Out and about on my daily travels I ask people a simple question because not only do I care about the answer but also to serve as a social experiment.
“So how is your day going?”
Most people I meet reply with “surviving” or a variation such as “hanging in there.” If they are corporate types at an office, they usually say they’re counting down to 5 pm or the weekend.
Words have power. If more of us declare our week to be full of unlimited possibility, and the best ever, how much would our collective consciousness shift?
Rarely in the years that I’ve been doing this experiment does anyone reply in the positive, such as “outstanding,” “super,” or similar. The closest such response I get is from a neighbor of mine who has been courageously facing a number of serious health issues. When I ask her how is her day going, her standard response is “Hey, I’m still alive.” She smiles when she says this, and it makes me smile too, and everyone else who hears it.
When someone asks you how your day is going, what is your typical answer? How alive do you feel? More importantly, how can you feel more alive?
Brendon Burchard answers this question in his excellent book “The Charge: Activating the 10 Human Drives That Make You Feel Alive.”
These drives are what make you feel more human. They are your desires for more control, competence, congruence, caring, connection, change, challenge, creative expression, contribution, and consciousness.
Why is it so important to activate these desires so we live a “fully charged life”? I love this quote from Burchard. I keep it as a note in my phone for when I need to remind myself of this truth:
Too many people have lost all grand ambitions for change and greatness by heeding the advice of the “realists” and the standard bearers of the status quo, who tell us to set “smart” goals. But smart goals almost always end up being small goals, utterly predictable and absurdly measured small plans for small people who need certainty and safety to such a degree they cannot wade into the wide territory of the unknown where real vision and progress lives. No great innovation or human leap forward came from a predictable path or an idea that was immediately “attainable” or “realistic”. It’s rare that these types of goals ever spark the imagination or fire the will of the human spirit. We are now a culture flooded with tasks and spreadsheets and work plans that inspire no heart, no drive, no courage.
I say, you want to change? Then do not under any circumstances allow yourself to settle on a vision or a calling or a change in any arena that is uninspiring. If you’re going to have clarity on something in your life, make it something so big and bright and meaningful that you will get out of bed and chase it until you grasp it or die. Bring forth a desire that is unbounded and even scares you a little bit, that will demand all the best that is in you, that takes you out of your own orbit and into the stratosphere of the remarkable. That kind of desire changes your life, and it changes the world.
So how is my day going?
Great! Thank you for asking!
That is not to say I have no fear of the unknown. But when my mind goes there, I tell myself what I know to be true in the mind of God: I am clear, I am confident, I am led. I have love to give, I have gifts to share, I have creativity to release, I have abundance to experience.
How is your day going?
Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography/Flickr.com