In the previous post, “Have You Filed Your Flight Plan?”, I attempted to encourage you to think about your life and what you wanted out of it other than to merely be known as your child’s parent. My hope was that you would take a moment out of your daily grind to map out, put detail to, the life that you desire – like the FAA requires of airlines.
However, since publishing the post, I realized that simply telling you that you should have a Flight Plan a.k.a. Life Plan was insufficient. So bear with me as I detail a process you can use to make sure your life takes on REAL meaning beyond being that of just a good parent. I want you to make sure that you get the life you’ve always wanted.
It’s a three part process that I call the ABC’s of Success. The first stage is step A.
A Stands for Admission
To have the life you’ve always wanted, you must begin by admitting where you are in your life. If you were in an airplane imagine this as the first leg of the journey. You start out at the departing airport, A, flying on plane X which has filed a flight plan to arrive at airport B (assuming of course that you can get a direct flight). I affectionately refer to this part of the ABC process as the “Getting Naked” stage.
In order to have the life that takes you where you have always dreamt and imagined, you must “get naked”. As you know when you are physically naked, all of your blemishes and imperfections are exposed. Give it a try. Get naked today. Take off all your clothes then stand on the scale in front of the mirror.
I promise you that you won’t be able to lie to yourself about the double digit pounds you need to lose any longer. There will be no denying that Dunlap tires are not exclusive to the tires on your car. The numbers on the scale and the view in the mirror will force you to admit that your belly has dun-lapped over.
Outside of your physical well-being, ‘getting naked” means that if you are not where you hoped to be in your life (financially, educationally, professionally, romantically, etc.) this is the time to acknowledge your current position so that you can begin to chart a course to get you to the location where you have always wanted and need to be. This is the time and place to peel away all those bogus and pretension layers that you so smugly wear each and every day.
There is no need to deny the obvious or lie to yourself one more second. Unless you are schizophrenic and suffer from an inability to tell the difference between what is real and not real, you already know the truth about what is real and where you are in your life. Either you are living the life you always envisioned or you are not. It’s that simple.
If you need to lose weight, do you think wearing black and/or larger clothes magically evaporates the pounds that you need to lose? Uh no! When your finances have eroded, do you think buying new cars and clothes on credit and at the highest possible interest rate makes it appear that you have no financial issues? Absolutely not!
When you are overweight you know it and so do others most notably those who care the most about you and who will certainly bear the burden of caring for you as your health continues to deteriorate. When your money is funny, you know it and so do others closest to you especially TransUnion, Equifax and Experian.
Trust me chances are that you aren’t fooling anyone. You are merely making a fool of yourself. Why would you want to waste your time and energy trying to fool anyone anyway? Is this the way you would want to spend your last day? In case you forgot, tomorrow is not promised.
However, if by some slight chance you manage to fool someone who is of particularly importance to you all that you have done by refusing to “get naked” is create an inauthentic relationship. A relationship that is not sustainable. A relationship with a person, place or thing that is only an illusion. FYI: you are not Harry Houdini!
At some point you will have to get naked. If you don’t like what you see more than likely neither will the other party. Your scale, your doctor and/or your significant other won’t like your weight. The auto dealership, home builder, department store, your child’s college/university and/or other lending institution won’t like your finances.
A Doesn’t Stand for Acceptance
Fortunately, the “A” in admission does not stand for Acceptance. You don’t have to accept your current health, wealth, professional or romantic station. You simply have to acknowledge your current location; admit where you are. Without admission, you will be like a plane lost in fog and turbulence that is being flown by a pilot who did not bother to file the Flight Plans.
Now that he is lost he is either too dumb or too stubborn to admit that he has no idea where he is or how to get where he wants to go. Not only does he not know how to get to the designated destination, no one even knows he has departed.
The scenario of the missing pilot flying blindly is synonymous with the way many of us live. Until the pilot acknowledges that he is lost and sends out an S.O.S., no one can get his coordinates to provide directions. Without the pilot admitting his shortcomings he cannot be saved. In all likelihood without “getting naked” the pilot is going to die and potentially cause the death of others.
Don’t be like the lost pilot. Be completely honest with yourself, admit where and who you are. Get naked right now so that you can make plans to get where you have always wanted to be. The life you have always wanted is within reach and it is waiting for you.
Trust me getting naked always works. Naked never lies, people do! You can have the life you’ve always wanted but the first step is admission.
The Letter B
The second prong of the triumvirate begins with the letter B. The “B” stands for “Been There Done That” or in one succinct word the “B” stands for “Belief”. In order for you to have the life you have always dreamt of you must believe that the life you desire is within your reach. Now is the time for you to be confident.
But how can we believe in something that we have yet to see? Quite frankly, how can we have confidence in happening when we have no reason to believe it can be accomplished? Easy! You must simply reflect on a time when you set a course to achieve a goal and it was accomplished.
Back In The Day
I believe this to be a reasonable request of you as you probably have already focused on a previous setback and decided that the life you dreamt of living was unattainable because of the past event. If you are willing to reflect on the past when it allows you to believe that you can’t or won’t be successful, why won’t you, why shouldn’t you permit yourself to use the past to convince you that you can and will be successful?
