12: Experience Life | A Life of Balance | The Monday Experience

It's Monday and we're glad you're joining us on the new format journey of The Real Brian Show! Starting this week, you will find three installments of the podcast ready for your consumption on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. Monday is Encouragement Day! Using stories and experiences from his own life, Brian will guide conversations toward making the most out of our day, out of our week, and hopefully set us all off to a great start.

Experience Life

My life has been a little crazy lately. I've been an entrepreneur most of my life, behind the mic and piano most of my life, and the blessing and curse of engaging in those activities is that there are always opportunities with potential. Some work out, some really work out, but many don't. You spend a lot of time working for little to no return. On the other side of that, when you do the right thing... things rock! I've spent a lot of time with people lately, wanting to make a difference, but have had to stop and ask myself recently whether I'm actually enjoying life. Am I really living, and not just exisiting?

Of course, work is essential; providing for a family, putting food on the table and upholding responsibilities. But is it really all essential? We hear and read about the litany of To-Dos: make money, be healthy, never eat sugar, exercise, have 8-pack abs like Oliver Queen, sleep 20 hours a day and work 8 day-26 hour weeks, stop watching TV and movies. Just work, work, work until you get there.

Today I want to talk about how we seem to be stuck in this endless loop of existence and insanity, within which we rarely lookup and ask what we're doing. We rarely stop to experience life or really live. We live on autopilot. After a conversation with my wife, Sarah, on Thursday, I came up with this idea for experiencing life. It isn't just about experiencing life, but experiencing balance in life. And in order to do this, I've come up with a few things that I can take action on:

• Only take on what is essential. Do less, and do it better. (More on this next week!)
• Having balance in life.
• Mindset. Attitude.

What would happen if I just focused on experiencing life and living a life of balance? Be healthy, but enjoy my favorite junk food every now and then. Work hard, but more importantly, work smart. Simplify my life so that I can really focuson, and do great with, a few things rather than trying to maintain interest and expertise in a wide variety of things (how stressful!). Fill my days, but get some sleep! Watch TV shows and movies, but only watch the ones that captivate me and are healthy for me.

In the slightly paraphrased words of William Wallace: "Everyone dies. Not everyone truly lives."