Tag: Life

Reality in Life

We all struggle with the idea of who we are, where we’re going and why we are here. It is important to understand that the reality of our life is what we make it.  Is it what will happen to us or is it the realization that we can determine where we’re going to go?  Of course, detours may happen along the way, but it is the self-determination that we focus on that guides us to our ultimate purpose.

We can talk about our system of belief, our philosophy of the purpose of life, our origins, our experiences, our upbringing or any of the other factors that may have determined who we are and where we’re going. These are all valid but, in the end, it is our environment today that determines our current reality infused with our attitude, positive or negative, that establishes who we are today and sets the stage for who we will be tomorrow.

If you look at yourself, are you someone who is progressing toward a destination that is satisfying?  Or, do you see yourself not making any progress in your life or slipping backwards? What is it about your reality that needs to change? What is it about your attitude that needs to change?  If you believe in self-determination, you need to figure out what the next step is going to be. If you don’t, you will wait and react to the next thing that happens to you. Is that really what you want to do, wait for something to happen to you?

No matter what your belief system is today, it can be different tomorrow. If you say, “I am so down in the ditch, there is no way my life can be different tomorrow,” you are not understanding how elevating your life can be when measured in the smallest of factors. What is important is the smallest bit of progress, measured by you, not the immediate complete change.  The transition can be instant or barely noticeable.  It is only you who fixates on the outcome.

What is important is change you are creating in your mind; you need to believe that the change is worthwhile and fixate on that notion. To transcend, you need to change your mind.  You need to change your mindset and change your attitude.  No one can do this for you.  Stepping up to face a life change means flipping the switch.  I say this from experience – smoking. For seventeen years I didn’t know what it took to stop. I tried hundreds of times.  Finally it got to the point where I had to flip the switch in my mind! Emphatically determine that I was going to quit smoking. I was not going to fall for the gratification that smoking gave me.  I was going to enjoy other gratifications that came along with not smoking.  All this was a mental process – not a time absorbing process, just an acceptance in the absolute belief that I no longer had to do this activity. It was just a decision that was made that finally clicked in my mind. The decision clicked and my mind’s switch was flipped, and I no longer had the urge to smoke.

All this may seem very easy, but it’s not.  I understand that. My point here is that your reality in life is what you make it. You need to get rid of the negative perceptions of your past and decide on the realities of your future. Let me say that one more time – get rid of the perceptions of your past and dwell on the realities of your future.

Please understand I’m here to help you.  I have an incredible will to help others flip the switch. Email me or call me anytime to help you get to where you want to be.

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Determine That You Have the Want To!

After being in business for so many years, it has always struck me how people would like to do certain things. They even appear to have a passion and love for the event or task. Unfortunately, sometimes having these things is not enough. We get into the “head game” of knowing, for sure, that we would be great at something until it gets down to the want to.  I’m not talking about a “need to” but rather the inner voice and action that drives you to absolutely want to accomplish this or that.

I have, for example, had people tell me that they would like to become a manager. I know exactly where they are going with this and I can see it in their eyes whether they have a want to or they “need to.” Why would someone need to be a manager? Easy, more money, power, flexibility, benefits, development, etc. So, why don’t these people have the want to? Simply put, it is because they lack the critical qualities of motivation, focus, determination, effort and, probably most importantly, it does not fit into their “life purpose.”

Motivation, focus, determination and effort are all very recognizable terms in respect to the building blocks of success.  The last point, life purpose, is probably a bit head scratching for some people but is the most important of all these descriptors.  Why do we do the things we do and what keeps us going to accomplish everything that needs to be done?  As in many activities, there needs to be a foundation.  To determine if you will excel in an activity, you have to see how it fits into your life purpose.  If it doesn’t fit, there is very little likelihood, even with all the other factors in play, that success will be achieved.

