Stop Wasting Your Life
If you had the choice today of eating a bucket of freshly-popped, buttery, lightly-salted popcorn or being given a set of car keys to drive the car of your dreams, (do I even need to ask) which would you take?
Let’s also assume that you are famished. You are wilting of hunger under the sweltering temperatures of hot South Africa and at the sight of this mouth-watering popcorn, you are drooling with desire. Would you still resist the sheer, old-fashioned taste of this now caramel-drizzled popcorn for a set of dangling metal? The sad truth is that more people choose the popcorn over the car keys every single day. I’ll explain.
A friend of mine went on an adventurous trip to South Africa. While most tourists choose to experience the typical safari, getting a view of the Big Five in this majestic land (the lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant and buffalo), my friend chose to see the monkeys. These cute, little monkeys were in a sanctuary, free to roam about the tree-covered hills and acreage spreading as far as the eye could see. But these weren’t your regular monkeys. These small primates were going through rehab. Yes, they were adorable but also little criminals.
These monkeys were rescued from thieves. Crooks would train these monkeys to appear innocent and inviting, but while they’re captivating you and sucking their thumb, they were craftily sliding your ring off your finger, slipping a hand in your back pocket to take your phone, your wallet or your car keys. They were felons! These were outlaw monkeys. True story. So, before my friends toured the sanctuary, the guide gave them strict warning, “Don’t take anything valuable into the sanctuary. Do not take your phone, car keys, wallet, jewelry, or purse.”
My friends asked, “Seriously?”
The guide warned, “Yes! Last week, we had a guy who was given this warning, but he did not listen. He took his car keys with him, and sure enough, the monkey stole ‘em right out of his pocket.”
One of the alarmed tourists asked, “How did you get them back?”
The guide answered, “Popcorn!”
“Popcorn?”
“Yes, monkeys love popcorn! We toss the kernels of popcorn on the ground and without fail, the monkeys come and eat it all,” said the guide. “But then, I leave one kernel in my hand and when they see everything else is devoured, they run up to a single piece in desperation. I hold up the last kernel and say, ‘If you want the popcorn, you have to give me the keys.’ Without fail, the monkey will drop the car keys, take the popcorn, and run off!”
There is an important truth in this monkey business. That monkey has in his possession something incredibly valuable. Those car keys have the potential to change his life. Pretend with me for a moment. With the car keys, that monkey could go anywhere he wants. He could drive to the popcorn store. He could sell the car and buy all the popcorn he wants. He has the ability to floor it, get out of that monkey prison, and be free! But he drops it all for one single kernel of popcorn that’s gone in five seconds!
Popcorn vs. Car Keys
Did you know that most people your age will pick popcorn over car keys? They’ll choose a short-term desire over a long-term destiny! They pick entertainment over wisdom. Instant gratification versus delayed reward. What is that? It’s popcorn over car keys.
You can go to a bookstore and pick up a gossip magazine (popcorn) and miss out on a personal development book (car keys) that could catapult your life to a whole new level. You can sit down and watch TV (popcorn) instead of listening to one podcast (car keys) that could take your business to soaring new heights. You can scroll for two hours on Facebook (popcorn) while missing a webinar (car keys) that could give you an idea to triple your income.
That used to be me. I was a popcorn kind of girl. I was average. I drove an average car. Lived in an average house. Worked an average job for an average salary. The only area I was consistent in was consistently choosing popcorn over car keys (short-term desires over long-term destiny).
My days were comprised of pushing the snooze button until the last minute, pulling up to work barely on time, and ending the day consumed with watching other people live their dreams as I watched episode after episode on my couch (aka eating popcorn). I did this for more than a decade!
When I first started my five daily habits, I heard this phrase in my prayer time and penned it in my journal, “Don’t be average and your life won’t be average.” (Emphasis on the understood you in that command: You don’t be average and your life won’t be average!) In other words, if everyone else is choosing popcorn, you choose the car keys!
