Where is Your Life’s Blood?

One of the most important things is to have something in your life that energizes you. To accomplish this, I actually try to forget any rational and practical life plans I’ve made for myself.

I’m not talking about a desire to move to a nicer place, finish that degree, or even find a special someone to spend your life with. I’m not talking about accumulating money or things.

I speak of something that runs deeper in us, in our life’s blood.

Today, I am curious how you may answer some of these questions:

• What is the last time you felt alive, truly alive? What were you doing?

• What gets you excited when you can pursue it? Having it is not the most important thing – simply being able to pursue it is wonderful on its own.

• What would truly disappoint you and make you feel like a part of you had died if it were taken away from you? (e.g., this may be a person, place, thing, action, passion, or idea)

• What gives you the feeling of flow? A feeling of timelessness, complete focus, great challenge, and yet finding joy in that challenge, of getting lost in the moment. (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, one of my favorite books.)

• When are you so happy that you stop caring about all the problems you face?

• What is the source of this life’s blood of yours? Is it your will to love? To be loved? To help? To challenge yourself to your limits in a way that is still enjoyable? To feel a thrill? To be a hero?

• Is there something you do that carries great risks? Yet despite the risk, it’s well worth doing to you?

• Is there something you could do all day, and you would be happy to do it? Even perhaps without pay or acknowledgment?

• Is there someone or a group where you feel like they are your true family? They awaken a deeper part of you that you didn’t even know was in there?

As I write these questions, I am aware that some of these could point toward clearly negative behaviors such as drug abuse – of course, I’m not encouraging anything of that nature. I am hoping to get you to find something positive that energizes you.

Unfortunately, sometimes as the days pass us, we can slip into a sort of comatose version of ourselves, just going through the motions, just putting in the work to get us from point A to point B, responding as we think we’re supposed to respond, just working toward that next promotion so that we can work toward the one that comes after it. If this sounds familiar, you may be stuck in the busy, entertained, exhausted cycle. Perhaps we all slip up in that way sometimes, but this is not the way to live our lives.

If you find that happening to you, I hope you can ask yourself where your life’s blood is. What truly excites and stimulates you and is worth doing on its own? Bring more of that into your life.

Perhaps you haven’t found it yet - that is fine, then you must work on finding it.

I see some people sometimes, and I can’t help but ask: Where has their life’s blood gone? I can’t judge too much. It has happened to me in the past. Perhaps it happens to all of us at times. The important thing is not to get stuck there.