The Power of 1440: Making the Most of Every Minute in a DayНамуна

Everyday Extraordinary

Words always have a way of revealing and betraying our true attitudes and beliefs. Here’s one particular word that is evidence of my bias: ordinary. I’m guilty of thoughtlessly using this adjective to mislabel and malign most of the golden moments I’m given each day. 

“Ordinary life” is the biased way I have often characterized everything that happens in my life between getting out of bed in the morning and back into it at night. I’ve fantasized about being, doing, or having something extraordinary, if only I could escape the tyranny of the mundane.

If you’ve grown as tired as I am of living in a constant state of restless discontent, then I have great news! We each have the power, and perhaps even the duty, to uproot this old way of seeing the world. We can plant a radical and liberating truth in its place. Here it is: There is no such thing as ordinary. Not a single second of your life or mine could ever be anything other than fantastically full of power, beauty, meaning, purpose, and potential.

Not. A. Single. Second.

Why? The truth is, ordinary doesn’t exist, because every moment of your life is a gift from God himself. It is not a matter of wondering whether God would give his children anything less than the best of everything (he would not!), but whether such a thing is even possible. It is not! 

The writers of the Old Testament understood a powerful truth that we should remember: “The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deut. 6:4). That means there is nothing but God, and he is nothing but good. He is involved in every human situation. He loves his children. He lives within his people—including you!

Every moment he gives us is extraordinary. Good moments become good memories. And bad moments, if viewed from the right perspective, become good lessons.

But hang on a minute. If God truly lives within us, if his miraculous and mind-blowing handiwork is visible in every created thing, if the world truly hums with the energy of the human potential for greatness, then why do so many of us hang our heads as if existence is some kind of permanent after-school detention? We act like we’re all assigned to a life that’s to be lived in a dull and dreary room and made to write the same sentence over and over. 

Why do we put ourselves in detention? To find the answer, look no further than your own mind. That’s the only place God’s creation can appear to be anything other than magnificent, because it is where we insist on imagining things to be other than they truly are. The only reason life ever seems ordinary, or even burdensome, is because we choose to think it is.

Our lives will always move in the direction of our most dominant thoughts. Every miracle or breakthrough begins in the seeds sown in the ground of your imagination.

The choice is yours. You can train your mind to see the marvelous presence of God in everything or focus on the dreary. Don’t get caught in the trap of sorting life into artificial categories called “ordinary” and “special.

The path you take—and keep on taking until it becomes second nature—determines your mindset, the sum of your beliefs and assumptions about yourself and the world. What and how you think is up to you. 

Respond

If someone asked you, “What kind of day are you having?” how would you answer? Remember, words are reflections of your core beliefs. Now, using what you’ve learned today, change your answer based on the truth that every moment is a gift from God.

Describe a day in your life you consider to be extraordinary. What was it about that day that made it special? How can you train your mind to view today’s 1440 minutes in the same way? 

Do you tend to see the presence of God in everything, or do you tend to focus on the dreary? What are some things that influence your perspective? Ask God to help you see him at work in your life today.