Just Some Thoughts To Help You Along Your Way

© ignoranceorapathy.com 03/07/2009

The news this past year has not been good. I am sure you know that, unless you have been living in a closet. Everyone seems to think they have the solution to your woes. Well guess what, and this may come as a shock, they don’t. They not only do not have a solution to your problems, they really don’t even care about your ills. So to paraphrase the late great Lewis Grizzard, It is time for some common sense and straight talk.

Follow up:

This country was built on a principle that Capt. John Smith established at Jamestown, if you don’t work, then you don’t eat. We have strayed from that principle over the last 60 odd years. Our society grew to greatness and prosperity on the idea of the individual. Common citizens doing great things everyday. Great things like working for a living and supporting their families, like educating their children and caring for the people around them. Super human feats of daring like showing respect both to yourself and others and being courteous and compassionate.
Living by an unimaginable personal moral code: I will always be personally responsible for my actions.

It is in this vein I think we need to rethink our lives and our society right now, before we trod any further down this road we seem to have turned onto. Our thinking has become skewed, taken off on a tangent, away from the core principles and values that gave birth to our nation.

So here are a few quotes and some thinking along with them that have paid me great dividends in my life. Some of the quotes I do not remember where they came from or how I heard them. Some I have paraphrased (inadvertently, because that is how I remember them), I am not taking credit for anyone else’s thoughts or ideas, I just want to give you some food for thought.

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." – Albert Einstein
In the current economic and social policy climate we find ourselves, this one seems more relevant today than most any other time. The Governments policies and our willingness to allow them to stray from our nations founding principles have caused the social and economic problems we have today as a nation. Why then would we look to Washington to solve our problems? How can they save us by doing the same ole things again? Isn’t the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and each time expect a different result?

Whatever you want to achieve surround yourself with people who have already done it.
I really like this one, and it has helped me along my way immeasurably. Humans are creatures of habit, you may not like it but it is true. Your parents used to warn you about hanging out with the wrong sort of kids in school. This quote embodies why they did that. You will become your friends; you will evolve in ways you will not readily see. Your habits will become those of the people surrounding you. Think, if you work and play with people who swear, your vocabulary changes, you will begin to use swear words more regularly. Think hard about that promising young person you know that graduated with such high hopes and promise, then fell in with the wrong crowd and lost all ambition. I can think of two people right off the top of my head that has happened to.
People who have already achieved what you want to achieve know something about doing it. They have been to the top of the mountain, so to speak, so it stands to reason they know how to climb it. Whatever it is you want to achieve or become, you need to seek out new friends who are already doing it. Overtime you will learn and develop the habits and traits that are required to be successful at your goal.
If you want to be rich, hang out with rich people.
If you want to be an artist, hang out with artists.
If you want to be a builder, hang out with builders.
You will learn by your associations the things you need to learn and habits you need to develop to reach your ambition. But on the other hand if you make your associations of the type that are not conducent to your dreams, you will mimic them and find yourself further than ever from your goals. In short, you will become your friends, so choose wisely; you will have no one to blame but yourself. It was a friend in Nashville who used to say, “Friend up, not down”.

Most people are stuck in a rut and do not know it.
This one was passed to me in terms of business and career moves and habits. Again we are creatures of habit and we like to be in our comfort zone. Your comfort zone will not make you rich or successful. You can do great things, have great adventures, have great failures and maybe achieve joy, but first you have to see your rut and move outside of it.

If you cannot afford it, you do not need it.
My grandmother came through the real Great Depression and it marked her. She did not agree with easy credit and living above your means. She did take out the occasional car loan and she did have a few credit cards. But, she was careful to use them wisely and only when she needed to, not whenever she just wanted to. My grandparents paid off their mortgage as early and quickly as possible and never refinanced their home to pay for things they did not need. Remember there is a vast difference between want and need. It is a lot easier to want, if you have a safe, secure and paid-off roof over your head.

If you do not have time to do it right the first time, when will you have time to go back and fix it?
This one ties in with the previous in as much as if you do not have money to pay for it, where will you get the money to pay off the loan? Taking personal responsibility for your endeavors or projects is paramount. If it is worth doing, then it is worth doing right. Take your time and make the most out of the experience.

