Episode #88 – A Life Worth Living For

Me and her had the same interest. She was the one who usually pushed me to sing more. We used to sing karaoke when she came over at my house and we would just joke around, talk about boys, our standards, and she actually challenges me. She’s one of those people that says, “Iron sharpens iron. She is intellectually wise at her age. I think she was two years older than I was.

A few months ago, I tried to search her online on Facebook and I still saw her went to a concert and it seems as though her life was going well, but I just never reached out because I thought to myself, I don’t know what else to say. Maybe she’s never going to be able to see this message and I’m kind of busy. We went in our way.

And that’s what happens sometimes when you have those inklings or inclination or intuition or a gut feeling. I think we must not ignore those things. Maybe because it’s a a voice from God or whatever you want to call it that telling you that this person is going to eventually not be here on this earth. So a few days ago she somehow is no longer here and I was grieving regretting that I wished I have at least taken a chance to say hello and ask how she was doing and what she’s been doing about her life.

So the thing about death is as I said, it’s something that we cannot predict. It’s something that we are not given the time of when we’re going to be departing from this earth. But as I said, you have to learn to live the life that you want to live right now. Do not ask for permission. Make mistakes and learn from them. If you somehow want to always pursue a dream, maybe it’s going to be something that is hard for you to understand or fear has been taking you at the back seat by not creating something that always wanting to create. Today is that day.

If you’ve been wanting to go eat at the fancy restaurant that you’ve always wished for or eat a eat a food that you have never had before, it’s a time for you to do so. Because here’s the thing, today is the only thing that we are guaranteed. Today is that day. Even the Bible is clear. Do not worry for tomorrow for today’s problem is sufficient enough. You don’t really know when you’re going to be here. You don’t know when is God going to take you back to where you belong. Because our body goes back to earth, but our spirit goes back to the Maker.

And one of the things that I really made me realize that life is too brief. We think that we have enough time that our time here is infinite. But actually, we are all finite. We are only here temporarily. We are not really here permanently because this is not the permanent place to have in our lives.

I’m going to follow my dreams. I’m going to pursue my goals. And that is the difference because we think that we owe people to follow whatever kind of life they expect us to live. If you’re not living the kind of life that you want, you’re actually living for other people. You’re not really living for yourself. This is why I was one of those people in my family that I shook the status quo. I did not follow the set of go to school, you know, we’re going to bring you back to the Philippines, get some nursing degree, and then have a nursing career, which is nothing wrong with having a career in nursing.

But I did not follow that path. I was the person that says no, I am not going to back to the Philippines and get a nursing degree there and then come back into this country and to be a nurse. I was the one who said, “Nope, I am going to go to school on with my own money. I don’t care if I’m going to take out loans for my name because I don’t want to wake up one day and one of you is going to say the reason why she has a nursing degree is because I helped her and I paid for her tuition fee.” I don’t want to owe anyone anything.

And that’s why because I know the kind of people in my life that somehow they’re going to use that against you. And so I said to myself that even if I go to school at nighttime part-time and I go to work full-time in the morning, I will just do that as long as I put myself to college and I know exactly what I want.

Because if I cannot decide on what major I’m going to be in and the rest of my family is going to tell me of what major I should be in, I’m not really living my life, am I? I am being dictated. I am being told of what I should become. And that is one thing I have learned as a child. I don’t care if people will will misunderstand me. I don’t care if people will misjudge me of the choices I’m making. As long as I’m living the life that I want, as long as it’s my life, it’s my making, it’s my choices, it’s my mistakes. Because if somehow I made the wrong decision, at least I can say, well, it didn’t work. But at least I tried.

A Life Worth Living For Requires:

Follow Your Own Dream

At least I was not living behind the shadows of people. At least I was not being pressured to follow somebody else’s dream. At least I was bold enough to follow my own dreams and actually did not bend. And even to this day, we all know that achieving your dreams like podcasting, creating a YouTube channel, having courses online. It is very hard because there’s a lot of competition. But you also have to understand that without challenging yourself, you’re never going to grow. Learning and improving are something that you will grow.

Get out of your comfort zone

Only when you challenge yourself that you’re going to understand your capacity and your greatest potential. If you are just going to be stuck in this mindset of well this is too hard, it’s uncomfortable, it’s unfamiliar, I don’t want to do it because it’s a very scary thing to do something that is not been done before because I know how hard it is to do something that is something new. But familiarity breeds contempt. If you are familiar with a place and you keep doing the same thing and you’re expecting a different result and you’re not going to move the needle, You’re wasting your time.

