How long is a lifetime? And, what do we do with it?

How long is a lifetime? And, what do we do with it?

I can remember my youth like it was yesterday. I had all of the time in the world. I am certain most everyone feels that way at that age. But, we grow up, get married, have kids, the kids grow up, we retire and life is wonderful. But, the reality finally sets in. We keep saying when the kids grow up that we will have our lives to ourselves. The problem is that they never do grow up. Their problems just get bigger. Our kids are all in their forties now and still share their problems with us. How thoughtful they are. We had problems at their ages, but seem to get through them on our own.

Both my wife (age 68) and I (age 63) came to a point in our lives, each of us at about sixtyish, when we realized how fast time was all of a sudden flying by. When we were younger, we thought we had all of the time in the world and would never grow old and die. Now, time seems to be flying by faster than it ever had when where younger.

A friend of ours recently went through a traumatic time in his life. It was shortly before his 70^th birthday when his wife noticed that he seemed down and quiet. Not normal behavior for him. She finally asked him what the problem was. He said that as he approached 70 that he all of a sudden realized that he was approaching the last decade of his life. Based on the actuaries of the average male’s life span in the United States of 72 to 73 for a male, he was right. He was approaching the last 10 years or less of his life.

It is time that you begin to appreciate every moment of your life, day by day, each and every day. Life is shorter than you think and now I am beginning to realize just how short life can be. Not in a depressed way. But, now I am living every day to the best of my availability as if it were my last. Every morning is the best and brightest that I have ever seen. That is the attitude you need to carry with you every single day regardless of your age.

Now let’s get started, right now. Whenever something happens to you that seems bad, start looking for the good in it. If you focus on the positive, your life will be better for it.

For example, I first learned of this attitude change from W. Clement Stone from his book.

So I began practicing this statement of mind adjustment. Whenever something bad would happen, I would look as deeply as possible for the positive. Well, it seemed to be working. But, I needed a real test. So, be careful what you wish for. After, about 6 months, I got a phone call from my company CPA. She said she wanted to come over and meet with my business partner. That afternoon, she stopped by to give us some particularly bad news about how we had been reporting our income to the IRS. Well, the first thing that came to my mind was what good could I find in this news?

Surprise! There really was good in this bad news. So, like Stone’s book suggested, I said to my self, “that’s good”. Then I repeated it out loud. My partner and my CPA were stunned. So, I explained to them that if we hadn’t learned this then, we might have kept doing what we were doing wrong until one day the IRS dropped in to tell us that we owed tens of thousands of dollars. We would have not been able to pay that amount and we might have been business.

And, let us never forget that what ever your bad news, there is someone with worse news. So, look for the good in every situation. And, never forget, “that’s good”.