Monday, January 25, 2010

Day 12 of the 100 Day Start Fast / Finish Strong Challenge - Take 2

This is a record of my progress towards accomplishing my goals and dreams using the following tools:

The Start Fast / Finish Strong Challenge (currently taking it for the second time, first of three times I will do the challenge this year)
Anthony's Robbins' book  Awaken The Giant Within (currently on Chapter 3), alternating with Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich - each to be read three times this year
Six Minutes to Success by Bob Proctor - Daily motivational videos

I am ashamed.  I am truly ashamed of myself.  I talk a good talk but am I walking the walk?  Sometimes but not the last few days, that's for certain.   Not to say I haven't done anything.  I have.  I did goto the gym Saturday and did work on the website Sunday.  Spent time with my kids and niece and nephew - that's not without merit.   But I have terribly lacked focus.   My weekend should have been much more productive than it was.

Great quote today from Six Minutes to Success:

"There is absolutely nothing that separates the elite from the paupers except expectations." J. Arthur Holcome

Currently I am dating a marvelous woman.  One of her most admirable qualities is her persistence in maintaining great expectations.   She demands more of herself, mostly for her children's benefit and expects to achieve it.   She does not allow normal or even exceptional circumstances to sway those expectations.  Therefore, she's accomplished a tremendous coming from the background she did.  I'm very grateful to have her in my life.

My expectations at the moment are pathetically low.  Not to say they couldn't be worse, they certainly could be.  I have a nice house, car, job, kids, friends, wonderful woman in my life but I am settling for far, FAR less than I am capable of achieving.  My house and car need repairs.  I am not being a (pro)active enough part of my children's lives.  I am not giving enough to my friends.   Nor have I truly opened myself up enough to my woman.    I am allowing myself to be content with less.  The safer, easier route.

No. No.  NO.  It cannot continue like that.

One of the absolute best moments in the 100 Day Challenge is Day 11 - Shock Therapy.   In it Gary Ryan Blair reads you a 'Dear John' letter from your own hopes and dreams.   You know, the ones you keep promising that one day you'll be together.   The ones you keep putting off time and again because it's too hard, your too tired, maybe tomorrow.   Those hopes and dreams have had enough.   If you cannot find it in yourself to come to them, they will find someone else who will.   It may sound a little corny here but Gary delivers it excellently and it'll have you in tears.

We do not live forever.  Hell, tomorrow is not even guaranteed to you.  You have now.  This moment.  How are you living now?  Are you living a life you would be proud of?  Or are you still waiting for that life to someday find you?   You do not have endless tomorrows.   Dreams cannot be put off indefinitely.  They will die.   Nor will the right moment ever come.  You have to create it.  And if it did come, right now, this instant, are you even ready to embrace it?  Probably not.  It'd pass you right on by.   We must take action, I must take action, now.   Today and every day.

It does not ultimately matter if I reach all my goals (and I never will because as long as I'm alive I'll keep setting new ones) but it matters entirely that I am running towards them.   For then and only then am I living.
The rest of the time, we're in spiritual decay.    It's time to run.

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