Success

Become the Exception

/ Tim / 2 Comments

My next birthday I will turn 60. Hard to believe that I came into this world so long ago, though apparently, I didn’t want to: I was a breech birth (sorry Mom). Soon I’ll be eligible to collect a pension and receive all sorts of discounts.  So I am supposed to be winding down my life and live comfortably in retirement. Only, that’s not what I want to do.  I want to be one of the ‘exceptions’ that comes into my own as I enter my golden years.  Fair warning, I am not planning on slowly fading out of this life by preparing for the next!

I have been doing a lot of reassessment of my life and where I want it to go.  What do I like? What do I see myself doing? Where do I see myself doing it? The type of questions that I answered back 40 years ago when it was suggested that I would make a great teacher (I spent many years involved one way or another with education) or mortician (oh yeah…like that was really going to happen!) I just want to know where I want to go in the next chapter of my life.

I have never been known to follow the regular path. I have been an exception to the rule.  As a teen, I complained that my younger brother didn’t have as many responsibilities as I did when I was his age. My father would look down at me and tell me it was because I was an ‘exceptional child’.  I really didn’t appreciate his response then, but I guess I was. Throughout life I gravitated to various positions, not really having a full-time career since I left teaching elementary school at 28. Lots of contract work, freelance, seasonal business and now settled in the south as a landlord and B&B owner in a country where I had to learn a new language and culture.

What I have been discovering in the past few weeks of investigation is that I can choose to be an exception to the rule. I can forge ahead and create new pathways for myself rather than follow well trod path of others of retirement age. Recovery had taught me that if I want to fulfill my dreams, then I had better work for them and not expect them to arrive at my door. I have some longevity in the family and I don’t want to spend the next 30 to 40 years twiddling my thumbs waiting for the grim reaper. I want to be the exception.

I am working on the next phase. I am working on my writing. I will continue to question and seek new answers because that’s what an exception does. I want to be the guy that the devil worries about when I awaken in the morning and I want to die sliding into home plate in a well used body. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t happen if I’m sitting in a rocking chair watching Netflix all day long.

There are exceptions to every rule in life. Some kids make it out of the ghetto. Some horses with lousy odds win the race. Some ‘seniors’ begin a new career late in life.

Dare to try. Change beliefs. Step out of the comfort zone. Be the exception because, as far as I know, this is the only life we get; I intend to really live it.

Where will your road take you?

Success from Failure

/ Tim / 4 Comments

It’s not our successes that matter. Rather it’s our failures: here is where we grow.

I don’t remember where I heard this first or who said it, but it hit a chord with me. Fear of failure often stops me from embarking on projects or setting goals because, well, I might fail. However, it is in the act of recovering from failure that I learn and grow. I see that walking the smooth path to get to a destination is all well and good. I can check out the sites along the way. And it’s all nice and good when I arrive at my destination, but I haven’t learned anything.

I’ve aged, but I haven’t grown.

Ask yourself the question: which vacation do you talk about the most? Is it the one where everything went completely as planned or the one where everything went wrong? It’s the unplanned events that happen in a vacation that make it memorable: the trip to the local emergency ward, the flat tire in the middle of a river, even the visit to the police station to report a robbery. It’s the out of the ordinary things, the unpredictable, the ‘failures’ that give us the stories of our lives.

In failing, I learn. By falling I learn how to get back up again. By being road blocked, I seek another way around. This is where the growth happens. By learning what doesn’t work I am one step closer to learning what does work. And once I have learned what does work, I don’t have to repeat the lesson the next time I am passing through a similar situation. I can learn from my missteps and mistakes. I am a different person from when I started out.

It’s still a struggle for me. I don’t want to fail. I don’t like to fail. Sometimes I don’t even attempt things because I fear I might fail. That’s the perfectionist in me coming out. So I push myself to try new things, to go new places and meet new people. I am not satisfied in maintaining the status quo: I want to move forward. And part of that includes trying things that don’t or won’t work.  So I am working on changing my perception of failure, one day at a time, one step at a time.

Actor Will Smith gives us his take on Failure in the following video: Fail Forward

 

Creativity and Inspiration

/ Tim / 1 Comment

Creativity is not something you wait for. It is something that waits for you. You must decide to be creative, not wait to be. You must challenge yourself. Pick up the brush. Grab hold of the camera. Turn on the computer. Start cooking the meal. Get to the workplace early. Propose the solution. Advance the idea. Become the answer…be the inspiration...Neale Donald Walsch

 

I’ve been writing here for more than a year and a half and I’m often asked where I get my ideas for the blog articles I write. At first it was difficult. Like everything new it was outside my comfort zone and I was a bit nervous about the results. Would there be enough material to write about?

Today I see the ideas everywhere. A year and a half ago I made a decision to write two articles a week and since then I have noticed that the process of finding inspiration gets easier as I write more articles. I find topics because my mind is more attuned to pick out what might be the inspiration for an article. It’s not that I am any brighter or gifted or creative than others. It’s because this is what I pursue.

Writing has become a very important part of my life, along with working to discover more about spirituality and myself. The two go hand in hand. I also belong to a local writers’ group and research writing. If I wish to be a writer, I have to write.

Every one of us has desires and talents that we don’t explore. We tell ourselves that we won’t be good enough or that is just a silly dream. I know, because that’s what kept me away from writing for many years although I was always drawn to it.

If you want to be a painter, then paint. If you want to drive a motorcycle then learn how to drive a motorcycle. You will never skydive from your living room sofa. Nor will you build that cabin in the woods by watching YouTube videos.

If I want to change my life, be creative, learn to enjoy life more, then I have to start ‘doing’. A painter gets better at his art by painting. A driver improves his skills by driving I can’t think about stuff alone; I must get up off of my duff and do. Only then can I put into practice and improve, becoming my ‘answer’, my own inspiration.