A New Outlook On Life

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Have you ever truly stopped and asked yourself, “My life’s not over so where do I go from here?” That’s truly a question we all can and should ask ourselves, on a daily basis. Our personal growth and development will never reach its true potential if we don’t adhere to this mode of thinking. Needless to say, as we experience more life and joy, in our personal development we will encounter others, some of whom can help us, and some of whom we will do best to ignore.
Thus it is truly important that we are open to exploring and assessing their ideas in relation to what we truly want. One of the truly most amazing examples of this I learned from 2nd and 3rd generation members of family owned businesses. Their parents and grandparents, may have begun the family business, and honestly believed their next generation would have a good future, while being able to support them in their retirement mode.
I didn’t see this happen just once, but numerous times and even substantiated my understanding of this by talking about it with such second generation members. For example, in one case the family members who had started and expanded the business, asked their son to take over their business, which was the delivery of food products to restaurants in their local communities. However, the son and grandson of the founders was a lawyer and did not succeed at it as his parents and grandparents had hoped he would.
Why? Because his interest was in the law and not food. The point I’m trying to make here, is that even or especially as parents and grandparents, we have experienced change as our grandchildren and children, have not. But it is not our right to tell them how they should live their lives.
So what can we do about our role? Analyze our own life and recognize where, if we had had a better perspective of life we might have in fact enjoyed a better life. You’re probably thinking to yourself, “How would that make a difference?” It wouldn’t unless you asked yourself, “My life’s not over so where do I go from here?” Asking however is not in and of itself enough. You must make a distinct decision regarding this issue and do something about it!