Writer’s Note: I had a thought about when I started blogging wondering and stressing about if I had enough in me to keep blogging at 5-7 days per week. The issue isn’t if I can write, it’s what do I want to write about. If all else fails, just write about what is on the top of your mind any given day and if you are running with your passion, always seeking ways to improve your craft, you are always going to have a bunch of stuff to write about.
Okay, let’s saddle up on our horses and let’s get on this trail…
You ever get up for morning meditation or prayer and when you try to clear your mind, you have this, sometimes arbitrary song going through your head? Today it was Taylor Swift singing “You belong with me.” … Don’t ask me, I don’t know, maybe that’s some weird mantra for recruiting. (LOL).
Yesterday, I was feeling really good, and I still feel good about life, and when you do, take note of the people who are helping you and have helped you get to where you are.
A younger version of myself, STS1/SS(DV) Challen Yee
U.S. Navy Submariner
THE IMPORTANCE OF TEAM (and FRIENDS)
Whatever profession you are in or stage of life you find yourself on a plateau of uncertain length, or worse, if you find yourself sliding on a slippery slope, it is important to get mentors and coaches, people who can help lead the way or kick your rear when you get in your own way.
It’s also part of the personal development rule that you become the average of the 5-10 people (I can’t remember off hand the most cited number) who you bring into your circle to allow their influence to touch your life on a regular basis.
Why do you think the US Submarine Force operates at a high level of efficiency and effectiveness? It is a group of volunteers who are motivated, doing their jobs by choice, and when you are surrounded by a caliber of people who have a higher mindset for success and achievement, guess what? That is only going to help perpetuate your own sense of purpose and desire to achieve.
I’m not going to tell you that there are never any problems, there are, that is what you get when you put humans together especially on an underwater patrol for months.
The point is, if you are not in a military setting, you most likely are going to need to create your own team of high calibre people to guide you, train, coach and encourage you, along with your own efforts of self-education and development. Life is not going to hand it to you on its own. It takes effort, it takes seeking.
Your military experience, if you are a veteran, helped provide you a model, an extremely valuable model, of how groups can achieve. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be kicking metal garbage cans across the barrack’s floor waking your compadres up in the morning and making sure their skivvies are wounded up tight in their bunk drawer, but I think you get what I mean.
Wow. Writing this blogpost on the fly went in an entirely different direction that I expected, but that is part of the fun and spontaneity of writing on an almost daily basis.
Ray Higdon. image source : RayHigdon.com
GRATITUDE
I want to show some gratitude to two of my coaches in the business field, Ray Higdon and Russ Whitney. In the MLM field, Ray Higdon is a master at teaching in a way that is effective, without beating around the bushes. Something you appreciate when you’ve got to get a job done. Through Ray I was recently introduced to Russ Whitney, who has been able to make a solid connection between our spiritual selves and our practical desire for economic freedom. The point being, there’s no way I would have been getting to know these two achievers if I was waiting for life to come to me. You’ve got to go for it and find who you will who can be part of that TEAM you need to be part of.
SEALS, those awesome pipe swinging dudes, have the practical TEAM concept embedded in their psyche, so why shouldn’t it work for you?
Russ Whitney. Image source: InnerVoice.com
I am certain that if I had known people like these men at any stage of my efforts to start my own business, even going back to when I tried to take over my father’s electric car business, or when I got hung up between wanting to become a Navy Chaplain or an Acupuncturist trying to get a practice off the ground, things would have turned out much differently with the impact of their practical philosophy and experience.
Nevertheless, DO NOT REGRET DIFFICULTIES IN YOUR PAST, let it be a school, not something to beat your head with. That’s part of your unique stamp that will drive (knowingly or unknowingly) your current desire to improve your life, if that is what you want.
An incredible teacher and mentor, “America’s Foremost Business Philosopher” Mr. Jim Rohn
And I won’t forget the man who was able to make a connection with me through his audio tapes and books who got me onto the personal development track, the late Mr. Jim Rohn. When I found myself lost in the cubicle from hell, Jim came to the rescue.
Stephen Mansfield, Photo by Isaac Darnall – Image Source en.wikipedia.org
VALUE IN SUFFERING
At the risk of breaking all practical laws of writing short posts for the attention-challenged, I have this non-Twitterized post for people who can handle more that 140 characters in one passage. I want to close this with a thought from Stephen Mansfield, who has become another coach whom I have only read, from his “Book for Manly Men”. I am getting closer to finishing it! (I read lot of books in parallel).
Last night I read his chapter on “Suffering.” Man, what a powerful piece of writing. Just let me hook you up with this introduction that helps address our possible preoccupation with needing to be perfect and how that may keep us from moving forwards.
Mansfield writes:
Gentlemen, LET ME FREE YOU FROM A BURDEN, THE BURDEN of the history you think you know.
We have all been done a great disservice. We have been taught what I call the statue version of history. By this I mean that we have been taught a version of history that presents the heroes of the past as moral giants who fell flawless from the womb, who achieved fame almost effortlessly. It hasn’t served us well.
No one meant to do damage. Our history teachers probably thought they were simply honoring the great men and women of our past. Yet most of them gave us statues rather than human beings, unscarred giants who achieved and conquered as though there was never any question of their destiny.
It isn’t so. Hear me. It is a lie.
The great heroes of the past you’ve grown to admire were all pitiful human beings whom we remember only because they declared war on some part of their pitifulness. If we don’t know this, we are left to believe that some people are destined to be great but most of us aren’t, and those of us who aren’t should just settle down to our duties and shelve whatever dreams make our hearts race.
I’ll say it again. It’s a lie.
(END QUOTE)
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I’ll see you… on the next page
Challen Yee