Do you spend a good majority of your day with your eyes glued to your phone screen, obsessing over other people’s lives on social media, contemplating the risks you never took, thinking about all the dreams you never sought out, realizing that you aren’t truly living? Well then congratulations, because you are the 99%! You are among the millions of other people on this beautiful earth, who are truly gifted and talented, but spend their entire lives feeling “comfortable” because they are held back by doubt and a lack of courage. Go venture out with the remaining 1%: the ones who roam the planet living each day as though it were their last.

If someone were to ask you today,  “Are you afraid to die?”,  how do you think you would respond? Would you be quick to answer, or would you drown in your own hesitation and worry, or would you avoid the question altogether? Now, just for s***s and giggles, let’s narrow the question down to “Are you afraid to die, tomorrow?” At this point, the majority of people would respond with a strong “Yes!” Are you feeling uneasy yet? Then realize this: It is not death that most people are afraid of. It is getting to the end of life only to realize that you never truly lived.

People ultimately fear living to death. They fear living an unfulfilled life, but only coming to realize this when they are near death. They fear that by the end of their lives, all they will know is that showing up to their 9am-5pm office job five days of the week kept them from immersing themselves in the culture of Thailand, or from feeling the adrenaline rush through their veins as they skydived for the first time. They fear that they won’t get to spend time with their kids, but because money is low, working that second full time job at Home Depot will have to do. They fear that they will regret not the things they did, but the things they didn’t do—the risks they never took, the dreams they didn’t seek.

In order to begin to dig yourself out of this hell hole of fear and worry, make a checklist, like the ones you make when you go to the grocery store so you don’t forget the damn gallon of milk... again. Write down three simple things that you want to experience within the next six months. Hang it on your refrigerator, or tape it on your bathroom mirror. Place it somewhere you will pass the most often. This list should remind you to strive for the extraordinary, even in the midst of the ordinary.

In the end, life is not meant to simply go to class, work, and wait for Friday to come around. No, life is about experiencing the right type of pain—the pain leading to success rather than the pain of living with regret. So get your ass off of the sunken in couch, put down the television remote, and go live. Go do the things that you've only talked about doing; do the things you’ve never done.

When you have reached your final moments of life, as you lie in a small hospital room with walls that are much too white for comfort, will you be laughing with friends and family about all the lively and playful moments you shared? Or will you be lulled to sleep by the sound of your heart monitor reminding you that the days you had were too short and there’s so much that you still want to do, if only you had the time.

“If only” is a silent killer. It is the phrase which haunts you at night, crawling inside your head, making your nights even more restless. Don’t live your life with the phrase “If only” tattooed across your forehead.
  While you still have the opportunity, don’t continue living with the 99%. Be a 1% kind of person.