Life by Design or Default

Life By Design or By Default?

If you live your life one day at a time, taking what you are served and offering no inspiration or dream, you are living your life by Default.

If you live your life one day at a time, dreaming positive thoughts for your future, creating fertile ground to grow your future, and don’t accept the tangible as the truth, you are living your life by Design—your design. Eventually, you will see your dream come into fruition.

Let’s start with how living life by default works: You get stuck in a rut—of thoughts, of deeds, of struggle. You imagine that everyday is going to look the same as the day before. You choose to believe that there is no way out for you. So, you grit your teeth, grin, and bear it.

I have known plenty of clients and friends who have chosen a life like that. Eventually, that person will end up in the therapist’s chair asking for help. Why waste tomorrow with no direction? I can help you right now.

Change is inevitable. Look around you. Without your trying, every day the trees grow, blossom, shed leaves, and bloom again next year. Without your acting, you trust in many things in our human existence you don’t even think about—air, cars not wrecking into you at every turn, people seeing you as you pass, and chairs not collapsing when you sit. You trust your perception and the perception of other most of the time. You trust that some things, God or the Universe takes care of.

Start with this thought: Today some things are inevitable, but, perhaps, not everything.

For instance, you could decide you want to write a book. With passion and fervor you awake every day and write ten pages before work. In two months you have six hundred pages written. You never imagined you could have written the book. You never even thought about the possibility. But one day, you got inspired. You sat down and began the task. Every day, you diligently set out to complete it. Now a few months later, after hiring an editor to help, you have completed your first novel.

What happens to this novel may not be completely up to you, but consider this: If you never sent this manuscript to an agent or a publisher, you would never know the possibility you hold in your hands. However, if you begin to submit your novel and get some rejections, you may begin to realize it needs more work. Or you may need to learn how to write an intriguing cover letter. Or you may need to find another editor—one that understands your concepts. Who knows?

But my point is, you will never know unless you set out and try.

Trying begins with a dream. From that dream place, I believe inspiration bubbles up. After inspiration, you must set your dream into action. If you don’t ever move forward with your inspiration, you or no one else will ever get to see if your idea had merit or worth.

I like to think that every idea or inspiration has a reason. Not every idea has success, though. But this shouldn’t keep you from moving forward with any dream.

The path to an authentic life is not success! The path to living an authentic life is living and acting in your truth. Nothing more, nothing less.

When you believe, as I did for many years, that the only way life can be successful is if your idea becomes an overnight hit, then you set yourself up for much disappointment. However, if you live life because you enjoy being inspired and want to share your life with the world, this may change your entire conceptual image of yourself. Now, maybe self-publishing isn’t such a bad idea. Perhaps, you can share your ideas with Facebook friends and be as happy selling a few copies to family and coworkers, or even giving them away.

Writing this blog, for instance, has absolutely no success attached to it. If one person reads it and gets something from it, I have done my duty. However, if I share it, make an effort to put it out there on the web, social networks, and submit my idea to agents and publishers, then getting a book deal would just be icing on the cake, an added benefit to living my passion.

This spring I had saved probably 1000 zinnia seeds from last year’s prettiest zinnias. This year, instead of getting two flats of soil and meticulously planting the seeds, I decided to just throw the seeds into the garden where I wanted them to come up.

Zinnias plants have cropped up everywhere, including places I didn’t expect, such as in the cracks of my sidewalk or between my walking stones in the garden. Did I fret because they didn’t go exactly where I had intended? Absolutely not. I simply transplant one that looks out of place and continue on.

It’s my garden. I can do with it what I want. I can plant seeds anywhere I want. Best of all, I get to watch the seeds grow. When I let go of the control, sometimes I’m surprised in a great way. Other times, I simply change the plan. The point is: I am in control of some things in my garden. I use that control to make it the best and prettiest garden I can.

The garden is our lives. Use your God-given right to sow, plant, and fertilize anything in your garden you wish. But, also know that without the tender warmth of God’s sun, the showers from heaven, and your caring, nothing will grow there.

Life is a cooperative effort, if you choose to let it be.

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Bo Sebastian is a Hypnotherapist and Life & Health Coach, available for private sessions to QUIT SMOKING, Lose Weight, New Lap-Band Hypnosis for Weight Loss, CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR LIFE! at 615-400-2334 or www.bosebastian.com.

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