The discussion of what makes us successful has been going on for a considerable period of time.  Many of us are tempted to fall for fads, schemes or popular culture concerning the meaning and methods for achieving success in our lives.  Many of us have come to believe that success is about setting personal goals, and tracking our progress on those goals.  Others view success as a “life purpose” that we seek to accomplish.

Many of these perspectives contain important elements of truth, but many of them are also missing some very important elements.  By understanding these key factors of personal, professional, and professional achievement, we can learn how to create our own vision of success.

The first step on the journey toward our life’s goals and purpose is to create a clearer picture of what they look like.  Each person’s ambitions are unique, but many people share a common passion for some area of interest in their life, and a desire to pursue those interests.  When we develop a vision of the direction that we would like our lives to move, it frequently involves the ability to spend more time engaged in the activities that we enjoy.  This frequently leads us to believe that they key to success is simply to attain more of what we want.

More is Not Always More

The common conception that many people hold is that they will feel more fulfilled in their life if they can simply achieve more.  More money, a nicer car, a bigger house, more vacation, more time to follow their interests.  The implicit problem that we run into when thinking in the context of “more” is that our time is a finite quantity.  Each day only contains 24 hours, and there is only so much that we can fit into that amount of time.

Thus, the pursuit of more becomes a study in time scarcity.  Assuming that we are able to attain the additional things that we want, it is highly likely that they will create additional time commitments that we must undertake.  When these time commitments are added to our existing schedule, it frequently leaves us with more to do than we have time to do things.  This abundance of projects and scarcity of time frequently leaves us shorting the aspects of our life that are highly important (such as personal relationships) but not articulated on our sheet of goals.

What you Subtract is More Important than What you Add

The next level of insight in the attainment of success is to understand that our most important decisions are frequently not what to add, but what to take away.  The only way that we can avoid a permanent time crunch that leaves our friends and family out in the cold is to re-arrange our personal, professional, and financial priorities on a consistent basis.  This means that when we add something, we must be prepared to take something else away.

In the real world, trade-off decisions are a fact of life.  We cannot have our cake and eat it too.  There are decisions that must be made, and the way that we make those decisions will have a tremendous impact on our future.  The way that we can keep our life in balance is to continually monitor our balance of activities to determine when it is time to add something and when it is time to remove something or change the way we do it.

Success is an Equilibrium, Not an Achievement

What all of this ultimately means is that “real” success is not an achievement … it is an equilibrium.  It is a balance of things we want and things we do that deliver the most total happiness and satisfaction that we are able to achieve.  Unfortunately, there are very few success authors who are teaching this truism, and there are many people who are seeking success in the context of goals and achievements.

Granted, goals are very important.  However, goals are not the end … the are a means.  For example, many people profess a desire to run a marathon as a goal in their life.  What most people really mean by this goal is that they would like to adjust the equilibrium of their life in such a way that they can increase their level of fitness to a state where they can train to successfully run a marathon.  However, what this goal-setting process frequently misses is that it is possible to complete a marathon without being in optimal fitness (albeit at a slow pace), and that it is possible to achieve considerable fitness without ever running a marathon.

What happens when we place too much emphasis on the goals themselves is that the equilibrium can be lost.  The desire to run a marathon can come to dominate our thoughts and actions.  (Especially for Type-A folks)  In this way, the goals we are seeking can take on an obsessive nature that displace many of the other highly important aspects of our life in the single pursuit of a particular goal.

As we go throughout our lives, we should seek to keep our goals and ambitions in perspective so that they are viewed in the context of our life’s larger equilibrium.  This is the way that we can stay balanced and pursue the “real” success that is a (whole) life that we want to live.  The decisions that we make will all echo throughout our future, so it is important to choose wisely.

 

One of the things that we like to do is human beings is to fantasize about how our lives would be different if something were different.  It turns out that this mode of thinking produces two distinctive outputs.  The first is that it allows our minds to drift into a world where events unfold exactly as we would like.  The second is that by using the word if, it absolves our minds of any responsibility for making our dreams a reality.

