Encouragement

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Existing versus living. Does life seem to be passing by or are you making the most out of it? Does life seem to happen, or do we feel engaged in its rhythm? Are you simply existing and surviving day to day or life is what it’s supposed to be – alive and kicking?

What is the gate that divides those who just exists and those who are fully living?

Experience, the power to step back, to feel, to understand, and most importantly, to learn from what is happening in us and around us, is the key between this gate. If you are able to open the gate and feel what the moment has to offer, understand what the situation is trying to say, and learn what the event is trying to teach, then you, my friend, can pass from just existing to fully living.

This key is not suppose to answer your questions, solve your problems, heal your sickness. However, it will guide you to ask the right questions, define the problem and diagnose the disease. After all a key doesn’t push you in the door; it merely opens the way.

How do we harness this power?

- Relish the moments. Savor the sauces of your life. Do not eat too fast and swallow without tasting. There are moments when life throws us delightful appetizers and desserts. It is not hard to make every one of these bites count. Ummmm… is what we automatically say in our hearts. However, there are bitter moments too, sour ones, spicy, to name a few of those that if we have a choice, we wouldn’t even taste. Are we just supposed to swallow them straight? Much of Chinese medicine does not taste very well (growing up, the idea of tasting the medicine abhors me much more than the reality of the disease I am battling. That’s how bad it taste.). But they are more effective and efficient than Western medicine. Suffer now and enjoy life later is what I used to remind myself to drink those medicines.

- Build the perspective. Our experiences aren’t television shows or movies that we walk out from after watching them. We are the actors and actresses in these shows. They do not show up to the taping and deliver the lines. They prepare beforehand and analyze what they did afterwards. Same is true for our lives. We prepare beforehand and analyze what happened. We look at events not as a dice in a game, but a piece of domino at play. It doesn’t stand alone; it’s part of a big picture. Many times, we see our situations as a speck in a piece of paper – a one-off. But it’s not. The paper is part of the speck and vice versa.

- Gather the lessons. I would bet that each moment you are trying to forget, trying to bury under the sand, trying to hide under the bed has a lesson. We do not have any trouble learning any lesson from spectacular experiences or even those that just merely makes us smile. But for opposing situations, if we could hit the fast forward button, we probably would’ve, each time. This attitude is where the problem lies. We do not take with us the lesson the event is supposed to teach us. We shortchange ourselves by not getting what’s left of us as we pass through them.

Life is hard as it is and you may say that doing what I laid out above would make it much harder. Why stare the lion in the face when we have the option to run for our lives? The answer is because you want to live. Can you outrun the lion? Your safest bet is to stand still and act like a tree so that the lion will pass by you. The same is true whenever we use the power of experience. We stand still to relish the moment, build the perspective and gather the lesson.

At progressLane, we harness the power of experience. We face the lion and stand still. On March 6, 2012, the lion will show up. Will you cross over from existing to fully living with me? Subscribe now to experience life.

How can you use and harness the power of experience today?

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