So instead you have to understand why it is important for you to challenge yourself all the time.

Education is a lifetime process

As I said invest in your self-education like yesterday for the first time in my life I have stepped into one of the investment corporation or building and I was kind of scary of course because how the heck I don’t belong there. I don’t fit in. There’s people that went into this kind of bank or whatever you want to call them. They’re not really a bank. What do you what do what do you call this investment field? Nobody comes in there unless the millionaires and the billionaires, right? And talk about portfolio. They talk about their dividends. They talk about high yield and they talk about CD and Roth IRA. What do I know about these things?

But because I told myself, you need to challenge yourself. You just have to step in there and feel awkward and feel intimidated because the people that you’re going to encounter are the rich ones. But because I told myself, what are you going to lose anyway? What are you going to lose if you somehow step into this arena, the place that you’ve never been? And people are going to look at you like, what the hell is she doing here? And I was the newbie. I don’t know anything. I do not have much money to invest yet. But that’s exactly what happens. You constantly push yourself. That’s what life is worth living about. Maybe you want to venture into another country. You always want to visit a different country.

A Brief History of My Beginnings

For me, I was fortunate enough that I was age of 16 come coming from the Philippines. I lived here for about 20 plus years and I was able to move across the country and live on my own for about 7 years without mommy and daddy’s money. It was my hard work. It was me wanting to really just get out of that super that kind of imprisonment that I had with my dad because we didn’t have really a good relationship. I got kicked out of my uncle’s house. It was a blessing in disguise because if it if I wasn’t got kicked out from my uncle’s house because we live in this one tiny house. My dad lived there, my aunt lived there, my grandma lived there, my aunt, my uncle’s wife lived there, and my little cousin lived there. You see? and with freaking three-bedroom apartment or house rather.

So it was something that probably God used to get me out of my comfort zone and that is why I have learned how to live a life worth fulfilling which is I followed my dreams. I went to school and I just took the courses that I wanted to take and despite the challenges about money but that’s when that’s when I learned about finances that’s when I learned about things in life of how to budget and how to pay off my credit card debt because a life worth living is not something that you have to wait as I said no one is going to be perfect you’re not going to get it right the first time there’s no such thing as the perfect moment you just have to able to get back up again. The moment you fall and you fail, you learn to get back up again and restart again. What does the Bible says?

Life will tes you

The righteous fall seven times, but then they get up again more than seven times because that’s exactly what we do. And that’s how God is going to test you with your character. It’s going to test how resilient you become. Because if everything is going well with your life, you’re never going to learn. Another thing, a life worth living is also learning something that is new. Maybe a new language, maybe you want to learn how to cook, maybe you want to learn how to edit videos or how to do podcast. That’s exactly what I said. Always challenge yourself. Always learning. Read a book that you have never read before. There are books that sometimes very hard for me to understand. I always like to learn and educate myself with a little thing here and there. I am very sporadic.

Always Learn

Sometimes I learn about politics, philosophy, about psychology. I mean there’s a lot of things that you can learn in this life. Maybe we are given this lifetime to create, to be curious, to learn, to grow, and then we can just take it all with us when we die someday. Every one of us are given 24 hours in a day, and it’s up to us to use it, to allocate the time that we’ve been given. And I really think that we’re are more creative geniuses and we just never really taken the chance to tap into our creativity because we’re too busy with work.

We’re too busy with responsibilities, raising kids and being a mom or being a wife. And sometimes if you don’t if you don’t take the time to know exactly what you want. That’s why many women or people or men, they wake up one day in the age of 70 and they’re living in regret and they wish they have done something differently about their lives. I w they probably wish that they have followed their dreams and pursue the things that they wanted to pursue but it’s too late because they’re too old or maybe they’re already sick and that is the thing that I don’t want you to live to live in regret because regret is a high price to pay.

You Don’t Want To Regret Someday

Nobody wants to live in regret. The wish I could have should have would have done it differently. If I wish I could have would have you know followed my dreams. I wish I could have, would have, you know, never listened to what other people said or never really cared about what they think or say about me anyway. Because most of the time when we don’t follow our dreams is because we get caught up in people’s approval, opinion, and their validation. We get caught up with people pleasing.

