Blueberry Pineapple Smoothie

It’s no secret I’m a planning person. I love detailing to-do lists, I love the way it feels when I check something off of it, and I love that I can plan for success in so many things with zero problem at all.

Except for this one small, lingering problem: I haven’t been successful to the degree that I have planned.

Now I believe that some of that is the Holy Spirit working in my life for things and plans that are very different from my own, but the reality is that the lack of success is directly related to the larger lack of two ultra-important components of planning: ACTION and APPLICATION.

I read a lot of blogs that pull me in with far-reaching titles and promises of huge announcements, only to be disappointed by the lack of detail, by the vagueness that is transparently brought on by fear of rejection. That’s a harsh statement, but it’s true. I’m very much someone who wants to know details, ways to take new ideas and apply them to my life. I don’t want to know that there’s something BIG AND HUGE going on, but can’t find out about it til 3 months down the road. While there is some good that comes with teasers I just want to know HOW and I want to know NOW.

The other day on the way to church I was listening to K-LOVE and the song “I Want to Live With Abandon” (Newsboys – totally used to be obsessed with them…) came on. And you know what I thought? I thought that it would be so nice to live with abandon. To live fully immersed in God’s love that fear really didn’t have a place in my life. To know God’s will so thoroughly that I wouldn’t be tempted to go down other roads. As the song played on I just kept thinking about the things that I’ve been planning for a while and the fact that there hasn’t been any action on those plans for some time.

See, here’s the truth for me: planning and emotional connection to plans will only get me so far before I actually need to DO something about it. I need to pull myself out of bed at 5am and sit down and WRITE my book. I can plan for days on how many sentences to write per day and how to find an agent, but til I take action it’s just not going to happen.

I could talk for days about the new business I’m dreaming up, but until I get my tail in gear and take some classes that are needed to make this happen – well, then it’s just not going to happen. And this isn’t meant to be a teaser, I just don’t have any meat on the bones yet. Promise I will give full details as soon as I actually KNOW the details!

Going back to living with abandon though. I’m kind of obsessed lately with looking up words in the dictionary to really grasp the full meaning of them. That day at church I looked up ‘live’ (to act out or practice, to be ALIVE) and ‘abandon’ (to leave and never return, to give oneself over unrestrainedly) and put together my own definition of living with abandon:

LIVE WITH ABANDON: To make a living and continued practice of leaving and never returning to the comfort found in inaction.

I’m scared to fail. I don’t want to look silly. I don’t want to say that I tried and didn’t make it. But if it comes down to it I’d rather learn from mistakes than never make any at all. These dreams and these plans mean nothing if there’s no starting point, right?

I spent much of January making plans for my book, making plans for a business, making plans for a move, making plans for this blog and making plans for my body. February is the month that it all starts though. I’m a little bit terrified, a lot excited and really ready to dig in and make it happen. So let’s make a smoothie and clink our glasses together, a toast to life and happiness and taking action on our dreams. CHEERS!