Your Way

"In the end there is no right way of living. There is only your way."

-- Ernie J. Zelinski

Every religious leader, pop philosopher, self-help guru, and best selling pundit wants to tell you how to live. Add in politicians, police, friends, and spouses, and you got a whole helluva lot of people thinking they know what is best for little ole you. Listen, not with a grain, but with a whole friggin ton, of salt! Everyone's got their own perspectives, prejudices, and points of view, and most of them having nothing to do with you.

Your job is to discover your way. It may share certain elements with those closest to you, or it may look entirely different. No matter, as long as it's your own individualized, idiosyncratic, heart-felt way.

Say you want to take your "retirement" from ages 35 to 45, and then go back to work later in life. Fine. God did not decree that you have to wait to retire until you're too damn old to really do anything exciting. You can work weekends and take Tuesday and Wednesday off. You can get up at 4 AM and go to bed at 9 PM. You can live six months of each year in a different locale. You can start a commune, become a nun, run a marathon, eat a vegan diet, or even join a commune of marathon-running, vegan, nuns!

Your options are as endless as your imagination, and the only criteria is whether your choices fit you. 10 commandments, 7 habits, and 12 steps, 3 wives are all fine as starting points, but merely as starting points. Eventually you must customize and personalize every system, every program, and then move beyond them.

If I say, "Do what feels right to you," too many people take "feels" to mean your current, surface level emotion. But when I'm using the term feel in the context of discovering your own way, I an referring to your deepest, intuitive, non-cognitive knowing. There is a level of consciousness from which you can always determine your own right way of living; you merely need to learn to access it.

And so, starting today, listen for that still, small voice within that will lead you to both discover and create your own way. Pay attention to it, nourish it, allow it to become your number one adviser. Then when you're on your death bed, about to exit stage right, you, like Frank Sinatra, can say, with no regrets, "I did it my way!"