The effect is very subtle, but it is still very powerful.  By thinking about our life if our dreams became reality, it sub-consciously reinforces the belief that our dreams will stay dreams.  A much more productive mode of thought is to consider how we can traverse the distance from where our current mode in life to where we want to be.  This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t dream about what life could be like, and use that as a vision to inspire our actions.  It simply means that we should not give ourselves an easy way out of failing to achieve our dreams.

The Power of How

By shifting our mental efforts to considering how to accomplish our goals, it triggers a very important shift within our consciousness.  It changes the context of our ambitions from something that we would like, but probably won’t ever get to something that we are creating a plan to go out and attain.  It may be that our first plan doesn’t work.  It may be that our plans need to change.  However, it is always true that nothing will happen unless we take action.

Another important piece of asking how to reach our goals is that it broadens our perspective.  It forces us to consider the causal chain that spans the distance and traverses the obstacles between where we currently are, and where we want to be.  Allowing ourselves to escape this analysis can bring our progress toward the goals and ambitions of life to a screeching halt.  It is almost always true that achieving our ambitions requires many thing to come into place.  It is also true that most of these things will not fall into place by themselves.  Unfortunately, when we think in terms of if, it robs us of the opportunity to organize the events of our life in a way that builds a bridge to our ambitions.  In order to make sure that we construct this bridge, it is critically important to think in the context of how.

Turning How into When

Once we have mentally constructed the map of how our goals can be achieved, it is important to shift our attention to thinking of when this will all happen.  The reason for this is because time is a finite resource.  Of all the resources that are available to us, time is the only one that we cannot produce more of.  Each day contains only 24 hours, each week contains only 7 days and each year only contains 12 months.  There is a practical limit to how much we can do (well) at any given time, so we must prioritize our activities to ensure that the things we hold most important are addressed first.

The notion of priorities is critically important when we traverse the distance between thinking of how to accomplish our goals and figuring when it will happen.  Everybody can create a list of things they would like to do and accomplish that is many miles long.  However, very few people have created a list of priorities that is reflected in their actions.  Most of us act on whatever happens to be the most urgent item of the moment and allow our priorities that are not immediately urgent to slip into the back of our mind until they are all but forgotten.

Ultimately, the factor that will most strongly influence when our goals become reality is where they land in our personal, professional, and financial priorities.  Each decision that we make is an implicit decision not to do something different.  Similarly, pursuing one set of goals is an implicit decision to ignore or delay another set of goals.  Because of this, we must be very mindful of what we prioritize and what we pursue so that we do not ignore things that are of greater importance for the sake of something with greater urgency.

Thinking of Possibilities

One of the buzzwords that has emerged in the popular vernacular over the past decade is “possibility thinking.”  In simple terms, this is a method of thinking how things ‘could’ be organized to create better outcomes.  The basis of the thought process is to avoid anchoring on the way that things work today and think in an unconstrained fashion to discover new solutions.  This mode of thinking can be very helpful in the context of our personal, professional, and financial goals.  Instead of starting with where we are in life, start with where we want to be.  Instead of attempting to trace steps forward from our current position into the future, trace steps from the future back to the present.

By changing the context of our thoughts, we can change the direction of our lives.  By changing the way we think about the world around us, we will change the way we interact with the world around us.  In this way, the way we think creates ripples that affect the way we act, which influences what we achieve.  Thus, the first step toward achieving your goals is to carefully craft the way that you think about your goals.

 

The current world is becoming very polarized and divisive.  There is an increasing trend of people to think and act as groups, instead of as individuals.  The subtleties of unique individualism are being concatenated into “black” and “white” or “Republican” and “Democrat.”  The problem that is created by this brand of mass conformity is that people stop looking to learn from people that are not a part of their group.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is famous for his belief that every person possesses some talent that exceeds his own, and that each interaction with another person gave him an opportunity to learn.  I believe that it would be wise for each of us to extend this philosophy into our own lives.  There is an unfortunate tendency in popular culture that has created a “cult of success” where people that show their financial affluence are worshiped and followed religiously by people who think that copying every facet of that person’s life will make them equally successful.

