Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 209 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Living Your Life with Purpose, On Purpose #1

Thank you for joining us for our 7 days a week, 7 minutes of wisdom podcast. This is Day 209 of our Trek. I trust that you had a very blessed and merry Christmas. Yesterday, on Christmas Day, we finished up our hike along the Christmas Trail. We explored the lives of those individuals that had a significant impact on the story. It is my hope that you were able to learn from these stories that bring hope to the world, not only during Christmas but each day of the year.  If you miss any of our Wisdom-Trek episodes, please go to Wisdom-Trek.com to listen to them and read the daily journal.

Today we look forward as we start on our Trek into 2016. One commitment that I am making for 2016 is to live my life with purpose, on purpose.  I encourage you to join me in living a life that is both rich and satisfying, to live life to the full. This does not imply that we won’t have setbacks but rather that we will be able to traverse through them while learning the lessons that they teach us.

We are recording our podcast from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. We drove up to Marietta on Christmas Eve and had a relaxing Christmas Day. Since Paula and I will be celebrating Christmas with our kids and grandkids on January 9th, it was great to sleep in and then share a wonderful Christmas dinner with my brother Jack, his wife Ann, and our dad.

For the past few years, Paula and I take the last week of the year to assess what we were able to accomplish during the year, but more importantly, what our plans are for the New Year.  We cannot predict with certainty what the future may hold during this next year, but we can confidently know who ultimately holds the future. With that then we can confidently make plans and map out the trails that we would like to hike. If we trip and fall or are detoured on our way, that is okay. We still have our destination set. That destination is to live life fully and to impact others positively each day which becomes our living legacy.

Keeping with our theme of life being a trek with its steep mountains to climb and deep valleys to navigate, let us focus on how we can live that rich and satisfying life each day. What is required for us to live life with purpose, on purpose?  For the next few days, let’s set our course to learn how to accomplish this. Our trek for today and the next couple of days is…

Living Your Life with Purpose, On Purpose #1

There seems to be an abundance of gurus of every kind that flood the TV and internet selling their secret formulas and magic juices for a more successful and more fulfilling existence. And there is, of course, no shortage of needy and sometimes very successful people in the market willing to part with their hard earned money to gain the insights that are being peddled.

This is because seeking fulfillment in life is almost a universal phenomenon. And the primary problem stems from the fact that while most everybody knows when they were born, very few know why they were born - and so they are searching for meaning. Your alarm clock can tell you what time to wake up in the morning, but it cannot tell you “why” to wake up in the morning.

Even as a listener to this podcast or reader of our journal, if I were to ask you if you believe that God has a purpose for your lives, you would most likely reply that you do believe that. Yet if I had to ask you what your God-given life purpose is, would you be able to tell me? Many people live their life without knowing what their true purpose is. Nevertheless, we all yearn to live meaningful lives.