Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 423 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

The Five Trails on Life’s Trek – Philosophy Part 1

Thank you for joining us for our 5 days per week wisdom and legacy podcast. This is Day 423 of our trek, and today is Philosophy Friday. Every Friday we will ponder some of the basic truths and mysteries of life, and how they can impact us in creating our living legacy.

Last Friday we began a multi-week trek as we began to explore the teachings from some of my virtual mentors such as Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, and Earl Nightingale. As mentioned last week, the core of this trek will be based primarily on Jim Rohn’s book called The Five Major Pieces to the Life Puzzle.  I have learned a considerable amount from reading and re-reading this book on my own trek of life, and I trust that it will benefit you also. Keeping with the continuity of Wisdom-Trek, I will be adapting it to The Five Trails on Life’s Trek.

We are broadcasting from our studio at Home2 in Charlotte, North Carolina. After working onsite with one of our Marietta clients on Wednesday, we headed south again for just a few days. Paula’s mom has a doctor appointment and one of our nephews is getting married on Saturday in Atlanta, Georgia. On Monday, which is Labor Day in the United States, we will head back to The Big House for about a week before returning to Charlotte again.

As we trek back and forth between Ohio and North Carolina, we don’t want to ignore the practical application of these travels to life’s trek should not be lost. Most of life is made up of the daily grind of just being faithful to the small details. As we travel mile after mile, we can only make progress by repeating each mile 365 times, and so it is with life. You will make progress by living one day at a time and then connecting those days together while heading toward your intended destination. On our trek for today, we will take what we learned last Friday and begin on the first of five trails on life’s trek, which is the Philosophy Trail. So, let’s break camp and head out on the first trail of this extended trek as we cover…

The Five Trails on Life’s Trek –Philosophy Part 1

Last week we invested time in camp preparing for hiking The Five Trails on Life’s Trek. Those five trails are:

1. Philosophy

2. Attitude

3. Activity

4. Results

5. Lifestyle

Although all of these trails are important, philosophy is the foundation or primary trail from which the other four trails branch from. Your philosophy can also be described as your worldview or paradigm from where your thought process originates. A major factor in determining how your life turns out is the way you choose to think. What you think about is a choice that you make every day. Everything that goes on inside your mind in the form of thoughts, ideas, and information forms your personal philosophy. Your philosophy then influences your habits and behavior, and this is really where it all begins.

Since we are on the Trail of Philosophy, let us examine how your personal philosophy is formed.  Your personal philosophy comes from what you know and from the process of how you came to know all that you currently know. Throughout your life you receive input from a multitude of sources. What you know comes from school, friends, associates, media influences, home, and other places where you invest time. It also comes from books you are reading or listening to, and it comes from listening and observing throughout all aspects of your life. The sources of knowledge and information that have contributed to the formation of your current philosophy are virtually unlimited.

As an adult, all of the new information that comes your way is examined through the filter of your personal philosophy. Those concepts that seem to agree with the conclusions you have already reached are added to your storehouse of knowledge and serve to reinforce your current thinking. Those ideas that seem to contradict your beliefs are usually quickly rejected.

You are constantly in the process of checking your preexisting beliefs for accuracy or confirmation in the light of new information. As you blend the new with the old, the result is either the strengthening of your past beliefs or the broadening of your current philosophy in light of new and valuable information about life and people.

The same beliefs that form your personal philosophy also determine your value system. As a Christ follower, my philosophy has been strongly influenced by the truths and teachings in the Bible, which I believe to be God’s Word.

Your beliefs led you to make certain decisions about what is valuable to you as a person. Each day you choose to do whatever you think is valuable. If you decide to start your day at five o’clock each morning in order to take advantage of opportunities that will enable you to provide your family with more of the good things in life, then what are you really doing? You are doing what your philosophy has taught you is valuable. Conversely, if you choose to sleep until noon you are also doing what you consider to be valuable. But the result from the two different philosophies – from the decisions you make about what is valuable – will be drastically different.

We all have our own ideas about the things that affect our lives based on the information we have gathered over the years. Each of us has a personal view about government, education, the economy, our employer, and a host of other issues. What you think about these issues adds to your emerging philosophy (or worldview) and causes you to reach certain conclusions about life and how it operates. These conclusions then lead you to make specific value judgments, which determine how you will act on any given day and in any given circumstance.