One of the important points that people frequently overlook is that luck plays an important part in many stories of fabulous success, and another even more prescient point to understand is that many things in life are more important than money.  Of all the important things that are ignored, this is probably the most frequent occurrence.  The reason for this is because wealth is quantitative … it is some thing we can easily measure.  However, relationships are qualitative … there is not a simple way to measure the quality and value of our relationships.  Unfortunately, this leads many to believe that the qualitative relationships possess less value because their value is difficult to compute.

In practice, the purpose behind building quantitative wealth is for the nurturing and maintaining our qualitative relationships.  Because of this, lifetime learning takes on an entirely new context.  Our learning takes on a magnitude that is much greater than simply earning money.  Because of this, the context of learning takes on two distinctive flavors … namely, learning what we “should” do and learning what we “should not” do.

Learning What To Do

It is important for us to seek out people whose holistic success we wish to mimic.  One pitfall that we must seek to avoid is the belief that the we can mimic a certain aspect of a person’s life without any spillover to other sections of our lives.  In truth, everything that we do has some impact on everything else that we do.  As such, when we are seeking coaching and mentoring, we should think in the context of both the skills we want to build and the person that we want to become.

Learning What Not To Do

An equally important aspect of learning is learning what we want to avoid.  In this way, we can shape the form and direction of our personal, professional, and financial lives.  The problem that many people encounter is an excessive emphasis on the factors that create external signs of success, but ignore the relationships and personal growth that is not on display to the public.  It is not a secret that many affluent businesspeople and celebrities are very unhappy, in spite of their financial success.  Thus, we see that in some cases learning what NOT to do can be just as powerful as learning what behaviors to mimic.

In the end, there are tremendous opportunities for gain available to people with the humility to constantly seek learning opportunities.  It is worth noting that these opportunities are not always easy to embrace, since they frequently involve admitting that previously held beliefs and actions were ill informed, rashly decided, or simply wrong.  These are not always the most pleasant of thoughts to embrace, but people who are willing to undertake this thought exercise will reap great rewards over the tenure of their lives.  It is certainly true that there is something we can learn from everybody, and that developing the discipline to learn will enable each person to walk on a path of constant improvement.

 

In the game of blackjack, you can ‘double down’ on a hand by doubling your bet for one more card from the dealer.  (When playing blackjack, your goal is to create a hand that is as close as possible to 21 without going over)  This action allows you to take additional risk for an immediate payoff.  Within the community of people who enjoy the game of blackjack, most will tell you that it is advantageous to double down on an eleven, or possibly a ten.  The principal reason for this is because cards with a value of ten have a higher concentration than other cards.  Because of this, it is advantageous for players to increase their risk in certain situations because of an increased probability for a higher payoff.

In the world of investing, there are both times to increase your exposure to risk for a higher payoff, and appropriate situations.  The problem which arises is that many people end up taking excessive risk to chase returns.  In this situation, it is rarely the optimal time to take more risk in the hopes of earning a higher return.

Currently, there are many people from the baby boom generation who are currently ‘doubling down’ with their retirement accounts by over-weighting their portfolios in high-risk ventures such as emerging market stocks and speculative real-estate in an attempt to pump-up the value of their nest egg before retirement.  The risk of this strategy is that your nest egg could crack just before it hatches.

The hidden danger of highly volatile investments is that the risk of loss generally stays hidden until market disruptions push the value of multiple asset classes down simultaneously.  In this case, there is not enough time to adjust your portfolio before it has been significantly burned.  These types of situations are especially dangerous, because the market tends to change very abruptly as relevant news and information develop.  For people who are approaching retirement, volatility can be especially dangerous.