I can humbly and gratefully say today: I no longer drive an average car. I don’t live in an average house. I don’t earn an average salary. I don’t speak at average conferences, and I don’t serve an average God. I learned how to choose car keys over popcorn, and I want to show you how you can too.
The Clock is Ticking
It all comes down to how you are spending every precious and valuable second of your day. First, identify where you are killing time and don’t even realize it.
Let’s imagine a bank credits your account each morning with $86,400. And each evening, it cancels out whatever amount you didn’t spend during the day. You can’t carry any leftover balance, but you get another deposit the next morning of $86,400. How would you handle this? You would utilize every cent every day, wouldn’t you? You would be adamant about making sure you got all that you were entitled to and nothing was wasted. Well, you do have a similar bank, and it’s called a clock.
Your time is the most valuable thing you have. Every single morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Each night, whatever you didn’t use effectively is gone forever. You can’t get it back. It’s your loss. But you get to start over with a fresh deposit the next morning.
What am I saying? Your clock is ticking.
When you view your time differently, you’ll start making the most of it.
Every second counts. Each of the 150 times you check your Instagram post counts. Each time you plop down in front the television for three hours counts. Every time you get into a debate on Facebook counts. Each morning, you oversleep by thirty minutes counts. These are seconds, minutes, and hours that turn into days, weeks, months, and years of your life being wasted.
These are precious moments that you could be sightseeing the countries you’ve dreamed of visiting, writing your life story in a book to pass on to your great-grandchildren, brainstorming ideas that could move you into a whole new tax bracket, or walking in your neighborhood to improve your health.
We are killing time every day without even knowing it. On average, we waste 10 minutes a day simply looking for our car keys and/or cell phone in the morning. That’s five hours a month! The average person oversleeps by 30 minutes every morning. That’s 10 hours a month! We scroll social media sites an average of 50 minutes each day. That’s 25 hours a month! And we’re stuck in traffic up to 42 hours a year!
In each account of time wasted, the hours add up to days, and the days lead to years of our lives flying by with nothing to show for it.
Bottom line: you have a limited number of seconds to do something with your life. How you choose to spend them results in how you spend your life.
The average life expectancy in America is 78.6 years. You may be surprised by some of the funny but true ways we spend the years of our lives.
28.3 years sleeping
10.5 years working
9 years watching TV, playing video games, or on social media
6 years doing chores
4 years eating and drinking
3.5 years on education
2.5 years getting ready (grooming ourselves)
2.5 years shopping
1.5 years caring for children
1.3 years commuting
After all that, you have only 9 years to live your dreams. Alarming, isn’t it? Well, an alarm is meant to wake us up. I want you to wake up to the reality that you don’t have time to waste. You don’t have another hour to kill, another morning to snooze, or another year to squander. Your time is precious, and each day spent wasting your time is you wasting your life.
This book was not written to fill your mind with regrets; I wrote it to light a fire under you to start truly living the life you were designed to live and enjoy it to the fullest. I am convinced that it starts by a simple change every day.
Deep down you know your life is meant to be something more. That’s evident by you picking up this book. In these pages, I am going to help you start with a single step in the right direction that will lead you up a staircase to new heights.
Expired or Expedited: It’s Up to You
A couple weeks ago, I was packing for a quick getaway trip to Cozumel, Mexico with my husband, Rodney. He had been asking me for months to take some time off and go relax on the beach. I finally found a few days to play and started packing my swimsuits and flip-flops.
As I grabbed our passports, I opened them to be certain I had the right ones and to ensure they weren’t expired (or Rodney would be poolside by himself). I happened to notice my daughter, Kassidi’s passport was in fact, expiring the next day! I phoned her and told her she needed to renew her passport as soon as possible knowing she would be joining me for a ministry trip to London, Amsterdam, and France in three months. You can imagine her utter relief when I called her realizing she could have missed an amazing opportunity simply because of an expiration date.
