Continued from: The Traveler’s Gift- Decision Two

The Active Decision

I Am a Person of Action.

Beginning today,I will create a new future by creating a new me. No longer will I dwell in a pit of despair, moaning over squandered time and lost opportunity. I can do nothing about the past. My future is immediate. I will grasp it in both hands and carry it with running feet. When I am faced with the choice of doing nothing or doing something, I will always choose to act! I seize this moment. I choose now.  page3

[Consistently, in all the seven decisions, Andy has begun by letting go of the past and reminding us that the past is ‘past’. He has told us to look to the future by looking at the present… by being in the present. With an eye whose range of sight extends to immeasurable distances and a spirit which impels the feet to follow that sight, the choice to act is the only choice there is. The right and responsibility to choose is abandoned many time. By choosing not to exercise that right, we have yet chosen. Only, instead of choosing to act, we have chosen not to act. In his Awaken The Giant Within, Anthony Robbins said: You are already getting the outcome of your decisions- only they might not be the results you wanted.

The implicit injunction there is: To change the results you get in your life, change your decisions. This looks very obvious when read, but how obvious is it when decisions are actually being taken..? **None of what is being said here would be new for you. But when you get the urge to start heaving bricks at me, ask yourself how much of this you implement. 99% wisdom implemented 1% times is not nearly as effective as 1% wisdom implemented 99% times. 🙂 **]

I am a person of action. I am energetic. I move quickly. Knowing that laziness is a sin, I will create a habit of lively behavior. I will walk with a spring in my step and a smile on my face. The lifeblood rushing through my veins is urging me upward and forward into activity and accomplishment. Wealth and prosperity hide from the sluggard, but rich rewards come to the person who moves quickly.

[A ‘habit of lively behavior’…? Strange statement that, isn’t it..? A habit contains an trace of choice… of volition. You may let a habit remain or you may get rid of it- replacing it with another habit. A smoker replaced the habit of non-smoking with that of smoking. Of course he may do the reverse whenever he wants, just a question of his choice.

To have the ‘habit’ of lively behavior one would deliberately need to be lively until it becomes a habit. Had I been you, I’d have said, “But I don’t FEEL lively at all, so how can I BE lively…?’ You know the tone in which this would be said, don’t you…? That irritating whining tone that grates on your nerves and make your fingers itch to close about my throat and slowly choke the life out of me..? Yeah, yeah… that one..! Had I said that, you would have had to keep your patience and say, “Never mind if you don’t FEEL lively in the beginning. Just pretend to feel lively and you actually start feeling lively in a short while.”

“Try it”, you’d have said, controlling your urge to go into the fingers-about-the-throat routine. **That was a clever bit of writing even if I say so myself. 😛 **]

I am a person of action. I inspire others with my activity. I am a leader. Leading is doing. To lead, I must move forward. Many people move out of the way for a person on the run; others are caught up in his wake. My activity will create a wave of success for the people who follow. My activity will be consistent. This will instill confidence in my leadership. As a leader, I have the ability to encourage and inspire others to greatness. It is true: An army of sheep led by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a sheep!

[The statement I loved the most there was ‘Leading Is Doing’. Short and sweet, with a fulsome punch to knock you out. Leading is doing. You can’t be a leader if you keep dilly-dallying. Nor if you keep sitting and waiting for things to happen. Nor if you are strolling leisurely towards your goal. Energy is a must in a leader. No one became a leader without being full of beans… without bristling with verve itching to let himself fly in the face of the world…! Leadership styles might be different in many aspects, but the common denominator is vibrant, abundant enthusiasm. The method of communicating that passion might be different for different leaders, but the basic ingredient was always in-your-face-passion. Nothing can move people better than a man with a passion he cannot contain and must let overflow and touch everything around him. **The word passion exists in all languages… naturally. In Hindi the word for it is ‘dhun’ (धुन) and in Urdu it is ‘Junoon’ (जूनून). Somehow, the Urdu word is what I have always connected with. I have had people accuse me of being ‘junooni’ (जुनूनी). I take it as the biggest compliment I could have been paid. 😀 **]

I am a person of action. I can make a decision. I can make it now. A person who moves neither left nor right is destined for mediocrity. When faced with a decision, many people say they are waiting for God. But I understand, in most cases, God is waiting for me! He has given me a healthy mind to gather and sort information and the courage to come to a conclusion. I am not a quivering dog, indecisive and fearful. My constitution is strong and my pathway clear. Successful people make their decisions quickly and change their mind slowly. Failures make their decisions slowly and change their mind quickly. My decisions come quickly, and they lead to victory.

[‘Successful people make their decisions quickly and change their mind slowly. Failures make their decisions slowly and change their mind quickly.’ Most people who take forever to make a decision usually hide behind the excuse that they are not sure if the decision they are about to take is the right decision or not. I am about to become brutally frank now. If you like you can bury your head in the nearest sand pit. Or put a sack over your head… that works as well I am told. To demand a guarantee that all decisions you will take MUST be right decisions, is like demanding that all traffic lights be made green before you will condescend to drive out of your garage…! I know this is common knowledge… and there is nothing new in what I just wrote. But, how many times in the past year have you delayed taking decisions because you were not sure of the outcome..? How many of those times have you made matters worse because of that delay..? A wrong decision is far better than living in a limbo- neither here nor there. That’s what I believe. You are welcome to try and dissuade me. ** Planting her feet firmly and setting her jaw, looking mulish. 😐 **

I am a person of action. I am daring. I am courageous. Fear no longer has a place in my life. For too long, fear has outweighed my desire to make things better for my family. Never again! I have exposed fear as a vapor, an impostor who never had any power over me in the first place! I do not fear opinion, gossip, or the idle chatter of monkeys for all are the same to me. I do not fear failure, for in my life, failure is a myth. Failure only exists for the person who quits. I do not quit.

[Reality has never been able to compete with our imagination. In ten seconds we can create more monsters in our head than reality can dish up in a millennium. FEAR is an acronym for False Evidence Appearing Real. The keyword there is False. I never let myself forget that. The second thing I never let myself forget is that I am far more capable of dealing with challenges than I give myself credit for. The last thing I tell myself is, in case I fail to deal with the challenge, I will learn where I need to work next. Next time that hurdle comes, I will fly over it effortlessly. The ‘idle chatter of monkeys’ is amusing occasionally. I am always amazed to see how much time people seem to have to waste. But of course, if they DO have time to throw away, what better could they do with it than to gossip about me…? Crumbs of worthiness… I really can’t grudge them that. Mean I am NOT…! ** I do NOT quit. Not for some lofty principle… let us be frank here. I don’t quit because I am too dumb to realize when I’ve been licked. And so… I don’t quit. 😀 **

I am courageous. I am a leader. I seize this moment. I choose now.

I am a person of action.

The Traveler’s Gift- Decision Three