3 Golden Nuggets

 "Many people die with their music still inside of them."  Well known author and physician Oliver Wendell Holmes made this statement over 150 years ago.

Her eyes are the window to a soul filled with treasures to share

Recently I wrote about how we each have been given one life to live, so let's live it the best we can, creatively making the most of every day.  But how do we do that?

Since then I came across some interesting research conducted among adults over the age of 65 who were post-retirement.  These retirees were asked one question, and it was this:  "If you could live your life over, what would you do differently?"

Anytime we can get a perspective on life from others who have lived and experienced things that we have not, it's, for us,  a wonderful opportunity to learn and grow.  I've come to realize that older adults offer a treasure of wisdom, insight and understanding that is beyond our reach simply because most of us haven't lived a span of 70 or 80 or even 90 years.

So when older people share insights from their unique vantage point and perspective, I listen.

The results of this study can help inform our lives, as younger people, if we so choose.    The top three sentiments expressed by the retirees were these:

Be More Reflective
The retirees said that they wished they had become less caught up in the day to day and taken more time to reflect on the bigger picture of life.  Reflection affords one the opportunity to step back and evaluate what is important and authentic.  Reflection allows us to evaluate whether we're living authentically and true to the call on our lives.

Take More Risks
If they had another opportunity at life, the retirees said that they would take more risks the second time around and not play it so safe.  I hear in that a willingness to fail more often, but to at least have tried something.

Live On Purpose
All of the retirees said that if they had their lives to do over again, they would want to pursue lives of purpose, of helping others, of  pursuing their passions and dreams. In essence, they wanted their lives to have mattered, to have made a difference in this world.

In fact, living with a sense of purpose is so critical to life, that other research has shown that a high percentage of persons who retire and do not find a meaningful involvement  somewhere will die within two years of retirement.  Death can be difficult as it is, but dying with "the music still inside of us" is even worse.

If you are reading this and happen to be in your 70s, 80s or 90s, would you offer your perspective on what you would do differently if you had a second chance at life?  I'd love to hear your thoughts!    Even if you're under 70,  I'd love to hear your thoughts as well.

Shooting for the Moon

Charles upgrading the kitchen of the first house we flipped

I have identified and put in writing a number of goals for the rest of my life.  One of the goals that I have identified  is to flip one house a year.  We flipped our first in 2011.  Since then, we have looked at many houses and put several offers in, yet haven't secured another house to flip.

It could get discouraging and it would be easy to give up, but remembering the specific goal... to flip one house a year... keeps me going.  Through this process, we are learning a lot as well.  We are learning how to make decisions faster, how to more quickly estimate the costs for the upgrades on the homes we look at, and much more.  So even though we haven't yet obtained another house to flip, we are learning things that will make us better at this.

Benefits to Writing Down Goals

• Goals help you to remember what's important to you.  Working towards your goals assures that you define your life, rather than letting circumstances define your life for you.
•  Specific, concrete, and measureable goals are motivating:  For example, knowing its already April and we haven't yet obtained a house for 2012 motivates me  to keep intentionally working at this.
• Goals help you to accomplish more than you would without them.  We may find out that flipping a house/ year isn't an attainable goal.  On the other hand we will probably end up flipping more houses with that goal in place than if we hadn't ever set a goal at all.  You've heard the saying: "Shoot for the moon!  You may not make it but at least you will have reached the stars!"  So true.
• You learn things about yourself and /or acquire new skill sets as you work towards your goals:  As someone with a very high value on being a life long learner, this is a pretty big deal to me.

Flipping our first house enabled a trip to Europe with the family!

 The reason for the goal of flipping one house a year?  It's because I have another goal in mind!  And that is to travel!  I have a list of countries that I want to visit in my lifetime, and since money doesn't grow on trees...

Today we put in another offer on a house and now we wait and see.  In the meantime, I have other goals to work on.

8 Reasons Why I Blog

The Month of March  marks a year since I launched this blog!    I thought it would be fun to reflect on why I started writing here to begin with:

A favorite spot in the world.... the place where I write.

1)  I love to write.

2)  Writing here is one way of testing a growing sense of call to write.  That's how we get clarity on any call, right?  We launch into it and see if there is fruit, or what happens as we step into the new thing, as a way of testing the sense of call.

