With each choice you make, you create your life.
~Albert Einstein
We are the stewards of our lives. Not just our possessions, but of our attentions, our thoughts, the words we speak, and the frequency we emit. This perspective on stewardship naturally extends beyond our belongings into the unseen realm of our inner lives.
If you desire a $60,000 car but can only afford a $6,000 one, treat it with reverence. If you own just one beautiful pair of shoes, treat them as if they were a rare treasure. What we tend to, tends to us. Where we place our attention, it mirrors back to us. What we honor expands us and our world.
This idea of devotion prepares us to consider how our everyday choices can create sacredness, regardless of the cost or status.
In The Little Prince, the fox tells the little prince: It is the time you have wasted on your rose that makes your rose so important. It is not a waste if it is dedication. The things that we pour ourselves into become sacred to us. Not because they are expensive, simply because they are ours.
From objects to actions, from words to thoughts, each decision becomes a quiet rehearsal for the life we’re imagining.
To live the life you imagine is not to wait for it to arrive; it is to begin living it now, how you speak, how you care, how you choose. This path to living your imagined life is not without a give-and-take. It asks us to release the behaviours that keep us tied to old versions of ourselves. It asks us to examine what words we use, even those clever comebacks that sound witty but lower our vibrations. It also asks us to discard what poisons us, even if it’s popular. Those include the voices in our head, telling us we don’t deserve or are not good enough.
This reflection leads to a deeper question: what are we feeding our minds and spirits every day?
Recently, I sat at an intersection in my car and watched a man cross the street. Perhaps homeless, perhaps not. A radio pressed to his ear, blasting violent lyrics. I felt a wave of empathy, not so much for his circumstances, but for his soul. He was consuming audio poison. Not nourishment, not uplifting. I wondered: what would happen if he heard something different? What would happen if we all did the same?
We are shaped by what we consume, of course, the obvious being what we eat, but also what we surround ourselves with, including the people, environment, philosophies, and our tendencies. Where we place our focus becomes the foundation of what we create. Choose wisely where you spend your energy,
When we consistently direct our attention toward what uplifts and nourishes us, we begin to inhabit the life we’ve imagined, rather than dream about it. Each small choice becomes a step on that path. This is the quiet but powerful way we “go confidently in the direction of our dreams” — not as a distant hope, but as a practice we live now.
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.
~ Henry David Thoreau
