This week I have a very special episode to bring you. Today is actually my 40th birthday and, as I started to approach this birthday, I began reflecting on my life. What is that I really want for my life and my family? What are the things I’ve been doing that aren’t serving me? How have I been holding myself back? Take a listen to this quick episode to hear the powerful realizations I’ve come to.
Take a listen to the episode below!
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Transcript
Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!
So today, the day that I released this episode, it’s my 40th birthday. I don’t know, I’m not sure why I think about that. I’m not too worried about that I guess, but at the same time, it does make me think a little bit.
Today, I wanted to share with your some of my thoughts. I have a question for you. Do you ever wonder what your life is really about? I’m not talking about your overall beliefs, about the meaning of life really, rather I’m talking about how you actually live, what you actually say and how you actually do what you do…how are you spending your life.
A while back, I watched a movie that really kind of rocked me to the core and it got me feeling what I already been thinking about my life and what my life was about. This movie is called Still Alice, and the main character is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease, which it hit really close to home.
As I watched this movie, I really kind of grieve with her as this brilliant 50-year-old Alice consider her future and forgot about her family, she grew anxious. She lost her ability to interact with other people. Honestly, I thought about myself and I wondered “How much time do I really have left?” None of us really know, but this really put in the perspective.
If I’m about 40 years old and this Alice in her mid 50s, yeah 50 year old, she’s just 10 years away from me, “What if I only have that much time left?” How would I spend my life, what would I want my life to be about?” And I can tell you what was easier to figure out. It was easier to figure out what I don’t want to be about, because I know based on just life and my own experiences and the way that I’ve come to view myself in the world.
I don’t want to spend my life protecting myself. I don’t want to hide or hold back just for fear that I might not succeed or that someone might actually not like me or think negatively about me or be annoyed with me. I don’t want to hold back out of that kind of fear and protect myself in that way just to keep myself from feeling hurt. What if I have something to offer? What if it really could impact people?
Of course this is something that I’ve talked about a lot. But I think in the end, we all need to kind of do the math a little bit and realize that all of those times that people don’t appreciate what we have to offer, don’t accept our offering, maybe you count them as negative ones, if you want.
But those times when the people do, I mean those are very small. They’re just passing blips on the radar. But when somebody does actually receive what you have to offer, how much bigger of a number is that? There’s so much more positive that comes with someone receiving your offering and you making a difference in their lives than all those little negative rejections essentially.
So I don’t want my life to be spent protecting myself from these tiny little negative blips on the radar. I want to go out seeking those out knowing that if I’m seeking those out that eventually I’m going to find somebody who actually does want what I have to offer. Do you ever think of it like that? Or do you see all of those rejections or those I guess negative moments in your life, or those people that tell you no. Do you give them more credit than they do? Do you give them more weight to them than they really have?
It’s nothing against those people that might say no or that might say not now or might not be interested. It’s not about that, it’s about OK, move on. So who does need what you have? Let’s find them and then think about how much more exponential impact you have with that one person who’d actually is open to receive what you have. Oh man, it’s worth the rejections!
So I don’t want to spend my life protecting myself, I know that. So I’m going to go for it. I’ve been going for it. I’m going to keep going for it and even when I get down, which happens, I just know that I have to step out and do something bold and brave and then I have to do it again. I might fail and I might not be everybody’s favorite person but I plan to learn and grow from it all and I don’t want to protect myself and I don’t want to just live protecting myself; I do want to love boldly.
Something else I don’t want is I don’t want to spend my life overwhelmed. It’s really easy to feel overwhelmed, doesn’t it? Honestly, this is not something I do well. I probably tend to feel overwhelmed. I packed my mind and my schedule. I try to not super pack it, but I do like it fairly full but then if I allow myself to get too tied to the outcome, I can easily get overwhelmed.
I don’t like the idea of shuffling stuff around my house and it’s interesting because we’ve lived in the house that we’re living in right now, we’ve lived in it for almost five years now, which is way longer than I lived in anyone’s house besides the one I grew up in since I was 18 years old.
So every couple of years, really, I had the opportunity in my adult life to go through everything. Almost twice, because you know, you go through it once when you’re packing and you think you’re getting rid a lot of stuff when you move. And then you realize “Oh my goodness, I need to get rid of so much more stuff.”
But I know that I don’t want to spend my life just shuffling stuff around my house because I haven’t had a _____ to go through everything every couple of years here at this house. I still have to be super intentional about going through things and I think it’s not just the things, is it? It’s the relationships. It’s the activities, which ones are kind of; I don’t know, be lasting and make a lasting impact.
I’m not sure that I always know the answer to that. I think sometimes we have to try things out and just see how it fits with our new schedule. And with two kids, one who’s going to 6th grade who is just starting youth group and just starting band and just starting all kinds of fun activities, I realized that it’s going to take a lot of reassessing as we go to kind of think through it. I guess that has to be OK!
So as I’m looking at the next few years and I’m thinking about not wanting to be overwhelmed, I know that I want to simplify as much as I can and not takes a lot of effort and intentionality. I’m going to cut back on stuff and activities that turn into detours or stumbling blocks between us and what we really feel like as our family purpose.
Like I said it’s going to be constant balancing act and I know it has been a constant balancing act, but there will be less to balance. Because I need to think clearly, overwhelmed makes it really hard to think clearly and that’s something that it gets really important.
The last thing that I know that I do not want, I did not want to spend my life running away from feeling…I don’t want to distract myself with meaningless things just so that I don’t have to feel the intensity of the meaningful things. I don’t want to numb my feelings or carelessly feed my emotions so that they grow out of proportion. I don’t want to diminish or exaggerate feeling and that’s something that I can easily do. I want the moment to be what it is. I don’t need to anticipate it ahead of time and hold that emotion, carry it out before and carry it out after.
This is the time in life when you start to realize how there are a lot of people around you that could be dying, a lot of people around you sick and becomes more and more evident. And I think it’s important to hold each one of those moments with the weight that they deserve while not carrying them too far forward anticipating bad things, while not dwelling on them too long afterwards punishing oneself perhaps for what you didn’t say or didn’t do. That’s something my husband and I talked about recently.
What is it that we feel like we really need to say to the people that we love? What do they need to know from us, to hear from us so that we don’t live without regrets? I wonder about that for you. Is there anything that you want to say to somebody that would help you to not live with regret? I think that’s probably one of these little buckets in our lives that probably need to continually be checked and dumped, if that’s how you want to put it; to look inside and say “OK, what now? Is there anything?”
Not necessarily because there’s stuff going on and like or some things specific that you’re concerned about. Though, it could be that. You could let those be triggers. You could let other people’s experiences be triggers for you to say, “Oh you know what, I’m going to do this now. I need to say this now.” But I think we also do that on a regular basis just because…so what do we need to say to live without regret?
So I want to explore. I want to dig dip, to uncover what I’m honestly feeling and why. I want to bring those feelings, those feelings to God and allow Him to turn them into power with love because I believe that’s what happens. I believe these feelings are fuel that they may not be structure, they may not tell us what to do, but boy they can sure fuel us through something hard or through something great.
So I don’t want to look at feeling and say it’s bad. I want to live passionately. So that’s basically it. I am confident that I don’t want to spend my life protecting myself, but I do want to live boldly and I don’t want to spend my life overwhelmed. I do want to think clearly. I don’t want to spend my life running from feeling because I want to live passionately.
To my question for you is how do you want to spend your life, your actual day-to-day life? What are you going to do to get there? You know what I hope you do; I hope you go for it. I hope you step out and do something bold and brave and then go do it again because your voice matters.
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