Are we really prepared to live our life?

Life is a beautiful journey. Yes, it indeed is.

William Purkey had once said:

“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,

Love like you'll never be hurt,

Sing like there's nobody listening,

And live like it's heaven on earth.”

Sometimes, I do get surprised to see how (un)prepared we are in our life to undertake this beautiful journey.

It was a beautiful Sep 2006 weather. As our plane touched the beautiful Dabolim Airport in Goa, we already started getting amazed at the beauty of nature. This was our 2nd family trip to Goa and, we were all excited and geared up for the beautiful beaches, exquisite food, the scooty drive, the freshness and the charm of ever open night life in this beautiful small city. 

This was our second trip, the first one being our honeymoon trip, way back in 1998. The only difference between the two trips was the number of family members that we were. We were now 4 instead of 2, and we enjoyed the beauty of Goa as much with our beautiful, adorable daughters in 2006 as much we did when we were a newly married couple in 1998. Time had moved on, but the fun and enjoyment of Goa stayed still in front of the time. We seemed to be living life to its fullest, at least as long as we were in Goa. It was a beautiful trip and a beautiful journey for a week. Of course, this trip was very well prepared, planned and executed to make this experience truly memorable. Preparation is definitely a vital aspect in the enjoyment of a journey.

Why did I tell you all this? Because I want you to correlate this to your own life. I am sure all of you have taken such wonderful, memorable journeys at some stage of your life. Now, you have been given a relatively longer, but the same beautiful journey called LIFE. You have been blessed with a great family, parents, children, friends, and the biggest of all "a unique you" along with all the power that resides within you. How you live your life is completely up to you. When I analyzed how most of us live our lives came as a rather surprise to me. It seemed that we were more prepared to die rather than prepared to live our life.

Prepared to Die? Why do I say that?

- We make sure that we have enough life insurance in place, so that we get prepared in case we die. We cover the risk of dying.

- We make sure that we have enough investments in place so that our children do not face any problem when we are no longer there. That's again a risk mitigation for our family in case we die. We are preparing ourselves of the eventualities of death.

- I even looked around in my office. On the technical front, we do a root cause analysis (RCA) for issues and we do it only if there has been a failure. We do not do it when everything goes fine. We are getting prepared for facing failure in future. 

- During our performance assessments, we are told about our strengths and areas of improvement, and we are told more to focus on areas of improvements rather than working harder on our strengths. 

....... and there is an endless list like this.

You may argue that this is how one learns from our past. We need to plan. 

I agree. Of course, we need to plan, but plan for what?

Failure, Death, Disaster are a few words which are always lingering in our sub conscious mind, because that's the vocabulary we use every day.

As the saying goes.."You will get what you think the most". "The nature will conspire to give you what you really keep thinking about". 

The natural laws do not understand the negative connotation, but only understands what you are thinking about. e.g. if you keep thinking that "I don't want to fail.", the nature only understands "failure"...and that's what it gives back to you, unless you start thinking in another way like "I want to succeed." rather than "I don't want to fail."

What about the thought of  preparing to live? Sounds strange? Why is this so strange to you? Is life only a struggle? Is life only about making your ends meet? Is life only about celebrating your family's events and sharing the snaps on Facebook? Is life only about getting prepared to die? Can we not prepare ourselves to live our life's?

Can we not have goals in life which encourage us to live, and then act as a source of encouragement for others, when we are not alive anymore? Life can be fun, excitement, sharing, happiness and everything else that you thought of as "difficult" to achieve. Life can be helping the needy, life can be visiting around the world, life can be exciting and full of adventures. Life can be chasing your passion rather than just earning money. It can all happen, provided you are prepared to live your life. 

Do you have a "life plan" with you? Do you have a plan which tells you the 100 things that you must do while you are alive? Do you have a plan to live life before you die? Sounds strange? This is what you came here for - to live life, and not just to prepare yourself to die well, and keep preparing for your death for your entire life span.

If you still do not have your life plan with you, it does not matter. Start now. Prepare your life plan, document your goals and dreams, print it out, have specific dates, paste it in front of your desk, execute it.... take life as a large project, similar to the one that you execute every day in your office. How do you manage project at your office? Do you do it without a documented plan?

Post financial freedom, I am living my life and feeling the bliss that comes with it, as per the plan I have created for it. Sure, I am prepared to die...but more importantly, I am more prepared to live my life.

Oscar Wilde once said : “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

Regards

Manoj Arora
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