Posts Tagged ‘Personal Development’

‘When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.’ Viktor Frankl

Situations come. Situations go. But no matter what situation we find ourselves in, we are given the wonderful opportunity to not always change the situation or even how others respond to that situation, but rather to change the way we think, the way we respond, and the very way we live.

Someone recently told me that if you’re standing still you’re actually going backwards. However, if we create an environment within which we are constantly challenged to change, we will ever more forward.

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I recently replanted my organic vegetable garden when we moved house. I had let it go to rack and ruin some months preceding the move.  For as we  knew that we were about to move, there didn’t seem to be any point in planting during those last days. The result of that inaction was a garden overtaken by weeds.

Inaction has that effect on our daily lives as well. That’s why I believe that action cures fear and that faith with corresponding action attached produces beautiful results in our lives.

Anyway, once I moved my vegetable patch from one address to another – yes I shoveled, with the assistance of a dear friend, the entire garden’s soil into a large trailer and transported it to its new home. That dirt had been tended lovingly for years, and I wasn’t going to part with it. For in that soil was life. In that soil was held the secret of all my past planting successes, and the success of all future plantings.

The very first weekend that the garden was re-established, new seedlings were purchased and planted, and within a four to six week period following the move we were once again eating the fruits of my labours – fresh, green and delectable. What I’d sown we were now reaping. And reaping is always accompanied by much rejoicing.

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The one thing I like predominantly about hanging around winners is that they force me to continue to seek ways to improve.

I remember reading about Sam Walton – the founder of the mighty WalMart chain. He would make it his habit to regularly visit his competition, and if he ever found one idea that they were doing well, he would immediately adapt it and roll it out into his stores. He was always seeking ways to improve his business.

And that’s how we should live our lives. Whenever we come across a better or a smarter way of doing something we should adapt it to our lives immediately.

I come across so many people who complain about their current circumstances, and I must admit my response, in my mind at least, is change it. Change – positive change – can occur in an instant if we simply decide to change, and then follow up that decision with decisive action.

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Last weekend I hung out with two dead guys. In fact as I consider a lot of my ‘solitude’ life – I tend to spend a large amount of my time within the company of the deceased. Now you may say, ‘How can you do that? How can you have a conversation with the dead?’

Well it all started years ago, when things were a lot tougher in my life than they are now. I would take myself to the local university in the town that I lived and I would search for jewels. Now where do you find jewels in a library you may ask? Good question. Jewels to me, in the context of the library, are books that add value to my life. And that is where I met a whole group of dead guys. In fact, I had to search into the depths of the basement area of the university’s library before I dug up some incredible treasure that is dear to my heart even until this day.

So there I was in the deepest, darkest parts of the library, all alone, poring over multiple volumes of some of the original productions of a man called Ralph Waldo Emerson. Here was a man, even though I didn’t fully understand his language, that seemed to have a kindred spirit. Reading his material was like an entwining of our hearts and minds. I felt his words to the very depths of my being and from time to time I actually understood them. It was like I was drinking liquid gold. Now the books were so fragile that the pages were beginning to perish, and so ever so carefully I underlined key words and phrases with a lead pencil so that I could later type up those notes into a complete volume for further study.

Now you need to understand that I wasn’t a fan of everything he wrote, but what I liked, I really, really liked with an incredible passion. So from that day on I have made it my practice to hang around dead guys just like Emerson.

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In order for you to take possession there needs to be something within your life that becomes your obsession.

Half-hearted people will achieve half-baked results. Full-hearted individuals will reap full-blooded achievements.

No-one has ever achieved anything of lasting significance by dipping their little toe into the water. Those who have ever done anything that has impacted their generation and beyond has at some point plunged headlong into the depths  of opportunity.

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