The thing about people is once they get on a track, it’s hard for them to get off. It’s hard for them to pull over on the shoulder lane of life and turn the engine off and just think.
It’s far easier to just put the car on cruise control until the exit of life approaches.
We live in a world where free time, absolute free time, to just think, is scarce and not only that, feared.
People get up in the morning, eat breakfast, commute, work, lunch, work, then work a little more afterwards, come home late, tired, do chores, watch TV, relax, and go to sleep only to do the same thing over again the next day and with weekends being devoted to more chores as well as meeting with friends and family.
Not a lot of free time in a given week for the average person.
And it’s scary because one day, in a blink of an eye, 40 years will have gone by and you soon begin to realize you haven’t yet really lived.
This is why you must give yourself time to just think.
So pour yourself a glass of scotch or a glass of red wine, get comfortable in your favorite chair, turn off your cell phone, TV, and computer and just think.
Think about your life by asking yourself these kinds of questions:
Why do I get up in the morning?
What am I doing with my life?
What is it that I really want from my life?
Do I have to wait for retirement for my real life to begin?
Why can’t I do the things I want to do then right now?
What’s stopping me?
Who says I have to wait till I’m 65 so I can do all those things?
Who came up with that structure in the first place?
If I keep doing what I’m doing, where will I be in 5 years?
Will I like it?
If not, what do I have to do now to change?
How’s my health doing?
Am I killing myself working to gain wealth only to trade that wealth to get back my health later on?
Am I so fixated on the future or the past that I fail to recognize and appreciate the present?
How are my relationships doing with my family and friends?
Who do I still have grudges against?
Why have I been holding them for so long?
What’s stopping me from forgiving them and letting it all go?
How has holding those grudges affected me?
Start asking yourself these types of questions in all the areas of your life.
Don’t be afraid to probe deeply.
Question everything.
Eliminate assumptions.
Destroy the status quo.
Wipe it all off the table and look at everything anew with fresh eyes.
For those who do have time, but don’t set aside time to just think, it’s most likely because they’re scared. People are too afraid to face themselves and ask these types of questions because they may not have the answers, or more likely, may not like the answers.
Far easier to keep the car on cruise control rather than pull over on the side of the road and realize you’ve been going down the wrong road.
But what if you don’t know the answers?
That’s good.
At least you’re asking the questions.
The answers will come in time.
And what if the answers don’t match up with the road you’re traveling in?
That’s good too because now you have new direction to pursue.
Think of all this as a mental reboot. It’s so easy to launch various programs with all of them running at full capacity till your CPU tops out and everything in your computer slows down.
A nice clean reboot can give you empty space to work with again so you can pick and choose to “load” the programs that truly matter to you in your life.
It’s like Socrates said:
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
