Lately, I have had the privilege of speaking to several people across different demographics who are quite simply, just going for it. They all took a look at their lives and decided to make a change.  What is interesting about all of these people is that from the outside looking in, they look like they have the world by the tail.  Nobody would take a peak inside their lives and think that they need to do anything differently.  In fact, a lot of us might even be willing to trade circumstances with them.  Honestly, all of them could go on living their lives exactly like they are and they would probably be happy.

In all these cases the people wanted to live a little more;  they wanted to feel good, have more balance, be happy and also stretch themselves.  So what are these inspiring people doing?  Learning Spanish, reading a large number of books in a year, running a marathon, traveling, trading day-to-day work in the office for a more remote setting, taking the promotion, taking a step down,  taking a chance on long distance love, bucking the system, going back to school, saying no more, saying yes more, and overall choosing themselves and their families over what the world says they should be doing.

This weekend I was speaking to G and she posed the question, “How can your life look any different if you keep making the same choices?”  It made me think of all of these people choosing a different path. Some choices seem obvious.  If we want to lose weight we have to make different choices in what we eat and how much we exercise.  If we want to be better at something, we have to practice more.  The problem arises not because we want to make different choices, but because we don’t realize that it involves more than a choice.  How many times have we said, “our diet starts Monday?”  Monday comes and goes and nothing was different.  Why?  We have to make a plan of how we are going to execute this new choice.  We have to figure out what kind of food we need to eat, go to the grocery, and plan our meals.  Deciding to eat healthy doesn’t just happen.

All of these people made a decision about their lives and then sat down to make a plan.  Even the ones who decided that they needed to say no to more things in order to say yes to themselves made a plan.  They had to think about scenarios in which they would typically say yes and figure out how to say no in a way that felt genuine; a way that they could feel good about and stick with.

This is what makes “going for it” so inspiring; all the behind the scenes work that it takes to actually make that choice.

What are you doing behind the scenes to “go for it” in your life?

Sunshine & Sarcasm,
Lowi & G