This is not to say that investors shouldn’t take risks . . . it is very difficult to generate returns in excess of bond or money market yields without taking risks.  The caution is that you should be aware of the risks that you are taking, and not allow yourself to fall into a false sense of security because the market hasn’t had a significant downward movement lately.  Large returns generally require that you take large risks.  If you are currently earning large returns, chances are that you are at risk for a large adjustment.  It is very important to make sure that a significant downward adjustment in value of your risky investments will not place you in a situation that you can’t recover from.

Thus, when deciding whether to ‘double down’ on your investment strategy, it is critically important to understand whether you are in a situation where such a decision is optimal.  Are your personal emotions constructed in such a way that a dramatic shift in market valuation will cause excessive nervous tension?  In most cases, investors are their own worst enemy … we allow our emotions over the movements of our portfolio value to influence our actions in a way that frequently moves contrary to our rational thoughts.

Thus, investing becomes a battle of reason vs. emotion.  Our reason frequently tells us to make decisions that would appear to be quite smart by most objective standards.  Reason typically evaluates decisions based on their inherent merits.  However, not all of our decisions are made rationally.  Instead of making our investing decisions based simply on the merits of a particular investment, we allow ourselves to be influenced by the other people we have seen being successful in making money.  When the market is going up, our emotions want to double-down on what we have seen as being successful.  When the market is going down, our emotions want to run for the hills and retreat from the perceived danger of the investing world.

As it turns out, the movement in market perception of a particular investment does not necessarily change the underlying fundamentals.  Many investments that are fundamentally sound experience negative market news, and other investments that lack solid fundamentals will experience upward escalations in market valuation that defy reason.  In the former case, it is important to avoid the emotional pull to bail-out on an otherwise solid investment strategy.  In the latter example, it is important to avoid the temptation to increase our investment, simply because the price has gone up and we hope that it will go up some more.

In the end, it is important for each of us to understand the extent to which our emotions compel us to ‘double down’ on what may turn out to be a highly risky strategy.  All of our decision should be made because of what we judge to be best for our well-being.  Achieving our desires will require that we take risks of some manner along the way.  However, it is important to ensure that all of our decisions are being made consciously instead of re-actively … rationally instead of emotionally.  This will help us to make sure that we don’t double-down on risky situations that we are not emotionally prepared to deal with.

 

For both individuals and business owners, negotiations can prove to be one of the most difficult and most important things that we do.  The largest purchases that most people make frequently involve very intense negotiations.  The ability to gain employment, and earn promotions is also frequently influenced by your ability to negotiate.  Negotiation has a very significant impact on personal, professional, and financial success.  Because of this, it is very important to understand the parts of negotiations that are the most important, along with the parts that are frequently misunderstood.

To many people, the idea of negotiating brings up images of aggressive arguments where both sides attempt to prevail against the other in a pitched battle for power where one side wins and the other side loses.  Another paradigm of negotiation is one where a “win-win” paradigm requires that no deal be made unless both sides realize significant benefits.  The truth of negotiation exists in-between these opposite visions.

Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement

The term BATNA, meaning “Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement” was coined by Roger Fisher and William Ury of Harvard University, and incorporates many of the ideas published by John Nash in his work on Game Theory.  The idea incorporated in BATNA is that our ability to negotiate is heavily influenced by our alternatives if the negotiated agreement does not occur.

One way to think about BATNA is to imagine that you’re looking to sell a car.  If you have one buyer lined-up who will pay $2,000 for the car, then you will be very unlikely to accept less than $2,000 from anybody else unless you have doubts about the original offer.  Your best alternative is selling the car for $2,000 and that places you in a position of power to confidently list the car for sale at a higher price. Alternatively, if you need to raise cash very quickly and have no buyers lined-up, then you may need to accept $500 or less from the first able buyer whom you come into contact with.  Thus, your best alternative exerts a tremendous degree of influence over your decisions.

