As we move into Ground Rule 3, how did you do with Ground Rule 2?
- Did you identify a single goal?
- Did you identify 3 – 5 steps?
- Did you prioritize them or order them?
- Did you take an audacious step and take that first action?
If you haven’t managed to get the lead out, at a minimum, you must take Ground Rule 3 seriously.
Ground Rule 3 is about overcoming our tendencies to procrastinate because we don’t know the outcome. There are few, if any of us, that can intuit the future. If we could, we would all have won a lottery. Individually, we would be living our life as we perceive it should be.
It is hard to make life changes. It matters little whether we take a different route to work, try new food, stick with an exercise program, or any of the myriad of goals, objectives, resolutions, or hopes that we have and or make. Consider this a gentle nudge, when you decide to do nothing, nothing will change. Let’s be frank; the status quo usually stinks.
Take a single step in the direction of your goal. I am not suggesting that you run a marathon without training, or try a new skill without research or training. Take a step in the direction that you want to go.
It is small things that make a big difference. When I started using a fitness tracker, it was only 500 steps. I am now at 2 miles a day (5,200 steps based on my stride). There are days when I don’t want to walk or do the plank. I take that first step, which leads to the next step, and so on. Before I know it, my tracker is buzzing. Life is like that. Take the first step so that your life tracker will buzz.
My current goal is to meet Cher in her challenge of holding a 5 minute plank. I am close but haven’t consistently achieved a 5 minute hold. I am between 4 and 6 minutes. When I achieve the consistent hold, I am going to send her a Tweet. I am going to tell her thanks for the motivation. Now, I am on to a 7 minute plank.
My Rule 3 Challenge for you:
- Pick a single activity.
- Take one action to complete the activity.
- Evaluate the outcome.
- Take the next action.
- And, then take the next step.
Today is 10 years since my mother crossed the rainbow bridge to whatever life exists in the next plain of existence. Our family is no different from many others. We all had a different vision of how the end should come.
The hardest action that I have ever in my entire life was to enforce my mother’s Do Not Resuscitate order, better known as a DNR. For the first time in my entire life, I had to be unselfish with my wants. It was what she wanted, not what I wished. The choice that we were making was whether she would be blind, deaf, incontinent, and bed-ridden for whatever part of her life was left. We watched her die for seven days. I held her hand as the death rattle came. Self-forgiveness is the hardest thing that you will ever do. My first step was to recognize the death is truly part of the Circle of Life. She was in an infinitely better place than she would have been if I had put my wants ahead of her needs.
Life is too short to live it in fear. Find the strength to make a difference in your life every single day. You should find someone that you admire, read everything that you can about them, then emulate their strategies, and leverage their lessons. All you have to do is look around, they are there. The people on my list, which is extensive, includes people from Atilla the Hun, Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Boudica, Richard Branson, Romeo Dallaire, and every member of the military that I served with to name a few. Each of them lived the paragraph below.
Put a fire in your belly is one way to telling you to ‘put some steel in your spine, screw it just do it, or take that first next step.’ Only by placing one foot in front of the other can you walk a mile, make a difference in the life of another, or change the direction of your life. If you do what you always do, you will get what you always get.
Have an absolutely amazing week.
Quotes of the Week
“Screw it, let’s do it.” Richard Branson
“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” Walter Elliot
“Remember, it isn’t the dreamers who have good lives – it’s the doers. Remember also what I call the three Ps of success: passion, planning, and perseverance.” Homer Hickam
