My Halftime

I guess the cat is out of the bag now. I wanted to become a full-pledged writer as much as my husband wants to become a full-pledged photographer. And we are both working our way towards that dream.... towards that goal. I've read that the difference between a dream and a goal is the time factor. You set a time when you will achieve a goal whereas the dream has an indefinite time as to when or if this will ever happen. We both started with our dreams but we did not stop there. We prayed about that dream everyday. And God who blesses dreams turned fantasy into reality. Because for God there is nothing impossible.

I read this book From Success to Significance by Lloyd Reeb and it described people who have lived the first half of their lives. They were financially successful but felt their lives were lacking in meaning. They were not answering to the call within. There is that sense of emptiness or that sense of restlessness, wherein you know that there is something more that you ought to be doing but are not doing right now. That was what struck me and Alvin these past two years.

Anyway, this book created a roadmap for me. It asked all the essential questions that I needed to answer for myself. My husband and I have lived the first half of our lives and we are now into the second half. It may seem too early for some that we have retired as doctors. But we have our dreams which has now started to transform into goals. And we simply needed to follow the call of our hearts, in pursuit of significance rather than success. Some people would be struck by this in their 40s or even in their 50s. I have an uncanny notion that this might be part of the midlife crisis phenomenon. However, whereas the midlife crisis would be viewed in a more negative way, this halftime tends to look at this phenomenon of "midlife crisis" in a very positive way because it gives you the time to pause, look back at your life and how you have lived it in the past and look towards the future with a sense of purpose.

Now, I am reading the ebook "48 Days to the Work You Love" and this even further puts into detail the structures that I need to achieve my goals. It helped me see all the different aspects of my life that are most essential and needed to be balanced. Work, family, financial, physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual.

For those who are really serious about living their dreams, Bo Sanchez's Five Year Life Dreams Success Journal might be able to help in making a Personal Mission Statement. This is just a booklet or a journal of sorts where you will be asked to write down your personal mission statement and the goals for each of these aspects. There are simple questions that you need to answer. If you want a more in depth way of looking into your life's mission, then The Path by Laurie Beth Jones would be the right book for you. This may sound tedious for some, but for me, it's worth all the time and effort because it's where my dreams started to become goals and then slowly transformed into realities. And unless you really put conviction and determination in living your dreams, these dreams will only remain as dreams and you will continue asking yourself why some people are living their dreams and why you are not. It only takes one step to do that... and that is the most crucial step.... to say yes to that dream. Write it down and put a time factor when you wanted it achieved. Then start with your objectives, your mini-goals... which you can achieve in a short period of time. The year 2009 is about to end. This is the perfect time to be looking back to the years that have passed, to plan ahead and to move forward into living your dreams.

As for me, I am reviewing my Life Dreams Success Journal for 2009, checking the goals that I have met for 2009, reflecting on the ones that I have not achieved, redefining my goals for 2010 and finally, the most essential factor is offering my plans to God. Because He respects our free will and will not impose His will on us, this act of offering keeps the door open for Him to intervene in my life, revise some of my plans to create a better one, and even steer it to a completely different and more exciting direction. Then I can truly live my second half as He deemed it to be.

Welcome Back Readrunner

Last year, I was introduced to running and fell in love with it. As a result, I have discovered my other passion in life which is writing. I started a blog on running, http://readrunner.blogspot.com and even managed to write a book about running and spirituality. I would say that I have entered a point in my life where I began to yearn for something else other than a successful career. I was drawn to read books like "From Success to Significance" by Lloyd Reeb; "The Alchemist, The Pilgrimage, Brida and The Fifth Mountain" by Paulo Coelho; I began to write down my vision, personal mission statement in life, listed down the important goals that I wanted to achieve... in short, I had a midlife crisis in a positive note. All these happened, I believe, because the spiritual part of me was stimulated by the physical exercise that my body experienced.

Today, I woke up at just before 7:00am and felt the need to go out and push my body once more. The last time I ran was six months ago. I definitely missed it. My body felt so sluggish and unprepared so I decided that I will just go out for a walk. The sky was cloudy and the neighborhood was still quiet. I can just hear the chirping of the birds and even the sounds of the cricket. Occasional cars would pass by. As I walked to my favorite street where our dream house stood, my mind went back to the vision that I have written six months ago... and now, I just saw its fulfilment.... "I run every morning in an enclosed subdivision where our dream house is located." I read my vision and mission statement everyday believing that it will hasten the process of its fulfilment. At that time, I was simply thinking of a private, enclosed subdivision in the Philippines. That was why in the early part of January, my husband and I started to look for a house in an enclosed subdivision. Then I got the immigrant visa schedule and we were caught in a whirlwind. When we decided that we will go for it, I felt ill at ease reading the vision and mission statements because I could not visualize this in the US.

But now, as I was walking in this wonderful neighborhood, I was simply astounded. God gave me something better. The sidewalk was well maintained and meant for walking or running, the lawns are well kept with no high concrete fences, the air was crisp and clean, there were no dogs or dog poops... then I remembered that vision statement. It is so queer that even when the mind cannot conceive it, the heart that believes achieves it all the same. There are still many part of that vision that have yet to be fulfilled but now, as I saw the first part come into fruition, or almost fruition I am once again motivated to read my vision and mission statement everyday again. And I am also moved to put back an exercise routine so I can get back into my running form. For now, the only running that I did was the last two minutes of the 20 minutes that I was out because then, it started to rain. My goal today was to simply break in my body and walk briskly. But the running that I did uphill ignited that desire once more to run.