This post truly challenged my ability to "Think Right". I actually finished it at 6:30 AM this morning and before I could get it posted, something happened with my network and I lost everything I had written. I did have time to rewrite it until now. Fortunately, I can still remember the point I wanted to make.
A good friend of mine is feeling very discouraged. I think it is safe to say that he is on the brink of depression. This is unusual behavior and I am somewhat alarmed.
The cause of this downward spiral is the fact that six months ago he lost his job. He handled it very well at first. He had been with the company for a very long time and they treated him very kindly and gave him a very nice termination package. He felt like the separation was fair and viewed as a mere inconvenience. He believed he would find a better job before the severance benefits ran out.
The Future Looked So Bright
He began his search for new employment by taking a couple of weeks off. It had been a while since he enjoyed sitting around and doing nothing so that is what he did. Following two weeks of doing nothing, he decided that there was no hurry and chose to complete a few projects around the house that he hadn't had time to do before.
Before he knew it, six weeks of his six month cushion were spent. It was at that point that he began scouring the internet looking for employment opportunities in his area. He submitted a few resumes and waited for phone calls that never came. When we last spoke, he was in a stupor. He couldn't figure out what he was doing wrong. He believed he had a positive mental attitude, but he was discovering that PMA was not enough.
Move Your Feet
It never is. Certainly, it is one of the keys to success, but it will not get us very far by itself. Success requires us to move our feet in the direction of our dreams. Thinking about it, is the first step to doing it, but doing it requires action.
Movement, is the critical activity. We must take that first step and then frequently assess our progress to make sure we are heading in the right direction. When we fail to do that, we fail to get what we want.
I like to use this phrase that I learned from Mike Ferry to keep me headed in the right direction. See if you can follow me on this one: "if you should be doing these things, but you are doing those things, and you know you should be doing these things, then why do you spend your time doing those things?" This question helps me to stop doing the things that keep me from getting what I want.
Dead of Alive
Several years ago, I was experiencing some hard times of my own. An employee had embezzled a large amount of money from our firm which resulted in a law suit by one of our client's. It was a dark time and I really hated going to work. When I was there, I felt angry. I also felt defeated. Guess how I felt when I got home. You got it, angry and defeated. Life was miserable.
My friends did their best to encourage me, but nothing really worked. I just was in a funk and I was not going to get out of it very easily.
One day, as I sat in my office plotting how I could make these problems go away, I realized that I would most likely have to live with the consequences for a very long time. I thought about how that would affect me, and then this thought came into my mind: "One year from today, I will either be dead or alive." I realized that I had no control over that fact. This realization helped me also realize that I could not change those difficult circumstances, what had happened, had happened. But there was something over which I had control. I could choose how I wanted to feel. I decided in that moment to add a very courageous ending to my declaration of life or death. I amended it to state: "One year from now, I will either be dead or alive, but I will be happy."
My choice to be happy produced a near immediate result. I suddenly felt empowered to move forward. For the first time, I saw the direction I needed to be heading. It took me a several months, but I eventually resolved all of these issues and exited that period of great sadness. Everything I did to grow out of that problem can be directly related to that defining moment when I decided to be happy. It changed my course for good.
Which direction are you headed?
What is your secret to staying on track?
How can you help others find their way?
Happiness alludes many of us when we forget to put things in perspective. I am certain that having a positive mental attitude is very valuable, but if you want to get where you want to get, then you gotta learn how to think right. That means that you must begin to see your thinking as an active process and move your feet.
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