Success is a Choice

Don't believe me?   Think about it...  You can choose to be hot and  bothered, raging and yelling or cool and calm and collected when you are angry, snap at your child or speak gently when he's messing up your living room floor with his toys, smile sweetly or grimace at the next person who says "Hello" to you, do your paperwork that you brought home from the office, or play a game with your child, pray for peace, or complain about society.   Choices.  You have thousands, maybe millions a day.  Every day of your life.  Right ones, wrong ones, good ones, bad ones...   What are you doing with them?  Are you using them?  Or are you giving them all away? 

Someone once broke down for me, all the hours, minutes and seconds in a day, week, month, and year.  I had to get out my calculator and do it again... the results are astounding if you think about it!  We all have this virtually untapped goldmine at our disposal to use, give away or waste, as we choose, every day!

Next time some ones asks you if you have a second, what are you going to tell them??  The point is, you have as much, or as little time to accomplish your goals as you choose to have.  Part of the "secret of success", then, is managing your time. 

You can do this most effectively if you have your goals in mind.   Begin with the end in mind, or, as the ancient Chinese saying goes, "live as one already dead".  Sounds a bit gruesome, huh?  Not if you really think about it.  Live your live with an awareness of what you wish to leave behind as a legacy.  To your family, to your friends, to the world.  What do you want your life to say about you? 

Don't live your life by accident!  Your life is a precious thing!  You have been given this one chance to live this life, to learn the lessons from this set of experiences, to give the gift of your love and your skills to others, and to leave something to the world.  What shall you do with this precious life? 

If you wander through your days, making no plans for the future, no "choices" - well, that is still a choice!! A choice to be lazy, to be sure, but a choice, nevertheless.   It is possible to accidentally succeed.  Many have done it, I suppose. 

But even the guy who won the lottery bought a ticket, and the inventor who suddenly comes up with some amazing innovation, "out of nowhere", had thousands of attempts before that success, and the newest popular movie star, the "overnight success", had years of training and performances before the media ever heard of him.  Nothing comes out of nowhere. 

Our lives are a culmination of the choices we have made, up until today.   Including your choice to read this far in this essay!  I've said it before, and I will doubtless say it again, you are where you are right now, in your life, because you have made the choice to be there!  If you are not happy with where you are, you need to start changing the choices you are making! 

I once heard Zig Ziglar say that his definition of insanity was some one who plans on spending the next 5 years making the same choices as he's made for the last 5 years, and expects to see changes in his life!  

You want changes? Make different choices!