Can you hold your breath for more than three minutes?
Who among us can stop breathing and still live?
Is breathing voluntary or involuntary?
What is controlling our breath?

No
Nobody
Involuntary
Spirit

God inhales and exhales us.
We are polished instruments through which God lives, breaths, and speaks.
Give thanks for every breath…every note…every vibration.
What kind of instrument are you?

If you ask some of today’s professional athletes you will find that the local little leagues like Babe Ruth baseball, Pee Wee football, or YMCA basketball were the places that they began to grow into the people they are today. If you ask many singers, you will find the church choir was where many of them got their debut.

By participating in these activities, the people we see today learned a lot about life in the context of what they were involved in. They lessons about discipline, teamwork, self-motivation, and sportsmanship were the greatest takeaways from those experience for those of who didn’t go on to play or sing professionally.

The traditional way of personal development was to focus on yourself. Grow, develop, get better at being you by yourself. A new way of thinking about personal development is to immerse yourself into your passions and seek to get good at that and in the process of doing so, you will become a better human being.

How can you develop leadership skills alone? Many of the soft skills that we need to grow personally can’t be developed personally. They require being immersed in a context that will indirectly or directly give you those skills.

For some of us, our platform is our campus, our community, an organization, or our job. The clearer you are about what your platform is and the personal growth outcomes you are looking for, the more fulfilled you will be and the more you will grow. What’s your platform?

Live purposefully!

Everyone’s life story is autobiography worthy. Each of our paths has been an adventurous journey of twists and turns, peaks and pits, troughs and triumphs. Ironically, our personal stories get diluted in our own minds simply because we have overcome the challenges that we’ve faced, therefore we think very little of them. We tend to only recognized challenges as such when we fail or struggle to overcome them. It is not until we share our story with others that we really realize how strong we were. Nobody considers their life to be autobiography worthy until others tell them so.

If we believed that everyone’s life story was worthy to be a New York Time’s bestseller, imagine how we would treat one another. We would have the utmost respect for one another and realized that our stories are intertwined and equally challenging. The story of humanity is my story, your story, our story. The story has been incredible thus far, but how will we choose to continue it? We are the co-authors of the future; what will we write? Our every decision alters the course of our collective destiny. Keep writing with ink of your life.

Live purposefully!

If failure didn't exist, many of our life choices would be different. In many cases, our own risk aversion has crippled us. Because of fear, we end up with a lot of "what ifs" and "shoulda, coulda, wouldas". Our careers are a big part of our lives, but our risk-preference may prevent us from choosing the most fulfilling career for us.

Job 1. What you can do:

“I can do that.” This is the type of job that we are “qualified” for according to our resumes. Since we know that we can do it already, this job brings very few challenges, and thus very little personal growth. It’s safe, with the biggest risk being the avoidance of our own dreams.

Job 2. What you will do:

“I don’t want to do it, but I will.” Willingness connotes a compromise between security and our true desires. If we were doing our “vocation”, or true calling, “vacations” would be less important because we would be living in our dream world every day. Sometimes we justify these types of jobs because of money, the challenge of something new, or social status.

Job 3. What you want to do:

“This is what I was born to do.” What you want do is a mixture of what you can do (because you’ve prepared for it), what you will do (without gritting your teeth), and you what you want to do. Oftentimes, what we want to do involves exercising the things that we are passionate about while simultaneously having a positive impact on others’ lives and the world. Doing what we want to do leads to more happiness, fulfillment, and productivity if our motivation is pure (not dependent on money or social status). Nonetheless, doing what we love often leads to money and social status because we naturally become the best at what we love most.

Questions to self:
• What if failure didn’t exist? Would I be doing what I’m doing?
• If what you want to do requires taking some jobs that you are willing to do or can do, how long are you willing to wait to do what you want to do?
• How are you preparing yourself today for the job that you want to do? What skills, relationships, knowledge, or experience do you need to succeed?

Live purposefully!

Inspired by: Daryn Dodson

Happiness = a good life
A good life = many good years
A good year = many good months
A good month = many good days
A good day = many good hours
A good hour = many good minutes
A good minute = many good seconds
A good second = many good moments

Happiness is living in the moment. Our lives are the sum of many moments. The only place is here. The only time is now.

Live purposefully!

A. To seek security and forgo fulfilling your life's greatest ambitions, or

B. To pursue your greatest ambitions and learn to be comfortable with the indefinite uncertainty of life?

Live purposefully!

Approximately 10% of the 6.5 billion people in the world have access to the internet. These 650 million people would be considered part of the "developed" world. How developed is the developed world?

At inventory.overture.com, you can type in any word and it will give you the monthly results for the number of times that word was searched on Yahoo’s search engine. Here are some keyword search rankings from September 2005:

September 2005 Searches

Word Searched (# of searches)
Ring tone (4,200,748)
Jobs (3,487,588)
Britney Spears (2,623,616)
XXX (2,300,886)
50 Cents (2,221,350)
Education (1,581,363)
Katrina (1,442,544)
Harry Potter (1,001,483)
Naked (855,285)
Video game (650,052)
Love (636,396)
Beyonce (486,470)
Drugs (365,544)
Guns (106,923)
Gandhi (36,478)
Purpose (20,430)

Thoughts held in mind produce after their own kind. Today’s world is the manifestation of yesterday’s thoughts and aspirations. Thus, we must be careful what we think today for they will become tomorrow's reality.

Live purposefully!

"Have a beautiful day" is a common phrase we use in passing, however it can be very passive and disempowering. What it conveys is that the goodness of the day is subject to circumstances such as the weather, traffic, other people's attitudes, and other life circumstances beyond our direct control.

How much more powerful and intentional would it be to say "Create a beautiful day". Immediately, the individual bears the responsibility for the outcome of the day ahead. Before the day begins, despite the weather forecast, traffic report, or negative encounter with a colleague the day before, the person claims that day is good and they have a role in creating that goodness for themselves and others. By simply choosing to look at the world ahead with our "glasses of goodness", we can change how we experience our daily lives.

Is it a choice or a helpless result?
Choose wisely.

Live purposefully!