We all die eventually. It can be sooner or later. With that information, you can either get busy living, or get busy dying.

You are living when you take ownership of your problems. It doesn’t matter if you win or not, but you play every game with a sportsman’s mindset. You are living when you give every challenge, every competition, every problem your best effort. You are living when you take hits but keep moving forward. You are living when you fall on the ground, but make an effort to bounce back, even though it feels impossible.

But you are dying when you run on autopilot. You are dying when you sleepwalk through life. You are dying when you don’t have an overall life strategy. You are dying when you let your circumstances, or your bad luck, or the people around you get the better of you. You are dying when you don’t make the hard choices, and let others make them for you.

A good life depends on your mental wellbeing. And mental wellbeing is never unplanned. It’s not something that just happens. It’s a conscious choice that you make, and it takes considerable effort. It starts off by getting to know yourself; when you ask yourself questions such as: Who am I? What is my purpose? What is personally important to me? What drives me to work on the things I like?

We cannot save ourselves from misfortune. Life is wicked, and no matter how hard you prepare, misfortune will find you. We often prepare ourselves either to achieve success or to prevent failure. The problem is, we are all experts at success. What we don’t prepare for is failure. What eventually is going to set you apart is how you deal with failure.

The reason why failure, sadness, and misfortune are inevitable is because you don’t control everything. Therefore it makes more sense to focus only on what you can control.

Life is not easy. Life is wicked. Life is not fair. It never was, it isn’t now, it won’t ever be. You can either sit and mope and blame and complain, or you can accept it, take responsibility, and make an effort to do something. You can either get busy living, or get busy dying.



© Ashish Oberoi
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