Taste Life!
How to Do Anything In Life We Want To By Sue Dickinson
I was having lunch with a friend of mine the other day when the discussion turned to our future plans, goals and dreams. My friend’s comments regarding these topics, while excited and animated, also seemed a bit flighty and erratic. At one point, she was talking about how far she wanted to advance in her career as a systems analyst, at another she indicated her main aim in life was to be able to quit her job and become a stay at home mom.
I admit, I have had times in my life where I’ve experienced the same uncertain, haywire thinking – absolutely passionate about one goal - only to days (or even hours) later becoming dead set on accomplishing something completely contrary to that original objective.
Why do we women suffer from this seeming indecision in our lives?
My friend Margaret told me once that her parents raised her to believe she could accomplish anything in her life that she wanted to…but when Margaret got older and tried to do just that, she found that her parents had failed to teach her how to discover what it is she really wanted out of life. So instead of looking for that one or two things that would make her truly happy, she spent many years trying to have and be everything.
We live in such a rich and exciting era, and our opportunities are so numerous! But at times the choices we have make it more and more difficult to settle on a final decision.
Imagine for a moment that you are standing in a huge buffet line of food. The tables are literally weighted down with the immense offerings – delicious meat and seafood main courses, succulent salads and side dishes, and decadent desserts line both sides of the table. What is your approach? Do you grab a plate and start at the beginning, piling on a little bit of everything until your plate is overflowing? Or do you walk slowly through the line, analyzing each option and deciding which items you will choose before making your selections?
Life is a lot like that buffet line. There is no possible way that we can take advantage of everything it has to offer. And rather than trying to do it all and to be everything to everybody, it makes more sense for us to pick and choose our life based on our own personal preferences and needs. And, just as our tastes for food change over the course of time – so will our needs and desires for what we want to accomplish.
Isn’t that great news? Our job doesn’t consist of finding a way to do it all! We don’t have to pile it on one after the other until our plates are so full, they are overflowing! Instead, we can slowly peruse all of the options we have before us – take our time and decide what’s the most important. And the most comforting thing is knowing that if our tastes change – if our needs and desires bend and twist with time – we are free to choose another route.
So yes, Margaret’s parents were right! We can do anything in life that we want to. The missing link, however, is knowing that we can’t do everything in life. It is up to us to discover what the most important and gratifying choices will be. By taking our time, and checking out all of our options before making our decisions, we can taste only those goals and dreams that are most satisfying – what a way to savor the flavor every day of our life!
