Are you one of the many people in the world today who feel like their life is falling down around them? A lot of people are struggling out there–struggling to keep their heads above water, struggling to make sense of it all. How can we even think about creating the life of our dreams with all the challenges facing us? How can we even think about work/life balance when we are doing all we can to keep our job or maybe find one. Well, the truth is, there may never be a better opportunity build our dreams than when the life we have known has fallen apart.
Think for a moment about a card house. When you build a house of cards, each card leans on another in such a way that they support each other and keep the whole structure standing. I’ve never really been very good at building a real house of cards. I usually don’t get too far along before the table I am working at gets bumped or a breeze blows the whole thing down.
Our lives can be like a house of cards as well. We prop up one aspect of our life, lean another on that one, stack a third on top, and call it good. For awhile, it is good; but before long, someone bumps the table, or a breeze blows through and, just like that, the whole thing comes down.
There are three things this house of cards analogy can teach us about getting through tough times and creating the life of our dreams:
1. We have to build our lives on solid ground. Just like we need somehting solid to build a house of cards on; we need to build our lives on solid ground. Solid ground means that we have a vision for our world and understand the purpose of our life. There is no way we can begin to make decisions about our life until we have a good understanding about what is truly important to us. Take the time to dream, and when you do, dream big and dream for the world. What kind of world do you want to live in? What is yours to do in helping that world to come to pass? Christopher LaBrec said this: “Everyone builds a dream in their lifetime. You’re either going to build your dream, or somebody else’s. So build your own!” Start building that dream and in the process, you will create solid ground for the rest of your life.
2. Our life is the sum of its parts. Each and every component of our life needs to be stable and strong enough to stand on its own in order for the totality of our life to work. If we keep leaning weaker parts of our lives on the stronger aspects, like we do when building a house of cards, eventually the parts of our lives that are working will strain under the weight and the whole thing will collapse. When you think about creating the life of your dreams, think first about how each and every component of your life is working and how they each fit together. This is a perfect time to stop and make sure that the really important things in your life are being taken care of.
3. Sometimes, no matter what we do, things fall apart. Life just works that way. We make plans about our career or we start a business and then situations change and we find we have to start over. We build a marriage that, no matter how hard we try, just won’t work and it ends in divorce. We build a house we think we will live in for the rest of our lives and circumstances change in a way that requires us to leave it behind. Sometimes life happens in a way that we didn’t expect and never saw coming. Breezes are going to blow and sometimes they can turn into hurricanes and tornadoes. What matters most is not what we create in our lives, but how we pick up the pieces when the things we have created fall apart. Winston Churchill said this: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
No one wants to build a life that looks like a house of cards. Choose now to start again on solid ground.
Tom Anderson is a vision quest guide and explorer of the soul whose mission is to awaken and inspire a sense of vision and purpose in those who would lead an evolving world. His book, Live a Mythic Life – a hero’s journey to vision, purpose, and service will be coming out this fall. In the meantime, download his free e-book titled “Three Steps to Living a Mythic Life,” by going here =>
http://www.liveamythiclife.com/signup
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