Is life actually about survival of the fittest?

Consider your life today and the journey you have taken to get to where you are. Think of the decisions and choices you made, the experiences you've had and your goals for the future - then consider the underlying theme behind it all. The theme is survival. That's right...all you have done and all you will do is based around surviving in this world.

I've said for a while that as you start moving out of childhood, where life is all about fun, life becomes more complicated. You encounter more forced responsibility and duties that you wouldn't choose to undertake. You work a job, rarely out of choice, but rather to earn an income that you need for survival. How you got that job was perhaps influence from parents who focused on survival and a main component of university study and career choice is financial reward - again about survival.

So how can you ensure you are one of the fittest and make life more than just survival but rather an experience? Well for one start by taking a look at those in the world that appear to have made it and living this way. One approach is to work extremely hard, make a lot of money at what you love to do and delegate all other tasks. Another way is to simplify your life and reduce the pressure on having to survive rather than actually living eg. reduce financial commitments and excess expenditure.

End of the day everyone runs a different race with a different winning post but the secret is acknowledging that fact and making sure you do not get caught up running the wrong race. If you do and if life is indeed about survival of the fittest it will be a race you will surely lose.

Defining your place in life

What many of us do not bother to do but perhaps should is defining our role in this world and the expectations we have of ourselves. Defining a role and expectations is not about settling but rather clearly defining why, when and how we will live our lives ensuring that we can understand the reasons for living the way we do.

Stress, frustration and anguish all stem for the fact that we do not make the effort to truly understand our decisions before making them or consider the impact of goals before setting them. When our achievements fail to meet our expectations do we consider all the reasons why the result achieved was indeed the result. Generally not, rather the term 'failure' is used as if the initial goal was a forgone conclusion. Then stress and frustration occur because the initial expectation in no means represented what you stood for or truly valued.

Defining your place in life before charging off into the sunset simply allows you to remove clutter from your life and focus on what is important to you at each stage of your existence. It also permits you to re-evaluate the expectations you have of yourself and provide a greater understanding of who you are and the limited resources you may have at your disposal - regardless of how determing you are to achieve a particular goal. A blind man has the potential to achieve anything he wants but is inherently restricted by sight - thus expectations of what can be achieved and the level of achievement must be tempered in accordance with this.

This thought process will allow you to live life according to your rules, rather than trying to live in the shoes of others, and permit you to achieve all you possibly can with the minimum of stress and frustration.