Are you living up to your full potential? I know that I don’t think that I am. It’s a constant struggle. I always feel that there is more to do than I can possibly get done and never quite feel like I’m doing everything that I must do.
You see there is something that is holding me back. And I think that it’s holding you back too. Know what it is?
Did you see the movie City Slickers (from way back in 1991!)? It’s a cheesy comedy, but it has one line in it that has an honest, simple truth.
Fed up with the antics of the “city slickers”, the crusty old cowboy looks at one of them and asks,
“Do you know what the secret of life is?”
He then holds up one finger and says,
“This.
One thing.
Just one thing.
You stick to that and the rest don’t mean $*!+”
“But what is the ‘one thing’?” the confused city slicker asks him.
“That’s what you have to find out.”
The message is that we need to know what is really, truly important to us and then pursue it relentlessly and not let anything get in our way, if our lives are to have meaning. It is when we haven’t figured out that “one thing” or when we forget about it in the midst of our daily busyness that we fall down. And that’s the one thing that keeps holding us back.
I see this play out in my life every day. When I am focused on my true goals and objectives, it is amazing what I can accomplish. But when I get hung up on all of the “to do’s” and emails, I can go an entire day without doing anything of worth.
But I think that there is one other aspect to this.
Sometimes, I think that we don’t have that “one thing” really figured out because we haven’t dared to be bold enough. To allow ourselves to truly dream and imagine the vastness of the possibilities. Until we do that, we will simply not be powerful enough on the inside to fight off the constant onslaught of the meaningless. It all starts with believing in yourself and in your own power to change the world. You have to be able to fight off the cynicism and believe that things really can be different and better, despite all evidence to the contrary.
I have two favorite quotes that speak to this ethos. I’ll save one for the next post, but for this one I’d like to leave you with a quote from a movie called Second Hand Lions. It is an amazing movie, if you haven’t seen it. There is a scene where one of the main characters gives part of a speech to his young nephew that he calls, “Everything a Boy Needs To Know About Becoming A Man.” I’m just going to quote it for you here. I hope that you get something from it.
Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this: that love… true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in.
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Tag/s:Personal Development
