Whatever choices you make in life, be ALL-IN, HOT or COLD, IN or OUT, FULLY INVESTED. Life is too precious to be lived lukewarm and time is too valuable to be spent with anything that only has half your effort.
It’s not what you do that makes your existence average – it’s how much passion you have doing it. Don’t settle for an existence of mediocrity. If you are going to do something, do it. If you are going to commit to someone, commit. If you are going to live with a new perspective, live it. If you are going to set a new goal, go after it.
As I look back on my life and think of all the times I wasted not being fully invested in what I was doing, I cringe. It’s such a waste of time or a distraction at the very least to venture into any task, relationship or adventure that I’m not going to give my all too.
Passionate Pursuits: We all live in reality. If you want to be an actor, we don’t all have the opportunity to pack up our things, leave our family and move to LA. But, if that’s truly something you want to do, then don’t just make excuses and not make any attempt. Pursue with all your heart to the extent that your resources allow. Don’t spend a decade of your life making statements like “Yea, I’ve always dreamed of doing that” and never taking any steps (no matter how small) towards that dream. Either stop dreaming it and move on to something you’ll actually do or put some action behind that dream.
Pursuits of Obligation: This doesn’t just apply to things we want to do. Sometimes there are things we have to do – to provide for our family or to take responsibility for our existence. I spent half my life working jobs that had nothing to do with anything I was passionate about. But I needed to make a living. It wasn’t my passion, but it had to be done. And if I was going to spend several hours of my day doing it, then why not give it my best effort and buy-in to whatever the vision was behind what I was doing (whether that was cleaning up a database system, increasing enrollment for a college program or making sure every person that heard my voice on the phone feel like they were welcome). Whatever it is that you have to spend your time doing, make the most of it and be all-in doing it. If your job is to take people’s orders, then make every customer feel welcome, get every order right and go the extra mile. You have to be there anyway, so be fully invested!! If you are a stay-at-home mom, then do that. Don’t spend all day on the couch watching TV and browsing social media. Play with your kids, teach them something – to kids, cooking with you or “helping” you clean the house is playing and spending time with you. Don’t waste your time or opportunity to be the caretaker of your home and family for granted by doing it half-hearted.
Relational Pursuits: If you’re going to be single, take advantage of it. Do stuff you like to do, hang out with friends, take up new hobbies and interests that you are drawn to. If/when you get hitched, you may not have the time to explore the world or the freedom to only think about where you want to eat when you go out. If you are married, then be married. Don’t just be someone’s friendly roommate, harbor negative feelings about your spouse or keep layers of your heart hidden from them. If you are going to make the choice to be married to that person, then be all-in. Make your marriage great. Pour your heart out, keep nothing hidden, change your perspective of them to reflect positive vibes and be invested in whatever your spouse is invested in. If you can’t get there on your own, then get help….but you committed to spending your entire life with that person, so if you are going to do it, don’t just live an outwardly happy facade of a marriage – actually make it happy.
Spiritual Pursuits: Most importantly, live out what you believe. If you are going to call yourself a Christian and say you love God, then live your life in pursuit of Him. Don’t just do your normal thing and make your own life decisions and spend your time on everything else except God. If you really believe He is your savior then take out some time to get to know more about Him. If you really believe that He is “Lord” of your life, then ask Him what decisions you should make….and then do them. It’s really difficult for anyone to believe that someone actually believes that a Being is all-powerful and all-knowing and has this great and glorious life planned for them when that individual continues to live like they are held accountable to no one and doesn’t make any effort to do what they’re supposed to do. And no, I’m not talking about pretending to be some religious Jesus-follower that follows all the religious rules of the church or Christian society. I’m talking about actually attempting to revolve your life and all of its components around a God that you say you believe in and doing what you know to do next. Nobody has all the answers for “what God wants you to do now” but I think everyone can find something they can do that will get them started in the right direction until they truly get greater clarity of what God is doing in their life.
Be all-in. That’s it. You may not be able to change everything about your circumstances or change out the people you are doing life with, but this is your life and if you are going to live it, live it fully passionate or don’t live that particular life at all. If you have to stop procrastinating a change in your life that you know you should change, then stop procrastinating and take the leap.
But for God’s sake (and yours), don’t waste your life going through the motions of an everyday existence and then complain about it. If there is something in your life that you complain about, then either change it, change your perspective and be fully-invested in that thing or decide not to do anything about it and be fully-invested in your pursuit of an existence of comfort (and therefore not complaining because you consciously decided not to change anything).
Cliche Ending: YOLO shouldn’t be permission to throw caution to the wind and make reckless decisions. YOLO should be a motto for living life passionately. You can make the right decisions and be responsible and still decide to live life passionately because you only live once, make it count.