Again, life purpose is the foundation of what we do.  Unfortunately, most people do not know, nor are they seeking, their purpose.  At this point, we need to find our life purpose and determine what we will do with the rest of our life. Or, do we first determine what is important in our life and then determine from there where we want to take our purpose.  For example, when I was growing up, I wanted to be a doctor.  I knew this was going to be my life purpose, but I lacked the focus and determination to achieve that result.  Aspects of being a doctor captured me and helped me to this day in my pursuit of my life passion.  In other words, I couldn’t be a medical doctor, but I deeply care about coaching and counseling people toward success in their own life.  This was the aspect that I saw in my father, who was a doctor, and now I have followed in those footsteps.

When you start thinking about your life purpose, think about:

  1. What is important to you?
  2. What you dreamt about growing up?
  3. Where you are now? 

These three questions are the starting points of determining life purpose.  Remember, although right now you may not see what your life purpose may be, you are living it. 

Once you have a foundation (life purpose) and you wake up with the drive, motivation, focus and determination, nothing can stop you.  Once you have these qualities, you have inside you the want to.  When you have the want to, everything else blurs into the background and you approach your life with the clarity that you never knew existed.

I hope you take these suggestions and spend some quiet time pondering the three questions.  Take some time no matter what your situation and know that if you’re at rock bottom, you will drive to the top quickly.  If you’re just going through the motions every day, take the steps mentioned and excel in the field of your choice. 

Taking the first step is always difficult, but find like-minded people and talk about the qualities of focus, determination, motivation and life purpose. I guarantee it will be an exhilarating conversation.

After being in business for so many years, it has always struck me how people would like to do certain things. They even appear to have a passion and love for the particular event or task. Unfortunately, sometimes having these things is not enough. We get into the “headgame” of knowing, for sure, that we would be great at something until it gets down to the “Want to”. Now, I’m not talking about a “need to” but rather the inner voice and action that drives you to absolutely “want to” accomplish this or that.

I have, for example, had people tell me that they would like to become a manager. I know exactly where they are going with this and I can see it in their eyes whether they have a “want to” or they “need to”. Why would someone need to be a manager. Easy, more money, power, flexibility, benefits, development, etc. So, why don’t these people have the “want to”? Simply put, it is because they lack the critical qualities of motivation, focus, determination, effort and, probably most important, it does not fit into their “life purpose”!

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Life’s Purpose – What Is Important to You?

Do you ever notice that life is cyclical?  It goes up and down and seems to do that all the time.  Wouldn’t it be nice if there could be some consistency in the way that our lives go?  The trouble with that idea is that with all the factors we are presented with in the course of living, it is very hard to control what we are faced with.  We encounter random events in our lives that shape who we are.  We know the path we are supposed to go down, but these events can sometimes derail those plans or veer us off into other paths. 

Consistency in life may be difficult, but we can, at least, find a path where we can make some ruts that will allow us to limit the “lows” and enjoy and maximize the “highs”.  So many books have been written about how all this can be done.  More importantly, the books have been written about how to find your life purpose.  In fact, that is what my business is all about.  How many people truly find their life purpose?  I would volunteer that most people are in the minority when it comes to this endeavor.  Still, finding life purpose is the key.  In other words, perhaps the definition of life purpose should be wrapped around the question: “What is important to you?”. 

When we begin to answer this question, the whole concept of life purpose can begin to take shape.  I compare seeking a life purpose to setting goals.  In setting goals, very often we set them lofty and very general.  Therefore, the goals become grandiose, out of scale, and, truth be told, impossible to attain.  It is when you break these goals down into bite-size pieces they become very attainable, yet on the path to that grand goal, we find some happiness and some sense of accomplishment.  It is this sense of accomplishment that encourages us to continue our journey toward that goal.  If we look at life purpose as the grand goal, we can see where frustration might come in.  We can see where the diverging paths send us to places we never intended to be.  If we take that grand goal of life purpose and break it down into the simple concept of “what is important to us,” we can then march toward our life purpose consistently, intentionally, and happily. 

