Shownotes
Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy
Welcome to Day 418 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 – Introduction
Thank you for joining us for our 5 days per week wisdom and legacy podcast. This is Day 418 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.
Today we will begin 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 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 The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. It has proven to be a very busy work week with our clients. This included remote software technical support for a client that we primarily assist with financial work and a significant uptick in transactions for our construction projects in Arizona. This has not left much time for our podcasting related work although I did create a simple online program to store, search, and print the nearly 11,000 wisdom quotes that I have been curating for many years.
Yesterday, Paula and I celebrated our 37th wedding anniversary. I have truly been blessed with a wonderful bride who has brought my joy and peace into life’s trek, which is full of unexpected obstacles and detours. When you have a trusted partner to trek with as well as a solid trail map or GPS, we can avoid getting lost along our trails of life. Today we will prepare for an extended trek with some basic ideas and thoughts before we begin to explore the five trails of life’s trek. So let’s take some time at camp today before we head out on…
The Five Trails on Life’s Trek – Introduction
If you have joined me for any length of time on our Wisdom-Trek, you know that in order to journey through life in a manner that is rich and satisfying, that you need to not only accept change but embrace it as good. Except for the triune God, everything else in life changes. Hebrews 13:8 tells us, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” So for everything else, we must understand “the only constant in life is change.”
You may wonder how the process of change begins. Change comes from one of two sources. First, you may be driven to change out of desperation. Sometimes your circumstances can become so out-of-control that you almost abandon your search for answers because your life seems to be filled only with irresolvable questions. But it is this overwhelming sense of desperation that finally drives you to look for the solutions. Desperation is the final and inevitable result of months or years of accumulated neglect that brings you to that point in time where you find yourself driven by urgent necessity to find immediate answers to life’s accumulated challenges.
The second source that drives us to make changes in our lives is inspiration. Hopefully, that is where you find yourself right now – about to become sufficiently inspired to make major and dramatic changes in your life as a result of what we will share together on our trek each Friday.
Inspiration can come to you at any time and from many sources. A song can inspire you, a book can inspire you, as can an effective and moving speech. The story of someone who has succeeded in spite of difficulty can stir your emotions. Inspiration, from whatever the source, arouses feelings within you that rekindle hope, ambition, and determination. It is a momentary whisper of encouragement and reassurance that causes you to become aware of your potential. You sense a spark of desire, and your mind flashes from one possibility to another, each thought-laden with the promise of future success and happiness. In this fleeting moment when inspiration stirs your soul, you are either driven into action, or you do nothing – being content to enjoy the warm feeling that is within you until, at last, the warmth moves on, taking with it the promise and the possibilities.
Wherever life finds you at the moment, whether responding to desperation or seeking inspiration, I urge you to make sure that you hike our Wisdom-Trek each Philosophy Friday. In fact, I would encourage you to join us Monday through Friday to keep that fire of inspiration fueled to actually make the changes needed in your life. In the end, your life will be judged not by the things that you began, but by the things that your effort and resolve brought to a successful conclusion.
The inspiration that you will receive from these treks has the capacity to alter your circumstance. For these ideas and principles to make an impact in your life, you must take time in the weeks ahead to seriously contemplate the direction of your life, and to ponder the message and carefully apply the principles on our treks each day and week.
As we study our trail map in preparing for the trek, there are a few important and preliminary insights that can start you on your journey toward success and happiness.
There are always just a few important principles that account for most of the progress you make on life’s trek. It is these “basics” that have the greatest effect on your health, your happiness, and your bank accounts. This is not to suggest that there are only a few life-changing ideas that will affect you, for surely there are many. What I am suggesting, however, is that you begin your search by focusing on the five fundamental trails that we will take on this extended trek. It is these few among the many that will account for the biggest share of the results you will achieve.
You will never be able to master every aspect of life. To try to become the master of every detail of your life will only lead to frustration. Instead, why not go after the few among the many; the few that will make the most difference; the core trails that will have the greatest impact in determining the quality of your existence and reaching your destination?
As you hike the trails for answers to the rich and satisfying life, always be in search of those few major trails that make the most difference. If you master these basic trails, I can promise that you will not be disappointed with the results.
It is the basics – the fundamentals of life – that we all need to master. These are the same key trails for success and happiness that have existed for the last six thousand years of recorded history. There are no new fundamentals for human achievement. Basics are basics, and anything else is merely an activity designed to refine or expand upon those same principles. King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, wrote in Ecclesiastes 1:9, “History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new.”
In any attempt to improve your current circumstances, never allow yourself to drift from those Bible-based, time-proven principles, which have flowed from generation to generation in a steady stream to serve as the fundamentals for finding, developing, and living the rich and satisfying life.
As we hike these trails on this extended trek, I would encourage you to develop your own list of the core principles that make the most difference in your life to maximize your impact.
It is important to understand that the five trails that we will explore on our trek may not be the only five to the exclusion of all others. I am neither so wise nor so arrogant as to suggest that I have all of the answers and that my answers are the only answers. The principles or trails that we will cover on our trek are five important trails of life and are as fundamental to your success now as they were for preceding generations. These are the trails that have been hiked before.
Through all my years of study and experience, through all my encounters with both success and failure, and through all the conversations and associations I have had the privilege to share, it is these five trails that I have seen as primary in their capacity to produce life-changing results.
As with any strenuous hike, endurance is often the best indicator if conquering a difficult trail will be successful. That is why I mapped out these five enduring principles or trails as the “fundamental basics” that have proven to be the trails of success in all areas of life. I will do my best to guide as we follow in the footsteps of the lives of those who have done well with life’s challenges and opportunities by taking these same trails. If you are wondering what these five trails are that we will hike, they are Philosophy, Attitude, Activity, Results, and Lifestyle.
I do not have the final and unchallenged answers for finding the rich and satisfying life. I will leave that to God. As best as I can, I follow His Word as my trail map for life. There may be others who claim to know better trails to take, but there are certain laws and precepts of life that have stood the test of time. That is why my best advice has always been to stick to these five basics principles or trails of life. If you follow along with me on our trek by investing both time and careful attention, you will see why I consider these The Five Trails on Life’s Trek.
Today we have studied our trail map in preparation for hiking The Five Trails of Life’s Trek. It is important that we prepare properly. Next Philosophy Friday we will begin to explore the Trail of Your Philosophy. 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 and inviting 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 together, let us always:
- Live Abundantly (Fully)
- Love Unconditionally
- Listen Intentionally
- Learn Continuously
- Lend to others Generously
- Lead with Integrity
- 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!