Do you feel like giving up?

Motivation

I ran across this article last month and I just can not stop thinking about this absolutely amazing man. Paul Alexander was completely paralyzed and confined to an iron lung due to complications from polio when he was six years old.  The very fact that he lived at all is a miracle in and of itself but, with the love and support of his family and through his own determination, Mr. Alexander received a law degree and established a private practice.

Even better? Mr. Alexander has taught himself how to breathe on his own for short periods of time (usually when he’s in the courtroom).

Check out this beautiful story (it’s long but worth the read).

Stuck in a box?

Motivation

Change can be scary.

Change requires that we look at ourselves, our patterns, our decisions and honestly assess which are healthy and which are unhealthy. Which patterns we need to scrap, and which need to be developed more.

That might mean that we have to humble ourselves, admit ‘the way I’ve been doing it all along is not , in fact the BEST way to do it – maybe its even the worse way to do it’.

Boy, that really drags up some ugly stuff doesn’t it?

What if the way you’ve been doing something your whole life were completely sabotaging your goals and dreams? Would you be able to give up being right to do the right thing?

In order to avoid being wrong, many of us simply refuse to look very deeply at our behaviors. Maybe we have the ideal person in our heads (the person who hits the gym three- no FIVE times each and every week, who always chooses the salad over the burger, the person who makes good interrelational choices, who’s always there for their friends, who never skips church …), every now and then we might catch ourselves comparing the reality with the ideal but then we feel too confronted, too disappointed in ourselves, so we duck our heads back in the box and go back to pretending that everything is going great in our lives.

But pretending doesn’t make it so.

If you aren’t absolutely satisfied with your life today, if you find yourself feeling sad or discontented or frustrated it might be time to sit quietly with yourself and examine the choices and actions that you are really making.

My family and I recently watched ‘The Truman Show’, a movie about a man who had lived his entire life in a television studio, in which all of his interactions were actually contrived by the producer without his knowledge. Truman knew something was off about his life, he just couldn’t put his finger on it – and despite strong efforts on the part of the producer and actors who made up his life to the contrary Truman was motivated to figure it out (also to track down the girl who got away…). There came a point when he finally stumbled upon the truth – he came to the end of studio – what appeared to be an endless horizon was really a wall. The wall of the box that he’d spent his entire life confined to. The producer tried to convince Truman to stay, that life was safe there in the studio, that people were counting on him not to mess with the status quo. Truman had a choice. He had no idea what was in his future, he had never had a real relationship (except for that girl). He took a chance.

Maybe you’re living in a box too. It could be any number or things but let’s say it’s your health. Whether you used to be able to eat whatever you wanted and never had to exercise and this middle-aged weight is a surprise to you and has left you feeling confused or you weren’t ever even able to run a mile in gym class no matter how hard you tried. Maybe you think ‘this is just the way it is’ because you’ve never known anything different. Are you where you really want to be? Are you willing to consider the possibility that things don’t have to be this way, that you actually can lift the curtain, step out of the box and be – really BE the person that you want to be.

A little step is all it takes.

Make your minutes matter.

Photo credit ‘The Truman Show’ 1998