How to: Do all Kinds of Right

So it's Monday here at the beautiful campus of Purdue University. My last blog was a bit more on the serious side so just consider this it's counterpart. As I was sitting at lunch between my classes, I was thinking about the movie "Date Night" with Steve Carrell and Tina Fey (both of whom are fantastic actors), and there is a line during the movie where Tina Fey says, "I bet you do all kinds of right." I found this quite humorous, and I am sure you would agree if you have seen the movie. Anyways, based off of that quote, today's blog is going to be about how to "do all kinds of right." Below will be six ways to make sure you are living life, along with descriptions of how to do each of these. So, lets go:

1. Travel, travel, travel

Not everyone will agree with this statement, but I believe that to live life, you have to experience new cultures. Get out, whether it's to the city or town closest to you or to a city in a country that is halfway across the world. Traveling gives us an amazing appreciation of other lifestyles. There are so many lessons that can only be learned via travel. So take those road trips, flights, or train rides. Experience the world, one new place at a time and watch as your life becomes so much more vivid and exuberant.

2. Dump the stress ball

Life is way too short to be stressed out all of the time. This is so much easier said than done, but the sooner we realize the basic reality that life goes on regardless of what we do, the sooner we can start to live life to the full potential. Time never stops, and although it may feel like it slows down or speeds up, it always keeps ticking away. So, the only thing we are doing when we stress out about life is wasting seconds that we can never get back. Someone somewhere once said, "We will never have as much time as we have now." As scary as it is, the average life expectancy in the United States is 78.43902 years according to google. Sounds like a long time, but look at it this way. That is only around 942 months, but 318 of those months are taken away due to sleeping, because the average person sleeps for 1/3 of their life. All of these numbers are probably driving some of you crazy but that gives us a grand total of 624 months to live. That may seem like a long time, but with such a limited time as that, we better make the most of the valuable time we have left.

3. Fear Face-off

To really live, we must confront our fears. Those who hide behind their fears are cowards. We are all different and thus we are all afraid of different things, but it is only by standing up to those fears that we become stronger. Don't be afraid to try new things. When you are old, it will be the things that you didn't do that disappoint you more than the things that you did do. Make sure that you have no regrets when you get to end of your journey. Those opportunities that you missed will fester and eat you alive. So stand up and fight fear with confidence. Never let fear control your life.

4. Routines are for people with OCD

DO NOT get into the lifestyle of living one giant routine. Keep things fresh. Be you. We are not living if we do the same thing every day. We are simply walking zombies and that is definitely not good. Go to a different restaurant. Walk a different pathway. Who knows what you may find when you decide to live life spontaneously. Life is so diverse, with so many possibilities, and we only tap into a very slight amount of that infinite design. Talk to anyone and everyone. Ride the bus to work. Put yourself in other's shoes, if only to understand that life can be lived other ways than your little box you have limited yourself to. Go outside the lines, go around the lines, go through lines. Simply put, do all kinds of right. That is, your definition of right. So do it.

5. Learn New Skills

Although not all of us are trained with numchucks (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-15hTA8O7c) , we all have certain skills that separate us from others. Also, we all have things that we wish we could do or want to be better at. Well, personally I'm done waiting for my shooting star to fall. Go out and learn what you want, become better or master a certain skill just for the fact of being able to say you did it. Take pride in what makes you different. Continually improve yourself. Never be content with what you currently are, because we can all be so much more if we put our minds to it. Always be a student, not necessarily a school student, but a student of life.

6. Laugh, love, dance, sing

Laugh until you cry. Laughter is the world's best known medicine. When you laugh, it is impossible not to smile. Find joy in life, and be excited about the little things. Watch a sunset. Fly a kite. Get lost in life; in all of it's quirks and peculiarities. Be a romantic. Let love overtake your life and be overwhelmed by it. This doesn't necessarily have to be with a spouse as you can experience this love with your family, pet, or even with religion. Dance when nobody is watching and dance even harder when people are watching. For some of us, flail when people are watching. So what if you can't dance. That just makes it even funnier and more enjoyable. Same goes with singing. Sing in the rain. Sing in the shower, in the car, your dorm room, because singing is a great way to better a day and make life more enjoyable.

Basically, when summing up this advice, we should all arrive at the coup de grace that in order to "do all kinds of right," you must first and most importantly "do you." Life is a wild ride, enjoy it.

Closing thought for the day: "Life is like a mirror, we get the best results when we smile at it. "

Signing off,

JD