Meyer - Seize the day : living on purpose and making every day count

Recently I realized that I have already lived more of my life than what I have left, and somehow that made me even more determined than ever to make the most of my time. I think when we get past the age of fifty or sixty, we begin to think quite differently about our life and what we want to do with our time than we did perhaps when we were twenty, thirty, or even forty. We realize more clearly how precious time is, and in my case (and I hope in yours), we want to make sure that we dont waste any of it.

Do you ever have plans for the day and then get to the end of it and feel frustrated and perhaps even a bit angry with yourself? You had a plan that seemed good, but you didnt do much of what you planned to do, and, to be honest, you are not real sure what you did do. You were busy all day, but you only remember doing fragmented pieces of things depending on whatever seemed the most urgent at the time. Actually, when you think about it, you must admit you dont recall finishing anything significant.

Your plan was to pay the bills, go to the grocery store, get the oil changed in your car, and cook a nice dinner for your family. You really wanted to do the dinner because just last week one of your teenagers said, Mom, why dont we ever all sit down to eat dinner together like we did when I was little? You didnt have an answer because youre not sure what the reason is. It just seems that life is so busy that having dinner together never happens!

Is it hard for you to focus on what you really want and need to do because of all the interruptions you deal with all day? Have your e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter accounts made your life easier or just busier? All of the modern conveniences can, of course, be very good, but only if we manage them and avoid letting the buzzes, dings, and beeps they make control us.

Are you steadily becoming the person you really want to be? Are you accomplishing the things you want to accomplish in life? Are you an on-purpose person, or do you drift through the days, weeks, months, and years waiting to see where life takes you? Do you need to take charge of your life? Is it time for a change? Do you need to seize the day today and every day?

I am usually a very goal-oriented individual, and I am motivated by accomplishment so I stay on track, but in the past year I found myself looking at the piles of things I needed and wanted to do and becoming so double-minded about which one to do first that I often ended up doing nothing, or at best just doing little bits and pieces of several things, none of which I finished. Oh, I finished the things I absolutely had to do, but, to be honest, I was wasting a lot of precious time and feeling aggravated at myself because I seemed to spend more time trying to figure out what to do than I did doing anything. I felt really overwhelmed and that is unusual for me, so I really started praying about it and wanted to hear what God would say to me about the situation. I felt life was ordering me around rather than me ordering my life, and I knew something was wrong.

As I prayed about it, God began showing me the importance of living life on purposesomething I had done most of my life but had somehow gotten off track. I think part of the reason why I encountered the season of passivity and double-mindedness was so I would feel an urgency to write this book. As I started listening to people, I found that a large percentage live their lives day in and day out without accomplishing much of what they truly intended to. They were busy, but not sure what they were busy with. Im busy has become the standard excuse for all the things we should have done but didnt do. If you see a friend you used to hear from regularly but now cannot get him or her to return your calls, he or she will assuredly say, Im sorry I havent called you back; I have just been very busy. We recently waited almost three weeks to secure an appointment for a carpet bid. When we called the salesman for the third time, he said, Im sorry it has taken me so long to get back to youwe have just been so busy! What if God never answered our calls and then gave the excuse of being too busy?