How to Be Here: A Guide to Creating a Life Worth Living

by Rob Bell

We all have a blinking line. Your blinking line is whatever sits in front of you waiting to be brought into existence.

Perhaps you’re in one of those jobs, the kind that sucks the life out of your soul and you can’t see the good in it. Stop. Leave. Life is too short to help make a world you don’t want to live in.)

All work is creative work because all work is participating in the ongoing creation of the world.

How we respond to what happens to us—especially the painful, excruciating things that we never wanted and we have no control over—is a creative act.

Before anything else can be said about you, you have received a gift. God / the universe / ultimate reality / being itself—whatever word you want to use for source—has given you life.

Are you breathing? Are you here? Did you just take a breath? Are you about to take another? Do you have a habit of regularly doing this? Gift. Gift. Gift.

Suffering and loss have this extraordinary capacity to alert and awaken us to the gift that life is.

Begin your prayers—begin your day—by acknowledging that your life is a gift and this gift flows from a source. This source is responsible for the air in your lungs, the blood that courses through your veins, and the vitality that surges through you and everything around you.

Begin whatever you’re doing by remembering that you are here and you have been given a gift.

The universe is unfinished, and God is looking for partners in the ongoing creation of the world.

Who you aren’t isn’t interesting.

isn’t interesting when it comes to getting out of your head, who “they” are isn’t interesting.

Decide now that you will not spend your precious energy speculating about someone else’s life and how it compares with yours.

We rob ourselves of immeasurable joy when we compare what we do know about ourselves with what we don’t know about someone else.

Whoever you are and whatever work you do, no one has ever lived your life with your particular challenges and possibilities.

“You” hasn’t been attempted before.

The Japanese have a word for what gets you out of bed in the morning: they call it your ikigai. Your ikigai is that sense you have when you wake up that this day matters, that there are new experiences to be had, that you have work to do, a contribution to make. Sometimes this is referred to as your calling, other times your vocation, your destiny, your path. Your ikigai is your reason for being.

Listen to your life. Look back on the moments when you felt most connected to the world around you. Think about those experiences in which you felt the most comfortable in your own skin. Reflect on when you were most aware of something wrong in the world and your strong response to it.

Some things you do for you.

To be here is to embrace the spiritual challenge of your ikigai, doing the hard work of figuring out who you are and what you have to give the world.

Success says, What more can I get? Craft says, Can you believe I get to do this?

What would it look like for you to approach tomorrow with a sense of honor and privilege, believing that you have work to do in the world, that it matters, that it’s needed, that

you have a path and you’re working your craft?

Whatever it is you do all day, do you see it as a craft?

Far too often, we don’t start because we can’t get our minds around the entire thing. We don’t take the first step because we can’t figure out the seventeenth step. But you don’t have to know the seventeenth step. You only have to know the first step. Because the first number is always 1.

Start with 1.

What is your 1?

I keep telling him, “Stop thinking about shit that ain’t happenin’.” Is this you? You’re here, in the middle of your day, doing whatever it is you do, but your mind is all over the place, thinking about 2s and 9s and 47s, playing out possible scenarios, wondering about certain outcomes, constructing conversations

in your mind about what you’ll say and then what they’ll say and then how you’ll respond—thinking about shit that ain’t happenin’.

When you are constantly judging what you’re doing, you aren’t here. You aren’t present. You are standing outside of your life, looking in, observing.

Nerves are God’s gift to you, reminding you that your life is not passing you by. Make friends with the butterflies.

Better to have a stomach full of butterflies than to feel like your life is passing you by.

We work hard to outline and plan and design and estimate and organize whatever it is we’ve set out to do, all the while keeping in mind that when we start, we don’t actually know what we have on our hands.

When you are bored, restless, longing for something more, unfulfilled, feeling like you’ve settled, haunted by the sense of being trapped in your own life, these are the deep waters of your soul speaking to you, telling you something is wrong, something is missing, something needs to change.

It’s written in Proverbs that it takes insight to draw out those deep waters in your heart.

Failure is simply another opportunity to learn.

What you would have called a failure becomes another opportunity for increased clarity about who you are and what you’re doing here.

No one is just a mom, just a construction worker, just a salesperson, just a clerk—because you doing your work in your place at this time is highly original and desperately needed.

First, we throw ourselves into it. And then, at the same time, we surrender the outcomes. We surrender the outcomes because we cannot control how people are going to respond to us and our work in the world.

Surrendering the outcomes is making peace with our lack of control over how people respond to us and our work. Surrendering the outcomes is coming to terms with the freedom people have to react to us and our work however they want. Surrendering the outcomes is embracing the fact that there are no guarantees when it comes to results.

Bhagavad Gita - do your with best with no attachment to the results

If you are looking for a particular response to bring you joy, that response may never come. The joy comes from being fully present in this moment. The reward is in throwing yourself into it right here and now.

If you feel stuck in your life, like it’s passing you by, like there’s something way better for you somewhere out there and you’re missing it, try this—try throwing yourself into the small things and repeating to yourself: This is where I start.

Our external environments mirror our internal lives. If your desk is cluttered, don’t be surprised if you find it hard to focus. If your closet and garage are piled with stuff you don’t use, don’t be shocked when you are easily distracted.

If things are lying around your living and working space that don’t serve a clear purpose, don’t be amazed that you aren’t very calm and centered.

When we feel like life is passing us by, like we’re skimming the surface of our own existence, often the best place to start is with our material possessions. Clean out the closets and and bookshelves and garage, sort out what goes and what stays. Be ruthless. If you don’t use it, toss it.

And so I sit here at this desk I’ve been sitting at for fifteen years and I do this work. I write this book. Work on a talk. Record a podcast. There’s a window in the first part of the day when I create things, and then it closes. By lunch I’m no good on that front. No new ideas; it’s like pushing a rock up a hill.

One day a week to remind themselves that they are human beings, not human doings.

Sabbath is when you spend a day remembering that efficiency and production are not God’s highest goals for your life. Joy is.

Sabbath forces you to listen to your life. Sabbath is a day when you are fully present to your pain, your stress, your worry, your fear. Sabbath is when you let whatever you’ve pushed down rise to the surface. Sabbath is a day when things that are broken get fixed, when things within you that have torn are mended.

Central to creating a life worth living is understanding that you have more power over your time than you realize.