The MONTHLY Motivator - September 2012

A quality life

You have all sorts of desires, hopes, dreams, goals and aspirations. Yet they all revolve around one basic, unimpeachable assumption. You wish to live a quality life that is fulfilling, a life that brings meaningful richness and true joy into your experience. All the other dreams and desires serve to define and to fulfill that one underlying desire to live a life of quality.

A life of real, meaningful quality is available to any person in any situation, because life itself has so many possibilities. The problem is that the outward expressions of a quality life can be confused for the authentic, inner essence of such a life. When that happens, you can end up chasing the mere tokens of your dream instead of the dream itself. That inevitably leads to debilitating frustration and discouragement. It is essential, therefore, to keep things in perspective, and to continue reminding yourself that there’s a big difference between the appearance of a quality life and the actual, genuine experience of a quality life.

The term “quality life” is not intended to be judgmental. No life inherently has greater value than any other life. Rather, in this context the term “quality life” is an intentional generalization, designed to encourage each and every person to create a unique definition of what such a life looks like. Even so, there are some basic characteristics fundamental to a quality life.

First and foremost is authenticity. Even if your idea of a quality life is to live in exactly the same way as someone you admire, it won’t happen. You cannot ever actually be that person. While it can often be quite helpful to emulate the apparent success of others, if you forsake your own uniqueness to do so then you’ll get nothing positive out of it. Your life is yours, and you must live it as yours.

Closely related is honesty. A life of deception is simply not compatible with a life of quality. You cannot lie or steal your way to fulfillment. Again, your life is yours. True fulfillment cannot possibly come from anything you acquire through dishonesty or deceit.

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--Ralph Marston

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