How to Live Every Day Exceptionally

By dougnau on Mar 9, 2010 in Consciousness, Personal Growth, Tools | 0 Comments

For about half of my life (the last 17 years), I’ve maintained a journal consisting of the big events and daily monotony of whatever was going on at that time.  At some points in time I’ve been more diligent than others at writing, but since I was 18 years old, I’ve filled at least a dozen books with my thoughts, my excitements, frustrations and experiences.  No one’s ever read them, and quite frankly I myself only browse through these once in a blue moon. That being said, there was a period in life four years ago that I made a very conscious and deliberate choice to read through each of these journals and pull out the strongest themes and messages.  It was my own personal strategy for getting to know myself better.  Now that I’ve gone through years of coach training, I recognize the essence of being a coach was already founded in the notes that I took over that month of reading and note taking and half a lifetime of journaling I had been doing.  Here are the rules to live by which were most prominently discussed throughout my writings (condensed from about 2000 pages).

  • Every Day is Exceptional
  • Be open and express yourself, Emotions are not to be bottled up
  • Have a free spirit
  • Have a dream and establish goals
  • Be a winner as you strive to win the game
  • Always give of yourself

Every Day is Exceptional

In this blog entry I am going to review the first theme.  Every Day is Exceptional.  One of the things that journaling forces you to do is to become conscious of what is going on right now.  Something happens each and every day.  Sometimes its small, like going to work and catching a smile on a face you hadn’t seen before, and sometimes its big – like making the sale you’ve worked on or 6 months.  Whatever kind of events fill the day, living life today is exceptional.  In order to keep life exceptional first remind yourself that it is!  Here are some of the strategies I discovered in my writing that help me to keep each and every day in perspective.

  1. Slow down.  If you’re like me, you’ve got an incessant need to do, do, do.  Even sitting to write this article today took some effort just for me to SLOW DOWN.  Its not always about being productive, its also about being.  Figure out a way to be conscious and to enjoy what’s here in each and every moment (I watch the palm tree sway in front of my window as I write this lawn – ahhh)
  2. Breathe every moment in. To dovetail on #1 above, breathing is centering and pulls us into the moment.  Make breathing consciously a regular practice.  Its something that can be done consistently wherever you are and may be the exceptional moment you look forward to each day!
  3. Work towards your passion.  I was able to make the shift 5 years ago from the software industry to Wellness Coaching.  To be real with you, that was a leap of faith.  But it was a leap of faith that has brought tremendous happiness and health into my life.  It was interesting for me to read through my years of working in an unfulfilling position and recognize how important this was for me BEFORE switching careers.  Work towards your passion, give it everything you’ve got and the rest will fall in place
  4. Work is not the purpose of life.  For those of you (as I found myself years ago) that are working in an unfulfilling position, that are putting in so many hours that there’s no more time in the day, and you are strapped to a blackberry, pager, or cell phone, you may have missed the point.  Unless you love what you do with a passion (then there truly is no ‘work’), then work is not your life’s purpose – though you may be acting as if it is.  Even if your work is your passion, there is room for more purpose in life.  Family, relationships, enjoyment, enculturation, and personal growth are some ideas that come to mind.
  5. Never sacrifice sleep and health.  Sleep and health are two things we can never recover.  Sure, we can catch up on a couple days of rough sleep, but years of depriving oneself by getting 4-5 hours per night, fueled by power naps and coffee in the day is no way to treat your body right.  Your health should be your top priority above all else because most everything relies on your health in order to function optimally.  I learned this the hard way.  Make your day exceptional by getting good rest, giving your body good fuel, by working your muscles and heart, and respecting that we evolved living in conditions much different than today.  Go back to your roots and simply listen to your body.
  6. Live a little.  When I was 18, my daredevil new friend at college once told me to live a little.  He saw I was a bit uptight, hesitant to do some of the ‘wild’ things he was doing and challenged me to move beyond my comfort zone in more ways than one. I became a real fan of the phrase ‘Carpe Diem’ – seize the day.  Every day has opportunity built into it, the question is what we do with that opportunity.  Want a new job?  Its as easy as preparing your resume and browsing the internet.  Want a new relationship?  Go out and start talking to new people.  Want to more money?  Create a plan to build your financial empire.  We pass up hundreds of opportunities to do something new every day.  Why?  Because we are comfortable and we’ve stopped looking.  If you’re sick of it - ‘live a little’. 

I know that reviewing my diaries four years ago really helped me to create my own personal mission, to see clearly for myself who I was on the inside, and to prioritize what really mattered to me in life.  If you live by the principles listed above, you’ll begin to feel that every day truly is exceptional and you’ll see the role you’ve got in creating that reality. 

 

Be Well

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Written by Doug Nau, The Wellness Coach, i-grow.net

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