One Month to Live - Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks - Week 52

For the final book of the Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge, I read One Month to Live - Thirty Days to a No-Regrets Life by Kerry and Chris Shook. This book had a lot of inspiring quotes, information, and challenges to do.

Although I didn't read one chapter per day and do the challenges daily, I would like to spend time in the future answering and reflecting upon some of the questions and information presented in the book.

Below are quotes that I liked, information that I felt was worth remembering, and challenge and things to do from One Month to Live.

Quotes from the book that I liked:
- Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives. (Alan Sachs)
- I am convinced that it is not the fear of death, of our lives ending, that haunts our sleep so much as the fear...that as far as the world is concerned, we might as well never have lived. (Harold Kushner)
- Teach us to number our days and recognize how few they are, help us to spend them as we should. (Psalm 90:12)
- I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. (Diane Ackerman)
- Guard your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
- This is your life. Are you who you want to be? (Switchfoot)
- It is never too late to be what you might have been. (George Eliot)
- The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration but its donation. (Corrie Ten Boom)
- He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
- They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. (Carl W. Buechner)
- Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something. (H. Jackson Brown, Jr.)
- Say what you want to say when you have the feeling and the chance. My deepest regrets are the things I did not do, the opportunities missed, and the things unsaid. (Jim Keller)
- The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. (William James)
- When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so that when you die, you will be smiling, and everyone around you will be crying. (Anonymous)

Information I felt was worth remembering:
- Embracing our time on earth as a limited resource has incredible power to liberate u. Most of us, if we knew we had only a month to live, would live differently. We would be more authentic about who we are and more deliberate about how we spent our time. But such a contrast begs the question: what keeps us from living this way now?
- What did you live for? Whom did you love? What were your passions? What were your biggest mistakes and greatest regrets?
- Are you living - knowing fully who you are and why you're here? Or are you hurriedly spending precious time chasing things that really don't matter to you?
- Your time on earth is limited. Shouldn't you start making the most of it?
- Many of the things you do now that seem so important would immediately become meaningless.
- There are four universal principle in the one-month-to-live lifestyle: to live passionately, to love completely, to learn humbly, and to leave boldly.
- Time once spent cannot be reclaimed. Once an hour, minute, or moment is over, it's gone forever. However, we can redeem the remaining time we have.
- If you waste your time, your waste your life. And if we're going to use our time in such a way that we leave a lasting mark on this earth, then we have to pass the effectiveness test.
- 20 percent of their activity produces 80 percent of the results. So, 20 percent of what you do in your life should produce 80 percent of your results. 20% of what you do in your life produces 80 percent of your happiness. 20% of the people you hang around with produce 80% of the joy in your relationships.
- If you're going to make the most of your time on earth, living a no-regrets lifestyle, then you need to engage fully with those around you.
- The only way to accomplish your goals of authentic living is first to take time and focus on yourself. If you're not healthy spiritually, physically, emotionally, and relationally, how can you move beyond yourself and invest in others?
- How you treat your body has a direct and lasting impact on the quality of life our enjoy.
- You must increase your physical energy. To increase it, you must first focus on developing a healthy concept of your body.
- If we looked at the lives of every person, both historical and contemporary, whom we consider "successful," we wouldn't find an absence of failure, fear, or pain. Instead we would find the common denominators of perseverance and purpose converging to motivate and inspire these achievers to move forward. They pushed through their fears, not only enduring failures, but learning from them.
- If your dream makes a difference in the lives of others, it's not a selfish dream.
- Take the very painful experiences that you would like to forget and use them to make a difference in the lives of others.
- When all is said and done, relationships are all that really matter. It doesn't matter how much money we have, where we live, or how many beautiful toys we've collected. None of these can comfort us, console us, cry with us, or love us. Our investment in the people we care about is the only legacy that has the power to endure beyond our lifetime.
- Why don't we live as if our relationships matter most? It seems ironic that most of us value relationships but don't expend the energy to invest in them fully.
- Mother Teresa said that loneliness is the most terrible poverty. She was right - without love we're emotionally bankrupt.
- Love always means risking pain.
- The incredible grief of losing parents. Children you invested your life in grow up and eventually move away. Our closest friends change jobs and relocate across the country. We don't stop loving any of these people, but we ache because we an't be with them and can't remain connected to them the way we would like. Pain is an inherent part of any significant relationship.
- You feel the urgency to make the most of your life, but too often you distract yourself with busyness, or you focus on things that can't fulfill your deepest desire.
- Our schedules move at such a rushed pace that we begin to suffer from spiritual motion sickness, one of the key symptoms of chronic soul disease. So, we move even faster.
- The antidote to motion sickness of our souls is stillness. When was the last time you were still?
- Real change is initiated on the inside; then the outside naturally changes to reflect it.
- The best antidote for comparison compulsion is service....serving people who can't give you anything of value in return.
- If you were living deliberately and passionately and were fully alive, you would want to live with integrity.
- A true sign of maturity and strength of character is to be the same person no matter where we are or whom we're with. Integrity is wholeness, consistency through and through.
- When you have integrity, it fills your life with peace, passion, and purpose. When you are the same person at work and with your family and with your buddies at the game or your girlfriends at the cafe, it fills your life with a calm unity. You're not always positioning and posturing, shifting and spinning, second-guessing who you should be in the various roles and settings of your life.
- If we want to live in an undivided, unbroken state of strength and peace, then we must be complete players.
- Integrate your core values and beliefs into all you do, not just some of what you do.
- You can be really honest in one area of your life, but if you're dishonest in another area, you don't have integrity. You can be honest in four or five relationships, but if you're dishonest in one relationship, you don't have integrity.
- Integrity requires allowing your true character to take center stage and deciding to reveal who you really are and what you truly believe.
- We all have been given a limited number of opportunities to influence others and make a difference in their lives.
- Sometimes people are more concerned with making a name for themselves than making an impact on others. Abraham Lincoln wisely observed, "Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worth of recognition."
- What exactly are you planting? What is the cumulative effect of your words, actions, and intentions on those around you an those ahead of you? What harvest will be reaped from all that you plan day in and day out?
- The seed has power and potential in it: it produce life. Unfortunately, some of us spend our time planting rocks - no potential, no life, no fruit.
- If all you're doing is accumulating things and trying to impress people, then the moment you die, your influence ends. Zero impact.

