per­sonal jour­ney into “you”.  Look­ing at life bal­ance with­out look­ing deeply at what mat­ters is what leads to bal­ance that gets “out of whack”, bal­ance that is jum­bled up, bal­ance that is back­wards.  So, the key then, is find­ing what it is that is most impor­tant in your life.  And this requires a real look into our­selves, a deep intro­spec­tion into who we really are.

Bal­ance doesn’t mean that we are always devot­ing equal time to each of these areas.  Bal­ance means that we are aware of these areas, we are aware of their exis­tence in our lives, we are giv­ing each area the nec­es­sary devo­tion so that we feel our lives are bal­anced.  Some days that will mean more empha­sis on the needs of our body, other days more focus will be on our spir­i­tual needs, and yet other days focus will be on our mind.

So, how does bal­ance get back­wards, or jum­bled up?  This hap­pens when we are not focus­ing on the real needs of our bod­ies, minds, and spir­its.  When we focus too much of our time on activ­i­ties that are not in align­ment with what our body, mind, or spirit truly call for.  And when our bal­ance gets jum­bled up, that’s when we begin to loose focus.  That’s when we fall out of our ele­ment – out of what we were meant to do.  We are crea­tures cre­ated to have a life of abun­dance.  When our lives are not in bal­ance, true abun­dance is missing.

A life of abun­dance and joy is pos­si­ble.  All it takes is bal­anc­ing our body, mind, and spirit needs.  Take the time to really deter­mine what this means for you, and then live that out every­day.  Make each twenty four hour day of your life be in align­ment with what you desire.  A life of bal­ance is await­ing you!

Note: This arti­cle is my sub­mis­sion into the Life Bal­ance Group Writ­ing Project, cre­ated by Stacey from CreateABalance.com.

photo credit: 10 Nin­jas Steve

“All coach­ing is, is tak­ing a player where he can’t take him­self” ~ Bill McCartney

When we hear the word “coach”, the first thing most peo­ple think of is a sports coach.  We expect a sports team or player will have a coach.  We expect them to, if they will have any chance of suc­cess in their sport.  How can they com­pete if they don’t?  How can they stand a chance if there isn’t some­one pro­vid­ing direc­tion and strategy?

Foot­ball teams have them.  Soc­cer teams have them.  Run­ners have them.  Cheer­lead­ers have them.

Coaches.  In sports, they’re the peo­ple who lead their team through a game, and through a sea­son.  They don’t play the game.  Their job is to instruct and lead the play­ers, to employ strate­gies, so that the team or player can best play their respec­tive game.  And aim for their goal of suc­cess in their game.

So, a coach is some­one who helps oth­ers employ a strat­egy for success.

In sports, suc­cess is mea­sured by win­ning games.  In life, how is suc­cess mea­sured?  Suc­cess in life is a very indi­vid­ual thing.  What suc­cess means to me is not what suc­cess means to you.  And how do we usu­ally get there (to suc­cess) in our lives?  How do we know what strat­egy to employ in our lives, to get us where we desire to be?

Think about that for a minute.

In sports, we expect a coach to be involved in a win­ning sea­son.  In life, we typ­i­cally expect we can do it our­selves.  And maybe we can.  Just like a run­ner can train them­selves for a marathon.  The ques­tion becomes, though, are we really achiev­ing what is possible.

Life coach­ing.  Life coach­ing is help­ing indi­vid­u­als deter­mine their per­sonal goals, and employ­ing strate­gies toward achiev­ing them.  Like a sports coach, a life coach has the task to give you direc­tion, help you to make some of the tough real­iza­tions, and lead you toward your own per­sonal successes.

My Expe­ri­ence

I recently par­tic­i­pated in a five-day coach­ing ses­sion hosted by coach Tom Volkar, look­ing at Authen­tic Busi­ness Dis­cov­ery.  This was a group coach­ing ses­sion, con­ducted by tele­phone.  My expec­ta­tion was that I would lis­ten on the phone for an hour, get pumped up, then go out and use that new-found energy.  And…repeat for five days.  That was not it at all…

Like the coach on a sports team, a life coach asks you to put in the time and effort to make liv­ing your life mean­ing­ful.  Mean­ing­ful in the sense that you really need to get to know you, and deter­mine what suc­cess means on a per­sonal level.

“Cham­pi­ons aren’t made in the gyms. Cham­pi­ons are made from some­thing they have deep inside them — a desire, a dream, a vision.” ~ Muham­mad Ali

The process of this week con­sisted of a series of ques­tions forc­ing me to really think about “me”.  Not just on the sur­face, what I por­tray, but more deeply, what it is that I truly value in life.  At times I strug­gled with the answers, and then other times the answers came eas­ily and quickly.   And that was good.  In the strug­gles, I was forced to look deep and really delve into how this all tied in with my core val­ues.  When real­iza­tions came more quickly, I knew that these real­iza­tions were in align­ment with who I am.  In the end, I came out with a bet­ter under­stand­ing of myself and what direc­tions I want to go in.  And that was an empow­er­ing realization!

