What Matters Most

I don’t recall now how I happened onto “Marc and Angel,” life coaches on a site they call HackLife. I received a post from them this week that I found too meaningful not to share my gleanings from it.

In their post, they talked about wake-up calls, those events that cause people to stop in their tracks, consider if they are making the most of their lives while they have the opportunity. As an example, they mentioned a woman who wrote them that she wished she had appreciated her life “with as much passion and purpose” as she had since receiving a cancer diagnosis.  Likely you know someone who has had a wake-up call of one kind or another.  Perhaps you yourself have had such an experience.  If so, you may be able to identify with their insights on the matter of wake-up calls.

They exhort everyone:

Recognize that this moment is your real life. (Recall the quote: Yesterday is history.  Tomorrow is a mystery.  Today is a gift.  That’s why they call it the Present.) Too easily we set ourselves adrift in the past or the future or in the minutiae of the present with no awareness of the gifts to which we are oblivious.

A life isn’t very long.  As I have aged, I have begun to grasp how fleeting life is.  When I was 20, life seemed to stretch ahead for eons.  Now I think more about how I want to use whatever time is left to me.

The sacrifices you make today will pay dividends in the future. I think about writing another book.  How important is that to me?  Do I want to commit the time and focus it took to write the first one?  I don’t know.  I am considering it.

When you procrastinate you become a victim to yesterday. Angel notes that she and Marc discuss this in more detail in the chapter on success in their book “100,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.”

Failures are often good lessons. Likely we all recognize the truth in this. 

You are your most valuable relationship.  I often gave Virginia Satir’s poem “I Am Me” to some clients.  You can google it if you are interested.

A person’s actions speak truth. Essentially, Marc and Angel are talking here about keeping your boundaries, not getting tangled up in people’s dramas.  Life is too short, too valuable, for that.

Small acts of kindness make the world a better place.  “Kindness is the only investment that never fails in the long run.  And wherever there is a human being, there is opportunity for kindness,” Marc and Angel write.

Behind every beautiful life, there has been some kind of worthwhile struggle. We are reminded we are “human, not perfect…wounded, not defeated.”

Time and experience heals pain, and it can’t be rushed. The point these authors make in their article is that eventually whatever that painful experience was, eventually it is part of a much longer life story and becomes a smaller slice of one’s overall life.  I would suggest that, while this is true, that outcome really depends on the person accepting the challenge not to dwell on it.  Otherwise, it can overshadow the rest of one’s experience.

 May we be bearers of hope, the “wait staff” of Hope’s Café for each other and all those we encounter.  Shalom, Kate

Hope’s Café Bonus:  “Don’t start your day with the broken pieces of yesterday.  Every morning we wake up is the first day of the rest of our life.” — unknown author