No accidents.
What do I mean? I mean…develop your plan to the point where your actions will yield your end goal instead of leaving things up to chance.
What legacy will you leave?
Take the chance out of it. Well, take as much chance out of it you possibly can. There’s always going to be a little bit of uncertainty when you set out on your path.
That’s the fun in it. Things are going to go really right and there will be times where you are tested more than you could imagine.
But a strong plan always yield far greater results than going into something completely blind.
The arrogance we have to believe that we can just call it in and do incredible things.
I used to be arrogant like that. Now, after understanding what it actually takes to achieve what I want, I have more lists and plans and maps than I ever did before.
That’s the nature of this game.
If you aren’t writing things down and understanding what you are getting from your day, how will you be able to look back on your life and understand the progress you have made?
It makes it much much harder to understand your own personal growth if there’s only mental evidence of it (this type of evidence can even play tricks on us).
You have to take it all the way down to the smallest daily actions. Those disciplines you invoke will test you and be tough at first, but once you arrive at where you are headed they will have become more of your philosophy than anything.
For me, that was waking up at 4:30 every morning for 8 weeks – a routine I know creates the greatest possibility for success and something I will continue to do.
These disciplines included planning my days, using my calendar, writing everything down, blogging every single day, stretching, cleaning, keeping myself as organized as possible, and committing to building my dream every day.
These things were hard at first, but as time went on, they became part of my routine and eventually part of me.
Seeing “possibility” is a very interesting thing. After thinking about this for a long time and testing out the waters, I think that the ability to “see possibility” and then shorten the amount of time it takes for you to put those thoughts into action is quite an impressive characteristic to have.
This is something I definitely admire in others and I seek to build for myself.
Something else I really admire and I’m working on pretty hard is being able to focus all of my energies down to a single task until it is accomplished.
My mind has always wandered quite a bit but I’m looking for and practicing ways to bring myself into ultimate focus. This means focusing as much on writing this blog right now as I can.
It’s going well if you are wondering.
Oh the future and how bright it looks. But can you actually bring yourself into such a state of visualization that you can actually see yourself in the future you have created?
I have these moments when I am watching things or listening to tapes – it takes me to where I want to be. When I’m there, I try to feel as much of it as I can.
I try to bring in the smells and sights as much as possible because I know if I can make it so real in my mind that it will go to work on creating that.
Sounds out there – but I’ve done this before. In fact, I did this with my fitness. I visualized eating healthy foods and developing a body that I was proud of, and this certainly came into good use when I was struggling towards the end due to absolute exhaustion.
Our minds and our ability to create our futures are often not given enough credit.
But once you figure out that you can develop a life that you are proud of and begin living your dreams, well, worlds morph and change around you.
I am in the process of going to work on all of my other dreams now knowing I am fully capable of creating them.
That wasn’t necessarily the case before, but now it’s a mission instead of a prayer.
I kind of like that – mission instead of a prayer.
Yeah.
So what will you make of this life?
People say that YOLO is a pretty stupid saying, and to some extent I agree…but it really does have an amazing message – “You only live once.”
Some people don’t live at all. I don’t want that for myself. I know that I have to do as much as I can in the time that I have here.
It’s about leaving a legacy instead of a liability.
I’m off to create.
Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project