Dur­ing the week, many tech­niques were pre­sented, of which our task was to use these tech­niques to dig deeper into who we are.  Some worked, some didn’t.  Not every tech­nique is going to work for every­one — because we are all dif­fer­ent.  Tom did a great job of pre­sent­ing us with meth­ods to use in dis­cov­er­ing what “authen­tic” means to each of us indi­vid­u­ally.  That not all worked for every­one is ok.  It’s ok because we all learn dif­fer­ently.  Hav­ing the right tools is the key.

photo credit: Smeerch

Like the coach on a sports team — life coach­ing helps you to focus and strate­gize on get­ting to where you desire to be.  A life coach is an out­side source, not biased by your life expe­ri­ences, work­ing to lead you to the cham­pi­onship game in life.  What­ever that cham­pi­onship game entails for you, that’s a great place to strive for!

Your Turn

What are your thoughts on life coach­ing?  Have you ever used a coach to give your life direc­tion or clar­ity?  Have you ever coached some­one else?  Is the ben­e­fit worth the cost?  Share your thoughts in the com­ments below.

photo credit: just.K

“I like the dreams of the future bet­ter than the his­tory of the past.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

Regret: Pain of mind on account of some­thing done or expe­ri­enced in the past, with a wish that it had been dif­fer­ent; a look­ing back with dis­sat­is­fac­tion or with long­ing; grief; sor­row; espe­cially, a mourn­ing on account of the loss of some joy, advan­tage, or satisfaction

On my last Sun­day Thought For The Day post, I included the fol­low­ing quote:

“Twenty years from now you will be more dis­ap­pointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bow­lines. Sail away from the safe har­bor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Dis­cover.” ~ Mark Twain

This sparked a lot of con­ver­sa­tion, some of which touched upon regrets.  This was a dif­fer­ent angle than I had thought about when I posted the quote.  I viewed this quote by Mark Twain as forward-looking.  Where are we going with our lives from here for­ward.  Another angle to this, though, is our past.  Our past has cre­ated who we are to this day.  We have become who we are because of all the things we’ve done or haven’t done in our life.  Or all the things that have been done to us.  The deci­sion we’ve made.  The places we’ve been.  Or haven’t.

And some of those things that have hap­pened in the past may have led to regrets.  You might say that we shouldn’t have regrets in our lives.  That we are shaped by the choices we’ve made, and that has led us to where we are.  But I ques­tion, are there not cer­tain things you may have wanted to do dif­fer­ently?  For me, that is regret.  And I don’t see that as nec­es­sar­ily bad.  It’s a learn­ing moment for us, when we can look back, learn from our past mis­takes, and move forward.

For instance, I regret not get­ting more involved in more extra cur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties in col­lege.  I became too focused on two things — doing well aca­d­e­m­i­cally, and hav­ing fun with friends (do they really go together??).  And I missed out on devel­op­ing both new inter­ests and new friends.  Look­ing back, I wish I had tried more activ­i­ties.  So, I regret that.  But I can also learn from it.  I can take away from this that try­ing new things is a great way to get out of my com­fort zone and find new interests.

In the com­ments from Sunday’s post, Stacey Ship­man pointed me in the direc­tion of another quote that really speaks volumes.

“As you grow older, you’ll find the only things you regret are the things you didn’t do.” ~ Zachary Scott

The things we typ­i­cally regret the most are the things we didn’t do.  It leads to the point, that many regrets stem from not doing, from not tak­ing action.  And the take away on this is that in our daily lives, we should do those things which take us out of our com­fort zone, those things which bring us great joy, those things which chal­lenge us.  Even if we fail.  Our lives will be more ful­filled know­ing that we DID instead of did not.

Another recent arti­cle on this is from Jamie at Blue Duck Copy, talk­ing about what you would do dif­fer­ently if you knew you only had 30 days to live.  What would you change in your life, so you would have no regrets?  This is pow­er­ful, if you really, deeply think about it.  What changes would you make today?  Are there things in your life you would change if you knew you would only be here for one more month?  Think about it.  And then make these changes in your life.

Regret.  Whether it’s from your actions or inac­tions, things that you wish we had done dif­fer­ently.  But also things that have hap­pened in the past.  The past you can­not change.  You have this moment in time where you are at right now.  You can use your regrets as knowl­edge of where you’ve been.  And then move on.  Take each moment of your life and be fully present.  Live today, to be fully alive and con­nected with what mat­ters to you — every day.

Your future does not have to be tied to what has hap­pened in your past.  You can choose, now, how you want to live your life.  The choice is yours!  Live the life you want, going for­ward.  While you can­not change the past, and any regrets that you have from it, you can choose how to live your life today.  Choose to live the life you are pas­sion­ate about!