The title of this post is the first line of a beautiful poem by Dawn Markova. I saw it in an Oprah Magazine and I typed and printed it out as a reminder that every day that I am gifted – must be lived. Yet for years I tried to live a carefully scripted life.

I think in today’s environment it is easy to want to follow the “prompts” we get from others about how we should do this or that and all the steps we need to follow in order to get to the pot of goal at the end of the rainbow.

These “prompts” unwittingly stifle our free expression and imagination.

In her book ‘Insight Out’, Tina Seelig shares that back in the seventies, the Lego company sold its colourful, interlocking bricks WITHOUT specific instructions. They were designed for open-ended imagination. Over the years Lego moved further away from this ode to imagination by offering predesigned kits with the finished product pictured on the box.

As I searched for meaning, seduced by the fact that someone else out there had figured it all out, and all I needed to do was to follow the instructions, I turned from my on my own self-direction, intuition and motivation.

Today we are inundated with information.

Thousands of books are published, and even more podcasts attempting to teach us how to make more of ourselves:

• How to be a more effective executive
• How to be a better salesperson
• How to be a happier more dynamic individual

The authors prescribe a course of action that will lead to a desired result. This plan has worked for the author and some of her students yet despite following her instructions to the letter, it may not necessarily work well for you.

These experts are good at what they do because there is an inward state that must be achieved in order for words and actions to be effective. They have had the luck to achieve this state intuitively or unconsciously.

The more rigidly you follow their path the less deeply aligned you become.

The secret to your own success lies in figuring out where you are amazing.

It’s your job to figure out what works for you. No one knows what will work for you. You can get help but no one will ever be more interested in getting answers but YOU.

The first step requires you to start looking at EVERY part of who you are, not just the parts related to work. Self-awareness: It’s simple but not easy.

We all come into the world with a predisposition to a natural style and natural pattern of behaviour and success comes more quickly if we find jobs or careers that allow us to exercise this pattern.

It is time to live!

It’s time to fire up your imagination and envision the landscape of your own life. The more imaginative you are, the more vividly you will conjure a landscape of possibility.

Limited imagination = incremental thinking, doing the same thing as everyone else with little variation.

Is that a well-lived life?

Contemplate Dawn’s poem today and ask yourself the following:

1. What are my self-imposed boundaries?
2. How can I reimagine my life?