Lessons for the Real World

I am taking a little "blogging break" this week, but still  have some great reading for you from internationally recognized speaker and teacher Chris Widener. In his article, he writes about ten "life lessons" he wishes he had learned before he grew up and moved out into the "real world".

Once you read his article, I challenge you to sit down and spend a few minutes listing some things you wish you had known about life prior to your entrance in to the complicated world of being a grown up. Feel free to share some of them with the rest of us in the comments section.

Have a great week!

10 Things I Wish I Would Have Known Before I Went Into the Real World

Intentional Disregard

How do you spend your time? Is the busyness of life eating away your hours, leaving you with nothing but crumbs? 

Until a few years ago, mine was. I got up each day, showered, drank coffee, dashed off to work, spent most of my daylight hours there, then dashed home, made dinner, did some laundry, cleaned something-or-another, paid some bills, brushed my teeth, fell into exhausted but troubled sleep, then got up and repeated the same process the next day. Whole weeks would slip by and I could not name even one thing that I did that I enjoyed. But even more troubling was that I had done nothing that would outlast me. None of my crazy busyness was doing anything to enrich my life or the lives of those I care about. I was just “putting out fires”. I would die wearing clean underwear and with no outstanding bills, but that was about it. Something had to give. Something was going to have to go undone so that I wouldn’t come undone. That’s when I sat down and decided what would get my attention, and what would have to wait. I developed a plan of Intentional Disregard.

I have intentionally chosen not to attend social functions that I am not interested in. No more school events, church socials, block parties, business cocktail parties or political rallies unless they hold great interest for me. I also have no enthusiasm for mopping floors, dusting bookshelves or scrubbing toilets, so I have arranged to have someone else do that for me. I don’t like to talk on the phone, so I don’t do it any more often or for any longer than I have to. When the phone rings at my house, it is as likely to get ignored as it is to get answered; people who know me also know enough to leave me a message. If I start a book and it doesn’t captivate me, I stop reading it, and I don’t watch movies whose topics don’t interest me, not matter how great the reviews are. I am intentionally disregarding things that have little intrinsic value to me. The space that they used to fill on my schedule has been replaced by chats with my husband over a glass of wine, reading books that interest me, writing about the things that matter most to me, and spending time with my friends and family.

I remember reading once about a survey taken of individuals over the age of ninety-five in which they were asked if they had their lives to live over again, what they would do differently. The three most commonly offered answers were these: 

• I would spend more time thinking and reflecting
• I would be more willing to take risks 
• I would focus more on things that will outlive me

How many of these things are showing up on your “to-do” list today? 

If you were to develop your own plan of Intentional Disregard, it would probably look very different than mine. The things that matter most to you, and the things that you can afford to disregard, are exclusive to you. No one else can, or should, define them for you. But I feel certain that there are things in your life that you could disregard today and be all the richer for having done so. You have enough heart and enough intelligence to know what those things are. So, why not spend a few minutes today developing your own plan of Intentional Disregard?

The Opiate of the Masses: It's Not What You Think

The writer and philosopher Henry Wood once penned, “ Simply to live is a wonderful privilege in itself…but to what are you alive?” 

Darn good question, Henry.

So, if I were to ask you what you were about…to describe your “aliveness”…could you do it? To what exactly, are you alive? Is your life a process of marking time, of tearing pages from your calendar, or is there something else? Some may call this an existentialist question, or even a metaphysical one, but I don’t see it that way at all. It's not about why we are here, but about what we are doing while we are here.

Let me explain. A couple of weeks ago, someone told me that he really enjoyed this blog, because it always made him think. And at that moment, something inside me expanded and I felt very, very alive (and humbled), because thinking is the privilege of the living. 

Karl Marx is often quoted as having said “religion is the opiate of the masses”. I think he was wrong. Religion is not “the opiate of the masses”, routine is. Routine is what enables us to go about our lives while remaining numb to that which makes us human; namely, our ability to think, to feel, and to question. 

Don’t get me wrong, I know that routine is necessary in order to maintain some semblance of order. Socks first, then shoes. Check the locks before going to bed. Change the oil every three thousand miles. But when we allow routine to dominate, when we allow our thinking to become marginalized, or worse yet, when we allow someone else’s thoughts to be traded for our own, we have sacrificed our “aliveness” for a cheap imitation. 

When was the last time you thought about yourself? Not like you typically think about yourself: not about what you are going to get or what you want, or about how you look or how you feel, or about what you are going to do next…but about who you ARE. What you truly believe. About the kind of person you are compared to the kind of person you want to be. 

If you only hear one thing that I ever say to you, let it be this: Open up to your life. Think more. Question your assumptions. Do something unexpected. Carve your own way. BE ALIVE UNTIL YOU’RE NOT!!  

  

You will not always (and maybe even not often) agree with my view of things, but that’s okay. You don’t need to think I’m amazing - you just need to think. Because the thoughts you think, and the actions you ultimately choose because of them, are the essence of your “aliveness”. 

I hope you have a great and amazing and thought-filled life. And in the short-term, a really satisfying week.