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Video: My Video Tips
July 20, 2010
Will My REAL Life Please Show Up
July 19, 2010
the good life
There I was living in Europe with my gorgeous European (Italian or Spanish) husband, my beautiful children and living the good life. I was always eating delicious food, being totally loved and adored and it was always sunny.
That is in my dreams and fantasies about my life!
But that life has not happened, nor anything even close to it. Yes I have traveled and lived in Europe. Yes I have dated European men, but I am not married, do not have children, do not live in a Tuscan village and do not receive foot rubs every day as in my dreams.
So the question is – when is my REAL life going to show up??
That answer is – it’s not. The life I’m living now is my real life. It’s the life that I never thought I’d be living but it’s exactly the life I’m meant to have. God forbid I should even be grateful for it and not wishing for that fantasy life that I envisioned for so long.
Now I am the first one to believe in dreaming and envisioning things, but in my Peter Pan-ish youth, I didn’t understand the reality factor of these things. We don’t, in my humble opinion, come into this life to ‘manifest our perfect dream life.‘
the perfect dream life
Much to the contrary, we come to grow, be humbled, to be challenged into changing ourselves and ultimately become a better person. This doesn’t necessarily happen by receiving the picture-perfect dream life.
So how do I reconcile those dreams, visions, fantasies and wishes? I don’t. I always live with this idea of an ideal life inside of me but on a regular basis I try to be cognizant of what I actually have.
I am not saying this is easy. I still want my fantasy life. But I would hate to be at the end of my life and realize that I wasted huge chunks of it, waiting for something that was never meant to happen.
What a waste that would be.
Neither do I want to stop dreaming and wishing for a life beyond what I have now. That’s not good either. Our spirit always needs to grow, expand and fly.
I think of it this way – life is made of sugar and salt. Salt is the tougher element, the one that breaks down other elements of nature. Salt is the part of my life that challenges me to grow beyond what I think I need.
Then there is the sweet side of life, the ‘dolce’ in my vita. That is the part of life that is naturally easy and pleasurable. It’s easy to love this side of life, but hard not to hate the other. But all sugar and no salt would be a sickeningly sweet life.
Try to convince me of that when a gorgeous Italian male comes to rub my feet and you’ll see that I’m a liar, but since that’s not going to happen today, I’m going to accept the sugar and the salt and love them both.
salty and sweet life
I do love salty potato chips and I do love chocolate, so if you eat chips and chocolate every day your life will be just peachy. Oops that’s another sweet!
You get the idea. The life we wish for is never going to show up like we see it in our inner movie. Does it mean we should stop dreaming? Absolutely not, but at the same time when we accept the salty, life naturally gets sweeter.
Viva la dolce vita!
Video: Dare to Be Yourself
July 13, 2010
How to Create a Meaning-full Life
July 12, 2010
meaningful life
Recently it’s come up several times where someone has commented to me that I’ve helped them to create a life of meaning.
Wow, what could be a better gift than that?
It helped me to see that this is no small thing and it’s not something that we’re automatically taught how to do in our modern world. I do believe that in ancient times this was part of our culture, but today it is definitely not.
So it made me think about what it is that actually creates a life of meaning and I came up with a few things.
First through let me tell you how I figured this out for myself. It has to do with my being a stubborn mule. My grandmother would always say to my mother, “Oh she’s so sweet,” and my mother would answer, “Oh Mom you don’t know her, she’s stubborn as a mule.”
stubborn mule
My mother was right of course and my stubornness actually served me in this regard. It served me because I absolutely refused to live a superficial life. I just couldn’t do it.
When everyone else was hunkering down to make money after college, I was traveling around the world – living, learning and gathering hunky boyfriends (but that is another story!)
I had a hard time doing those ordinary jobs that everyone else was doing. I remember one time I went to work as a temp in an office. I lasted all of about 2 hours before I hightailed it out of there.
I was sitting at a keyboard typing in some data when I asked the guy next to me how long he’d been there and he said, “Five years.” but the look on his face told me everything.
I asked him how he liked it and he said he hated it. I was shocked. You hate it and you’ve been here five years?? That so unnerved me that I told them I was sick and went home before lunch. I didn’t even last half a day. Selling my soul to an unhappy job was not my thing.
So point #1 is - to create a meaningful life you’ve got to dare NOT to do what you really don’t want to do and would hate doing.
Got that? Do not, absolutely do not, do things just because they are:
- a good idea
- someone tells you that you should
- you think it’s the only way to do it
Not of this is true. It’s all a lie. You can live a life of meaning but you’ve got to risk NOT to follow the crowd. Got that?
steer your ship
Now then how do you steer yourself towards what has lasting value? Well sometimes that’s not easy either but let me give you a clue. Lasting value is not in these things:
- money
- a new boyfriend or girlfriend
- chocolate (unless you eat enough of it)
- a new car
- you get the idea
So point number two is – think about the things that you can do to make a better world, change yourself and help those around you.
A full-filling life is found in the deeper sense of contributing to life.
That will contribute to a meaningful life more than anything. For at the end of the day or the end of our lives, we are not here for ourselves. We are here to share and make a difference for others.
There’s more I could say but just these tips for now. How can you stop following the crowd and how can you steer towards what contributes to the world and has lasting value.
Hope you enjoy the post and feel free always to share your stories!
Video: Searching for More
July 6, 2010
Connect With Annie Hart
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