Archives: fulfillment

Stop Looking To The Future, Start Living Your Life

A large part of our lives is taken up looking for new and exciting things to do; peering into the future to see what we could be doing six months, a year, five years from now.

I see things differently. Perhaps because of the perspective two-and-a-half years on the transplant list gave me – knowing little else from sitting, getting worse and waiting for (a) death or (b) a second chance – I don’t see the point in looking that far into the future. Six months is about my limit.

Looking to the Future!

Even now, my fiancée is being incredibly patient as we try to plan our wedding for July 2012. I’m just about grasping it, but it’s a long way off.

I prefer to live a life that focuses not necessarily on the cliché-heavy ‘here-and-now’, but rather on the soon-to-be. Not focusing on what I dream of down the line, but on the actions – however small – I can take now to take a step closer to those dreams.

As I move forward in my own, personal brave new world, I’m already committing to things, exploring things and taking action to make them happen.

If your life is full of things you’d love to do ‘some day’, be they personal, professional or otherwise, now is the time to take the next step, the next action and set the wheels in motion for whatever it is you most want to pursue.

Just because it’s not laid on a plate, doesn’t mean it’s not there for the taking.

Finding the Kernel of Positivity

Everyone has bad days. It’s a natural thing; life can’t always be sunshine and popping candy.  The trick is not to let bad days absorb you and pull you down into a spiral of bad mood, bad attitude and – as a result – more bad days.

One of the purposes of my original blog (archived here) was to constantly remind myself of the good things in life; the simple things that happen every day to make you smile.1

Getting through bad days is all about finding that kernel of goodness, that moment of levity, that scrap of positivity and grabbing hold of it with both hands. It’s not always going to make your bad day go swimmingly, but by looking for the good in every bad day, though, you’re opening yourself up to the positive experiences, rather than closing yourself off: that road leads to wallowing.

Don’t sweat the bad days, just try to find the good that you can carry forward into tomorrow so you don’t let the day that’s gone before rule the next day, or the next, or the next.

  1. hence the title: Smile Through It []