Recently I heard someone say about another friend, “I think he wants the picture of the perfect family in the big house with the nice cars and all but he’s not willing to do what it takes to make it all perfect.”
Wow. I had never heard someone express that idea before. It made me begin to think of all the good things people want in life. And wonder…
Could it be true that we often desire the picture of the good life but we’re not quite willing to do the work it takes to make that picture the best it can be?
We want marriages based on unconditional love.
And functional families.
To raise children who are moral, kind, giving and driven by Godly values.
We’d love to have optimal health.
How about ideal jobs where we earn all the money we need, enjoy what we do and maybe even a make a difference in the world at the same time?
Better yet, maybe we’d like to own our own prosperous, growing business.
We’re always proud to be on the winning team.
Don’t many of us demand excellence of ourselves in our craft, skill or vocation?
We want good grades and high honors.
Who does not want to be honorably respected at home, in the workplace, in our churches and communities?
And almost every person I know wants to see our goals reached and our dreams become reality.
I’ve always believed that anything worth having or being is worth working for. Anything worth working for is worth doing our best for. And anything worth doing our best for calls us to extra effort and time.
It demands sacrifice, failures along the way, perseverance, on-going education and focus. It will see tears, scraped knees and even a few broken bones on a sometimes rough terrain. Because the roads to these ends are never smooth or easy. The roads never come to meet us. We must often forge the roads ourselves.
But through some personal experience, and observing successful people that I respect, I believe also that if we remain single-minded, keeping our eyes on the ultimate end results, making a commitment to do whatever it takes to live whatever picture we desire, then we shall. And we will live it as wiser people who are stronger in character for having made the journey as we did.
4 comments:
Nice thought.
Hi Cheryl,
I really enjoyed your post. I would like to posit something here. You mentioned "doing whatever it takes". Whenever we humans become inspired to press on to the mark of excellence, some of us get out our "to do" list of steps to take. Then we start marking off the steps on the list. But what if what's required involves a step not on our list? What if it requires a new way to perceiving? Here's an example. Back in the early 1990's if a person wanted to start their own home based business that included recruiting, their success pretty much depended on knowing people and getting to know more people in their locality. Then came along the world wide web. Recruiting in the international market became a probability rather than just a dream. In my estimation, that was a paradigm shift, a new way of seeing business possibilities. I'm here to suggest that just as we went from locality to nonlocality in the business world, we need to do the same in the area of personal achievements, whether it be raising our children to be godly people, or improving our own physical health. How do we do this? By showing compassion on our neighbor and helping them acheive excellence, we will find that our own lives have improved and we are closer to the mark. Because, after all, we are all connected to one another by the invisible web of the divine matrix.
It is all so true and I'm happy and proud to have witnessed many of the steps you have taken to have your 'perfect life', it isn't what we have in our posseions to live that life, it is in our hearts and yes our giving hands. We do all have perfect lives if we believe.
Enjoy all of the steps your future holds.
love
your little sister, me
You said, "But through some personal experience, and observing successful people that I respect, I believe also that if we remain single-minded, keeping our eyes on the ultimate end results, making a commitment to do whatever it takes to live whatever picture we desire, then we shall. And we will live it as wiser people who are stronger in character for having made the journey as we did."
How true that is. Keeping the end in mind, our life purpose in its entirety (which includes more than just our "work", but living out all of our core values) - will definitely keep us on task. Lose sight of it and we will wander.
Thanks for your thoughts!
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