And so we stop living the life that we want. And if you don’t take the time to ask yourself the question, what is the life that you want to design? Where do you want to live? What are things that you want to do? What are the choices that if you could make a choices now, what would what what would that be? For many of us, unfortunately, we cannot just move to France or to Europe. Perhaps if God allows you, maybe that’s something that you should look into. Hopefully, one day I could just visit there for one year and understand the culture of French and Europeans because I’m so drawn about their culture. I’m not sure why that is.

Take A Risk

And so besides the point, we really have to understand that a life worth living is also designing your life. It’s not by default. I think most people that are successful, they just didn’t wake up one day and wishing for something and they never really worked hard for it. People that are successful because they understood that life is worth taking a risk, that life is worth designing and creating. It is it doesn’t happen magically. I think I’m not sure who said it first, but a plan without an execution is a failure or you have to have you need to have a plan and execute them in order for it to become something that you can see a result a result. You can wish all you want, you can hope all you want.

You can manifest and do the kind of thing in your head when it’s manifesting. You can say, “I’m rich.” You know, I’m always rich. But if you don’t do the work, if you don’t do the hard things, you’re never going to be rich. Let’s just face it. It doesn’t matter if you’re going to sit on your floor and you’re going to try to manifest a Lamborghini in your head or try to manifest a million dollars in your head. If you’re not going to do something with the changes in your lifestyle, it’s not going to change anything because that is just a hocus pocus nonsense.

Assess on What You Want

You’re not going to change anything unless you say, “Okay, what is the kind of life that I want? Do I really want to have a big house? Do I really want to have a Lamborghini? Do I really want to have a freaking Porsche in my garage? Or are people are just giving this to me? Is it because this is the standard of society? Is it because for too long we have been conditioned that this is what normal life is? That this is exactly what wealthy looks like? Wealthy people versus rich people are completely different. You may not be the wealthiest person when it comes to the money in the bank. You may not have billions of dollars in the bank, but when it comes to your relationship, when it comes to your health, when it comes to your life, you’re happy, you’re content, you’re wealthy.

We think that just because you don’t have a millions of dollars in the bank that you must be poor. But if you have a good, loving family that loves you, a loving husband or a children that cares about you and they take care of you, you are wealthy. And if you think you’re content about your job, your career, even if you’re working at McDonald’s or who could barely make enough money, but you’re content about working at the deli, you’re contented of the things and you’re making enough money to support your family, but you’re happy anyway. That’s wealth. You are more wealthy than you think.

Wealth is Subjective

And you’re healthy. You can eat the food that you like to eat. You’re agile. You can actually move from places to places and able to do your errands and chores without body aches. You’re actually wealthy because we think that being wealthy is only for the people that are opulent who are making much money and have a lot of investment and good portfolio. But you’ll be surprised that many rich people are actually not wealthy. Many rich people are actually hunger for deeper meaning about their lives.

Many rich people that have millions and billions of dollars are actually not wealthy. They don’t have a wealthy mindset. They always think that it’s never enough. They always want to have more. At what point though is enough. So this is why a life worth living for is more than just the meets the eye. It’s about the soul. It is what’s going on deep within your soul. That’s why Jesus said, “What good is a man to gain the whole world but loses the soul?” Because if your soul is not satisfied, if your soul is there’s a gaping hole in your soul, if there’s a chasm in your soul and you don’t know what it is that you need to fill in.

Find Your Interests

That’s why many people have crutches and they always pursue things because they think that by pursuing a lot of things and gaining more and following this and following that and they never really understood why they’re never happy and they try different things, you know, they probably tried this and it didn’t work and then they’re going to chase another one and they tried this and it didn’t work. It didn’t chase another one. The one rule thing that I told my son for you to really understand what you want to do in this life, this is the rule of thumb. A life worth living for cuz I love I asked my son, you pay attention to your interests.

So my son is interested with playing drums. He’s 12 years old right now. He also interested in playing billiards and he’s also interested in something about the video games. And I said, if these things you try to hone them, if you try to be skillful and learn about them and you practice more and you put that focus in one thing, you don’t have to ask questions whether that’s exactly what you want. I think we’re given a revelation when we’re children of what we’re supposed to do in life, but we’re too caught up with the voices around us that we don’t really listen.