How BATNA Influences Our Idea of Fairness

One of the enduring ideas of humanity is the notion of fairness.  The situations that most people perceive as being unfair are those where one side has a significantly better BATNA than the other.  An example of this is if you are walking across a desert, parched of desperate thirst, and run across a truck who offers to sell you a 20 ounce bottle of water for $5,000.  The natural response to this scenario is that the transaction is supremely unfair since the cost of that bottle to the seller is approximately one dollar.  In this situation, the BATNA of the person walking through the desert is a painful death of dehydration.  Alternatively, the BATNA of the seller is their lost time and the expense of driving across the desert to find somebody walking whom they can sell water.

The reason why this feels so unfair is because the alternative of the person walking is death, while the alternative of the person selling the water is simply wasted time.  However, this transaction still makes both parties better off, even though it feels patently unfair.  If the truck were not present to sell the high-priced water, the person walking across the desert would suffer a painful death.  Even when the person driving the truck engages in what is frequently called “price gouging,” he still delivers a valuable service that is critically important to the person in the desert.  Thus, in what seems to be a blinding paradox, some of the transactions that appear to be the most unfair to the “little guy” are actually the most beneficial.  The reason for this is because when the best alternative for the “little guy” is worse that the seemingly unfair exchange, then they are far better off with the deal that feels severely slanted against them.  Thus, by using legislative power to prevent exchanges that feel unfair, it is possible that we are actually condemning the people whom we think we are helping to suffer an even worse outcome.

How BATNA Influences our Negotiations

Another important thing to consider in regards to BATNA is its impact on our personal, career, business, and investing decisions.  Within this insight is two levels of distinction.  The first is that our alternatives influence our decisions.  The second is that our perceptions may differ from reality, and result in decisions that are sub-optimal.  In short, it is very easy to both over-estimate and under-estimate our best alternative.

• Why our Alternatives Matter

  • The simple reason why alternatives matter so much is because we can be more confident in refusing low-quality outcomes when we have a better alternative.  If you are highly educated and experienced in a field that is in demand, you do not need to take the first job offer that comes your way.  If you are able to re-locate with ease, you can be more flexible in finding a new job that allows you to advance more quickly.  If you are a business owner who already has a key customer that generates sufficient revenue to cover your costs, you can negotiate pricing with new customers from a stronger position.  If you are able to assemble investment deals that generate a high rate of return, it will allow you to walk past the traditional financial instruments that are sold for retirement planning.
  • In short, the decisions that you make are bracketed by the alternatives that you possess.  By increasing the quality of your alternatives, you increase the strength of your decisions.  Thus, the ‘real’ way that people achieve success is not just through the decisions that they make, but through developing the alternatives that allow them to make high-impact decisions in the first place.  Most of the best investments require some degree of capital.  If you are unable to pay the monthly rent, high-impact investing is not an option.  Regardless of how educated you are in decision making, those decisions will not become available until you influence the underlying alternatives through preceding actions and decisions.

• Over-Estimating the Alternatives

  • One of the thing that frequently happens in high-stakes negotiations is that one or both sides will over-estimate their alternatives.  This typically results in the adoption of “tough-guy” negotiation techniques, and can create very large problems if the deal falls apart and the assumed alternative do not materialize.  Typically this situation occurs when negotiators fail to invest sufficient research into their realistic options.  The most frequent occurrences of this effect are when one side focuses on the other side’s lack of options more than their own situation.
  • For example, the union frequently notes that management will be in a pinch without labor.  Similarly, management frequently notes that the union members will be in trouble without their wages.  The truth is that both labor and management suffer from a prolonged work stoppage.  It is important to avoid taking your eye away from your own alternatives by excessively focusing on other people’s alternatives.

• Under-Estimating the Alternatives

  • Another way that people can run into trouble is by under-estimating their alternatives.  When this happens, people will be likely to take “the first thing that comes along” instead of searching for their best option.  Typically, this situation occurs when people have a low opinion of themselves and their abilities.  This is not to say that ego and arrogance are in order, but that an honest assessment is critical.

