Takeaway: Be intentional about your life. Design and build the life you want. Be intentional in who and what you dedicate your time and energy to.
I read a great quote recently that I want to share with you about the importance of being intentional.
Life is like an empty field. With intention it becomes a garden, without it weeds and debris will take over. Something will grow either way, but it’s your choice what takes root. - John Steinbeck
Design and build the life you want. Be intentional in who and what you dedicate your time and energy to.
The weekend before last, I was sitting with a friend in a bar. At one point, the people next to us struck up a conversation.
It was a recruiting trip for a woman who had been offered a job as a professor at The University of Michigan. The faculty of her department were showing her around town and trying to convince her why Ann Arbor was a great place to live and work.
Having grown up in the area, they were excited to hear our perspective. The woman’s particular concerns were whether there was enough to do and enough people to meet. She was in her early thirties, single, and looking to take the next step in her life’s journey—finding a husband.
The advice my friend gave was spot on:
If you’re waiting for something magical to happen, it won’t ever come. You have to put yourself out there to meet people intentionally. You have to put in the effort and try.
You’ll meet people, and those people will introduce you to other people. Those people will invite you into a community of a whole new group of people—so on and so forth until that moment of serendipity happens. That moment when you meet someone you have a strong connection with.
There is a lot of opportunity in Ann Arbor, but you have to go out and find it.
I couldn’t help but think about how true this advice was for just about anything we may want in life.
We’re going to be stuck with one or the other—a bed of flowers or a bed of weeds—and the deciding factor lies in our level of effort.
~ Coach Alex