3)  I was at the point in life where I felt I needed something new to put energy into that taps into my desire to create and develop something.  My blog scratches that creative itch!

4)  Over time, the blog will become a sort of memoir.  The things I write about always come from my own life experiences and personal learnings.  Someday I'll have a collection of writings about stuff that's been important to me along the journey. Otherwise, knowing me, I'll forget. I guess you could also say then that this blog helps me to remember what's important, which is what memoirs do.

5)  To push myself to learn something new and to keep on learning.

6)  I saw the potential to connect with people all around the world, thus not being limited to the sphere of my particular geographic location.

7)  To encourage and inspire myself.  I know, sounds narcissistic but I'm learning to find encouragement and inspiration from within and learning to need it less from others or outside sources. And from someone who has historically needed quite a bit of encouragement from others, let me just say that learning to find encouragement from within is a step in the right direction.  But, feel free to send some encouragement my way anyways :)

8)  To experience God.  It's interesting, but I find that in the process of writing that I experience God in some pretty cool ways.  Writing helps me to stay connected and surrendered to the Source.

There you have it.  The reasons why I started this blog in the first place.  Later I'll write about the some of the things I've learned in the process that I didn't see coming when I first started this.  And maybe even later than that I'll write reasons why I think YOU should start a blog if you haven't already!

How about you?  What do you like to do?  What are some of the reasons why you do what you do?

The Power of Continuums

In one of the courses I teach, the students and I interact around the Illness-Wellness Continuum.  Basically, this model is intended to help someone determine if he or she is moving in the direction of Wellness or in the direction of Pre-Mature Death. The Illness-Wellness Continuum served as a wake up call for me a few years ago.   I have found what I call "Continuum Thinking" to be a very helpful tool in determining if I am moving in the right direction, or not.  A continuum is defined as, "anything that goes through a gradual transition from one condition, to a different condition, without any abrupt changes"

Here's how it can work:  decide what is important to you, and then determine what the opposite might be.  For example, on one end of the continuum you might identify "Financial Freedom" as the end goal.  What is the opposite of that?  "Debt" or "Foreclosure", as examples.  And then map a few indicators out on either side as points of evaluation to help you decide if you are moving towards Financial Freedom, or away from Financial Freedom.  Or, another example might be if you had a dream to  "Publish a Book".  You can ask yourself, "Am I  moving towards fulfilling that dream, or away from it?"  Every day you make choices.  You either move towards the things that matter, or you move away from the things that matter.

Today is my birthday.  It's always a good day for me to reflect and think about the overall trajectory of my life.  A question I am asking myself is: "Am I generally moving towards what's important to me, or away from those things?"

"Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses....Oh, that you would choose life...!"  (God in Deut 30:19)

Goal Setting 101: Begin with the end in mind

I am currently supervising student nurses in a long term care facility.  Today was our clinical day on a large unit of beautiful elderly people. It's an environment that I am unexpectedly finding to be conducive to the personal goal-setting process that I'm in the midst of.

I talked with one elderly gentleman in particular today who sits by the nurses station, talks with anyone who goes by and is really very pleasant and friendly. While his strength is failing, his mind is completely intact. Today after we had talked a bit I asked him if he had ever been married. He said he had and then became emotional when he went on to tell me that his wife had died after 50 years of marriage.  I said,
"That must have left a big hole in your life."
 He agreed and went on to say, "Now I just sit and wait."
"For what?", I asked.
"For the next thing. For whatever happens next."

Watching these precious elderly folks, and listening to them, makes me reflect quite a bit on what I want the end of my life to look like.  Of course none of us really know what's ahead and many people end up in places and situations that might have occurred only in their worst nightmares but I do think there is some wisdom in at least attempting to look ahead and envision what perhaps could be in those final years.  I think that if we don't, we may end up just waiting for the next thing to define the moment, the day, the week, the year for us.  As Stephen Covey says, "Begin with the end in mind."  In other words, what do I want the end of my life to look like and then back up from there to know what I need to be doing  now to get there.

