Make Every Day Count – 6 Ways to Make Your World a Little Larger

The past two years I have been on a journey of finding a renewed focus for my life. It started when I left my career after having a baby and has continued through the loss of a grandparent followed by the loss of a parent.

If I’ve been enlightened about anything during these past two years, it’s that life is incredibly short. We either live it fully or we waste it.

I recently heard about a colleague who was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. He’s 27 years old and never had a health issue in his life. On the flipside, my husband’s grandmother is almost 89 and she lives on junk food.

Life and death are funny. They seldom make sense. None of us are guaranteed a tomorrow. Make the most of today and live with no regrets.

My renewed focus is to make every moment count with my precious daughter and family, to use my talents to encourage others and to live life fully. These priorities sometimes mean that my to-do list for the day doesn’t get completed. Sometimes it means I pass up an opportunity to make more money. Sometimes it means I stay up half the night working so I can have my day free.

Sacrifices made for the right reasons can bring freedom. Finding your focus is priceless. Start your life over by thinking of the end of it – then make every day count.

Part of pursuing a focused life of purpose may include an expansion of your perspective. Expanding your worldview may help you find your niche. Here are some ways to make your world a little larger.

• Host a foreign exchange student. Not only will you help make someone’s dream come true, you and your family will learn just as much as your host student, as you learn to communicate with each other and learn about his/her country’s customs.
• Eat local. Eat and buy locally grown food, or start to grow your own. The average North American sits down to eat, each ingredient has typically travelled at least 1,500 miles, according to CleanOurAir.com. Eating locally not only has health benefits, but will also take you one step closer to understanding the affect our choices have on the world around us.
• Volunteer. Nothing puts your problems in perspective faster than helping another with his/her problems. Volunteering is on the rise since the recession, and with the mounting economic needs, opportunities abound to make a difference in the life of someone else.
• Read the BBC. While it doesn’t have to be the BBC, reading a non-American source of news can help put our own news in context. Make sure the news you consume doesn’t only deal with what’s happening on our home turf, but the world around us.
• Hang out with people who don’t look like you. Many of us find it more comfortable to talk with and hang out with people who are like us – and look like us. If you don’t have a regular opportunity to befriend or at least have conversations with others who are from different ethnic backgrounds than yours, put yourself in situations that will. Take a free class from the library or visit a lecture or community event.
• Read a book or magazine you don’t think you’d be interested in. A mentor of mine once recommended buying a subscription to a certain news magazine and reading it from cover to cover – even the articles that didn’t interest me. This allowed me to widen my perspective on the world and introduced and educated me on topics I normally would seek information about.

When your mind expands, your circle of influence grows – allowing you to better affect change around you. Go for it!