When Thunder Rolls but Lightning doesn’t Strike

How to up your game and save 20 years…. Does it really matter to you? All the books and articles you see about upping your game just a little bit that can make huge leaps in your total performance over 20 years. No, it doesn’t matter if you take action on it. No one is really going to care about it more than you. What is sad, is knowing you could have tried but didn’t. Knowing you had the potential and just didn’t make an effort. Knowing your efforts could have improved or made a difference for those around you but you did nothing. You’d rather be an Ostrich with your head in the sand and let the world go by.

But it does matter. You matter, no matter what anyone says. We all really should matter for each other even though that is not how the world goes. 

We all have stuff. Stuff going on in our life. Each day when we get up its a new day to create something, to say something important, to shout it to the world. To make a difference. I remember a broadcast a long time ago and the guy talking was saying ‘Life is Hard.’ I’m thinking, ‘Are you kidding me Pal, what are you talking about?’ Life hadn’t gotten to me yet. It hadn’t touched me. It hadn’t kicked the shit out of me. Yet. Because I was so young and naive I figured it just didn’t happen that way.

I figured, you just hang around the right people, you do things right every day. Eat 3 squares daily and get your 8 hours of super sleep and everything is dandy. Wow was I wrong.

When life taps you and gives you a jolt, you take a look around, stand up and brush yourself off and don’t think too much about it. But if the same thing happens again, you really start to wonder and pointing fingers. It is everyone’s fault except yours. But if these events keep repeating eventually you have to look at yourself and see what actions you are taking that are causing these crazy events and decide on what you can do about it.

If you don’t, then it's a long slow slide to the bottom. 

You are playing the game of life and think everything is going fine. Then one thing goes wrong. Then another and then another. You try to fight back but the harder you fight, the deeper you sink. Until you can’t move... you can’t breathe… because you’re in over your head. Like Quicksand.

Then you have a choice. You can trudge along life along the river bottom where all the sludge is. You can let it drag you along. As if you are holding on to the end of a rope and even though it seems you are going slow motion, you need a mask because ‘stuff’ just keeps hitting you in the face so you have to dodge it. You actually have to move so you can dodge it. Move your body just so you can dodge it. Move your body so you can dodge it but also move some more so that you realize if you can keep moving, you can eventually let life touch you once again. If you come to your senses, you can come up for air and let yourself breathe again or you can just stay down there and let life kick the shit out of you.

You can lay there and cry and die or you can get on with it.

The good news is you really have choices. You don’t have to sink so low to the bottom that it feels like you are in quicksand. You can start moving right away.

Identify as much with yourself what is going on in your life. What is really going on? Then you can reach out to someone that can help you get your life organized and help you see the vision of where you think you would want to be. Then it's just taking the right actions.

I really don’t want it to make it sound so graphic sinking to the bottom but I have had times in my life where I just was not certain what the next day held. It's almost like a phase of life you go through and leave it behind you. But it doesn’t have to be like that. You can get up everyday and feel grateful for everything that is around you. If you are living a life of gratitude, it is very hard to be angry at the same time. In fact it's impossible. You can focus on all the positive emotions in your life and do that on a daily basis and eventually your positive just totally overrides any negative emotions that might exist in your life.

You can turn it all around starting today. Starting right now.

Make your life so important. Your activities and actions are so important that taking the right actions on a daily basis is a must in your life. You just have to step up and make it a priority. Make yourself a priority. Make showing up as your best self a priority because if your best self shows up then you can also show up as your best self in front of people that are important to you in your life. Your friends, family, your customers. 

In fact when you do this, you might even find that some of your friends might not even hang around because you have changed so much. Your energy is operating at a different frequency that just doesn’t jive with them. That's okay because your real friends will always stick around. 

This is all why we have to find the balance in our lives. If our vocation or career is going to take up 8 or 10 or 12 hours of our day then we might as well enjoy it. Do the things we love doing and being around the people that are important to us.

It is also why if we want certain things in our life to materialize or we want to achieve certain levels or be above average then we also really really need to be clear on exactly what we want. Exactly and Precisely. 

The more you want it and desire it, the quicker and faster you can achieve it.

As a matter of fact, how quick you really take action and go after something is really an indication of how badly you want something.

One of the biggest changes that can happen the quickest when I am working with  clients is their proximity group. I always ask them “Have you thought about maybe changing the people that you hang around’ Sometimes I will get a defensive answer and clients are visibly shocked that I might even suggest or ask that. 

Usually if we take the top 5 or 6 people that are in our lives and analyze it we can see similar results when we compare ourselves to them. Similar results in many areas. Sometimes when analyzed we can also discover that our proximity group is totally out of whack and greatly affecting what we do. Actually many times there is one person that is influencing your major decision making in a not so positive way. 

Take hold of your thoughts. Take hold of being in silence with yourself. Be kind with yourself. Light a candle and just sit with yourself. Take one of your favorite books and sit in your coziest corner and just read. Sit in a room, with a pad of paper and pen for an afternoon. No social media. Just leave your phone for as long as you want. Just make a list of things you would love to do. A new project you would like to begin. A project you would like to finish. Just let your mind wander for a few hours while you sit with the rays of the Sun coming through the window and write down what could be in your life. What you would like it to be.

Then ask yourself, ‘What if?’ ‘What if I did do this and how would it affect my life?

How much better could you make it?

Which makes me think, it’s Saturday night and the end of the week, I better go clean up my room.