As Elvis Presley Sang, It’s Now or Never

I never met Dan Healey, an account rep with the Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI). Yet seeing a post from Timothy Andrews on LinkedIn that Dan had passed away at age 55 was a shock. Just a week prior, my youngest son told me of an acquaintance who passed suddenly at the age of 58. Both vivid reminders there is no guarantee in this life. 

Had you been born in the 1500’s, due to disease and poor diets, you could expect to live, on average, 38 years. By 1921, 100 years ago, life expectancy in the United States was up to an average of 60 years, while today women on average live to be 81 and men age 77. 

Living forever, or immortality, is something humanity has longed for since time immemorial. Given that’s not possible, why then do so many of us let time slip by without pursuing our dreams or doing those things that most touch our heart. In thinking about this, I’ve come up with five ways to help live life to the fullest.

• Be Grateful: Despite what you may think, gratitude is not convincing yourself that everything in your life is perfect. Being grateful is more about appreciating those things that make life worth living. I’m thankful for the constants in my life like my wife, our children, a comfortable home, work I love, my health, and a creative mind. Each day I look for the smaller things that help make for an enriching life. Blue skies or beautiful clouds, roses, sunrises and sunsets, the ocean, trees, a gentle breeze, or a squirrel named Sami that comes to see us each night for a hand fed snack of nuts. And gratefulness has been shown to ease tension in our lives and even help us sleep better. Being grateful every day is a good practice to open our hearts and minds to all this world has to offer.

• Pursue your dreams - Do you have a bucket list of things you want to do? This list should include those places you want to visit, goals you want to achieve, and dreams you want to fulfill. It’s important to have these written down so you can cross off each one as its attainted to give you a sense of satisfaction. While many of us are lists makers, those tend to be geared around a specific activity such as work or things to get done around the house. A bucket list opens up the opportunity to identify everything you’ve ever wanted to do and haven’t yet…be they big, small, or random activities or goals. Unleash your imagination and keep that spark of living life to the fullest alive by documenting your deepest desires and dreams on your bucket list. 

• Take a risk - The word risk invokes different feelings in each of us. Many will spend their lives avoiding risks at all costs with the hope they’ll never be hurt mentally or physically. Others see each day as a chance for new adventures that can only be experienced through risk taking. Imagine where the world would be without risk-takers like George Washington, Amelia Earhart, Neil Armstrong, Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or businesspeople like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Walt Disney and Oprah Winfrey? The simple act of getting up each morning involves risks, so take the advice of Eleanor Roosevelt and “Do one thing every day that scares you.” And now that you’ve got your bucket list, you can start making plans to achieve each of them one by one, even the risky ones. 

• Remember to say, “I love you” - When I first met my wife, she and her dad would have phone conversations and at the end would simply say goodbye to one another. I asked why she never said she loved him on these calls and she said she knew he wouldn’t reciprocate. I encouraged her to try and after a few calls with her saying she loved him, he started doing the same. Let the people you love know it. Don’t be afraid to express your feelings of appreciation and gratitude or to say thank you to those in your life. Don’t wake up one day to find someone you kept meaning to connect with is gone and you never got to tell them how you felt. 

• Do it…Now - Procrastination can be debilitating, causing us to put off pursuing our dreams. Doing it now means you understand time is your most valuable commodity and learning how to manage it more carefully can help you achieve amazing things. As Pablo Picasso said, “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” If you have a dream, make the decision to get started on it today. Don’t wait, do it now.

As far as we know, we only live once so have the courage to follow your heart and take calculated risks  Don’t let other people’s opinions hold you back from chasing your dreams and don’t dwell in the past. What happened yesterday is over and done, and today is a gift that may not repeat tomorrow. English statesman and philosopher Francis Bacon summed it up this way, “Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand and melting like a snowflake.”