Ready to Rebound!

What am I supposed to do with my life? Shouldn’t I be doing something…well…more?
These questions haunt everyone from time to time. Personally, I can’t count the number of times my acquaintances and I have batted this philosophical shuttlecock around a conversational circle. More often then not, the discussion gets bogged down in the seemingly immiscible oil-and-water struggle between the “idealists”, who are sure anything is possible if you just believe, and the “realists” who claim that between taxes, child-rearing and battles over tenure and seniority there simply isn’t time for belief in the promise that “your check is in the mail,” let alone anything more esoteric like living the life of your dreams.

I can’t help but feel that most of us are going about this issue the wrong way – simply trying too hard to get it right the first time and ending up doing nothing out of fear that we will get it wrong, and not find out until we’re too far down the road to find our way back to the starting point. Unfortunately, by the time we realize that we haven’t actually chosen anything we often discover that the choice was made for us long ago by our inattention.

Instead of trying to figure out the eternal (and unanswerable) question of, “What should I do with my life,” consider just living life, and living it well. There’s nothing wrong with simply picking up a comfortable mix of jobs, hobbies, causes, volunteering and fun stuff that you really want to do and enjoy doing, and then doing them to the best of your ability with no intent to be anything other than yourself at your best. If you do this, one of two things will most certainly happen:
1. You will eventually stumble across something you want to do while you’re out enjoying your life.
2. You won’t stumble across whatever it is you want to do, but will enjoy living your life anyway, creating a warm, cheerful and loving environment for those around you in the process.

Either way, you will have a happy, enjoyable life that you can be proud of reliving in the hereafter, and you may end up coming across something wondrous. One thing I do know is that while all of us are capable of doing great things, not too many of us realize that not everybody has to climb to the top of the mountain and be a hero to do this.

Even if you just spend your life being kind, happy and pleasant, puttering around at your hobbies, helping others when you can and generally just making the world around your little sphere of influence a little cheerier by virtue of your smiling, whistling presence, that’s a great work in and of itself. Too many people, feeling that pull to “make something of themselves,” fail to realize that who they already are is enough.

So why not just relax, enjoy your life and let it unfold as it will. Many who believe in reincarnation believe that some lifetimes are just for enjoying the view, a vacation of sorts, and many others believe that it is as much a sin to forgo permissible pleasures as it is to avoid the forbidden ones. Surely our Creator would not create such a beautiful world as this and then be offended if we were so taken with it that we spent our lives enjoying it and each other. Enjoy your life and enjoy the lives of those around you. And if you just so happen to find “great work” while you’re at it, well that’s just the icing on the cake.

Things are going great for you. Your life is amazing. Things just could not be better, and then BOOM! Something happens to take the rug out from under you. You may be afraid, confused, angry, or all of the above and more. What you really need to though is figure out what went wrong. Just follow these five steps, and you will be back on your way, better than ever:

1. Take a step back
Any time things are going badly, the first thing you should do is just simply take a step back and re-evaluate the situation. Look closely at not only what has gone wrong, but what has gone right as well. Above all though, take a deep breath and realize that chances are decent that you can fix things. Being able to do this and change your attitude to a positive one is a very important first step.

2. Ask someone else’s opinion
This can be difficult to do. You may already be feeling bad about how things are, and now I am asking you to put your faults in front of someone. The hardest part though is not how you feel about things, but finding someone who you know will give you an honest, unbiased opinion on the situation. If you have a mentor, this would be an ideal person to talk to. Remember though, that it is their opinion, and whatever they say you must listen, even if it is something you don’t want to hear.

3. Ask for help
This could be something as simple as helping you get re-organized, or it could be borrowing money, asking for someone’s time, or any other number of things. Realize that most people are willing to help others. Most importantly though, do not forget to do the same when others approach you in the future. Follow the Golden Rule. It is as simple as that.

4. What have you learned?
After everything else, look back on the situation again. What lessons have you learned? What things would you not do again? What things would you do more of? What people were there to help and in what capacity? What people were not? If we do not learn from our mistakes, we are then doomed to repeat them continuously. What have you learned?

5. Try again
Take another shot. There is almost always one more thing you can try, one more avenue to pursue. And if you fail again, you go through the process again. You never truly fail until you stop trying to succeed. This is very important to remember. So much so that I would say if you take nothing else from this article, please remember this!

So remember, take a step back, ask someone else’s opinion, ask for help, figure out what you have learned, and then try again. Following these steps may not make things perfect, but they will clear your head and get you back on the road to success again, which of course is where you really deserve to be, now is it not?