In the end, understanding our alternatives is a critical part of optimal decision making.  It is important to make an honest assessment of what our options look like so that we can avoid the errors of both over-estimating and under-estimating the quality of our alternatives.  This is one of the fundamental keys to negotiating success in our personal, professional, and financial life.

 

Few small businesses have escaped fallout from the economic downturn of the past few years. However, as many indicators begin to show signs of improvement, entrepreneurs need to position themselves to benefit from the recovery, says Jim Muehlhausen, CPA and author of The 51 Fatal Business Errors and How to Avoid Them.

“The default mode is that we’re all very scared,” he says. “Business owners don’t want to spend when they’re in doubt, but it’s important to make smart investments in your business as the economy begins to rebound.”

Muehlhausen offers five crucial steps to recovery that business owners need to take now:

1. Review your business model
It’s time to ask some important questions: Is your business model working for you? Are your sales actually coming from where you think they’re coming from? Is it time to adjust your focus or the way you do business? Take a top-to-bottom look at your best sources of revenue and figure out how you can pursue more of that type of business.

• How the Recession Saved One Company
• How to Stage a Small-Business Comeback
• Famous ‘Trep Failures — and Comebacks

2. Avoid the Hail Mary
If you’re holding your breath for one big deal or event, you’re putting too many eggs in one basket. Too many business owners are hanging their hopes on events that might never happen. Instead, look at ways to grow your business incrementally and make smaller investments in areas that will generate a return, such as expanding into new sales channels or increasing effective marketing tactics.

3. Buy back your time
You may have worked with a skeleton crew to survive a drop-off in business. Yet as the recovery takes hold, it’s important that you aren’t busy wearing too many hats to recognize growth opportunities. Hire a part-time assistant to invest in automation. For instance, create a web-based ordering tool or find a more effective CRM program to help identify and deliver on customer needs more quickly.

4. Get bigger
As so many companies are struggling, there could be opportunities to acquire or merge with a complementary business that has a solid customer base. By doing so, you can expand your offerings and capture more market share. In other words, grow your business now, in anticipation of the upswing that’s on the way.

5. Forget fear
Most important, it’s time to stop fretting. Fear-based decisions are rarely effective and will keep you from seeing your next move clearly. Now is a terrific time to tune up your systems and put effort into developing new products or services.  Rather than lamenting the bad times or trying to make things better right away, Muehlhausen says, direct your attention to two years from now. You’ll be a step ahead of everyone who’s only focused on the short-term.

Article source: Entrepreneur.com

 

Most of us have been in a situation where there were lots of things to do, but not much time to do them it.  In these situations, the natural response is to ask what items are the most important . . . and a disturbingly large number of managers and bosses will frequently reply: “It’s all important.”

The subtle insanity of the statement: “It’s all important” is that if everything is considered to be ‘important’ then there is no way to prioritize which activities to do first.  Thus, saying that everything is important really means that nothing is important.

Conversely, if we want to really ‘focus’ on something, we must implicitly decide to eliminate other activities so that we can develop mastery in a specific area instead of consistently dabbling, without building any depth.  This insight is especially important in our current era of marketing bombardment and ubiquitous connectivity, since it is very easy to get distracted by instant messages, emails, and phone calls.

Unfortunately, general knowledge and dabbling doesn’t tend to produce very desirable results.  The rewards available to people who are only ‘average’ have been declining for quite some time, and will continue to decline for quite some time.  The reason for this is because there are a lot of people with ‘average’ skills and abilities.  Because of this, clients and employers do not have an incentive to deliver a high amount of compensation since average talent is very easy to replace at a reasonable cost.

Increasingly, it is only the top performers in most professions that are highly successful.  In order to reach the top of your profession, it requires intensive determination focused on specific goals.  Achieving this focus necessarily requires us to delay or eliminate other activities that we are currently engaged in.  The fundamental question each of us must answer is whether I am willing to make the choice?

