Stop Waiting To Be Rescued

Stop Waiting To Be Rescued

The kids got the right idea, someone must have had a good role model.  There are way too many people who wait for something to come along and make it all better for them.  To help them get a better job, help them find a girlfriend, offer up a great deal on a new car, introduce them to the workout routine that is going to finally get them RIPPED.  I swear to God dude, this year I’m gonna be packing some major guns!  I tell you what, when you finally show up with those beefy arms I’ll give you my “Suns Out, Guns Out” Vegas tank.  You’ll have earned it.  It’s all around us everywhere as we listen to people want more this and more that but they have such a difficult time going and getting it themselves.  Sometimes I just want to slap em and say stop waiting to be rescued!  Rescue yourself – no one is coming to save you!  In the end you have to be your own hero because everyone is busy trying to save themselves.  Some folks just do it more effectively than others.  Stop waiting to be rescued.

 

 

Save Yourself –  Stabbing Westward

Remember this?  Maybe if you’re my age you will.  If you haven’t heard it, listen up, it’s good.  Kinda says it all – in a dark way.

Save Yourself – Stabbing Westward

I know your life is empty
And you hate to face this world alone
So you’re searching for an angel
Someone who can make you whole
I can not save you
I can’t even save myself
So just save yourself
I know that you’ve been damaged
Your soul has suffered such abuse
But I am not your savior
I am just as f***ed as you
I can not save you
I can’t even save myself
So just save yourself

Wake Up

It takes that “aha” moment sometimes.  Brian Tracy, the guy that wrote “Goals!  How to Get Everything You Want – Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible” writes in his book that when he was twenty-one years old he was broke, he had a job working construction, and he lived in a small one-room apartment. One night he was sitting at his kitchen table and he had a sudden flash of awareness that changed his life: “No one was coming to the rescue.”  Tracy realized at that moment that everything that happened to him from that moment on was completely up to him. He was responsible for his life. If he didn’t change, nothing else would change.  It was totally and completely up to him.

A friend of mine recently switched jobs.  She switched from being the Big Man On Campus in a safe job knew she knew how to do really well with a company she’d been with for over 7 years.  Now the company had grown increasingly unstable for her liking so her eyes were open for a potential change.  She recently took a leap of faith to basically power a start up company that is funded by an established company.  So the funds and motivation for a new division for the company were there, they needed someone smart and driven to get the thing up and running.  She decided to go for it soon after listening to a speaker discuss how you have to be the CEO of your own career.  Stop waiting, take charge and go get it.  So she did.  So far it’s been a good decision.

In order to take control of your life one day you have to wake up and totally and fully realize that you are 100% responsible for your life.  You control your actions, you make your decisions, even when you aren’t.  If you robotically go through every day driving the same way to work, doing the same thing at work, driving home, eating the same rotation of dinners, watch TV or whatever, then go to bed and do it all over again the next day it may seem like you aren’t making a CONSCIOUS choice.  That’s because you’re not.  You are making an UNCONSCIOUS choice to do the same thing every single day for 10 years in a row.  But you are making the choice every minute of every day.  You have to really really let it sink in that you are the driver of your life, the CEO of the direction of your company.  It’s seems kind of scary but it’s actually very liberating.

 

You Can Choose

This is actually pretty cool once you get over freaking out.  You really can choose what you want in your life.  If you have depressing and negative people in your life, you can choose to remove them from your life.  Yes I know it’s not as easy as snapping your fingers but things that are worth it usually aren’t.  This is true of most of these things.  Don’t really like your job?  Well, either look for doing something similar at another company or learn some new skills and start a new career.  A big chunk of my job includes recruiting and I can’t tell how great it is when I get the opportunity to talk to someone that had a certain career direction for years, got bored, and decided to go down a completely new path in their career.  It completely rejuvenated many of them, they love what they do now and engage in their work enthusiastically each and every day.  They made a conscious and probably scary choice to go for a different career.  Many of them have had to go back to school and all of them had to learn new skills.  They somehow found the time to do it, even with a busy life.  They moved themselves from a boring dreary career they’d long grown bored of into a new field by putting in the time and energy required into learning a new skill and going for it.  Always a pleasure to talk to folks like this.

You have to continually remind yourself that you have a choice.  You have a choice everyday and in everything you do.  I know it doesn’t feel like it sometimes but that’s all by your own doing.  Seriously.  You don’t have to go to work.  You could skip it.  There might be a consequence for that, I don’t know your job and responsibilities there, only you do.  But the fact is you COULD choose to skip going to work.  You can watch football all day Sunday instead of doing the yard.  You might already do that.  You can choose to eat nothing but a bag of Cheetos for lunch.  I don’t know why you would but you could do it if you want to.  Now this also goes to the more positive side as well.  You can choose to find the time to engage in a new workout routine.  You can choose to take 2 hours on Sunday and do some meal prep in order to eat healthy this week.  You could choose to pick up book on selling and challenge yourself to make more sales in the final quarter of the year.  Or you could choose to take your wife out on a date once a month.  All of these are choices you can make.

Start Small – Challenge Yourself

I want you to try an experiment.  It’s pretty easy I promise.  Start by become aware of the choices you make everyday.  Just be aware of what you chose to eat for breakfast.  Be aware of what you listen to on your drive to work.  Watch what you work on during the day at your job and how much you enjoy it or perhaps just auto pilot along.  See what you do with your evenings.  Observe the route you take to work.  And so on, just be aware of what you do.  And the key to all of this is I want you to acknowledge that each of these are choices you are making or made a long time ago and just continue to do them the way you’ve always done them because they work for you and many times they offer the path of least resistance.  Just be aware.

Now I want you to challenge yourself to make a few different choices every day.  Try something new on for size.  Take a different route to work or try a new workout.  Don’t eat the same thing you always do for lunch, try something different.  Go for a new sexual position with your partner and see what happens.  Maybe something good will, maybe it won’t.  It’s within your power to make a choice to go for something new.  These are all small choices to do something different you can try and there are hundreds of others you can try throughout the normal routine of your everyday life.  Speaking of which, since it’s so nice outside on this love fall Sunday I’m going to air up my bike tires and go for a spin after I finish writing this.  Something different – and I want to be outside.

Be Your Own CEO

Once you become aware of the choices you make everyday and start to change a few things here and there you’ve gotten a good base down.  At this point you can take it to a bigger level if you aren’t happy with something.  Like learning a new skill to go for a new job.  Or changing things around so you can really invest your time and energy into getting into shape.  Or making some new friends so you can dump the negative ones you have now.  Or working a 2nd job so you can buy yourself that vehicle you’ve had your eye on and been talking about for the last 5 years.  Or figure out exactly how much you need to go on the trip you’ve always dreamed about.  And then figure out how to save the money to do it.  You are the CEO of your own life.  Nobody is going to rescue you – you must rescue yourself.  So make some different CHOICES and go get it.

All my best,

Mat A.