What does it take to feel flush? Not in the sense of feeling flush in the face, but feeling flush in life. Where all is good and we feel lucky to be where we are right now in this moment.

If I could have imagined the life I have right now when I was younger, I would have been ecstatic to be where I am. Living in southern California, the job I have, my wonderful family, my beautiful wife, my home, my friends, my health and all the things I get to do and see.

However, now that I’m here, I’ve seemed to have move the goalposts. I want something more – something different. As Sam Harris so eloquently put it, “Imagine what it would be like to be truly satisfied with what we have, even just for an hour.”

What would that feel like?

What does it mean to care?

I suppose it changes your perspective on what you’re doing. If I care about my health, in theory I will watch what I eat, workout and look for opportunities to nourish my body, mind and soul so as to live a long life.

It does indeed – for me – slant the way I view a certain subject matter. And it always seems to be for the better. I know that’s a relative term – ‘better’ – but, I seem to take more pride in the work when I care.

That has real implications. Therefore, the ‘collateral damage’ from that approach spills over into other areas of my life in fantastic ways. Enough for me to take note about how I approach anything and everything.

What do you think it can do for you?

Once again, we rise from our sleep to face another day with hopes, expectations and new ideas pending.

And yet the only thing we can do is front all that we Love, fear and are uncertain of taking on daily.

Doing so, might feel easier to do with repetition, as we feel the gentle push of momentum on our backs. But, we must remain steadfast in our approach and not lose our focus.

This is a daily test of courage and discipline which can shape us into beings of right action and evolvement.

Which over time can compound into great accomplishments.

One day at a time with moments of courage in between.

We can all get a bit caught up in the romance of a great story without acknowledging and/or knowing what it took behind the scenes in order for it to come out the way it did.

I know I do it quite often. I want to hear the ‘feel good’ part of how it went down – the movie version. The reality is, there were a whole lot of hours spent by that person alone in the wee hours of the night grinding out the painstaking details, planning and doing the delayed gratification work that needed to be done in order to complete the task. And there were no camera’s or people around to see it.

This is when the real work gets done. This is the secret that no one wants to dive into the details about. They would rather hear the romantic version.

I would too, but that’s not giving us a realistic assessment of what it really took to knock it out.

That’s what I’m interested in. I think we all are.

There is a beautiful story if I haven’t already shared it about teenage boy with down syndrome who was running in a 5K race. There was also a marathon that was starting at the same time. Somehow he got confused and ended up running in the marathon.

His parents were concerned for his safety after never crossing the finish line for the 5K. Hours later he came across the finish line for the marathon and found his parents. When asked why he didn’t stop, his response was, “I knew there would eventually be a finish line, so I just kept running.”

Maybe we could be as brave and bold and not worry about how far we have to run and just keep going until we reach the end.