Happy Birthday To Me and Every-Day To You!
December 16th, 2015 // 2:10 pm @ Scott Manning
This week has been birthday week for my whole life. My brother was born on the 12th, my mom on the 15th, and me on the 17th. Crazy huh. I guess many people have some dynamic like this in their families too.
It’s always been a wonderful experience. Really a lot of fun and nowadays that we are all busy it makes it quite fun to have a day where we can knock it all out at once and make it an event.
Anywho…today’s message isn’t about me, it’s about you…it’s about the ‘next’ year of your life, whether that’s the year of 2016 or year of ‘age’ you are going to experience.
What matters to me about birthdays, as business people, entrepreneurs, always in the relentless pursuit of more, better, faster, is that you get to pause, slow down, reflect, and at least for a moment of time contemplate all that you’ve done, experienced, accomplished, enjoyed and maybe even suffered and survived through. Then most importantly you get to map out, design, plan, and create the birthday list of things you want to do, be, have, experience, enjoy, achieve, live through in the upcoming year.
You get to ‘be you’ instead of ‘be business’ and say hey you know what this is what I want the next year of my life to be, this is what I want as the saying goes “the dash” to represent and mean.
Here is something I know from experience, that all really elite and ultra successful people can say they have in common… They have reasons to succeed, they have a list in their bucket, they have benchmarks, victories, things they want for the next year in their life.
I will predict one birthday promise for you right now, no matter when your birthday is, you will not get what you do not ask for. You will not accomplish what you do not define and set out to achieve. You will never ever look back on a year of your life and have important things off of your ‘list’ if you do not put anything on it to begin with.
This year and for many years really, there is no material gift that I want or ask for from another person – the only gifts I ever ask for are ones from myself. And I think that is the irony of life. Surely the older you get (without question the more successful you become), the more you are the only one going to grant your own birthday wishes.
So, you damn sure better have them.
Personally…I think doing something fun on your birthday is wonderful…something meaningful, absolutely.
But you know what – I just never understand someone who does ‘what they want’ on their birthday, one day a year, instead of doing something they want every day of the year.
Yes, I “work” on my birthday, because the gifts I want to give myself require work to achieve, require focus not dictated by the dates on the calendar rather the mission on my mind and the purpose in my heart. There are many amazing things I could be doing other than “working” on my birthday but not one that is worth the sacrifice of living 364 days a year doing something other than what I love.
Today I want to say “happy day to you and to me” because, thanks to you reading this, following along and giving me the opportunity to serve, influence and guide you, for which I am most grateful for – I get to wake up everyday and celebrate my life doing what I love every single day of my life.
This week I will celebrate, I will celebrate the thing that you and I both share: the spirit of entrepreneurship that gives us the control to choose our own life, create our own years, and make our every-days worth celebrating not just our birth-days.
My advice to you is to use your own birthday to make your own wish list for the next year of your life and then do things every single day and all throughout the year to enjoy, cherish, reward, and celebrate all that you deserve and desire.
Most of all remember the more deliberate, decisive, disciplined, determined, focused action you take the more you will be able to live that famous saying of whatever one else wants…to have your cake and eat it too!
And that’s what this life is supposed to be all about…whatever you want and wish it to be!
Category : Blog