Mistakes are the only things we can truly call our own – Billy Joel
And
You will learn more from your failures than you will your successes.
Learn to embrace your failures, you can learn so much more. Almost no one critiques their success, but they do pine away over failure. Evaluate what you did wrong, learn from it and do not repeat your mistakes. That is an important part of growing and evolving into a better, happier and more successful human being. Once you learn to accept your failures as your own then, you can take personal responsibility for them. If you apply the lessons you should have learned, then you may just be successful on your next try. Behind every success story there are a hundred tales of failure. Edison failed to invent the electric light build hundreds of times before he succeeded. Had he given up and not accepted his failure and learn from it, we would all be in the dark right now.

You have no one to blame but yourself.
Hard pill to swallow I realize. The truest statement I know. Once you accept that you made the decisions that lead to the circumstance you find yourself in, you can grow and move forward. Home foreclosures are the hot topic of the day. Think about it, why is your home being foreclosed? Who signed the mortgage? Who decided you should be in your line of work? Who decided your level or lack of education would be sufficient? Who got you into the circumstance that landed you here? Like it or not, believe it or not YOU DID! Years back I was living with a woman for about 5 years, one day I returned home from work to find she had stolen all of the money out of the bank and half the stuff out of the house. (stolen meaning she was not entitled to all of what she took) I could easily have blamed her for the problem but that would not solve it nor rectify it. I had to accept the cold reality, I chose to become involved in that relationship, I chose to live together with her, I chose to allow for joint accounts. I made the choice, so it was my fault.
Learning to accept your personal responsibility for your circumstance is the only way you can ever begin to improve it. Stop looking for someone else to solve you problems or bail you out. Get up off your butt, take responsibility and start working toward a better tomorrow. You have to do it yourself, no can or will do it for you!

History repeats itself.
It always does and it always will. It is also said that those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. That is being played out for us right now. The current administration did not learn the lessons of Franklin Roosevelt and Jimmy Carters failures and are attempting to repeat the same mistakes, yet they seem to hope for a different result. They also did not learn the lessons from Ronald Reagan which would have taught them the best way to pull us out of this economic downturn. History is a easy way to find out what does not work and what does. Study it and learn from it.

What good does it do for me?
This one is a very destructive quote and also a very construction point. This was said by one person about the apparent good luck of someone else. Jealousy is a very destructive force in our world. No good can come of pure envy, in its un-evolved form. I have adapted envy in my personal life, and it seems to work very well. I know I am much happier and personally more driven to accomplishing my goals and ambitions. For example if I pull up next to a very nice car at a traffic light. Unlike my liberal counterparts my first thought is not how to take it away from it’s owner, but to think, that’s nice, what do I have to do to get one for myself. I have learned to embrace jealousy and transform it into motivation. I have learned to view the success of others as a joyful thing. I love to see the people around me happy and successful. I want to see everyone I know and everyone I don’t achieving their dreams and finding success in their personal lives. I think it makes the world a better place to live. It is a dangerous and destructive negative force in the world to envy and despise people. It does not matter one bit that someone else’s good fortune or success does not directly benefit you personally. It certainly does not diminish you, unless you allow it to. It is very hard to change your attitudes and opinions. If you can find a way to turn envy into a positive motivating force in your life, you will find you are much happier.

When I look out and see our nation, I see so much potential. I see “a shining city on a hill” (Ronald Reagan). I see a collection of individuals who at their best could accomplish anything they can dream of and at their worst could be the most destructive force imaginable. These quotes have helped me along my way only because at a point in my life I realized I needed to change the way I thought about things and the way I did things. I realized change was needed. No one can or will change unless first they realize they must.

In these “dark times” there is hope, but it does not come from without, it comes from within. Stop looking to Washington or anywhere else to make your life better or to solve your problems. Americans are not great because of their government, they are great inspite of it! Look within, learn from your mistakes, embrace your successes and grow.

If you can do nothing else than learn to employ this one thing in your life.
Everyday when you get out of bed set this goal for your day:
Today, I will in some way, improve my health, my family, my life, my career and my circumstances.

By all means, smell the flowers, stop and soak up the sunshine, take a hot bath, smile at a total stranger, hold a door for someone and whatever you do, at least once in your life Dance Naked In The Rain!