“Contemporary psychological research into the importance of meaning and purpose in life demonstrates that without a sense that life is meaningful, people are more prone to anxiety, depression, and a variety of physical ailments. Studies have found that hope too is essential to physical and mental well-being and is a major ingredient in a person’s resiliency in the face of crisis, illness, and suffering. Hope, meaning, and purpose turn out to be critical for mental and physical health and for psychological strength and coping.”
James W. Jones: In the Middle of This Road We Call Our Life
One of the most memorable of all the memorable lines in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R> Tolkien is this one, spoken by Gandalf the wizard: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
In the years since I wrote Never Fear, Never Quit: A Story of Courage and Perseverance, I’ve thought a lot about fear and courage, and about perseverance in the face of obstacles and setbacks. Lately I’ve become convinced that the greatest fear of all, the Granddaddy of All Fears, is not fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of humiliation, or even fear of success (which author Steve Pressfield calls the mother of all fears). No, I’m convinced that the greatest fear is that we eventually and inevitable run out of time. It’s a cliché that football coaches say they don’t lose games - they run out of time. It’s also a metaphor for the Granddaddy of all fears - we don’t fear dying so much as we fear running out of time for life. We don’t fear failing as much as we fear running out of time to get back up and try again.
When I’m speaking about Core Action Value #9, Focus, from our course on The Twelve Core Action Values, I’ll make the (rarely contested) statement that no one on their deathbed says “I wish I’d watched more television.” Then I’ll ask what people do regret toward the end of their lives (as they realize how close they are to running out of time). The same four things come up, and always in the same order.
Relationships: Without exception, at the top of the list comes family and friends. People know that someday they will wish they had spent more time on relationships and less time on things that were really much less important. Spending time on relationships is always something we intend to do later, but in too many cases later never comes because we run out of time.
Experiences: The second thing I hear is that toward the end of their lives people regret that they didn’t travel more, didn’t write the book that had been burning up inside of them, didn’t quit the job that was killing their soul and start the business doing something they had a burning passion to do. These experiences were always something they’d get around to one day, but that day never came because they ran out of time (Zig Ziglar used to give people in his audiences a wooden nickel with the letters TUIT on it; he’d say you’ve always been saying that someday you’ll get ‘round tuit - and now you have a round tuit, taking away your last excuse.
Finances: The third thing people always say is that in old age, people regret that they weren’t more responsible for their finances. Because of youthful indulgences, many older people retire to the equivalent of Jeff Foxworthy’s redneck retirement community, where the houses have wheels and the cars don’t. When people blow ten grand for a week in Vegas or Disney, the implicit assumption is that they’ll have time to make it up before they have to retire; the fear is that they’ll run out of time before that happens.
Health:You often hear older people saying some variation of this: If I’d known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself. We buy exercise machines and gym memberships and diet plans with the resolution that we’ll actually use them - eventually. But all too often, “eventually” never comes because we run out of time.
An Unpleasant Truth You will run out of time. Period. No exceptions. You might have some warning that your hourglass is about to run out, for example with a diagnosis of terminal cancer. Or your hourglass might run out suddenly, the way an aquarium would drain when the side is smashed in by a rock. Procrastination causes you to push off what you need to do today into tomorrow with the consequence that you are always living in the shadows of yesterday. It takes courage to act, to conquer the procrastination that robs you of your precious time.
- Staying on Top When Your World's Upside Down
- Introduction
- The Laws of Adversity
- The Great Divide – defining moments in adversity
- Carve the statue of you
- The four ways to handle brick walls
- Embrace the 4 personal freedoms
- Get clear about your values
- Align your goals with your values
- Have the courage to pursue your highest goal
- Thank God Ahead of Time (TGAoT) for whatever happens
- Use adversity as a platform for change
- Fear of failure is really fear of humiliation
- Congratulate yourself on being rejected and on failing
- You must overcome your fear of success
- Leadership is most important when the world is upside down
- The flip side of love is loss
- In grief seek comfort - and give comfort
- Imagine your organization as a support group
- Grieve – then move on
- There’s no such thing as false hope
- Practice a healthy humility
- Go off alone somewhere
- In the trials of adversity work on character strength
- Identify the problem behind the problem
- Change your questions
- Make the most of midlife crisis
- Stop doing what isn’t working and try something new
- When you put the pieces back together make the vessel stronger
- Stop thinking about yourself
- Stop ruminating
- Train your doubt
- When one door closes, push open another
- Ignore the nattering nabobs of negativity
- Utilize your gifts
- Hang tough!
- Don’t give in to apparent failure in the middle
- Rescue your failures
- There is no free lunch
- Raise your expectations
- Live into your potential
- You don’t need OPA
- Use DDQs to redirect your actions
- Use EDQs to redirect your moods
- Do good for others
- Practice Rafe’s Law
- Work until your mission is finished
- Bigger problems = better life
- The difference between courageous and crazy is often
- Escape prisons you’ve made yourself
- It’s not personal, permanent or pervasive
- Develop emotional power
- Get real by integrating ego and soul
- Do something!
- Get more sleep and practice Neuro-Attitudinal
- Practice strategic laziness
- Break your addiction to negative thinking
- Transform negative self-talk into positive affirmation
- Erase the graffiti of negative self-talk
- Pay attention to the metaphors by which you create your perception of reality
- Direct your dreams in a positive way
- Interpret dreams to your benefit
- Distinguish between problems and predicaments
- Create rituals
- Playing it safe can be a dangerous game
- Use the 6-A Formula to Create Memories of the Future
- Face the granddaddy of all fears
- Ignore the chatter of the world
- Stop whining
- The Pickle Pledge – a simple promise that will change your life
- Take The Pickle Challenge
- Build up your stamina
- Don’t pick fights you don’t need
- The steepest hills are in your mind
- Turn off the tragi-tainment
- Build upon The Pyramid of Self-Belief
- Act confident to earn confidence
- Stop waiting for someone else to “empower” you
- Take to heart The Self-Empowerment Pledge
- Monday’s Promise: Responsibility
- Tuesday’s Promise: Accountability
- Wednesday’s Promise: Determination
- Thursday’s Promise: Contribution
- Friday’s Promise: Resilience
- Saturday’s Promise: Perspective
- Sunday’s Promise: Faith
- Keep a personal journal
- Pay attention to the patterns in your life
- Overcome your own laziness
- Transform despair into determination
- Enthusiasm is the master value
- Stop awfulizing
- Adopt the Nedlog Rule
- Practice mutuality
- Say Yes to what matters by saying No to what doesn’t
- Write a poem
- Train your brain
- Replace anguish with hope
- Combine ignorant bliss with unearned confidence
- You can be a victim or a visionary but not both
- Work fast
- Caring is the root of courage
- See the world as it really is
- Fear can make you stupid
- Maintain your momentum
- The most important choice you ever make
- Illuminate the darkness
- Get out of stuck
- You cannot change the past but you can rewrite your memory of it
- Turn bad news into the best thing ever
- Write your own horoscope – a Youroscope
- Don’t hit the brakes when you hit the gravel
- Dealing with the energy vampires
- Be productive
- Your trajectory is more important than where you are at any point in time
- Forgive
- Even when the last thing you want to do is to forgive
- Forgive 360
- Stop abusing your imagination with delusions of grandeur and delusions of disaster
- Stop procrastinating
- Create something knowing there are no guarantees
- Get started
- Lost causes are only really lost when you stop fighting for them
- What doesn’t kill you…
- Expect a miracle