No matter where you are today, or when you found this website, if I could talk to you personally I would ask you these simple questions from Darren Hardy in his book The Compound Effect:
‘Look back on your life five years ago. Are you now where you’d thought you’d be five years later? Have you kicked the bad habits you had vowed to kick? Are you in the shape you wanted to be? Do you have the cushy income, the enviable lifestyle, and the personal freedom you expected? Do you have the vibrant health, abundant loving relationships, and the world-class skills you’d intended to have by this point in your life?’
If not, why? Simple – choices. It’s time to make a new choice – choose not to let the next five years be a continuum of the last. Choose to change your life, once and for all.”
Choosing Your Attitude
Victor Frankl writes about surviving life in a concentration camp in his book Man’s Search for Meaning:
The experiences of camp life show that a man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given st of circumstances, to choose one’s way.
The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity – even in the most difficult circumstances – to add a deeper meaning to his life.
Nothing New Under the Sun
Dale Carnegie writes in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
“… a collection of successful and time-tested recipes to rid our lives of worry. However, let me warn you: you won’t find anything new in it, but you will find much that is not generally applied. And when it comes to that, you and I don’t need to be told anything new. We already know enough to lead perfect lives. We have all read the golden rule and the Sermon on the Mount. Our trouble is not ignorance, but inaction. The purpose of this book is to restate, illustrate, streamline, air-condition, and glorify a lot of ancient and basic truths – and kick you in the shins and make you do something about applying them.”
“… Remember that the use of these principles can be made habitual and unconscious only by a constant and vigorous campaign of review and application. There is no other way.”