Create an extraordinary life

I ran into my friend one day on the street. I asked him how he was. He said not very good. But if he won the lottery—and he showed me a few tickets—he’d be happy then. I asked him if business was slow. He said, yes, income was down and bills were up. He needed a big hit to balance the ledger sheet.

We talked for a while. I asked him what he made an hour. He said $100, but he was mostly getting appointments for half-hour sessions. He was a therapist, and business wasn’t very promising right now.

“Gee,” I said, counting up the hours in a week, “if you worked four half hours a day, that’s $1,000 dollars a week and $4,000 a month. Sounds like pretty good income, at least to me.”

“I never thought of it that way,” he said.

“Instead of trying to win the lottery or get that big break, why don’t you try to happily do just four half hours of work a day? Then you don’t have to win the lottery to break the bank. You’ll be pretty well off right now.”

It’s easy to want to win the big one or think of a windfall as the only solution to the problems we face. And the lottery we want to win might not be just in money. We can easily take that kind of thinking into our relationships or our work. Buy a chance to win the lottery, if that’s what you want to do. But maybe you could look at things a different way. What if you stopped going for the big one and tried to do a lot of little things well? You could work on being the best friend that you could be. Or maybe you could get closer to that person you are dating. Instead of waiting for the perfect soul mate to come along, just be the best boyfriend or girlfriend in the relationship you already have. Instead of waiting to win the lottery, make the most out of all the ordinary moments in your life today.

You’re richer than you think.

God, help me remember that many ordinary moments, when well-lived, add up to an extraordinary life.

From the book: More Language of Letting Go