So for the purposes of this part of the ABC’s of Success, you are only allowed to focus your attention to a time when you accomplished your goals and exceeded your objectives. Moreover, this exercise in belief is the only time when you are allowed to consider the past. As such, the rule to remember and reiterate is this: “My past is only a reminder of my great potential and the realization that I will soon live the life I dream of living“.
I promised this process was easy and it is if you focus on past successes instead of setbacks. An example of being able to reflect on the past as an indicator of our ability to do something out of the ordinary with our life can be done if we reflect on the time in our life when we could only crawl. By crawling, I do mean literally crawling.
I Wish Those Days Could Come Back Once More
You might not remember this but there was a time when you could not walk. During this time you were consumed with a desire to stand on your own two feet and walk. You couldn’t wait to learn how to take those first steps. You believe that you would walk sooner than later and you believed his even though you had no history of walking.
Everyone who came within earshot of your voice knew of your desire to walk. Despite the routine slobbering and the often times indistinguishable language you uttered, you made it clear to all that would listen that you dreamt of a better life – a life that allowed you to move faster so that you could get into things you had no business getting into and so that you could go to places that you never thought possible.
Once you learned to walk – achieved this dream for a better life – you began to dream of the day when you could run. Then you dreamt of the day when you could walk to school, walk to school alone, ride a bike, ride a bike without training wheels, drive a car, etc. The realization of each dream which you considered a necessary piece to having a better life was ignited and fueled by a past success.
The journey that you embark on now is to be ignited and fueled the very same way. If a child with very little leg muscle, shaky equilibrium and minimal intelligence can learn to walk and get into things that their parents did not want them to get into how much more can you, one who have been standing on their own two feet for a lifetime, who has significant intelligence and a treasure trove worth of life’s successes accomplish?
The answer is that there are no limits to what you can do and what your life can become. You can do and have everything. Hopefully, you have dared to dream audaciously and the life you dream of is so ambitious that it cannot be compared to anything in your past. Congratulation for being bold.
Just in case you need a bit more convincing, I’ll share this last tad bit with you. You have to succeed because the world only progresses when people, people just like you really dream – when people like you move far beyond their comfort level. Don’t believe me?
Grab one of the pieces of technology that you undoubtedly own (mobile phone, laptop or tablet) that were, by the way, invented by someone just like you who dreamt of a better life, who dreamt of doing something others most likely thought impossible and Google the phrase “people who achieved greatness despite great obstacles” or “people who achieved their dreams in spite of humble beginnings”.
What you will discover are numerous people – people just like you – who started at the bottom of society, people who came from not just humble but the most meager of beginnings and people who even had physical limitations that despite those so-called “limitations” went on to do just what they dreamt of doing and sometimes accomplished things that never initially dreamt of doing.
I hope you can believe in your past successes as a sufficient vehicle to move your dreams forward. I hope the examples of others who achieved their dreams despite starting from zero, from places of desolation and who had physical impairments left you convinced and inspired about your own ability to have the life you always wanted. The world is counting on you to dream, to dream passionately and to achieve those dreams.
Commitment
The letter “C” in the ABC’s stands for commitment. This is the third part of the triad for success and perhaps the most difficult element. This third part is the most difficult because most people do not know how to commit to anything. As an example, in less than a month millions of Americans will make New Year’s resolutions to improve their lives but those resolutions will not last beyond the first month of the New Year.
Instead of losing the weight we want and need to lose we give up trying to be healthier in 30 days or less – accepting for another year the larger less satisfying version of ourselves. Others of us will resolve to quit smoking only to find ourselves more addicted than anytime previously – willing to endure extreme temperatures and declining health just to take another puff. I
nstead of improving our financial position, many of us will postpone long-term financial stability for immediate depreciating gratification – new cars at last year’s prices or purchases of depreciating goods with our new “low interest” credit cards.
Unfortunately, these are but a few of the ways most people commit to making the necessary life changes; by not committing at all. As a result of our behavior, we should not be shocked if our children watch and/or mimic our actions. To a child the aforementioned uncommitted behavior is a signal that being committed is synonymous with failing, refusing to do the thing(s) that we said we were devoted to do.
So we should not be surprised when our child quits the team in the middle of the season or no longer wants to play the instrument we paid for with our credit card.
Time to Take a Step Back
In order that you do not end up like the masses and serve as the wrong, unintended type of role model for your child, you might want to reassess what the word commit actually means. To commit means that you are bound and/or obligated to do something. You are bound and/or obligated to do the thing that you said you were going to do – that thing you said was of the utmost importance.
If you say that you are going to lose ten pounds in the New Year then you are bound to lose all ten. Losing nine and a half pounds won’t do. If you promise to quit smoking, smoking outside the building is not to be considered realization of your goal. If you say that you are going to be financially solvent then you are obligated to do so.
Making new purchases and devising a plan to pay off the additional debt in the coming years is not acceptable. Remember your children are watching, learning and ready to imitate your behavior.
When you are bound to your resolutions you are stuck, you can do nothing except be obligated. When you are obligated you are trapped, you can do nothing less than fulfill your duty in its entirety. This is the condition of commitment that will have you improve your health, quit smoking and become financially fit.
This is the commitment required so that you can be the mentor your children require. Don’t you want your children to believe through your accomplishments in their ability to see their own dreams come true?
In the words of Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. “keep hope alive”. It is possible for you to have the life you always hoped and dreamt. It is possible through your actions and behavior to show your children that impossible is nothing.
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Previously Published on The RS Project
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