“This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time.” – Tyler Durden, Fight Club
Although Fight Club isn’t among my favorite movies, this particular quote is great. Within it, you can feel the urgency of choice. Every day, every minute and every second is filled with them. The realization of this can be paralyzing.
But it shouldn’t be.
Once you make a choice, you’ll either prosper or wallow because of it, but at the end of that day, minute, or second, you will have freed your mind of the worry that comes with making a choice. It’s the worry that creates the churning in your stomach, the ache in your chest, or that pain in your neck.
You might regret a choice you’ve made, but in the next moment you have the option to correct it. Sometimes the choice you make leads to a tragic result. But you still are the narrator of your story. You still are the one who decides how to live with your choice.
Prosper or self-pity. Learn or become stagnant. This is our challenge.
It seems fitting that I should end this with another movie quote, and this time it’s from one of my all time favorites!
“I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.” – Andy Dufresne, Shawshank Redemption