One of my favorite Point of Grace songs (and my absolute favorite until recently), "How You Live," makes the case that what matters is not what you do or who you know, but how you live.
Now, I absolutely believe that.
In fact, I've recently given up my freelance writing career to write and teach others how to become the person they want to be, the person they were put here to be.
Still, I sometimes find myself thinking, or even saying, "It's just not that easy."
And it's not.
If it were that easy, no one would need my help or anyone else's. If it were that easy, we wouldn't need people to remind us it's how we live. We wouldn't need to seek guidance in finding our purpose and pursuing the goals we're here to pursue.
And you know something?
I like that it's not easy, because the easy things are usually not very important.
The way I see it, God put me here for a reason, or more accurately a lot of reasons. I will never know exactly what those reasons are.
No matter how earnestly I seek my life's purpose and pursue it, I still only know a portion of what God has in mind for me.
That's what makes it hard sometimes--I don't know if I'm on the right path. And I don't always like doing what is in front of me to do.
But at the same time, not knowing what God has in mind makes it easier.
He doesn't expect that I will follow his plan absolutely. He doesn't get angry and punish me if I take a left instead of going straight, if my intentions are good and I'm trying to be who I was put here to be.
What I'm here for, ultimately, is to live. Everything else flows from that.
So it really does all come down to how I live.
Every day I make decisions about how I'm going to live.
Whether I'm going to work through dinner or sit down and enjoy my family.
Whether I'm going to complain about the traffic or just accept it.
Whether I'm going to push to be more of me, or do the easy things and ignore the real work I could be doing in my life.
As I think about this, the thing that comes to mind is that it's "how you live," in the song. How you do live, not how you did live.
That's a big deal to me, because it means I always have a new moment to live in.
I'm not perfect; I'm not supposed to be. I know, if you're like me, it gets frustrating not being perfect. Sometimes I think I should be.
But if I were, I wouldn't get to choose how I live, and I wouldn't get to make the decisions about what my life will be like and how I will serve.
And I'm grateful I can make those decisions, because everything I do matters more to me when it's my own choosing, my own decision how to live.
So in every moment, I try to live the way I'd want to be remembered. Some moments are better than others, but when you add up all the moments, they have a big impact.
Angie Dixon is now a successful author and coach, but once struggled to get through the day. Suffering from mental illness, Angie set out to discover how to live after spending a total of a month on the psych ward and finally finding effective medication for her physical illness. In the years since, she has mastered procrastination and learned to live her real life. She is the author of Procrastinate Later, The Leonardo Trait: Create the Life You Were Born to Live, Your Heart's Work, and too many other books and programs to mention here.