A friend of mine sent this link yesterday and I thought you would enjoy the message:

What if today was your last day?

Did you give it your all? Did you help everyone you could? Did you live up to your highest expectation of others? It is so easy to slide into a state of complacency. In nature, there is growth and there is decay. There is no middle ground. The rate of growth or decay may increase or decrease, but change is the natural state.

Human beings have a peculiar penchant for the static experience. With our big brains we reason “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” Based on that logic the attempt is made to design a life from the outside in, meaning, that we assemble pieces of the world around us in a way that we feel will make us happy, safe and comfortable. I’ve known many people who held onto decaying artifacts of times gone by – a favorite blanket or shroud, an old car, a broken piece of furniture or terabyte-sized .pst (email folder) – for no other reason than because of the memories they have imprinted in them.

If you collect life’s little mementos long enough you can eventually fill a warehouse, no matter how small the objects of your affection. Remember the warehouse in the Raiders of the Lost Ark? If you’re not careful, at a certain point it becomes hard to differentiate between objects of true value and old rubbish. If today was your last day, what, if any, of those objects would you dote upon? Or would you spend the time with people? What really matters to you?

One way to find out is to look at your life and ask yourself what is open to growth, what is dormant and what is passing away. If you are ignoring the elements in your life that need weeding, watering and general care and focusing on trying to resuscitate that which is passing away naturally, it might be time to reassess your priorities.

Dare to add momentum to your life. Life, the collection of circumstances that come your way, the internal sensings you may have are constantly giving you clues and cues as to the right path to take. Caveat lector: the path less travelled isn’t always the best one to take, in fact, there are no rulebooks that guarantee the perfect outcome. Ask yourself instead, based on the available information and your own inner sensing, “how can I most creatively handle this situation.”

Your life, the world that has taken shape around you, is likely partly there due to factors beyond your control and partly there due to your own manipulation of what came your way. As I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, happiness, a satisfying life, cannot be manufactured, bought or bartered. Your own happiness comes as you add joy, add value, breathe the spirit of who you are into the winds of change. You needn’t manipulate the world around you as your influence will invisibly impact the world you center, much like a magnet does to iron filings or sound waves do to matter.

I firmly believe that each one of us is born with a purpose. Whether or not you realize that purpose is entirely up to you. As you go about giving expression to your purpose, you’ll find that the nature of the circumstances that you face are irrelevant. In fact, it matters more what you do with them than whether or not they are “good” or “bad,” which are just pointless, subjective value judgements anyway. One man’s trash is another’s treasure, right?

If today is your last day, will you be able to say at the end of it that you did all you could to enhance, uplift and bless the world around you? If not, then why? If so, then good work!

Let yourself handle today perfectly, no matter what comes your way. You can do it!