Even in old age [the godly] will still produce fruit.  They will remain vital and green. Psalm 92:14

Goals

I've been thinking lately that it's time to establish more goals for my life.  I could perhaps have another 40-50 years  to live life (by the year 2050, it's projected that there will be at least a million people over the age of 100).  Right now, I have about 10 very specific goals (or, dreams)  that I have identified that have not yet been fulfilled.  So if you do the math, that means I'm accomplishing 1 goal every 4 or 5 years.  Hmmm... I think I can do better than that.  In fact, I think I need to do better than that.  Having a sense of purpose and a vision for our lives is part of what leads to a fulfilling, alive, and God-honoring life.  So, I've been prayerfully thinking about all of this, writing down thoughts and refining some of the goals I have had to be very specific and measurable.  I'm also working on identifying goals that I haven't ever really clearly articulated before.

 With God, all things are possible (Jesus)

On top of that, I'm challenged to identify goals/ dreams that go beyond what I am capable of accomplishing in my own strength and know-how.  Many of the goals I am working on are  big enough that if they happen it will only be because of God.

Bill Gates has said, "People overestimate what they can accomplish in one year and underestimate what they can accomplish in 10 years."  It seems that most of us have busy schedules and its easy to get caught in the trap of not taking the time to think beyond what happens this day.  Writing  goals down and keeping them visible can serve as a daily reminder to us of what is important.  So, when 10 years goes we can look back and celebrate the accomplishments of that decade.

Currently, these are the goal categories:

• Family
• Influence
• Service
• Gifts, talents and skills

I'm also aware that what we do comes out of who we are.  So I'm doing the background work of asking myself what kind of person I want and need to be in order to achieve the things that I want to do in life.

And, finally and most importantly, anything worthwhile ultimately comes out of that place of knowing and walking with God.  Jesus said, 'Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15)

Leave Deeply Missed, part 2

Dad and Mom with my daughter

I was thinking about people that I personally know who model this principle to me of leaving deeply missed (see yesterday's post).  One of the people who came to mind is my own dad.

Dad had a rough start in life which led to some serious orneriness as he became a school aged boy (I didn't let him tell my own boys the stories until they became old enough to know better than to emulate their much admired Grandpa!).  Often in trouble at his little country school, the teacher's were unable to see the raw potential in him.  In seventh grade, he went to see the school guidance counselor about his future. The guidance counselor told Dad that he would never amount to much of anything and that the best he could probably do would be to become a mechanic. Hard to comprehend, but true.  That interaction, while hurtful to the core, became a motivation to prove everyone wrong.

Dad went on in life willing to work hard for every penny he earned.  He started out by delivering eggs. He was the best egg delivery man there ever was, I'm sure. Eventually he landed a job in a small but growing tool and die company.  There, he began to see possibilities for his life that he had never seen before (see my earlier post, "You Can't Be What You Can't See"). As Dad, because of his integrity, strong work ethic and good inter-personal skills, began to move up the ladder in this organization he began to catch a vision of one day not only being an employee but of being a business owner himself.

Eventually the opportunity presented itself and Dad, with Mom by his side in it all,  started his own business. Dad would often get up at 3 AM to be at work before any of the other employees.  He'd plan and organize the day, the work, and his strategy for growing the business.Everything Dad did came out of his passion for the business and his passion for people..  His guiding principles became:

• Always go the extra mile; don't just meet people's expectations, exceed them
• Do for others what I would want them to do for me; reward generously those employees who work hard and give their best
• Follow through and do what I say I will do; if I said a product would be delivered in 1 week, then it will be delivered in a week at all costs
• Always be honest; no BS'ing anyone, if I don't know the answer just admit it.
• Care about people for who they are; don't just care about them because they keep the business going.
• Be generous; the business is blessed to be a blessing so no hoarding allowed

Dad worked hard and gave it his best. He was able to retire early, having built a very successful business that impacted not only the business world, but the lives of his employees, customers, and those who benefited from Mom and Dad's generosity.  Dad sold the business to someone he knew who would take good care of it.  The day he walked out of the doors of the business he and Mom had built for the last time, he left a hole so big that no one could possibly begin to fill it.  This many years later, people still talk about how much they miss Dad running the business. He left deeply missed.

Thanks, Dad and Mom, for your incredible example of giving whatever you did your very best!  I am blessed to have been in the front row as I have watched you live out your exceptional values and principles.