Design Your Life

I had a meeting with my mentor last week and somehow we started talking about a common friend, who has been really stressed out lately. He started his own on-line business almost a year ago, but since he is also working full time at a regular job, he has very little time left to work on his blog. As we were talking, my mentor to told me the story about the howling dog (he does that sometimes, instead of expressing his point of view clearly, he lets me figure it out by myself  ). When I heard the story my first thought was, “I absolutely have to share it with my readers!” and then 15 seconds later it came to me, “Hold on a minute… Was he talking about me?!”

We all do  this. If we get a piece of very good advice, we immediately think about people who could  use it. But the thought “I need to start doing something differently” rarely crosses our mind and then when it does cross our mind, we postpone it for later saying, “Yeah… I really do need to change this, but I’ll think about it tomorrow.”

But this time my mentor was, indeed, talking about me. There was no doubt about it and this realization has helped me to resolve one of my biggest frustrations that I have been mulling over for a long time.

I will share the dog story with you anyway, because it may help  someone that you know, or better yet, it might make you realize something very important about yourself.

“One day a salesman came to a little old fashioned neighborhood with neat houses and big front yards. There were dogs on just about every front porch. Some of them barked as the salesman walked by and some of them just lay lazily in the shadow. But there was one particular dog that was acting strangely. He whined and howled as if he was in pain.

Preoccupied, the salesman knocked on the door of the house and an elderly gentleman came and asked if he could help him.

“Sir,”- replied the salesman, “I believe that there is something wrong with your dog. He is moaning and groaning, instead of barking like all the other dogs do.” The owner looked at the dog and said, “There is nothing wrong with him. He is just sitting on a nail”. “If he is sitting on the nail why does he not move?” – asked the salesman in astonishment.

“Well” – replied the old man – “it just does not hurt him bad enough” “

Many of us are caught up in a similar situation. We are sitting on a nail, but it does not hurt badly enough. We might want to get a better job, move to a bigger house, continue our education, open our own business, get back in shape, spend more time with our family, but the problem is that our current situation is not uncomfortable enough to do something about it. So in the meantime we continue to work at a job we do not enjoy, live in a small house, spend our nights in front of the computer, and feel guilty for not devoting enough time to our children. And worst of all is that we continue to hope that someday it will all change for the better.

But our life is not a result of the circumstances that we have been put in. It is a result of choices that we make.

Take a few minutes to think what area of your life is causing you the biggest distress and sufferings? What is holding you back from pursuing your biggest goals? What problem steals your energy and occupies your thoughts?

They say, that “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains”. There is no point in waiting till it hurts badly enough in order to start moving forward and getting back on the right track.

It is much wiser to start right now, when everything seems to be going well, by taking little steps to make our life even better.

Your first step:

Think about the “turning points” of your life.

• How did you get where you are today?

• What were those life-changing decisions that have helped you to improve your life?

• What is holding you back now from going after your dream?

• And more importantly, what decisions can you take right now to increase your level of happiness, joy and well-being and decrease the amount of worries, frustrations and sufferings in your life?

Sometimes all it takes is moving off the nail.