Youth…
The word alone creates many different images in our mind. Images of hope, strength, health, and speed. It is also associated with words such as inexperience, foolhardy, and naive.
I must admit that each day when I see my four-year-old son run off to play with his friends at school that I am quite envious.
Not a care in the world.
He lives life with reckless abandonment because he doesn’t know any better.
Half courageous, half silly, all fun.
That’s what life should be for a child – fun.
There’s only one problem, one day my son will wake up and find himself a man.
Life really is that fast edlekarna.cz.
It feels like just yesterday that I was back in the Philippines enjoying crystal clear waters with my mother and father.
As a child, we have our whole lives ahead of us; uncharted waters, unlimited potential, all that is needed is guidance.
These days I’m honored to help young minds grow.
At present I help a quite a few clients who still aren’t old enough to drink. It’s quite a rush.
Being placed in a position to mold young minds is something I cherish because I know that our future lies with them.
The other day I sat across from one such mind. Listening to her talk about her daily life a simple concept occurred to me.
I stood up and walked over to the whiteboard, grabbed a marker and wrote the words “TODAY” in big bold letters.
Underneath that I put a bunch of little circles going straight down.
Then I asked her to tell me a list of the things she does on a regular basis.
She told me a few things, then I added a few more myself to prove a point.
The list looked something like this:
- Saving money
- Studying two hours a day
- Watching movies
- Dancing
- Working part-time
- Smoking (this is one I added)
I then asked her to look into her future. I started out by asking her how her life would change next week from doing each activity.
The answer was, unsurprisingly, “Not much.”
And she’s right, so what if you save $20 bucks this week, spend 10 hours studying something, or even smoking a few packs of cigarettes. It’s not going to have much effect on anything.
If we were to look at our entire life on a line over an 80-year period then a week would be a mere blip.
Then I asked her the same question only changing the time period. Instead of a week, I asked her how her life would change if she continued these activities for 20 years.
Hopefully you already know the answer.
We started with the first thing on the list – saving money. She told me that if she continued doing that for 20 years she might be able to buy a car or put a down payment down on a house. Good answer.
Studying two hours a day she’d likely have a good paying job. Another good answer.
Watching movies, well…not much to say here except that she’d know a lot of movies.
Then I asked her about smoking, she told me she might have trouble with her health. Maybe even cancer. A tad extreme, but it’s possible.
The point is all we need do to see our future is look at our todays.
There’s only one problem, the good stuff is so much harder to do than the bad.
I mean, it’s easier to watch two hours of TV than to study a foreign language for 20 minutes.
Saving money is harder than spending it, but only one of them makes you rich.
Studying, saving, exercising…those are tough. Amazingly, it is activities like these that are the leading cause of the deadly disease known as excusitis, which I was first made aware of in the fabulous book The Magic of Thinking Big by Dr. David Schwartz.
Jim Rohn was right when he said, “It’s easy to keep bad habits, it’s easy not to develop the disciplines, it’s easy not to do.”
The disciples of life aren’t easy, but they are worth it.
It’s easy to see, but too often we choose to ignore the facts which is why making a list of activities that you do day in and day out can be so effective.
Once you’ve gotten them down on paper it’s there for you to see in black and white.
No more excuses.
You are responsible for your future. You design it purposely, or haphazardly…but you will create it one way or the other.
20 years will pass as sure as night follows day.
The only question is, where will you arrive?
Adrian Shepherd