You have made and will continue to make decisions based upon what you think is valuable. Whether the decisions you are making will lead you toward inevitable success or unavoidable failure depends on the information you have gathered over the years to form your personal philosophy. As an example, I believe in all areas of life your harvest is based on what you plant which I take from Galatians 6:7, “Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant.” Another example for me is taken from Galatians 4:14, “For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'” Based on this verse, if I do not love myself properly, then I am incapable of loving others properly.

Consider this analogy – Your personal philosophy is like the setting of the sail on a boat.  In the process of living, the winds of circumstance blow on you in an unending flow that touches your life. We have all experienced the blowing winds of disappointment, despair, and heartbreak. Why then, would each of us, in our own individual ship of life, all beginning at the same point, with the same intended destination in mind, arrive at such different places at the end of the journey? Have we not all sailed on the same sea of life? Have we not all been blown by the same winds of circumstance and buffeted by the same turbulent storms of discontent?

What guides us to different destinations in life is determined by the way we have chosen to set our sail. The way that each of us thinks makes the major difference in where each of us arrives. The major difference is not circumstance. The major difference is the set of the sail.  The same circumstances happen to us all. We all have those moments when, in spite of our best plans and efforts, life just seems to fall apart.

Challenging circumstances are not events reserved for the poor, the uneducated, or the destitute.  The rich and the poor have children who get into trouble. The rich and the poor have marital problems. The rich and the poor have the same challenges that can lead to financial ruin and personal despair. In the final analysis, it is not what happens to us that determines the  quality of our lives, it is what we choose to do when we have struggled to set the sail and then discover, after all of our efforts, that the wind has changed direction.

When the winds change, you must change. You must struggle to your feet once more and reset the sail in the manner that will steer you toward the destination of your own deliberate choosing. The set of your sail, how you think and how you respond has a far greater capacity to destroy your lives than any challenges you face. How quickly and responsibly you react to adversity is far more important than the adversity itself. Once you discipline yourself to understand this, you will finally and willingly conclude that the great challenge of life is to control the process of your own thinking.

Learning to reset the sail with the changing winds rather than permitting yourself to be blown in a direction you did not purposely choose requires the development of a whole new discipline. It involves going to work on establishing a powerful, personal philosophy that will help to influence in a positive way all that you do and all that you think and decide. If you can succeed in this worthy endeavor, the result will be a change in the course of your income, bank account, lifestyle and relationships, and feelings about the things of value as well as the times of challenge. If you can alter the way you perceive, judge and decide upon the main issues of life, then you can dramatically change your life.

Today we have just started up the Trail of Philosophy, and we explored how important your thinking is in the creation of your personal philosophy. If you find that your personal philosophy is not as strong as you desire then you will want to join the continuation of our trek on the Trail of Philosophy next Friday as we discover How to Develop a Powerful Personal Philosophy as we hike The Five Trails on Life’s Trek.

I know you will find these insights interesting and profitable in living a rich and satisfying life. Our next trek will be Motivation Monday where we explore more trails of how to get and stay motivated to bring value to your world. So encourage your friends and family to join us, and then come along on Monday for another day of our Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.

That will finish our trek for today. As you enjoy your daily dose of wisdom, we ask you to help us grow Wisdom-Trek by sharing with your family and friends through email, Facebook, Twitter, or in person when you meet with them and invite them to come along with us each day.

If you would like to listen to any of the past daily treks, they are available at Wisdom-Trek.com. Don’t forget to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek so each trek will be downloaded to you automatically. I would also appreciate it if you would rate and review us on iTunes or Google Play so that others will find out about Wisdom-Trek and join us.

Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and most of all your friend as I serve you through the Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal.

As we take this trek of life together, let us always:

1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
2. Love Unconditionally
3. Listen Intentionally
4. Learn Continuously
5. Lend to others Generously
6. Lead with Integrity
7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

This is Guthrie Chamberlain reminding you to Keep Moving Forward, Enjoy Your Journey, and Create a Great Day Every Day! See you on Monday!