A time for everything.

I've learned that you can't have everything and do everything at the same time.

Oprah Winfrey

The lying preacher.

You know, I don't go to many funerals. They are generally sad events, as can be expected. People are saying good-bye to loved ones and friends. Often eulogies are delivered and nice things are said about the departed one. 

Every time, I'm confronted by this question: What will people say about me?

I recently heard, though I can't remember where, this quote: "Live life so the preacher won't have to lie at your funeral".

So often we bounce through life giving no consideration to what impact we are having. Why is that?

Why do we sometimes find it so difficult to focus on what we will leave behind. 

What legacy are we leaving in our workplace, in our family and with our friends?

Why do we so often consider only the here and now?

When we're young, the excuse is that we have plenty of time for that big picture stuff later in life. How often do we wake up and find that life has passed us by and we've still given no attention to anything but ourselves.

We must make an extreme effort to change this thought pattern. 

We must seek to leave this world a better place when we go, than it was when we arrived.

Helping others is probably one of the best ways to leave a positive legacy. Sometimes helping another person can be as easy as a simple smile or "hello". 

It's not hard. Make an effort to try it. 

Give someone an unsolicited compliment. Say hello to a stranger. Smile.

So, let's not make the preacher lie at our funeral. Life life so he can speak the truth, at least he'll be a happier person for it.

Dare to be you.

My advice to you is this: Learn to be you, learn to go with your passion and your vision. Yes, listen to people. Yes, read books. But learn to make your own decisions and do not allow other people to set your vision. This is what Peter Ivrine, C0-Founder of Gloria Jean's Coffees, had to say about being an individual.
He goes on to say; Another principal I have learned is that as you grow and develop, you need to take the high road. By this I mean that you and I should always look to take the innovative road, the road of excellence. People with large vision find that their road is less congested. On the other hand it's extremely busy and congested on the low road. Everyone expects to operate there. It's the expected route. It's the route that often presents fewer obstacles, although I believe that on the low road you are going to face obstacles. Whether you take the high road or the low road, you cannot actually avoid problems and difficulties in life.

Benjamin Franklin described insanity as "Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

Author John Maxwell says he has met people who tell him that they've had ten years experience, and yet he discovers they've actually had one years experience ten times. They have been doing the same things the same way for ten years.

Look around you. Look at people who are successful. Odds are they are the ones who have dared to be different. They will be the ones who stopped doing it the way everyone else was doing it. They will be the ones who took the high road. They knew that in order to be successful they were going to face obstacles, they just wanted to face different obstacles in order to reach a higher level. These people took the innovative road, the road of excellence.

They took their vision, took a route of innovation and excellence and they achieved higher levels of success than their competitors even thought possible.

Do you have a vision? Do you have goals? What are you doing about it?

Learn to be you. Dare to be you.

Getting There.

One of my friends recently commented that he had not sat down and written out his goals and dreams. He wasn't leading himself or heading towards anything in particular. Drifting.

Fantastic to recognise this early in life. 

I've witnessed so many who are in the same place today as they were five, ten or twenty years ago. They start at a place and just don't move on. Consequently their life becomes a treadmill of sameness. They go to the same job, do the same tasks, watch the same programmes on TV, have the same friends and do the same things each week-end. The only thing that changes, is their age.

They are not challenged to be better, to be different or to stand out. They are happy being where they are. 

The trouble is where they are today, as say a twenty five year old, may not necessarily be a great place to be when they are forty.

I watched a show on TV recently that covered binge drinking. They highlighted how, in Australia, binge drinking had become an enormous problem among our young people. Teenagers and young adults in particular were drinking way beyond levels that the human body can sustain. They were partying and having a good time. 

The programme did show the distasteful side also, such as the violence which often breaks out when large groups of people are drinking, and the severity of these altercations. All young people interviewed were adamant they were doing it for just a good time.

The common belief is that this is a phase and young people will "grow out of it". Well surprise, surprise it was discovered that many do not. For many, binge drinking became a culture, a habit which, as they grow older, they continue to maintain.  

A twenty year old who has had too much to drink can be viewed as someone who is having a good time. A fifty year old who has had too much to drink is viewed as a drunk.

These people have not moved on, they are stuck in a time warp. What was once a good time is now simply a habit and a large headache in the morning.

Dr David M. Burns says "Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life".

We need to identify when we are on the wrong course, we need to have the guts to say "I was wrong, what I once believed was a good path to follow, I now recognise as incorrect". We need to question what we do and continually ask if we can do life better or differently.

My friend was right in questioning his direction. He has recognised that if he doesn't, then he'll wake up in twenty years and find neither he nor his circumstances have changed.

Where will you be in twenty years? What will your life look like? What will you look like? Will you be the same, will you be doing the same things?

Where are you heading? What are your dreams?

Criticism

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.

Elbert Hubbard

Time

Poet Carl Sandburg said, "Time is the most valuable coin in your life. You and you alone will determine how that coin will be spent. Be careful that you do not let other people spend it for you."

John Maxwell says, "Your greatest possession is the twenty four hours directly ahead of you. How will you spend it? Will you give in to pressure or focus on priorities? Will you allow pointless e-mails, unimportant tasks, telemarketers, interruptions and other distractions to consume your day? Or will you take complete responsibility for how you spend your time, take control of the things you can, and make today yours."

When I was a child, life had so  much less distraction. Life went on in a leisurely pattern. We had many less things to distract us, no TV, no internet, no computers, no mobile phones, no videos, the list goes on. When I joined the workforce in 1972 there were still no mobile phones, no internet and no video and no computers. Most correspondence was still hand written. When you finished work at the end of the day or week-end you did just that, finished work. How life and the workplace has changed. 

Now it is commonplace to still be working, in some form or other, during our leisure time. Now we have so many things which vie for our time and attention, mobile phones, e-mail, text messages, TV. 

Now I can sit in my lounge chair and take a photo and show it to the world in seconds. Technology is wonderful. In my work I can even go online and track aircraft and tell you exactly when they will arrive at their destination according to the information given by their computers and overhead satellites. 

Life is lived at a much faster pace and everyone, it seems, wants a piece of our time.  

How do we prioritise where we spend our time? How are we to know where we are to give this most valuable asset, the next twenty four hours?

Start by asking yourself these three questions:

What is required of me?

Any realistic assessment of priorities must start with an assessment of what you must do. For you to be a good spouse, friend or parent, what is required of you?

To satisfy your employer, what must you do? 

If you are a leader then the question should be, What must I personally do that cannot be delegated to others? When listing priorities, what is required should always be given careful consideration before moving on to the next question.

What gives me the greatest return?

As you move through life, you will begin to see some activities which return a higher return for effort than others. (If you haven't already discovered this, your probably not progressing.) Your attention should be focussed on the activities which return high yield.

What gives me the greatest reward? 

If you only do what you must and what is effective, you will be highly productive, but you may not be content. It is important to consider what gives you personal satisfaction. Don't start with the reward question and go no further. There must be balance. No-one can be successful who doesn't possess the discipline to take care of the first to areas before adding the third. 

The philosoper, William James said, "The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook."

Selfishness is....

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Oscar Wilde