Are You Living by Design?

Are You Living By Design?

posted by: Deana Hudson

Are you living life by chance or by design? Living by design takes a few simple but neglected steps including purpose, discipline, and one other…

In order to take the first steps towards living by design, you first need to create a purpose for yourself. Find the “why” (What Holds You) for you. When you keep the “why” before you, decisions become straightforward. Zig Ziglar, in his great audio program called “Goals,” gives us two questions to ask as we make choices:

1.) Is it morally right and fair to everyone involved?

2.) Does it get me closer or further from my primary objective?

With a clear, created purpose and these questions, life becomes clear and you will know the direction you are moving. It’s your responsibility to find and achieve your best and highest calling. Will you do it?

Strengthening Discipline and Will Power

Thanks to the “me” focus of our culture for the past generations, we have lost sight of the need for, and the benefit of, discipline and will power. Instead of denying themselves in the present in order to achieve a future benefit, most people want to receive the benefit today and then be rewarded the benefit tomorrow! Credit problems, government programs, and the constant drone of the “blame game” all reflect the idea that there should be no consequences for taking the easy and enjoyable patch today. However, life doesn’t work that way. The overriding law of nature is that of cause and effect: the consequences of your life are ultimately determined by what you have done and how you have done it.

So here is the ultimate question for you: Are you willing to invest now in order to receive a return later? What you do and the way you do it will ultimately determine the path of your life. Jim Rohn often says, “We can choose the pain we experience, the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.”

It takes will power to deny yourself, but with a purpose, it’s easier. If you know you are going to weigh a certain amount, it’s easy to turn down that dessert. If you know where you are going, choosing the turns to get you there is actually pretty easy.

Managing Time

For many years “time management” has been a staple of business management seminar speakers and personal development books. The problem, of course, is that you can’t really manage time. Time just moves forward. Moments turn in to minutes. Minutes turn into hours. Then days, weeks, months, years. There’s nothing any of us can do to “manage” time. Everyone has the same amount: 24 hours in every day. You can’t buy time, save time, or make time. As in the immortal words of that great philosopher of my youth who states, “Time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’… in to the future.”

So if you can’t manage time, you need to learn how to manage and improve what is happening with your time. This is simple but challenging: You have to learn to manage yourself. It is self management. It is discovering in your very soul that each moment passing is a moment that will never pass again. How you are spending it and all of the other moments of your days, months, and years will determine the path and results of your life. You will discover that how you live each moment makes a difference in what ultimately happens in your life.

Remember those goals for the next year that you have written out? How present are they for you right now? Have you thought about them today? If not, why not? Take a moment now and focus on them.

Aligning Goals and Life

Keeping them present for yourself will help you to adjust your days and your use of time to align with accomplishing what’s important to you. That’s one reason that you write them down and a good reason to review them once in a while. I review my goals daily and I actually keep my primary goal on a laminated card which I carry in my pocket everyday. It’s on a florescent orange cardstock allowing it to stay really active in my mind so I can use them as I make decisions throughout my day. The more active you are in engaging your goals with your life, the more real they become to you. And the more real they become.

There is nothing as sad as human beings who have left their destiny to chance. Those who think that life is something that happens to them rather than something they design are sad shadows of what they are made to be. You see, you design your life by deciding how you’ll use it every moment of every day. Each moment is the most precious gift that you have. So how do you spend them? How will you spend the moments that stretch out before you? How many do you have?

No Mortal Knows

While we don’t know how many moments are left to us, what we all know is that there are only so many. You can’t recover one that is gone. You can’t buy or find more. So they are valuable, precious and of infinite worth. But they’re free. Because of that we treat them as though they are worthless, but nothing could be farther from the truth. So, starting right now, live your life with focus. Know where you’re going and why you’re going there. Manage yourself and move towards your vision. Let’s go!