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I’m re-reading The Rhythm of Life: Living Every Day with Passion and Purpose
I first read this New York Times bestseller three years ago. It’s a book I want to read at least once a year because its message really resonates with my desire to be the best version of myself that I can be.
The main gist:Â Â In an age obsessed with noise, speed, and perpetual activity, “who you become is infinitely more important than what you do, or what you have.”
From the book’s cover liner:
Once every twenty-five years or so, a book comes along that perfectly identifies our common search and struggle for happiness, and teaches us how to find lasting fulfillment in a changing world. This is that book.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing insights from the book here at Life Compass Blog. Here’s the first one:
Everything is a choice.
This is life’s greatest truth and hardest lesson. It is a great truth because it reminds us of our power. Not power over others, but the often untapped power to be ourselves and to live the life we have imagined.
It is a hard lesson, because it causes us to realize that we have chosen the life we are living right now. It is perhaps frightening for us to think that we have chosen to live our life exactly as it is today. Frightening because we may not like what we find when we look at our lives today. But also liberating, because we can now begin to choose what we will find when we lok at our life in the tomorows that lie unlived before us.
What will you see when you look at your life ten years from now? What will you choose?
Life is choices.
Kelly goes on to say that sometimes we choose “the-best-version-of-ourselves,” and sometimes we choose “a-second-rate-version-of-ourselves.”
Everything is a choice, and our choices don’t just impact the moment we make the decision. They echo throughout our lives – into history and on into eternity.
If you’re like me, by now you’re probably thinking, “Wait a minute – what about people who are disadvantaged, or who are victims of circumstance?” Kelly has an answer:
Some may say that we do not choose our circumstances. You’d be surprised. We have much more power over the circumstances of our lives than most men and women would ever admit. And even if circumstances are thrust upon us, we choose how we respond to those circumstances.
I think he’s right when he says this is life’s greatest truth and hardest lesson. No matter your life’s circumstances — whether you’ve been hurt, you’re in debt, you’re broke, you’re unemployed, or you’re stuck in a job you hate — we must to accept that we have chosen to choose our choices (whether they’ve caused the situation we’re in, or have caused us to remain stuck there).
The day we do that is the day we cast off victimhood and are free to pursue the lives we were born to live.
Are you pursuing the life you were meant to live? If not, what choices are holding you back? Please share your comments below.
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