EPL # 5: YOU Can Change Your Life

“There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I’m going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life-whether I will see them as curses or opportunities.” ~Elizabeth Gilbert

So to finish off Eat Pray Love week, I decided to try and sum up the whole point of the book/movie. In one word. Ironically, I pick a word that is not even in the title. I think the point is LIVE.

Let me explain. I think to do that, we start at the beginning. Julia Roberts is lying on the floor of her bathroom. She's lost and miserable and alone and weeping. And you know what she did? She got off the floor and changed her life.

Too often, we decide that we are somehow stuck in a place or a job or a relationship or a situation. When I hear people complain about how bad their lives are and how much they hate living where they are living or whatever it is and I just want to shake them! If you're not happy with your life, THEN CHANGE IT.

We're lucky that we live in a society where we can make these changes. There are some countries in the world where a person can't change their life. They do not have the options. They have no opportunity to be whatever they want to be, they have no money to go where they want to go, and so on and so on.

Think about Tulsi in Eat Pray Love. Julia Roberts befriends her as she is being forced into an arranged marriage. Tulsi is devastated. She wants to travel and see the world and go to school and be something different and marry someone who she falls in love with. But she can't. She doesn't have the option to change her life.

I'm not saying you should leave your spouse, quit your job and run off to jet-set around the world for a year. Most people probably do not need to take that drastic of a step in order to change their lives. (Not to mention most of us can't afford it....I read that Elizabeth Gilbert footed the bill from the advance for the book....).

But you can do something to change your life. If you hate your job, look for a new one. If you don't like where you live, move. If you have a friend or a boyfriend or whatever who is dragging you down, ditch them. If you need to take a vacation and lay on the beach for a week, book the trip.

We've only got one shot at this life thing. What a waste it is to spend our time hating what we're doing. We are fortunate enough to have the opportunity to change our lives today. That's the message of Eat Pray Love. If I had written the book, I would have added my word: Eat Pray Love LIVE. Go put it into action. Go LIVE!