Get Busy

“Get busy livin or get busy dyin” - Shawshank Redemption

What a great line from a that movie. The genius of this line is that getting busy livin and getting busy dyin is the same thing. We all live, and we all die. The path to doing both is the same. You want to live a fulfilling life don't you?. When on your deathbed you'd like to look back and feel accomplished, right?

The key is to get busy. It appears twice in that line up there, get busy. Go after something and work for it. It can be anything really, but it'd be better if it's something you want. And I mean something you really want. A creative work of art, a relationship, a job, a title, a certain physique, whatever. Just get busy and get after it. Who knows, you might feel like you're living more than you are right now.

Then there's the question of what if I fail? Then keep on getting busy. Just means you haven't gotten there yet...yet. Keep going until you get whatever it is you're after. And when you get it you're still not done. Stay busy to keep it. Kind of sounds like a lot of work but ask yourself this...will it feel “busy” when it's something I truly want? Could be worth it...so why not take a shot?

So this sounds like some great rhetoric. Makes for a great pep-talk doesn't it? So how can the message in this line matter to me? Or you (whoever might be reading this)? Well, I watched The Shawshank Redemption about a week ago on TV and that's what got me thinking all this. Since then I've been thinking of what I really want to do and what I want to be. First on the list: I want to be a writer. Getting a book published that people enjoy reading would be awesome. Second on the list: fitness. Simply put, I'd like to look good. Third: jiu-jitsu. I fell in love with it the first day I went to Gracie Barra and I want to be good at it.

I got a few things that I find are worth getting busy for. What next? I've gotten busy with each. I write something every day and I've started blogging (check out my other blog called Hunters, it's a story I'm working on). I make time to run every week and I make time to go to jiu-jitsu practice 4 to 5 times a week. I'm not a writer yet, I don't have 6-pack abs, and I wouldn't dare call myself good at jiu-jitsu but keeping at it is the only way to ever get there. So that's what I'm getting busy with. What about you?