"We are bombarded with so much information and advertisements that draw our attention away from what is most important - your life!" Living is an opportunity that we get to experience only ONCE! I call it the YOLO effect. When you plan for your vacation, you do everything in advance so that you can enjoy it to the limit, after all, you might not get a second chance to go back to that destination. Though there is no second chance at life, the general approach to living is quite the opposite of how most people plan for their annual vacation. In fact, many people don't give it the time of day as they would the vacation! But very few people (yes, they're out there) would disagree that life's more important than any material possession—more than anything you can imagine. Why? We are so bombarded with information and advertisements that tug on our emotions, and draw our attention away from what's most important — Our Lives! "…we are not passive inhibitors of space, but actual contributors!"
YOLO is taking stock.
When I look around me I see people scurrying to go about their business—caught up in the hustle and bustle of living. They are always doing. They're never stationary. Let's establish that we are not passive inhibitors of this earth, but actual contributors! If we don't approach what we do in that light, our work and efforts would seem intelligible and fruitless. Society has many faucets of life and with them jobs and activities for people to earn a living, even if the jobs appear menial. Still, if you examine every job, you can see the link to something bigger and greater than the activity itself. A classic example is the janitor or the cleaners, who allow you to work in a more pleasant environment by taking care of the things that would otherwise be a nuisance! "…we are not isolated from the world and others immediately around us. We are influenced and affected by decisions that others make consciously or not."
YOLO is appreciating life.
Once we start to appreciate living, we will start seeing the marvellous aspects and values of life. Remember, life gives us adequate opportunities to choose our response to any given situation or circumstance. So long as we are 'free' physically and/or mentally, we can choose how to spend the next few moments of our lives. And so we can choose to relish every minute or second, or simply use it to complain about all the things we deserve and don't have! True we are not isolated from the world and others immediately around us. We are therefore influenced and affected by decisions that others make - consciously or not that involves us. It is this interactivity that makes what we do impact others and it's mostly unavoidable. Somewhere someone is making a decision that will have an impact on your life, either positively or negatively, now or sometime in the future! We don't know who they are, but such is the universe and it’s always working. "We can make strides to become who we want to be, but never mistake the smoke for the fire." YOLO is understanding yourself. While we cannot see everything when we need or want to, there are those moments when our subconscious gives us a hint of what we are really doing. We get random flashes of insight and split-second introspections that we merely ignore. We go on each day doing the same ineffective things, hoping that this time we'll get the result we seek…and for the thousandth time it didn't work! Self-deception only makes us a fool, nothing else. We condition ourselves through ignorance to accept mediocrity as a measuring-stick for success. When you're doing less than your best, you're cheating yourself and by extension, life! Make strides to become who you want to be, but never mistake the smoke for the fire. That is, the presence of the former does not guarantee the existence of the other, so don't start celebrating before you get to the end. "We are more motivated to spend billions of dollar to reach the most distant planets, than to develop a cheap and affordable way for the masses to travel to another continent!"
YOLO is about balance.
Why do we ignore the simple aspects of life and gravitate to those beyond our immediate grasp? We are more motivated to spend billions of dollar to reach the most distant planets, than to develop a cheap and affordable way for the masses to travel to another continent! Is there something passed down through mankind that makes us crave for that which we are not yet ready for or seems beyond our grasp? What happened to slow and conscious living based on a well thought out scheme? People are so desperate to attain success without the hard work, that society has thrived on that frailty, where people are looking for short cut measures to reach their dreams, which invariably involves fortune and fame. Reality television, lottery, casinos and gambling are not spontaneous creations. They are the benefactors of the risk ordinary people will take to become extraordinary. Paradoxically, real joy (and happiness) comes through a well executed process, sprinkled with luck…yes, luck!
LUCK — Labouring, Under, Correct, Knowledge — Rich Dad, Poor Dad. This is because often times the journey is what makes reaching the destination euphoric and meaningful. We cannot short circuit life, because in the end you'll lose out! Living beyond our means or on the edge makes life interesting for a while, but ultimately the value disappears and we become dissatsified with our lives. Sometimes the very thing we used to make our life worthwhile becomes the villain or elephant in the room. Remember the YOLO effect and keep life and living as your primary focus. Don't let the everyday mundane activities distract you from your goals by keeping you too preoccupied to care about where you're heading.
Start YOLO'ing Today!