Vitality Pursuits www.vitalitypursuits.com

For me – Movies, Cooking, Great Books, Great Dining,  Travel are Vitality Pursuits.

Vitality Pursuit feeds the soul that you are.

Vitality Pursuit restores you and replenishes you.

I do not think that you can live the Good Life www.goenjoythegoodlife.com without regularly availing yourself of  the Vitality Pursuits that feed the soul that you are.

From Dictionary .com  www.dictionary.com –

Restore – to bring back to a state of health, soundness, or vigor.

Replenish – to supply (a fire, stove, etc.) (or the soul that you are) with fresh fuel.

 

Discovering and availing yourself of your Vitality Pursuits is part of what it means to Enjoy Life.

Good Life Element #1 is Enjoy Life.  www.goodlifeelements.com

Sadly people are not often taught to enjoy life, instead they often endure life and occasionally pursue pleasure as a means of temporary escape or to simply self-medicate to deal with the pain of thier life.

People tend to either Enjoy Life or Pursue Pleasure.  www.goenjoythegoodlife.com www.goendurethecommonlife.com

Enjoying life is a perspective you can learn and a skill you can develop. I know it can be done, I spent a good portion of my life not enjoying life. On November 29th 2007, I was confronted with the call/mission to enjoy life and the shocking realization that I had never been taught or encouraged to do that.

I know that, like me, some people come from certain Christian tribes where enjoying life – here and now – just seems wrong somehow. If that is you – #1 get a good counselor and #2 check out Ecclesiastes  9:9.  (Just don’t read Ecclesiastes 9:7 until you have spent time with your counselor.)

Once you begin the journey of learning to enjoy your life, one of the things that you will be faced with is looking at why you pursue the recreational activities that you do.

Some of your recreational activities might be ones that feed your soul, and some might be ones that are simply enjoyable or meaningful to you.

I enjoy watching a good NFL game…I enjoy watching a bad NFL game. Simply put, I like NFL Football.

I like sports radio. I enjoy Colin Cowherd, Dan Patrick, Doug Gottlieb, John Kincade and Jason Smith.

I enjoy Music. Especially Blues. Blues artists like – Joe Bonamassa, Joanne Shaw Taylor, Ten Foot Polecats, Janiva Magness, Buddy Guy, and Robin Rogers.

While I truly appreciate and enjoy NFL Football, Sports Radio and Blues, those recreational activities do not feed the soul that I am. They do not restore or replenish me.

Years ago, while living in Olympia, Wa, I heard a friend of mine, Bill, share what moved him. He spoke about hiking in Yosemite National Park. He talked about hiking for hours and finally getting to a place where he had a beautiful view of a waterfall. Bill spoke from the heart, and he talked about how much nature and hiking moved him and inspired him.

While Bill was speaking, I very much identified with all of the positive things that he got from that long hike. At the same I knew that hiking for hours to see a nice waterfall was not going leave me feeling moved and inspired. Tired and sweaty maybe, but not moved and inspired!

 

As Bill was talking, I realized that movies leave me feeling moved and inspired. When the lights go down and the previews come up, I know that I am likely to leave the theater inspired and moved.

In November of 2007, I began dealing with this whole “enjoy life” thing. Over the past year, I have come to learn about Vitality Pursuits and the role they play in both Enjoying Life and Pursuing Wholerness (Good Life Element #2).

In closing let me, share with you some of my Vitality Pursuits-

I already mentioned Movies.  Other activities that feed the soul that I am, are Travel, Great Dining,  Great Books and Cooking.

   

    

   

Most of these activities were not healthfully nurtured in me as a child and it has been quite a journey to come to embrace what turns my crank.

I highly encourage you to discover what it is that turns your crank and feeds the soul that you are. You might be pleasantly surprised at what you find.

You also might get some interesting responses from people in your sphere of influence as you begin talking about your Vitality Pursuits

In addition to my blogs, You can follow me on Facebook and on Twitter. On Facebook, I tend to share details from my life and I have often posted about what I am cooking.

One of my Facebook friends, kept telling me that I was passionate about food and that I was “living to eat”.

This friend  was missing the fact that it was the cooking I was excited about, not the food in and of itself. To be fair, I have stuggled with eating for comfort, however when I cook a meal for my family, I do feel restored and replenished without even eating what I have cooked.

I think that part of the reason that cooking is a Vitality Pursuit for me, is that for me, cooking is a creative outlet. Cooking is how I do art.

I look forward to hearing from you as you discover what your Vitality Pursuits are!

That’s it,

Steven Shomler

Good Life Sage