Why We Need to Live Our Lives at 212 Degrees
You can't become the best version of yourself by playing it safe.
At 211 degrees water is considered hot. One degree more and it’s boiling. One degree is the difference between very hot and generating enough force to power machines.
When it comes to our lives, how frequently do we strive for 212 degrees. Are we even aware of what 212 degrees feels like?
I spent the summer before my mom passed away helping her prepare to die. She asked me to help “clean her house” but the moment I arrived back in Minnesota I knew it was something much bigger than that.
She had been sick for months, though none of us knew exactly what was wrong. To this day I couldn’t tell you how much she knew, but it was enough to know her time on earth was coming to a close.
I spent almost two months working with her every day. Going through books, photos, knickknacks, and childhood memories. One afternoon as we were working in the dining room, picking up a wedding photo of my father and her I asked, “what do you want to do with this”?
“Leave it exactly where it is, I don’t want him to forget too quickly that we were married for 50 years”.
Even when she was dying she still had a bite.
Later that same day I picked up a plaque she had won at work. Most Significant Employee Contribution.
“What should I do with this?” I asked, holding it up for her to see.
“Keep that. I want people to remember I was good at something after I’m gone.” Hand to God, it still brings tears to my eyes remembering those words.
Good at something? You have to understand, my Mom could do everything. She was the best cook and baker I’ve ever known. I still long for her homemade bread. She could sew, garden, and farm. She could build a damn good fence (far superior to my dad’s fence building skills).
She took up woodworking, photography, and she wrote several books. She donated time to so many causes. She could paint, wallpaper, and manage a budget. She could fix electrical problems and plumbing was natural for her.
She even knew how to make moonshine.
I couldn’t think of things she wasn’t good at. And she thought we needed a plaque to understand there was one thing she was good at.
She lived her life at 212 degrees and she didn’t realize it.
It’s easy to get caught up in the comparison game. Easy to forget the contributions we make on a daily basis. It’s especially easy to forget our strengths when we assume everyone else can do what we do.
They can’t.
I spend a lot of my social media time talking about ways to become better entrepreneurs. How to strengthen your business. How to become better at sales. Build stronger relationships, etc. All those things start from within.
You can’t become the best sales person or marketer or entrepreneur if you aren’t hitting 212 degrees.
Power the machine and know that when you do it right the people you love won’t need a plaque to understand you were good at something. They will feel your legacy in every memory they have.
Live your life at 212 degrees.
xoxo
Julie
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