Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 618 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Picture the Future in Advance

Thank you for joining us for our 5 days per week wisdom and legacy building podcast. This is Day 618 of our trek, and today is Philosophy Friday. Every Friday we ponder some of the basic truths and mysteries of life and how they can impact us in creating our living legacy.

Currently, we are on an extended multi-week trek as we explore the teachings from some of my virtual mentors, such as Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, and Earl Nightingale. The core of our current trek is based primarily on Jim Rohn’s book 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 have adapted it to The Five Trails on Life’s Trek.

We are broadcasting from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. Our granddaughter Hazel continues on her leukemia treatment regimen. Her counts are doing well, and she was able to discontinue the use of her blood pressure medicine and Zantac, so we are thankful for that. For the next 2-3 weeks, she will continue to have a lumbar puncture to administer a heavy dose of chemo as the oncology team continues to monitor her progress. Although there are no guarantees in life for any of us, we are hopeful for a complete recovery and are visualizing that day.

It is important that we invest the time to visualize what we desire our future to be. We are remaining in camp for a couple more weeks, as we review The Five Trails on Life’s Trek, which we have already completed. For our future to be realized, we need to practice the concept of picturing our future in advance.

So as we remain at camp, let us ponder and consider the…

The Five Trails on Life’s Trek – Conclusion (3)

As we continue our conclusion, as a reminder, our overall extended trek covered these five trails:

1. Philosophy

2. Attitude

3. Activity

4. Results

5. Lifestyle

So today we desire to explore the concept of how to:

1. Picture the Future in Advance

If you could capture the mental picture in your minds of how your future will be, given your current direction, perhaps you would become more serious about your life. The following story illustrates dramatically the consequences of failing to develop a sense of urgency.

One day a man was sitting in his small boat on the Niagara River. The waters were calm, the breeze was gentle, and the sun shone brightly from a cloudless sky. Only moments before, the man had pushed his boat from the riverbank, and even now the shore was only a few feet away. Clearly, there was no cause for concern. As he baited his hook and cast his line into the water, his mind began to drift.  Just as his mind began to drift, so did his small boat.

The movement was slow and imperceptible in the beginning, with the boat doing what any boat will do when left to drift along with the gentle current. Just like this boat, all drifts in your life are leading toward an eventual destination. If the drift is left uncorrected, it will move toward that destination as though by some strange and unseen force.

In his preoccupations of the moment, the man did not notice the increased movement of his boat. His thoughts were still on fishing as they had been all week in anticipation of this outing. There would be plenty of time for seriousness. For a little while at least, he would continue to relax and enjoy himself. He would ignore the challenges of life and use this hour to allow himself to drift.

Without warning, his thoughts were shaken from wherever they had wandered, back to the present.  The sound he now heard seemed to come from nowhere, distant at first, but in the twinkling of an eye, it had intensified and was now almost deafening. His attention was seized not only by the sound but by the movement, for his small boat was being propelled through waters that were no longer gentle and calming.

He looked around him, and for the first time, he noticed the river banks on either side had retreated as though on a journey of their own. He had no motor on his small boat and had journeyed out with only a single paddle. There had been no apparent need for a motor or oars.

He struggled to comprehend what was happening, for it was as though he had moved from the calmness, the serenity, and the safety of one environment into the frenzied turbulence of circumstances beyond his ability to grasp or control.

In an instant, the reality of his circumstances registered clearly. The thundering sound, the rising foam, the swirling mist, and the uncontrolled momentum of his boat created an instant picture of his horrid circumstances. He had cast himself and his small boat onto the Niagara River, and his drift had brought him to the threshold of the falls.

His mind flashed a collage of thoughts and emotions. If only he had thought about the consequences of his drift. If only he had been better prepared and had thought to equip his boat with a motor, just in case. If only he had noticed sooner, or if only…
Only now did the man notice the crowd that had gathered along the far banks on either side, as the word quickly spread about the boat cascading down the river toward irreversible disaster. It was as though those who knew what was about to happen were wanting to help, but to make any attempt to rescue this hopeless creature would serve only to jeopardize their own safety. Some made futile efforts to toss ropes or to hold out tree branches, but most stood in stunned silence, witnesses to a tragedy that need not have happened.

In a fleeting moment, he felt the impending doom of his own personal neglect. He was a victim of his own preoccupation, of his careless inattention to detail in an environment that had the capacity to swallow up his existence, his opportunities, and his abilities.  His personal neglect and lack of observation could put all of his dreams to an end in one brief moment.

His one final thought was what he would do differently if only he had a second chance. His thoughts rushed through his mind with the same rapidity as the water passing over the edge of falls, tumbling to their final destination hundreds of feet below.

Had he been given the gift of a second chance he would have allowed himself to see the possible future disaster well in advance. He would have seen it clearly in his mind before the event took place in reality. He would have anticipated the certain consequences of neglect. In his mind’s eye, he would have seen the rising foam, heard the roar of the falls and sensed his accelerated drift so that he might have acted without delay to move quickly to the safety of the shore.

If he could have been plucked from the waters instead of being consumed by them, he would have placed new value upon his talent, his opportunities and his time. He would not have allowed frivolity to capture his attention nor would he have permitted his desire for rest and relaxation to take his focus off the greater need for intense labor and measurable progress.

But unfortunately, he simply ran out of time…

Although this is just a story, how does this apply to your life? Are you drifting along without preparation and a sense of purpose? How are you applying the principles that we have learned as we have explored The Five Trails on Life’s Trek over the past few months?

To live the rich and satisfying life that you are designed to live, you must picture the future in advance through the proper planning and execution. A couple of verses in Proverbs reinforce this thought:

Proverbs 21:5 – Good planning and hard work lead to prosperity, but hasty shortcuts lead to poverty.

Proverbs 24:27 – Do your planning and prepare your fields before building your house.

We are deliberately taking our trek slowly as we review The Five Trails on Life’s Trek. Over the next week or two, we will complete this exploration and move on to a new area for discovery. You learned how important it is to Picture the Future in Advance through Proper Planning and Execution.

On our final segments of this portion of our Philosophy Fridays, we will examine our current drift, as we explore the concept that life is not a practice session. I know you will find these insights interesting and profitable in living a rich and satisfying life. Our next trek is Mindshift Monday, 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. If you would like to listen to any of our past treks or read the Wisdom Journal, they are available at Wisdom-Trek.com. You can also subscribe at iTunes or Google Play so that each day’s trek will be downloaded automatically.

Thank you so much 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!