How are you doing?

If you answered, “fine” or “good”, as is so currently common, you are in grave danger of missing the boat. We effectively kill the life of the conversation when we use the words “fine” or “good” to describe our experience of life. Subconsciously, we are also shorting ourselves on how much of life we do experience. As Tony Robbins eloquently puts it, “the words that we attach to our experience become our experience.”

1 in 10 Americans are on anti-depressants.

1 in 3 Americans feel dissatisfied with their lives.

You and I, WE, are ALIVE!

We have the opportunity to experience tastes, sounds, sights, textures, emotions, relationships, mental and spiritual phenomena.

“Suddenly you’re ripped into being alive. And life is pain, and life is suffering, and life is horror, but my god you’re alive and its spectacular.”

There may be moments of pain, suffering, horror, but most of life is benign, AND the majority of our pain, especially in the first world countries, is self-inflicted pain. Whether it is the physical pain induced by unhealthy lifestyle choices or the mental anguish incited by unchecked emotions and rampant destructive thought patterns; these pains can be ameliorated or avoided entirely by us.

1:400,000,000,000

Those are the odds that you would be born, with your DNA, in that spot on Earth, to your parents, out of all those sperm, with that one egg. These are just the odds for our birth. What are the odds are that you would not only be born, but survive childhood, make it into adulthood, have a computer or device, and read this article?

Exceptionally slim. BUT, life happened. Life is happening.

Life is ripe with opportunity to find joy, peace, wonder, awe, creative expression, intimate connection, and virtually endless experiences. Take this opportunity to change your language and change your experience of life.

Anytime I am asked the question, “How are you?”, I take the opportunity to reflect on my experience of life. When I do this, I feel grateful. This gratitude for being alive with the capacity to respond, elicits a joyous answer from me. “I doing fantastic! I’m alive!”

Here are some of my favorite answers to the age old question, “How are you?”
‘Stupendous’, ‘splendid’, ‘This is the best moment of my life’, ‘Amazing’, ‘Wonderful’ I’ve even tossed in ‘splendiferous’ on occasion. (Don’t worry if you can’t find it in every dictionary, ‘splendiferous’ is a word.) Consciously come up with some default responses of your own, so that each time someone asks about how you are doing, you will have the chance to experience an uplifting moment in your day.

If you want a more thorough kick in the butt, so that you can get back to enjoying the thrill of life, watch Mel Robbins in this TED talk. I highly recommend it.