Recall Your Childhood Dreams

Because when I was a child, I’ve always liked communication. I’ve always drawn into journalism. I’ve always liked to understand how to communicate what does relationship interpersonal relationship that was always my curiosity about the world. I was the person who like to go outside in the field you know looking at nature watching the butterflies and the grasshopper and even to this day that is still something that I like to do. I love nature. I like to just meander and wander around nature and that keeps me at peace and I like to talk to people interpersonal relationship.

I like to understand where they’re coming from, understand their problems. And so you see, but because we have been conditioned that people in our lives know better, especially our parents, they think that just because they’re an adult, they know better than us. When in fact when you’re a child, God already gave you the kind of hints that you should follow. You know, either it’s my son also loves the hair. I said maybe you want to be a barber someday and maybe you should focus on how to cut hair and maybe you should understand that you can make a hobby of on the side of being a billiard player and then at night you can play the drums.

Multi-faceted Interests

I mean this is exactly what you do with your life. You just do not say that I can only pick one when you have a lot of interest because we have are multiaceted people. We’re not just one dimensional. We’re multi-dimensional. I have a lot of interest and so do you. You’re not just one person who only like to just one thing. I’m pretty sure you have multiple things that you’re you’re interested in. And why do we limit ourselves anyway? Because the sky is the limit according to the saying, right? If you are interested in music and interested in writing and interested in other games or any sports rather then why don’t you just learn to tap into it because that’s worth life living for.

Do not allow people to limit your capacity. Do not allow people to say this is it. This is exactly what you’re going to be good at and that’s it. and you’re not even going to bother to venture into other areas because you’re too afraid or you get too caught up with people’s opinion and idea when in fact they haven’t even tried it themselves.

Understand why you want to achieve it

So you have to understand that if you’re interested in other sports, you want to play other sports that you’ve been wanting to play, then do it. If you want to do something with your life, maybe painting or take a painting class or whatever it is, then just possibly do it because as I said, life is too short.

And it made me realize that when my friend died at the age of 45, I really thought to myself, I wish I have asked her what she did with her life during those period of time. Was she able to, you know, follow her dreams? Was she able to fulfill her goals or cuz I remembered looking at her Facebook. I think she was one of the realtor. She sold houses back in the Philippines. And I thought to myself, well, I think she made it right. I think she lived her life the way that she wanted to live her life. And hopefully she did.

And maybe that’s why God gave her the time to rest now. At least her pain is no longer here. She’s no longer going to carry the burdens because she too had a very difficult childhood, difficult relationship with her family. She didn’t have a very loving home that she wished she had and she was never been married. But that’s what made me realize that life is too short and I don’t want to wake up and just be dead and says, “Oh my gosh, I wish I could have done much better or much more to life.”

Be Present

And another thing and last but not the least, the point is do not only focus on today. You have to also understand that there’s a hereafter. You cannot only be concerned about today and this now. If we even consider to invest in a portfolio of how much you should invest in your dividends and Roth IRA, you also have to be invested in where you’re going because that matters the most than being here because as I said here is not your permanent home. Here is just a temporary being. The one that you’re going after here is the permanent. It is infinite. And I think you should know for sure that if you’re going to heaven, if you’ve ever meet God face to face, you’re confident enough to hear him say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” And I think that’s what Jesus said. I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one can come to me except through the father.

You can believe otherwise, but that’s what I believe because what else is there? Can you name of someone who have been here? Who who is the greatest person that can pay for our sins in debt in full? Can you name one person who did who live a life pure and perfect and holy who knew no sin? I couldn’t think of anyone. Only Jesus Christ did. He was the man who knew no sin who became sin. He was the one who lived a perfect life.

And he was the one that was the Messiah. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son to those who believe in him will not perish but have eternal life. And I think there’s no other one. And so it’s worth a try to really understand that if Jesus meant that he is the son of God, that he is the way, the truth, and the life, what is it for you to lose to to believe in that? There’s really nothing to lose. And we somehow think that this life is just only for pleasures. Yes, I do love pleasures. I like to eat good food and do the things that I like to do, which is buying books and going on vacation, going on the beach. But other than that, we we also have to understand, are you really sure and confident enough when you die? If you’re going to meet Jesus, is he going to say, “Yep, he’s one of mine.” Or is he going to say, “No, depart from me, you wicked one. I never knew you.