FIRST HALF VS SECOND HALF

15 Oct FIRST HALF VS SECOND HALF

Finishing well is really what matters.  Consider any professional sport – most games are won or lost in the second half.  So it is with life.

Typical first half pursuits and challenges include:

• Obtaining an education
• Getting married or building relationships with friends
• Building a career and striving to move upward, trying to provide for the family.  Having good intentions
• Acquiring material things to help make life’s journey more comfortable
• Juggling many priorities – how to be with friends and family yet expend oneself in the adventure of building a career
• Experiencing pain: divorce, addiction, guilt, loneliness, wayward children, job loss, illness, etc
• Determining what you have to work with – your gifts, abilities, knowledge, experiences
• Choosing challenges and new horizons that fit the game plan
• Marching ahead, pursing the goals and playing hard
• Trying to figure out what to believe sprititually.  Developing a beleif system.
• Getting involved in activies and figuring out how life works

Typical Halftime Questions and Issues include:

• What shoudl I do with what I’ve learned?  Have I done enough – in my family, my community, my church?
• Am I able to devote more time to the peopel who are most important to me?  To help them become all they can be?  To reach out to others?
• Are these long hours really worth the price?  And now that I’m here, is this where I want to be?  I want more than success, I want significance.  I’m successful, forutnate and yet frustratingly unfulfilled.
• I may have lived more than half my life.  What am I going to leave behind of lasting value?  Do I really need more stuff?
• What’s really important?  Maybe it’s time to take a breather and reevaluate things.  How would I like my life to be different?
• How can I use the great learning experiences I’ve had and wisdom I’ve gained to make a difference in this world?
• I know quite a bit about what I have to work with – now it’s time to choose strategically how to use what I have.
• Now I can build on the past to creat new challenges, new horizons that reflect my new goals and to discover what it means to be open to what I am uniquely designed to do.
• I just can’t keep playing the game the way I’ve been playing.  But I want the second half of my lfie to be even better than the first.
• I want to figure out what to do with what I believe.  I want my faith to be lived out through action that is built on my faith, values and beliefs.
• I dare to beleive that what I ultimately leave behind will be more imporant than anything I could have achieved during the first half of my life.

It’s time to build a plan for the next 20-30 years of your life!