Challenges and things to do:
- Use a journal to live the the next thirty days as if they were your last and to write down what happened. If like others, you will note a greater clarity of purpose and a renewed passion for the things that really matter.
 - Quickly make a list of five things you'd change about your life if you knew you only had a month to lie. Choose at least one to begin changing today, right now.
- If you were certain your life as you know it would end in a few weeks, what would be your biggest regret? Why?
- In what area of your life are you suffering from the Someday Syndrome? Make a decision today never again to use the phrase "someday, when things settle down." Realize that today is your someday.
- Keep a time journal this week, and jot down how you spend each day. Try to rate your productivity along with your contentment.
- What was the biggest time waster in your past week? What was the payoff for you? Did it distract you, entertain you, allow you to avoid someone? Is there a way to use your time differently and have a greater, more significant impact?
- What's one thing you can do today toward improving your physical health?
- Spend time journaling about a specific goal for each of the four areas (spiritual, physical, emotional, relational) that you can pursue during the rest of this month.
- How connected do you feel to your dreams? Does your day-to-day life reflect an active pursuit of your dreams?
- What are your frozen dreams? In other words, what would you attempt if you knew you couldn't fail?
- Make a list of the people you would want to see and to share your heart with if you knew your time on earth was limited to one more month. What specific steps could you take to connect with one o them and share your heart?
- In the next day or two, no matter how busy you may be, find a time to surprise someone you love. Find a way to add quality connections to your life on a daily basis.
- Make a gratitude list of five or six things that you often take for granted.
- Make a list of the people in your lie for whom you're most grateful. Try to think beyond the obvious ones - family and friends - and consider the people who contribute to your life each day yet tend to be overlooked.
- Write a letter, send an email, or call someone who's important to you but lives far away. Recall the last time you were together, and tell that person what it meant to you.
- Try a 24-hour media fast (no television, radio, computer, or newspaper) to help you tune out distractions and listen to the people in your life. After your media fast, write down how it affected you.
- Find an object that reminds you of who you really are (e.g., picture of you doing a favorite activity, being with loved ones, rock from a hike, jewelry from a parent/grandparent). Keep it with you or in a prominent place you will see every day as a reminder of your true identity.
- Make a list of your strengths and be specific. Go back over the list and beside each one write how much time this past week you devoted to using or improving that gift.
- When was the last time you felt passionate about an experience? What were the circumstances? What gifts did you use? What does this experience tell you about your purpose in life?
- What do you consider the happiest season of your life? How often do you think about it or finding yourself wishing you were back in it? How does your present season of life compare to it? Is nostalgia causing you to miss out on present opportunities?
- If you knew you only had one month to live, how would you simplify your lie? What materials goods would you give away, sell, or trash? What items on your schedule would be the first to go? What keeps you clinging to these items now?
- What storms are you facing in your life today? Are they making you stronger or blowing you apart? Remember, you don't get to choose what trials come into your life, but you do get to choose your response. What response will you choose today?
- Spend at least one hour alone and uninterrupted. You might stare out the window or take a walk in the woods.
- Who has consistently encouraged, challenged, and caught you? If you only had one month to live, what would you want to tell them?
- For what would you like to be remembered? How are you contributing to this goal right now? How long will this legacy last?
- Look at your calendar for the last month. How much of your time was spent on temporary goals? How much on an eternal legacy? Look over your checkbook and credit card statements. How much of your money was spent on temporary things? How much on eternal investments? Consider at least one way in the week ahead that you can invest in an eternal legacy.
- What did you do last week that will last for the rest of this year? for ten years? for eternity?
In what area are you currently expressing the most pressure? How have you responded so far?
- List five convictions that you hold and believe are timeless.
- List five character traits you would like to be remembered by after you've left this earth.
- What one cause, situation, or people group have you always been moved by? This week research ways you can serve time - using your time, your talents, and your treasure.
- Think of a loved one who has passed away. How would you describe his or he spiritual legacy? What would you like to emulate about this person's legacy of character?