Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 623 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Life Is Not a Practice Session

Thank you for joining us for our 5 days per week wisdom and legacy building podcast. This is Day 623 of our trek, and today is the last segment of this Philosophy Friday series.

Each Friday we pondered some of the basic truths and mysteries of life and how they impact us in creating our living legacy. Today we are completing our extended multi-week (actually multi-month) trek as we explored the teachings from one of my virtual mentors Jim Rohn. The core of our current trek is based primarily on Jim Rohn’s book The Five Major Pieces to the Life Puzzle. 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. As we reach the conclusion of our current Philosophy Friday trek, we will build on our story from last Friday about the person who went fishing on the Niagara River and paid no attention to his small boat drifting towards the falls until it was too late.

Today I encourage you to examine your current drift to see where you are heading. In addition to examining your drift, you must grasp the concept that life is not a practice session. There is no dress rehearsal. The world is your stage, and each day is a performance.

So as we remain at camp, and complete our review as we ponder and consider the…

The Five Trails on Life’s Trek – Conclusion (4)

As we finish this trek, 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:

1. Examining Your Current Drift

To continue the thoughts of last Friday’s story…(If you have not listened to it or read the journal, go back and review it now. It is Day 618.)

Just like the small boat in last week’s story, you are drifting in some direction even at this very moment. The only thing you can determine with any degree of accuracy is where your current drift may be taking you. The big unknown is whether there are still enough ticks left on your personal clocks to change.

For some people, their past deeds have charted a course which threatens to imprison their future, and yet they do not take corrective and immediate action. They allow the drift of neglect to continue unabated. They permit their desire for entertainment to subdue their appetite for education. Rather than searching, they become lost. They are inclined to think that their small mistakes or neglects or errors in judgment don’t really matter all that much. They have not yet learned that everything affects everything else and that their actions of today are forming their consequences of tomorrow. Their careless acts and their wandering thoughts are swallowing up their most precious resource – time. It is because they seemed to have so much time that they allowed the individual moments of opportunity to slip unnoticed into an accumulation of empty years.

Your philosophy is moving you toward a specific future condition. So is your current attitude, level of activity, and results. Your current lifestyle is either encouraging you to experience new depths of emotional experience or whispering to you to wait until you have it all.

What you are and how you are must be examined not only in the light of your objectives but also with a keen awareness of the ticking clock. Maybe you only have a few years left. Maybe you only have a few months left. Either way, wouldn’t it make more sense to be doing something constructive with the time that remains rather than to be passively waiting for time to take its inevitable toll?

2. Life Is Not a Practice Session

The time for practice is over. Practice time was while you were growing up. Practice time was while you were in school. You are now full participants in the game of life, and your opponent is human mediocrity. In the absence of intense and intelligent human activity, the weeds of failure will move in to destroy the small amount of progress that your efforts have created. You cannot afford to wait for the “two-minute warning.” You cannot afford to wait until the last few minutes to discover that your game plan isn’t working. You cannot afford to wait until the last few ticks of the clock to become intense about life’s opportunities.

You must challenge yourself right now with a new level of thinking, and drive yourself toward a new level of achievement. You must impose upon yourself a new discipline and develop a new attitude about life that motivates you and inspires others.

You cannot keep waiting for a foolproof opportunity to come by before you force yourself to get serious. You must identify your current opportunity and embrace it. You must breathe your talent and your vigor and your new sense of urgency into its existence and discover all that you can do.

You cannot allow yourself to dwell upon the risks in every opportunity. Instead, you must seize the opportunity that is inherent in every risk, knowing that you must sometimes run the risk of going too far in order to discover how far you really can go.

You can do it! You can change your life, and you can start right now simply by developing a new sense of urgency. Remember, your clock is ticking. You have the ability to achieve whatever you want if you will just begin the process now.

It is easy to achieve success and happiness. It is also easy not to achieve them.

The final result of your life will be determined by whether you made too many errors in judgment, repeated every day or whether you dedicated your life to a few simple disciplines, practiced every day.

The discipline of strengthening and broadening your philosophy. The discipline of developing a better attitude.  The discipline of engaging in more intense and consistent activity that will lead to the achievement of greater results. The discipline of studying your results in order to anticipate the future more objectively. The discipline of living life more fully and investing all of your experiences in your better future. These are the challenges to which you must apply your talent and your intensity with a sense of urgency and unshakeable resolve.

It is my hope and objective of Wisdom-Trek, that through our daily treks we will share information that will assist you as you trek the trails of life. As you go through life’s trek, may your trails become progressively smoother and easier to navigate. As you reach your summit of life and your trek of life is finishing, may you be able to say as the Apostle Paul did at the end of his trek in 2 Timothy 4:6-8, “As for me, my life has already been poured out as an offering to God. The time of my death is near.  I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have remained faithful. And now the prize awaits me—the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the day of his return. And the prize is not just for me but for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing.”

As you stand before your maker, may He say Matthew [25:21],

“The master was full of praise. ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let’s celebrate together!'”

We have deliberately taken our trek slowly over the past 45 Friday’s as we now are finished with The Five Trails on Life’s Trek. Next Friday we will begin a new series of trails as we look at facing and then conquering the giants that are in our lives. I know you will find these insights interesting and profitable in living a rich and satisfying life.

Our next trek is Mindshift Monday where we will help  you live differently by thinking differently. 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!