Welcome to my website and my blog. If you’re wondering why you’re here, or what you might find, that’s you and me both. In fact, I’ll be wondering how you even found this, but hey, wonder is a beautiful thing. The ultimate purpose of this site may not exist yet, however the most important thing is to begin. I do know that am going to share a lot of quotes, because there’s already a bunch coming at you right here. I read that waiting until you have it all figured out to get started is like sitting in your car in the driveway and waiting for all the lights to turn green before you actually go. Or as Zig Ziglar put it, “People who won’t take step number one never take step number two.”
Let’s talk more about Zig Ziglar. My current favorite quote is, “People say motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” And this is the topic of my post, and more, the theme of my year. I’ve been subject to motivation my whole life, and let me tell you, it is awesome! What a feeling of power and possibility when you believe in your heart that anything is possible and acknowledge that you are truly capable of achieving anything. Yet I grew easily discouraged when it wore off, and then doubly discouraged for knowing and allowing it to wear off, and you can imagine what nonsense that is.
Perhaps I’ll revisit the history lesson later, but let me just jump to the part where I read a book published by Life Leadership entitled Thick Skinned, which discussed, in my paraphrasing words, how to grow a pair and stop reacting like a little nancy every time something goes wrong. One section in the book challenged me to take Orrin Woodward’s “Project 180”. This entailed dedicating yourself to reading 30 minutes every single day of self-improvement material and listening to 3 hours of audio every day of motivational talk or anything related to something you want to do or someone you want to emulate. Now this sounded rather extreme to me, not the 30 minutes of reading, I enjoy and could handle that. But 3 hours of listening? That’s a lot of time that I didn’t have. Of course, do it while doing other things, working, exercising, driving, etc. That’s Zig Ziglar’s, “Automobile University”. With nothing to lose and already seeing a hint of the motivational problem I have recognized earlier in life, I decided to make the commitment and do it.
Six months later, I am still doing it, and I am seeing changes in my behavior and attitude that are exactly in line with the type of person that I want to be. I have not made all my problems disappear, and I have not accomplished everything I ever wished I could. I would be a fool if I thought it could happen overnight or that I could eliminate 30 years of negative self-talk in a few months. However, this is the answer. I feel like I’m not emphasizing enough how absolutely miraculous this really is, so I guess I’ll have to give myself another chance next time.