“I BARGAINED WITH LIFE FOR A PENNY, AND LIFE WOULD PAY NO MORE”

Can you get a good life because you bargain well?  Do you believe that if you complete your half of the bargain, life will grant you the rest, are you sure that what you put in influences what you get out?  For instance you might be looking for love, therefore the bargain might be that if you slim down you will find someone to love you, after all it’s only your weight that makes you unlovable, and that you think, is down to you. You are sure that if you go to the gym every day and eat healthily you will never become seriously ill, because only people who abuse their health get sick. You believe that hard work and dedication will always be rewarded in all spheres of your life, in other words life is what you make it.

If this is true can you ruin your chances by throwing down the gauntlet, gambling with the cards life deals you? Sometimes we think people get what they deserve. They gamble with their health, with relationships and with their financial security. For them life is about picking the right odds and believing that after that fate takes control. They expect bad things to happen but rely on the odds that good things will balance these out.

For most people life’s outcomes are unknown and unplanned, a series of swings and roundabout rides. Sometimes the ride takes you to the top, sometimes to the bottom and sometimes you end up exactly where you started but where the ride stops is uninfluenced and unpredictable. Some of us avoid the fairgrounds and gambling dens of life altogether, preferring to know for sure that whatever happens is down to us alone.

Is it better to take a chance? Maybe just to get on the ride is the only way to learn if life ever reveals how to influence where it stops.

      "Have the courage to face a difficulty, lest it kick you harder than you bargained for"

Stanislaus I

      Title quote by Jessie B. Rittenhouse

“ACT DECIDEDLY AND TAKE THE CONSEQUENCES. NO GOOD IS EVER DONE BY HESITATION”

Abraham Lincoln said ”Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle!”  

Do you hesitate? One foot over the threshold do you have to peer out before stepping through?  The problem with being human is that we don’t always know what we want or where we want to be. Feeling pushed into instant decisions on which road to take, we hesitate and postpone making any decision at all, but taking the wrong road can be an adventure it doesn’t have to lead to disappointment or disaster.

Adlai Stevenson wrote “On the plains of hesitation lie the bleached bones of countless millions who at the dawn of victory lay down to rest and on resting died”

 In sport victories are claimed often by hanging on whilst fighting for your next breath,running on legs that can't run any more and reaching with arms that don't strech that far, and never giving up.They are  not ever won in the changing room deciding what tactic to use or what plan to follow. In life hesitating about whether you will know how to play the game can stop you from reaching your own personal goals.

“If knowing answers to life’s questions is absolutely necessary to you, then forget the journey. You will never make it, for this is a journey of unknowables, – of unanswered questions, enigmas, incomprehensibles, and most of all, things unfair. -  Madame Jeanne Guyon

To live without certainty, in a life full of fear and insecurity and not to be held back by hesitation, can if we are brave enough, create a mindset that allows us to live a life without limitation.

  Title quote by Thomas Huxley

EARS LISTEN BUT WHAT DO THEY KNOW OF WHISPERS CAST IN SILENCES UNHEARD

Ralph Nichols wrote “The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and to be understood” All of us feel at times a disconnection with the people around us, a feeling that we are constantly attempting to communicate but that no one is listening.

The truth is most of us know how to listen but not always how to hear, because to really hear we have to connect. Connecting can be risky it can require gifts we don’t want to give like time, empathy and emotion. Deep conversation can create a dependence we didn’t want and now cannot break, so we don’t connect we listen without really hearing

Peter Drucker said “The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said “. Being listened to is about so much more than conversation it’s about respect and acceptance, it’s about a feeling of really being seen and recognised. It is self-perpetuating that the less we are listened to the less we have to say, so we never open up, we never grow and like a flower that shrivels in the bud we never blossom. We quickly learn that in order to be valuable our role is not to contribute to a conversation but to be the listener.

So many people have voices that are unheard, opinions that are never spoken; they become so good at listening that they forget how to speak.

”Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable”

David Augsburgh

“WE ARE OUR CHOICES”

The problem with being human is that we don’t always know what we want or where we want to be, if we do then choices are easy, even though the right choice is not always the easy one, we instinctively know it is right. It’s making the wrong choice that worries us, the consequences of choice can be with us forever so making the wrong one seems doomed to end in disaster, but taking that wrong road isn’t always a catastrophe. Wrong turns can lead to adventure and unthought-of new experiences. You may not end up where you planned but it can still be a good place, and having made a choice means you have written your own story and hopefully will continue to write it until you come to a happy ending.

“We do not choose to be born…We do not, most of us, choose to die, nor do we choose the time or conditions of our death.

But within all this realm of choicelessness we do choose how we shall live; courageously or in cowardice, honourably or dishonourably, with purpose or adrift.

We decide what is important and what is trivial in life.

We decide what makes us significant is what we do or what we refuse to do…

We decide. We choose.

And… so our lives are formed.

Joseph Epstein

Title quote by Jean Paul Satre

"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it"

Karl Albrecht wrote, “The typical human life seems to be quite unplanned, undirected, unlived, and unsavoured. Only those who consciously think about the adventure of living as a matter of making choices among options, which they have found for themselves, ever establish real self-control and live their lives fully”.

From the moment we are born everything is in motion, a journey has begun and a new story is about to be written. Some of the storyline will be our own creation and some of it others will write but we are the only ones who will live it, and no one can teach you how to live. Others may determine the mission statement; parents, teachers, partners, all can influence and direct a life, but the business of living is finite so don’t waste a moment living someone else’s plan.

If our lifespan is limited then whatever we take out of life is a straight exchange for some of that time, so make sure you exchange it for something that is worthwhile.  Pope Paul said “Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrow."

It is exhausting and a waste of time to try and mould your life to fit someone else’s design because constantly seeing the world though someone else’s eyes means your achievements are never wholly your own and  consequently you never wholly deserve the rewards.

Title quote by Henry David Thoreau