Life is too short...

We often use the saying “life is too short” or some variation of it to help us deal with an issue, put things into perspective or motivate us. While the saying has a lot of sentiment, we need to stop using it as a source of motivation and as an excuse. It puts us at odds with trying to do everything before we die. Here are some examples of that prove my point.

We often use “life is too short” as a mantra to no longer put up with negative people in our life. First let me say that I do not think anyone should waste any time with someone who brings them down. It is unhealthy and you deserve better. It does not matter if it is a relationship, friendship or someone you work with. Spend as little time with these people as you can and if you can get them out of your life, do it. If you lived to be 100 or 200 or even 500, would it be okay to spend your time with people that bring you down? The fact of the matter is, you could live forever and you should never spend a moment with someone who makes you feel bad about yourself.

“Life is too short to not take chances”, puts us in a place that we constantly need to worry that if we do not take a chance today or right now, there will never be another one. That we are somehow limited on the chances and opportunities that we have and we need to be sure we never miss one. While I am all for taking chances and making the most out of every opportunity, if we need to compare it to how long we could live, we miss the point. We should not take chances because of the limited time we have on this earth, we should take chances because it is something that we want to do and something we feel called to do. If you take a chance just because of limited time, you are more likely than not, wasting time. In fact the whole idea of chance is absurd to me, yes there will be chances of opportunity for you in your life that come along unexpectedly but we need to be in the mindset that every damn day is an opportunity to live the life you want.

My whole issue with the “life is too short” mentality is that it stops a lot more opportunities than we think. For some, life is too short to follow their dreams. Their dreams will take a great amount of time, and we never know when we could die. Following our dreams mean giving up things that we love and that hurts. Some dreams are long-term and pretty damn ambitious and so for those dreams, we could say life is too short. Life is too short to go and chase all of it, to spend countless hours working on a project and to not even know if it will all work out. Life is too short to not be “happy” and have the easy life. Some dreams mean letting go of other dreams, to stop being comfortable and to be scared at times. The real issue with telling people that life is too short is it makes them judge what they want to do based off of them dying and not based on what they really want to do and where they will have an impact. It is better to be in pursuit of your dreams and die then to not chase your dreams at all because there was not enough time.

We need to focus on the fact that there is so much opportunity. Opportunity is all around us. Fill your life with taking chances and following your dreams because you could live for 50 more years not because you could die tomorrow.

An Ironman Moment

To start off with, this post really is not about Ironman but it is about a way to live your life. It is a deliberate choice that is made every day. It is not always easy but it is always worth it.

An Ironman moment in your life is a point in your life that you will never forget.

An Ironman moment is an investment with compounding interest. The series of small choices you make on what you will do to and what you will stop doing to get to your moment all adds up and become greater than the sum of their whole. The more you do, it does not become easier but the impact becomes greater.

The choices become so much greater because with each one, you take a step outside of your comfort zone, which creates a bigger comfort zone. It is a choice to challenge yourself to go further while appreciating where you have been. When I ask people about doing an Ironman, their main response is the fact that they have never swam that far or are not that good of a swimmer. I am not sure how to break it to you but no one knew how to swim when they first started training. If we stopped ourselves from where we were and what our current skills set were, we would never get anywhere. We would never do anything. No one, no matter how great they are was able to swim the whole distance. Apply this outside of an Ironman to your life right now, what is it that you want to do but currently cannot because of where you are? You can spend your entire life focusing on why you cannot get there or you can spend your life figuring out the next step you need to take to get there. One will lead you nowhere while the other will change your life.

People talk about all the time that they will have to dedicate to get there. You are right, it is a lot of time to dedicate and it is worth it. The time will pass anyway; you might as well invest it in doing something that changes your life. Think beyond an Ironman, this applies to every aspect of your life. If you want something you have to work for it and invest the time. I am willing to be that the time you think you will miss, will go unnoticed. You can spend your time working towards your goal or slipping away from it. They both bring challenges, when you work towards your goals, these challenges help you grow, when you choose to ignore your goals these challenges make you feel a fraction of how great you really are.

This moment in your life is about experiencing how truly great you are and not in an arrogant way but in a way that excites you to do more, be more and live more. It is about putting everything on the table and seeing what you are truly made of. It is reaching your limits and breaking them. Most people will never truly understand how great they are, not because they are not courageous enough but because they have been told to settle for just being okay and that doing the least amount of work is all that they need to get by. Take a look around you, everywhere there are hacks and tricks to do less work in less time and supposedly get more from it. I see this all as a lie. I do not believe that you there is any shortcut to true success because in the end, success is not just the end goal but it is the work that went into reaching that goal.

The secret is that you do not have to start with an Ironman but you do have to start somewhere, so whether it is running a 5K, doing your first sprint, switching careers, moving to a different city or whatever you can think of, you just have to start and move forward.