Make Each Day Your Masterpiece

This is second on the list of John Wooden's father's list of rules for living, and it's one of my favorite points on the list.

Often I feel we all fall into the drudgery of day to day life. We wake up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, do something for a minute, and go to bed ready to the same thing the next day. That is not bad in and of itself, but sometimes our attitude about it is.

We need to seek to live each day to the fullest, to have things to look forward to everyday, and to not take things for granted. Live a life with purpose, knowing what your goals and dreams are, and working hard to achieve them. Do not neglect tasks or friends, but seem to make your life fulfilling, and for each day to have meaning, to make each day better than the day before it.

Many people simply find life boring, in part because they might not see the beauty and the spectacular-ness (note: that might not actually be a word... I report, you decide) of everything. There are amazing things all around us, but we don't always look hard enough, or even care to look in the first place.

Making each day your masterpiece means seeking out the great and wonderful things in life, and then really focusing on them and cherishing them. Sure, there are always going to be mundane things that need to be done on a daily basis, life needs a foundation after all, but that doesn't mean that things have to be boring.

"How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny selfishness and virile indifference! You would begin to be interested in them, because they were not interested in you. You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always being played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers." - GK Chesterton

Wake up each day with a purpose, thankful that you are alive, knowing that the life you dream of is always within your grasp, if you are only willing to reach for it.