A Work of Art

By Mike Hall, December 25, 2015

“If your career path doesn’t seem to match your heart’s longing, it may be you have a skill that doesn’t match your passion.

You can’t escape that there are hopes and passions inside you, waiting to come alive.

You know there is much more you have to offer, though you do not say it out loud.

You’ve carried these dreams in your heart for too long, it’s now time—way past time—-to do something about them. Life is not a stationary experience. Your dreams are not a portrait fixed in time but a story still being written. Life is not a color within the lines project; life is a work of art.

You have to keep mixing colors, creating new blends, and seeing things in fresh ways. You must be willing to get paint all over you. Life is about growth. Growth demands change. Change requires humility. Sometimes you need to bring change; sometimes you need to be changed.

Many of us need reinvented lives. We need fresh stories, maybe some new characters to enter our story. When you get up in the morning, maybe you feel like your life is just like a show waiting to be canceled, an endless rerun with worn out story lines and superficial characters.

You don’t get any say about the beginning of your life journey, but you have a great deal to say about the destination of your journey and how that journey shapes you. If we are to live our destiny, we must be willing and ready to face the challenge.

All of us must choose to reinvent ourselves to face whatever is waiting in front of us. Part of learning to reinvent yourself is learning how to be teachable, resourceful, and flexible. Life is filled with unforeseen boulders, and you must become the river.

The higher the water, the less the boulders can slow its progress. A great destiny is not a tightrope but a river. It’s not balance you need but adaptability. Missteps are permissible but not rigidity. You must be willing to reimagine, to relearn, and to reinvent yourself. Adaptability requires teachability.

The ability to change comes from one core characteristic, and that is simply humility. Humility keeps us flexible. It serves as an oil that keeps our hearts open to change and able to adjust.

You were created not to simply sleep through your dreams but to live dreams bigger than you, bolder than you.

Somewhere in our past, many of us gave up on our dreams and lost touch with an essential part of our being. Somehow our capacity to dream of a different us, of a different life, is beaten up and left broken by people and pain and disappointment.

To create a different world is both a courageous act and a creative act.

May your life be a work of art.”

By Erwin Raphael McManus