Life is in the Living!

A Teen Leadership and Mentoring Blog

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Dan Blanchard award-winning author, speaker and educator

Life is in the living! But for some reason we’re all usually too busy looking for the rainbow over the horizon instead of the roses right outside our windows.

I’ve been proud to say that for a lot of years I have been carrying around a pen and a miniature note pad in my pocket so that I always have my to-do list on me. In addition, several times a day one can also see me whip out my miniature note pad and feverishly write something down.

I don’t want to forget to do anything important. And I don’t want to lose any important thoughts that my brain may stir up during the course of my travels throughout the day.

“The richest man in the world, John Rockefeller, used to do this too. So if it’s good enough for him, then it certainly is good enough for me,” is what I sometimes say to people when I catch them looking at me funny or giggling the first time they see me whipping out my little note pad.

However, what I didn’t know as a younger man, was that even though John Rockefeller claimed his note pad helped make him a very successful man, it also was one of the many things that contributed to making him a very sick man.

By the time Rockefeller was 53-years old, he had lost all his hair, his skin had lost it’s color, and he was really sick. At a time when he was making a million dollars a week, he was only able to spend a couple of dollars a week on the miniscule amount of food that he was barely able to eat.  A pauper would have been deprived on this richest man in the world’s diet during his sick years.

What happen? How did Rockefeller turn it all around and end up almost living until almost 100-years old? He stopped worrying about his to-do list and started designing the life that he wanted to live. He finally realized that life was in the living!

Now I’m not throwing out my pen and little note pad yet. I realize that I still have a lot to do, and I need to stay organized in order to efficiently get it all done. However, when my wife sees me running around like a madman, which is often, she tends to grab me, and reminds me to stop and smell the roses. That’s good advice for all of us.

Every time my beautiful wife reminds me to stop and smell the roses, I too, like Rockefeller, am reminded that life is in the living; not in our to-do list!

Now go on out and live your life!

And finally, please share how you’re going to use the secret of success that life is in the living!

 

Thanks for your time,

Daniel Blanchard

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