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

by Rob Bell

Do you see your life as something you create? Or do you see your life as something that is happening to you?

You create your life. You get to shape it, form it, steer it, make it into something. And you have way more power to do this than you realize.

(Which is an excellent litmus test for whether the work you’re doing is work that the world needs: Does it move things forward?

Some things people give their energies to prevent other people from thriving. Some tasks dehumanize and degrade the people involved.

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 he...

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.

What new and good thing is going to come out of even this?

The blinking line reminds you that whatever has happened to you, whatever has come your way that you didn’t want, whatever you have been through, you have today, you have this moment, you have a life that you get to create. The universe is unfinished, and God is looking for partners in the ongoing creation of the world.

If you focus on who you aren’t, and what you don’t have, or where you haven’t been, or skills or talents or tools or resources you’re convinced aren’t yours, precious energy will slip through your fingers that you could use to do something with that blinking line.

We all have our they—friends, neighbors, co-workers, family members, superstars who appear to skate by effortlessly while we slog it out. They are the people we fixate on, constantly holding their lives up to our life, using their apparent ease and success as an excuse to hold back from doing our work and pursuing our path in the world.

All Peter can think about is someone else’s path. He’s with Jesus, having a conversation, and yet his mind is over there, wondering about John. Peter asks, What about him? and Jesus responds, What is that to you?

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

When you compare yourself with others, you have no idea what challenges they are facing.

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.

Is there any way in which you are not throwing yourself into your life because you’re convinced that you could never do it as well as so-and-so does it?

You may be talented, but you’re not Kanye West. —Kanye West

I am the magic

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.

Knowing your ikigai, then, takes patience, and insight, and courage, and honesty.

The one thing that unites the people I know who are on satisfying and meaningful paths is that they kept trying things, kept exploring, kept pursuing new opportunities, kept searching until they discovered their ikigai. And then from there they never stop figuring it out because they understand how absolutely crucial this is in creating a life worth living.

Your ikigai is exhausting and exhilarating, draining and invigorating, all at the same time.

There are moments when nothing in the world seems more difficult, and yet you can’t imagine doing anything else.

Embracing your ikigai will always require tremendous faith and courage.

you are a divine piece of work, created to do good in the world.

Success is when you’re seduced into thinking that your joy and satisfaction are not here but there—somewhere in the future, at some moment when you accomplish X or you win Y.

Whenever you see someone taking his craft seriously, it’s inspiring, especially in work that often appears at first glance to be menial and routine.

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.

It’s too overwhelming otherwise. It’s too easy to be caught up in endless ruminations: What if Step 4 doesn’t work? or What if there isn’t money for Step 11 or What if people don’t like the results of Step 6?

You have no idea what the answers are to any of those questions. The only thing that wondering and speculating will do is separate you from the present moment.

Some people are stuck. And they remain stuck.

And they don’t get unstuck, because they can’t get their minds around the whole thing. But you don’t have to get your mind around the whole thing, you only have to get your mind around the 1.

I keep telling him, “Stop thinking about shit that ain’t happenin’.”

Make friends with the butterflies.

Welcome them when they come, revel in them, enjoy them, and if they go away, do whatever it takes to put yourself in a position where they return.

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.

Somewhere along the way in becoming adults, it’s easy to lose this potent mix of exploration and determination. We settle. We decide this is as good as it gets. We comfort ourselves with, It could be worse.

Whenever you create anything,

you take a risk. And that includes your life.

Which is true. It’s always a risk to take action. It might not work, it might blow up in your face, you might lose money, you might fail. No one may get it. But that’s not the only risk. There’s another risk: the risk of not trying it.

There are always two risks. There’s the risk of trying something new, and there’s the risk of not trying it.

Failure is simply another opportunity to learn.

The first thing you have to do is throw yourself

into whatever it is you’re doing.

Throwing yourself into it begins with being grateful that you even have something to throw yourself into.

I was doing a Q&A at an event in 2012 and a man raised his hand to ask a question, introducing himself by saying that he was just an insurance agent. As we’ve seen, that little word just is a problem.

you doing your work in your place at this time is highly original and desperately needed.

But it hasn’t been done or said by you. It hasn’t come through your unique flesh and blood, through your life, through your experience and insight and perspective.

Sometimes we don’t throw ourselves into it because we put ourselves out there in the past and discovered that snipers were crouching on every roof.