Inspirational story:

Someone sent me this and it really resonated with me, so I wanted to make sure to share it with you.

We tend to see our lives as binary. We choose milk over orange juice. We go left instead of right. We sleep instead of stay awake.

Frankly, there’s an entire gray area people stay away from.

I held the hand of a dying man once. He stared at me and cried. His hand cold and shaky. As his lips moved, I leaned in to listen to his whisper.

“I see myself in you. I see all the years in front of you. And I wish I could have mine back.”

He died a few moments later.

The 1 Way to Live Without Regret?: Live life your way.

Over the next few months, I replayed what that man said to me in my head. I said it aloud. I wrote it down. His words held a lifetime of weight, exerted in a few seconds of time. Regret. Envy. Jealousy. It all festered inside his soul, because he didn’t do at least one thing in his life.

I dug into this man’s life, and an obvious passion revealed itself. He loved kids. He volunteered at an orphanage, the boys and girls clubs, boy scouts, etc.

Another piece of information surfaced whilst digging into this gentleman’s past. He’d never married, and he’d never had kids of his own.

He worked like a mad-dog to accumulate wealth, but he never made time for what he loved the most: family, a wife, kids.

If you want to live a full life, consider these 5 ways to live it:

1: live life your way, not the way others expect

As far as we know, you get one shot at this life. You get one trip around the merry-go-round. It’s relatively short. And you’re in it with billions of others.

“The whole point is to live life and be–use all the colors in the crayon box.” -RuPaul

2: Work to live, do not live to work

In Western society, we tend to take our jobs pretty seriously. We wake up, clock in, clock out, go to sleep. Instead, consider a lifestyle that allows you to live. Work for the ability to live. Go see a show. Go for a hike. Spend some time with the kids. Enjoy each and every breath you have, because they are limited.

“Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.” - Dolly Parton

3: Express yourself

We bite our tongues. We’re afraid of offending someone. We’re also afraid we’re not good enough at painting, writing, speaking, etc to share our opinions, perspectives, and ideas.

Consider the consequence of never expressing yourself. You hold it all in. No one ever gets to know the real you. You live within the voice of the masses, which may align with what you think or do, but not expressing yourself suffocates your essence as a human being.

“You’ve got to express yourself in life, and it’s better out than in. What you reveal, you heal.” - Chris Martin

4: Initiate, build, and nurture relationships.

All we have in this world are ourselves and others. We humans are technically a lone species in a cognitive sense. We are also extremely social, which begs the question, why is social media causing so many issues emotionally?

Nonetheless, spend time creating new relationships and nurturing old ones. Build bridges between people, not things, and remember: We’re all in this together.

"You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want." - Zig Ziglar

5: “Don’t worry Be happy.” -Bob Marley

A surprisingly common sentiment is that people hold themselves in a negative state of mind. They push and pressure themselves to a point of emotional exhaustion, which then leads to a downward spiral of negative thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

Cheer up, buttercup! You wake every morning to experience life. You have a choice to make: live or die. Either way, you will die. So why not live a little along the way?

“Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more.” - Tony Robbins

I’ve learned through this experience and others two things:

1. We get one shot at this gift of a life.
2. It’s my responsibility to leverage this opportunity at life however I can to make the biggest positive impact possible for myself and for others.

Don’t make the mistake the gentleman did and live life how others deemed necessary.

Live life your way.