“What is the purpose of living deliberately?” When I think of this, it makes me instantly refer to a quote by Nathaniel Branden.
‘To live authentically, to speak and act from our innermost convictions and feeling. To refuse to accept unearned guilt and to do our best to correct such guilt as we may have earned. To be committed to our right to exist, which proceeds from the knowledge that our life does not belong to others and that we are not here on earth to live up to someone else’s expectations. To be in love with our own life, in love with our possibilities for growth and for experiencing joy, in love with the process of discovery and with exploring our distinctively human potentialities.’
So, what is living deliberately to me? First, let me start by expressing that mostly living deliberately is all about choice. Choosing to live your life, and not let your life be lived by what has been chosen for you. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well in some ways it is. At any given time in our lives, when we can sit down and ask ourselves the simple question. “Am I happy right now? Is this what I want?” You can ask yourself this question in reference to many things; job, spouse, family, friends, and so on. To live deliberately is to not live based on old patterns of the past, or the feelings of not being good enough, worth enough, or can’t, but to live by acknowledging those old patterns and saying to yourself, I am going to start a new and I can. We often let beliefs, some that we have been taught, some that are based on our experiences that we encountered in our life, or experiences that someone else encountered and we take on that belief as the road map to how we live. We use that belief to steer our car in a direction. Here’s a good example of what I am referring to: A parent that is afraid of the water, will sometimes unaware or aware pass that down onto the child. Then the child grows up never learning to swim because of a fear that his/her parent has. At some point the child can make a choice to either accept that fear and continue to live with never experiencing the joy of swimming, or making a choice to say; “ Hey, I really want to enjoy swimming and I am going to learn.” We often miss out on living our life deliberately by living it with the stale, old belief systems of others and our own and living it from a fear based belief. I can’t try that, because I will probably fail. That is not living deliberately.
So I challenge you to make a list of the things in your life you would like to change. Then look at that list and make another list of the things you would have to do, in order for that change to happen. Then look at that list again, and adapt the belief that you are capable of making that happen!!!
“Is life living you? Or are you living your life?”
“Effortless becomes effortless; when over-achieving ends.”
