There are 7.7 billion people in the world, and 250 are born every minute. Incredibly, what life is like is different for every single one of them.
People are born into a wide range of circumstances, many of which are beyond their control. Poverty, disease, abuse, and other issues can dictate much of the course of their life, and such hurdles can be difficult to overcome. Even so, purpose and happiness can still be found.
But there are also billions of people who are born into circumstances that do not place great constraints on what they can achieve or the degree of happiness they can find. Unfortunately, for too many of them, the most limiting factor in how their life will turn out is themselves.
To make the most of what we have been given, it’s worth learning about living life well. Two good ways to do that are to avoid being limited by our thoughts or by our choices.
Being Limited by Our Thoughts
According to the National Science Foundation, the average person has somewhere between 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Amazingly, 80% of them are negative! In addition, 95% of those thoughts are the same repetitive thoughts they had the day before.
Another study by Cornell University documented that 85% of what people worry about never happens. Of the 15% that does happen, 79% of the subjects discovered that they could handle that difficulty better than expected or it taught them a lesson worth learning. Altogether, that means that 97% of our worries are baseless and a result of our unfounded pessimistic perceptions.
This steady stream of negative thoughts and unfounded worries dictates much of how we feel and what we do. In addition, our thought patterns become ingrained in our brains, and we get stuck in what people in recovery refer to as stinkin’ thinkin’. Until we learn to take more control of our thoughts, we can miss the opportunity of living life well, day after day after day.
“We are what we think about all day long.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Being Limited by Our Choices
There are many ways our bad choices, including those leading to addictions, bring about an array of negative circumstances. Anyone who wants to make progress in living life well can benefit from learning the principles of recovery that improve our lives and prevent addiction.
What many people don’t realize is that our choices of what not to do also have a huge effect on our quest for living life well. In 1910, Theodore Roosevelt captured this sentiment in a famous speech that came to be known as “The Man in the Arena”:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again,
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause;
who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly …
In Daring Greatly, Brene Brown expands on this theme: “Our willingness to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and the clarity of our purpose. We must walk into the arena with courage and the willingness to engage. That is daring greatly.”
Living Life Well
In closing, even though this may sound contrary to what you might wish, I don’t wish for you a life without issues, stress, or trials, because that is not realistic or how life is meant to be. Nor do I wish you a life with no risks, mistakes, or failures. Because that is not living life well.
About 152 thousand people die each day, and many never experience life as it is meant to be. We each have our own journey, but it can be better if it is not limited by our thoughts or our choices.
Question: Are you more limited by your thoughts or your choices?
Action: Pick one thing you can do to move toward living life well.
