Best Life
“Well...This happened.” - Dawson's Creek, Eastern Standard Time
Hello Dear Friend,
Have you ever played Best Life? One player comes up with some ludicrous scenario like, “You wake up one morning unable to speak and after an emergency doctor visit you find out that you will never talk again. Best life, go!” Then the other player responds by coming up with a some positive outcome to their imaginary misfortune by creating a “Best Life” for themselves. The answer could be something like the following, “I would become a professional mime, join Clowns Without Borders and devote my life to bringing joy to children’s faces all around the world.”
Sounds simple enough, right?
Funny, how a playful pastime can carry such a profound way of looking at life isn’t it? Sure it’s just a game. But imagine if we would look at our entire life that way. Imagine if we were in the pursuit of seeking out our best life. Instead of getting depressed and feeling down and sorry for ourselves when life doesn’t meet up to our expectations what if we changed our perspective and looked for the best in life? What if we made a conscious effort to stay positive and be on the constant lookout for our "Best Life" no matter the situation?
Years ago I had a friend ask, “What’s good in life?” The question seems innocent enough right? Yeah, not so much. Completely unknown to him, my life wasn’t going so great. At the time, I was undergoing a season of negative, upon negative, upon heaping negative. In all honesty it was much easier to see and place my focus on all the not so great stuff that was happening in and around my life and a whole lot harder to see all the good. While he was asking that simple question I knew there was a greater message behind those words. I immediately recognized that God chose to use this particular friend to help me change my viewpoint. So obviously that's what I did of course. In that moment God prompted me to look at my friends question as a personal challenge to find something that was good in my life and to shift my focus off of the negative and look at the positive.
Throughout the years I’ve found myself re-asking that same question he asked me all those years ago, “What’s good in life?” Don’t get me wrong, it’s a bear pulling yourself out of life trials. It's hard switching your focus and having to be your own damn cheerleader at times. But what if we took all of our shortcomings big and small and turned them into “Best Life” scenarios? How much happier do you think we'd be? How much lighter do you think our steps would be?
Here's my challenge for you and for myself, focus on creating your best life so that one day you'll have the privilege of looking back on a beautiful history. That's it. Yeah I know, by doing so we are daring to step outside the box and are forcing ourselves to get a little creative with the way we look at any given situation. But I'll let you in on the secret - by doing so, we allow ourselves a fighting chance to find the best in life. After all, we are as happy as we choose to be and you know what? I choose happiness. I choose to live intentionally and give myself some self-love. I choose to live every day in my best life.
So what about you? You want to play best life?
“You’re standing in the middle of a room. This room represents your life. It's comfortable, it's safe, it's familiar - but you want more. There's a part of you that even craves more. You look around and see that there's a door in front of you. Your curiosity has you open the door and as soon as you do something or someone pushes you through that door. Your safety net is gone. The room, the door, everything has disappeared. You can't go back. You can only move forward. What do you do?...”
So, what do you say? How do you respond? After all, this is your best life...
With love from,
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