The other benefit of looking at our life purpose as “what is important to us,” that it allows us to find constant reinforcement.  This allows us to ponder “importance” with every interaction, every conversation, every event and every breath we take.  For example, stop what you are doing right now.  Think about this: In the next hour “what is important to you?”  Really think about it!  Is what you doing now going to allow you to achieve what you deem most important?   Of course, I would say it is because we are learning how to move toward our life purpose and to embrace what we intend to do through doing what is most important to us. 

This blog is the first in a series talking about what life purpose means and the role that understanding what is important to you has in developing that purpose.  I would refer you to the following websites:  

www.fergussongroup.org  

www.achieveyourlifepurpose.com 

These web sites will help you continue the search but, in the meantime, take some time, quiet time, to ponder and write down what is important to you.  It doesn’t matter how big or small the issue may be, it is a starting place. 


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The Brilliance of Life

In 1966 I had a profound experience that has remained with me throughout my life. I was fourteen years old at the time and, to my knowledge, I was off to an adventure that would be something different than I had ever known. Different in the fact that I had never been away from home that much and even though this was probably less than thirty miles away, it was still away from home and I was on my own. It was at Camp Sambica (I still remember the name) that we talked about dedicating our life to Christ, and I remember that for a while the thoughts were in one ear and out the other, until we had a campfire and expressed our commitments. Something powerful happened and my reality changed. I don’t know how to explain it; it was just that I knew I was on the right path and I had something to believe in. Although I had been going to church my entire life, all fourteen years of it, it never really impacted me as it did on that particular night.

The reason I bring this up is because our reality is shaped in so many different ways and my commitment at that point took many hits over the years as far as temptations and straying, but the basis for following a carpenter from 2000 years ago has always struck me as being something that was rather odd and why it was that one man would have such an effect.

As the years passed, I realized that the teachings of two things, love and learning, were the core of why I believed and why I followed. I have tried to take those core beliefs and apply them to other religions and find the love and learning there. Doing this has helped me understand the goodness of each one, and in finding that goodness, came tolerance and acceptance. It is interesting to go back and see, in a moment’s flash, the effect of a change of reality and what it can have on an entire life. Many people ask questions about different aspects of faith or religion, “what happens if”, “how can you justify this to that”.  I do not believe that it is my place to justify. My place is to accept what I believe, be true to my reality and try to have a perspective that is open to all. I do try to rationalize the different comments and how they apply to different social constructs and the events that occur within our world that seem to make no sense.

In every area of life there are events or occurrences that make no sense depending upon what your belief structure is or how you view life. If you view life as a struggle and as something that you are put here to simply get through, it is difficult to see the brilliance of life; however, if you look at it as a wondrous thing, for the time we are here, it should be a joy. In every situation, depending upon your faith and beliefs, you have the ability to see the joy or the happy outcome of whatever that situation might be.

We can look at all the world’s events and try to make sense of what is going on, but in the end, it comes down to each individual’s belief and how that impacts the overall global reality. If you have an attitude of love and learning, everything you look at or try to make sense of, you see as a learning experience, and, as in a previous blog, you really see what is going on, what went on, and what precluded the events that are happening.

I know personally that, many times, I wish I could have more of an impact on some of the events that precluded the actual occurrence. For now, I believe it is a matter of understanding who we are, and I allude to this in my workshop, that our purpose boils down to what is important to us. What is important to us isn’t necessarily global such as world peace but maybe is as simple as helping to guide our child to the next level in life and find happiness.  Or, doing what we can to assist our parents in having an old age that is full of contentment. In other words, our purpose in this life can be glorious, global and extravagant, or it can be simple, yet rewarding, depending upon what is important to us.

My advice to all is to find your brilliance in life by seeking the small as well as the large, truly loving, seeing and having an impact.  Your happiness will result in the learning and joy in the experience.

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