Therefore, you must be determined to make things happen for YOU, for your profession, and for your family.
Too often too many people simply sit back and watch things happen. They feel that the world owes them fame, fortune or glamour. This thinking is flawed because it simply prevents the great potential that lies within from ever gaining a viable opportunity. You must make things happen. You must become bold and courageous and eliminate fear and uncertainly from your life. You must dig deep within yourself and pull out that powerful fuel, enthusiasm, and bring it forward. Only then will things like fear, doubt and negative thinking be corralled and unable to lunge out can you maintain your positive mindset.
Abraham Lincoln was one of the most visible symbols of personal accountability. He suffered more defeats and personal tragedies than victories. He failed at business, in politics and even in love. He had a nervous breakdown. Lincoln, however, never gave in. He never sat back waiting for things to happen. He never allowed those shortfalls to deter him from his life’s pathway. Lincoln made things happen and became one of history’s most respected and honored presidents this nation has ever known.
Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded. Eighteen publishers turned down Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull before it was published. Richard Hooker worked for seven years on his war novel M*A*S*H* only to have it rejected twenty-one times by publishers before he made things happen by publishing it himself. Babe Ruth and Reggie Jackson both struck out more than they hit home runs. Even Winston Churchill did not become prime minister of England until he was sixty-two years only and only after a lifetime of defeats and setbacks. However, each of these great people made things happen.
Life is truly a unique and funny adventure. There is just one way that we clearly have an opportunity to control. We can talk about how bad the stock market did today, or we can take a longer look at what it has done over the past year. We can complain about the stumbling blocks in our path as we go about our work and interaction with others, or we can push those blocks over, set aside what we see as challenges and make the stumbling blocks stepping stones for more enjoyable travel. It is not difficult to feel sorry for ourselves noting how unfair life is and how things are stacked against us, or we can focus on the fact that we have life and learn to grasp its essence. As the old saying goes, “Even when you wear the soles of your shoes out, it simply means that you are back on your feet again.” It is a matter of how you see yourself in the mirror of life. What do you see when you look at the person standing before you? Only YOU hold the answer.
There is a well-known photo which shows a stork about to consume a poor frog. As the stork is about to swallow the frog, the frog reaches out and grabs the stork’s neck preventing it from swallowing. Its caption says, “Never give up!” Life is like the stork. It is too often there to swallow us if we do not take action to control our fate. We are much like the frantic frog. If we do not grab hold with all we are worth, we will surely get swallowed. We simply have to keep squeezing life’s neck so that we will not lose our opportunity to become all we can and should be. We must never give up.
Don’t sit back. Don’t expect life to deliver to you. Go out and make life deliver for you. You hold the key to all you can become. Know your ultimate aim in life. Create your future. As the ancient words proclaim, “Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.”
