Day 286: Reminders…Live hard, Love Harder

I took the liberty this morning of adding the line Live Hard, Love Harder, to the heading of today’s blog, Reminders. Again, each BTL Builder takes a month writing and giving their interpretation of Chet’s Blog and today is my interpretation.

Live Hard, Love Harder is a phrase you see at the bottom of every blog Chet writes. I referred to this phrase in an earlier blog and how I came to a much deeper understanding of this phrase and adopting it as my Mantra, a daily, hourly, minute by minute, second by second, REMINDER of what is truly important in my life and the Big Question it poses to me, Am I Choosing the Hard Thing, (Live Harder) or settling for mediocrity, being comfortable? Am I Loving my wife, my family Harder every day or building a massive integrity gap by telling everyone how important my family is and sitting in a restaurant with my family and my nose in my phone on Instagram, FB or streaming a football game? Come on, is that really how you want to live your life?

My older brother Steve died of Cancer in July of 2020, in the middle of Covid, when none of us were traveling and pretty much hunkered down. We never really had the chance to celebrate his life, his passing the way we had hoped to. I sat down one afternoon, and I started writing and asking myself what I admired about him, what am I learning from his passing, what did he model that I might be missing in my own life, what did we miss in terms of our own relationship, what did he accomplish in his life, what have I not accomplished in my life and what am I settling for? Does my Opus mean anything to me? Am I dreaming and doing? Am I really Choosing to Live Hard? Am I choosing to Love Harder?

I was in a Kairos moment for sure, a new season of life and I was not happy with some of the answers to my questions. I sat down and totally re-evaluated every area of my Core and this was not just one afternoon, this went on for several months. Each time I read that phrase at the end of Chet’s blogs it just kept grinding deeper into my heart and I would use the words, haunting me! 

On October 24^th as I stated in an earlier blog, I sat down once again writing down more of my big dreams and aligning more of my core. Together, Chris and I worked on writing our big dreams and resurrecting dreams we had previously written down and maybe being totally honest, had given up on those dreams. On that day I wrote down the words, Live Hard, Love Harder, and new so deeply in my heart what they meant to me and by saying them, (my new mantra), was like saying my whole CORE in 4 words. 

It’s now 5:54 am and I’m fully awake, dreaming and doing, sitting in the middle of Bryce Canyon Utah, living out one of our big dreams and more to see! I’m choosing to do the hard things that allow for growth and mastery and loving harder the people in my life that make my life so meaningful, Living my OPUS!

Live Hard, Love Harder, thanks Chet!