Making a life

"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give." Winston Churchill

Yesterday I wrote about gratitude, and although we usually think about being grateful for something we receive, I did introduce the concept of giving as an element of gratitude.  Today, I want to focus on giving.  We can give many things.  Money and things are easy to give.  Time, commitment, focus, consistency, and passion are harder.  These require that we give of ourselves--our life energy.

I am guilty of saying, "I'd really like to do that, but I don't have time."  What I am saying is that I don't make that thing a priority in my life.  Yet when I look at the time that I fritter away every week in activities that are meaningless to me, it is clear that time is not the issue.  What has been lacking are commitment, focus, and consistency.

For at least a half dozen years, I'd talked about starting a blog about heart-knowing.  Only this week have I mustered the commitment, focus, consistency, and, yes, time to actually do so.  When I pushed myself to my computer to write my blog last night, I was really tired, and it was late.  Where would the energy come from to write?  But, I was committed to writing daily. A funny thing happened: by the time I was done writing, I was energized, satisfied, and passionate about what I'd written.  I thought I was giving to others, and my gift came back to me tenfold.

I am not sure why I was surprised.  Each time I've written a book my time in the "flow" state with the words tumbling out of me like water from a waterfall has left me deeply satisfied and with a heart warmth that glows from inside of me.

Whatever our gifts may be, when we make using them a priority, we give to the world the very thing we came here to give...and we are making a life by doing so.  That's what I know in my heart today.