Hi, it’s Shelly Lefkoe, co-founder of the Lefkoe Institute.
You know, when my kids were little, I always taught them that life was like a yardstick and most people live somewhere in the first two feet, 11 and three-quarter inches.
What life’s about is the last quarter of an inch.
How many of us really live life in that last quarter of an inch? You know, my friend Stuart Emery who wrote the book Success Built to Last and created the actualizations program many, many years ago, said something that so struck me and has stayed with me ever since I heard it.
He said, “If you knew how many breaths you had left in your body, how would you use them and who would you use them on?”
Today, I want to ask you, when you look at your relationships, are they alive and vibrant?
Do you tell the people in your life that you love them, that they matter to you?
Do you give them appreciation and show them your appreciation?
When you talk to your kids, do you give them one word answers or do you engage with them to enrich your relationship and give them memories to look back on and say, “Oh I remember those conversations I used to have with my mom or my dad”?
Or that you can look back on and remember?
Do you go to work everyday and think about, “What can I bring today to make this day excellent?
What can I learn?
How can I grow?
How can I do something different?
How can I innovate?”
Or do you just go to work and do the same things you always do?
I think so many of us get stuck in a rut, we get up in the morning, we go to work, we come home, we help the kids with their homework, or we just sit in front of a TV set and life gets smaller and smaller and smaller.
I ask you to take a look at, what is it that you might believe that would have you not living your life knowing how many breaths you have left in your body?
Stuart also talks about, who’s in your room.
Who did you bring into your life?
Are they people who make you feel great about yourself, that you love being with? That are always positive, or you always learn something from them, or you have fun and you laugh a lot, and they contribute to your life in some way?
Or are they people who are energy vampires? Are they negative? Are they people who when you leave say, “Ugh, that was awful”?
If so, what are your beliefs that have you have those kinds of people in your life?
I mean beliefs like, “I don’t deserve”, or “Everything’s too hard”, or “I’m not good enough”, or “I’m not important”, or “I don’t matter.”
All the beliefs that I talk about in so many of my blogs and my videos.
Just ask yourself the question, “What would it take for me to live in that last quarter of an inch in life?”
You know, Hellen Keller says, “Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
It doesn’t have to be a daring adventure where you’re rock climbing, or you’re hanging off mountains.
It can be a daring adventure in that, you dare to do something different. In that you dare to be self expressive, and wear purple, or go to work and tell somebody that you just love working with them.
That’s the kind of daring I’m talking about.
Breaking out of your box, re-looking at your career, re-looking at your relationships, re-looking at, as Stuart says, who’s in your room.
I hope this was food for though and I’ll be back again soon.
