100 Business Days Out: Day 95 - LIFE IS WHAT HAPPENS... (#6 Lesson)

...WHILE YOU ARE PLANNING IT. How true is this? I think back to how I got to these first 100 Business Days Out and if I could rewind time nine months prior to April 3rd (the beginning of this free time)I would not have been able to tell you that I would have ended up with the company sold and me having all of this time to figure out what I should do next. It's a long story, which I am glad to tell anyone who is interested, but I will never forget the Friday afternoon about a year ago when I was standing in Penn Station getting ready to board a train and my cell phone rang from the investor who was going to lead the next investment round for SNOCAP. What I heard on the other end of the digital transmission was that because of this "issue" coming that had something to do with some problems with sub-prime mortgages (this was a few weeks before we read it in the papers)that this investor's hedge fund could not now make the investment in SNOCAP. That was the beginning of what ended up a decision a few months later to sell the company. I could not have known this was coming and was not planning for it, but it hit me out of the blue and it was real. That's a real life esample, but not a disastrous one like the deaths of Tim Russert and Randy Pausch were. I have written about both of them a couple of times during these 100 Business Days Out. They both hit me hard. The lesson that comes from these examples is that we just don't know what is going to come next. Change or tragedy, they both can come from left field as we are planning what tomorrow will bring. I am a planner. I always have been and I suspect always will be. I like to be able to see what is coming around the corner and be ready for it. And in many cases, that is what makes life run better for me, but that's not the way life always work. And because of that I know I can spend too much time looking to the future versus living in the present. These 100 Business Days Out have been really good for me on this front. I have found myself living more in the moment, perhaps because there is nothing to plan for the future, but I would like to believe it is because I am listening more to the heeding of others who for one reason or another have missed days and opportunities in their lives. Once a day is lost, it can't be taken back and beleive me, they go faster and faster each year. So, I know now more than ever that life is just what happens, reagardless of what you plan and how you plan for it. And with this lesson, it is more imperative than ever that I make the most of each and every precious day I am given.