 

Many people are familiar with the sentiment that “the end justifies the means” when pursuing goals and ambitions.  However, in the realm of business and life, ends and means are quite important.  In many cases, ‘how’ you go about doing something is equally (if not more) important than what you are doing in the first place.  Many times, it is easy to pursue short-term results by bending or breaking rules.  However, long-term success requires attention to both the goal and the methods used to reach it.

Most people recognize this fact in the natural world.  It is not difficult to see what happens if you attempt to plant and harvest wheat without following the right steps.  No matter how hard you try, it is not possible to ‘wing it’ to success in the natural world.  However, many people are gripped with a desire to fast-talk their way to success in the world of business and relationships.

The truth is that ends and means are a matter of natural law that hold equally true in the physical world as they do in the world of relationships.  The fundamental difference is that when dealing with people, it takes longer to see the impact.  However, the impact is always in effect regardless of whether it is immediately apparent.  The hard work must be done if ‘real’ success is every to be achieved.  It may be possible to temporarily gain the appearance of success through slick dealing and clever tricks, but there is no way to fool nature.

Ultimately, the way that each person chooses to pursue their goals is important.  Relentless pursuit of excellence sounds great in commercials, but if it causes you to sacrifice everything else in your life for the sake of one goal, is it really a worthy endeavor?  This is not to say that people should not have goals and ambitions . . . quite to the contrary.  However, it is imperative that the pursuit of those goals be done in such a way that it is part of a complete life and not an unbalanced obsession.  This will likely result in many goals that take longer to accomplish than some of us would like, but it will also result in greater happiness, contentment, and completeness in our lives.

 

Recent news about the 8.9 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan has caused many people to pause in consideration and prayer for those affected by this natural disaster.  As the news and images of the disaster comes in, they make the perceived difficulties of our lives pale in comparison to the real turmoil faced by those who are on the front lines of responding to the earthquake and tsunami.

When events such as this unfold, they draw a sharp line between the things that we spend time getting worked up over and the things that are really important.  In response to this, it would be wise for many of us to “get over ourselves” and put the so-called problems of our life in context.

Most of us remember the drama-filled days of high school when the tenner of our life revolved around what one person was saying about another person, and the furthest we looked ahead was the upcoming weekend.  The depth of self centered obsession in our youth only becomes apparent when the wisdom of age and experience has had an opportunity to emerge.  Upon deeper analysis of our lives in the context of a larger and more complex world, it becomes more and more apparent that the drama of our lives, which seems so important in the moment shades pale when compared against the larger world in which we live.  When mired in the depths of self-centered obsession, this is extremely difficult to see.  However, when one steps back from the gritty details of their own life, it becomes quite clear very quickly.

When thinking about the concerned of our personal world, it is important to understand that each of us are only a small piece of the larger scheme.  It is important to simultaneously avoid over-estimating the extent of our impact and take personal responsibility for the results of our own life.  Situations like a natural disaster frequently leave people with a feeling of powerlessness, as there is nobody to blame for the circumstances.  (Not that this fact stops people in power from attempting to assign blame or take credit)

It is most certainly true that none of us can cause, nor prevent a natural disaster.  It is also true that none of us can cause nor prevent a humanitarian crisis or economic recession.  What we can do is take specific actions to create specific results.  We cannot stop an earthquake in Japan, but we can contribute to the response.  We cannot stop an economic recession, but we can act to ensure that the financial well being of our family is secure.  We cannot stop people from being self-destructive in their personal decisions, but we can teach our children to make wise decisions in their own lives.

In the end, “getting over ourselves” ultimately comes down to a frank realization of what we can and can’t do.  This understanding allows us to focus on the things that we can do, the decisions we can influence, and the goals we can achieve.  In this way, each person can help to create a better world at large by creating a better world within their own sphere of influence.

 

Life can frequently feel out of control with a myriad of commitments, deadlines, and things that need to be done immediately.  Each of us have a list of things we would like to accomplish that exceeds our available time, effort and energy by a considerable margin.  In this situation, it frequently feels like we cannot afford to stop moving, because every minute gone by is one less minute to accomplish our goals and ambitions.