Who's life are you living?

I listened to a presenter recently who posed this question to the group, "Who's life are you living?"

It made me think about the lives we live to please other people, or to meet the expectations of peers, or be someone who we think we need to be in order to achieve.

Even leaders can fall into this trap. Perhaps as we grew and developed as leaders we looked up to certain other leaders and modelled ourselves on them?

Don’t get me wrong, having good role models and mentors and learning from others is a wonderful thing, but only if we retain who we are—or maybe find out who we are in the process—and not try to emulate other leaders or at worse become a carbon copy of someone else. Carbon copies can only ever be cheap imitations, and what is worse, as we focus on imitating someone else or living their life, we can lose sight of who we are and who we can be.

In life we can put on so many different masks that sooner or later we forget who we really are. 

All too often, we don't take the time to think about the life we want—we just accept a life through a series of compromises that diminish the picture of who we really wanted to become. Each one of those compromises takes a little bit more away from the person you really wanted to become and more accepting of what is just okay.

?     Is the life you have right now the life you thought you would have had ten years ago?

?     Are you doing what really makes your heart sing?

?     Are you enjoying life or enduring it?

?     Are you accepting where you are at or searching for what is possible?

?     Is your life acceptable or is it exceptional?

?     Are you getting by or getting ahead?

?     Have you determined the life you want or are you accepting the life dictated to you by others, circumstances, situations or the norm? 

Lots of questions I know, but know this—you are worthy, you are capable and your dreams are possible.

#LivePassionately