Years ago a friend gave me a book titled, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way
I was in a place where I was unhappy with the way my life was going. I was overweight and in a life stealing job, everything just seemed to be wrong.

The principles of the book has stuck with me, though I haven’t accomplished everything I have wanted to (see post It Starts with P and Ends with Rocrastination), I keep telling myself a little at a time will eventually be a lot. I do have a better job; it took some hardships before I got here, but I would never be here without taking small steps to change my life.

Instead of setting large, scary, unfathomable goals…set small short term goals that you can see yourself accomplishing. For example, set a goal to lose 10 pounds instead of the 100 pounds you would eventually like to get rid of. If you want to start exercising but have been a couch potato for the last ten years, start by walking in place in front of the tv during your favorite show instead of registering to run a marathon or joining a gym. This last year…I overcame my fear of the elliptical. It kicked my ass when I first started using it but gradually, increasing the resistance a little at a time, I can burn about 500-600 calories in an hour (Hell Yeah!).

You’ll never know how much you could have accomplished if you NEVER start.
And, if you don’t know where to start…start somewhere, anywhere…just start.

And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. ~ Abraham Lincoln

There is a Garth Brooks song called “Pushing Up Daisies” that has stuck with me ever since I heard it years ago.  An excerpt:

There’s two dates in time
That they’ll carve on your stone
And everyone knows what they mean
What’s more important
Is the time that is known
In that little dash there in between
That little dash there in between

Are you living in the dash? 

My church is starting a series of services centered around the idea of living as you only had one month to live. Would you change how you lived your life for the next month if you knew it would be your last one? 

They call it a challenge. 

What would you do differently if you only had thirty days??  Go ahead, think about it for a minute.  (I’ll wait here)

It’s hard to say isn’t it?   It was a lot easier for me to say what I would not do than how I would do something different. I know I would spend as much time as I could with my family. 

The point of the “challenge” isn’t to plan out how you would spend the last thirty days of your life – as if you would even know when that was.  The point is to get you to start thinking about living your life differently now not waiting until you know you have a short time left to do the things you always wanted to do.  

The “challenge” I am struggling with is not what I would do – its how to go about doing it and not get sucked back in to the daily grind we have become accustomed to. 

I want to travel the US in an RV – see places and experience different people and take lots of photos.  I was to live life, travel, love and be loved, and ultimately be happy.  If in the process, I could make a difference in someone else’s life – that’s a bonus.

Do you know how I could start living my dreams now?  That will be my journey…I just don’t want to spend my life trying to figure it out. 

I leave you with a quote from www.onemonthtolive.com :

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live your life so that if you discovered you only had a month to live, you wouldn’t have to change a thing?”

Leave your dreams in the comments below. 

Curly hair – check. Rock Star – check. Famous – uh? Singing Talent – well? Songwriting – eh. Male – oops?

So what would it take to be part of the Jonas Brouthers? I suppose genetics might be my first downfall. Not to mention I’m a girl who can’t sing and is much older than the trio. Hmmm…a girl can dream can’t she?

Their franchise has already raked in upwards of $50 million from touring, album sales and merchandise.  Whichever one just turned 21 bought himself a lamborghini for his birthday, a mere $200K.

So, what would it be like to be a Jonas brother and how do I sign up?   For now I can only dream that for the rest of my life, I could choose what I wanted to do each day instead of planning my life around my job.  Sure, they may be history in a few years,  they are getting older than the demographic they play to, but from the amount of money they have made, would they ever have to work again?

I’m sure they have a few years in them left, another disney movie, some spinoff projects and maybe even a clothing line, cologne or two or three, hair gel perhaps?