Think about that. She had plans to go to Europe. She had the finances to go. She had the desire to go. She was expecting to go. But she could have missed out on a trip of a lifetime because the deadline came and went. If she had waited, she would have missed out and been too late.
I don’t want you to come to the end of your life and realize it’s too late. That your expiration date is here. That you didn’t get to enjoy what God wanted you to enjoy because you weren’t ready. That your dreams remained in a drawer overlooked month after month, year after year, until your time expired.
In Kassidi’s case, we had to fill out a special form to get the passport expedited. That word means “to hasten, to move quicker and faster.” She didn’t waste any time. Once she realized what needed to be done, she acted promptly. Time was of the essence, and she couldn’t afford to delay another day. Because of her split-second decision to get things in motion with the passport office, as I write this chapter right now, I am sitting at a table in a little apartment in London, England, while Kassidi is out walking around Hyde Park. Imagine the life experiences she is having because she took action.
Passport to Life
The truth is we all have an expiration date. Your time here on earth is limited. It’s precious. It’s valuable. God doesn’t want you wasting another second with meaningless habits that are derailing your dreams. What if God placed a big stamp on our “passport to life” showing us how much time we have left? I mean, it’s sorta creepy, but it would certainly motivate us to live each day with purpose.
When you think about the average lifespan (of an American) being 78.6 years, that means that if you are 42 years old, you only have 36 more Christmases left with your family. If you are 57 years old, you only have 21 more summers to enjoy at the lake. If you’re 63 years old, that’s 15 more birthday cakes with your family. Fifteen! That’s nothing! It makes you view life more seriously, doesn’t it?
First Corinthians 2:9 says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him” (NLT). God has prepared an extraordinary life for you like I prepared to take Kassidi to Europe with me. Don’t wait for your expiration date and miss out. It’s time to wake up and really start living life. Start by making the seconds, the minutes, and the hours count.
I wasted years of my life accomplishing very little and repeating the same scenario year after year. But I made a decision to take the first step in a positive direction. I listened to the first message. I read the first chapter. I attended the first conference. I walked the first mile. Little by little, my mindset improved, my relationships strengthened, my dreams enlarged, and my body reshaped.
Every good decision pays off. I’m not wasting another second of my life living in that rut again, and I pray this book is your first step into your promising future.
The truth is that when you stop feeding your mind, as I did for 11 years after college, you become stagnant.
Jim Rohn, the great motivator and thought leader, was blaming everyone for where he was in life: stuck, broke, full of excuses, nothing in the bank, and pennies in his pocket. Until his wealthy mentor, Earl Shoaf, told him, “If you want the future to change, you’ve got to change.”13 And that change can begin by picking up one book, listening to one podcast, or attending one conference.
View your growth as a way of life, not a period of life. The dawn of every day brings us an opportunity to make improvements to our lives. An interesting thing happens when you start the journey of personal growth: The more you learn, the hungrier you are to learn more. You can’t get enough. You begin to crave knowledge and wisdom as much as you used to crave sitting on a couch vegging out to reality shows. Why? You start experiencing the rewards of what you’re learning.
Jim Rohn said, “You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight. If you want to reach your goals and fulfill your potential, become intentional about your personal growth. It will change your life.”
The truth is you didn’t get to choose which country you were born in, which city you grew up in, the parents you were born to, or the environment you were raised in. You didn’t even get to choose the name you would be called for a lifetime. Although you didn’t get to choose the beginning of your story, you have everything to do with how your story ends!
One day, you’re going to wake up on your 78th birthday, and as you look back on the life you’ve lived, are you going to smile at what you see? Will you be proud of the legacy you created? Will you wish you hadn’t stopped and settled somewhere along the way? If a caregiver were sitting by your side with a journal and pen listening to your final thoughts, what would fill up the pages of her diary? Whatever remorse there would be, let it become your driving inspiration to change now.
Are you going to pursue your dreams or complain about what could have been? Settle or strive? Rest or reach? The choice is entirely up to you.
