What Have You Got To Lose?

It’s an important consideration, especially if you’re risk-averse: 

What do I stand to lose if I make this or that choice or commitment?

The "Catch 22" conundrum is, if you’re totally risk-averse, you risk losing everything by not wanting to lose ANY thing. 

Life –if it’s anything at all – is a risk.  Worse, in large part, it’s a losing proposition.  You can’t have it all – at least not all at once – and you have to give up both good and not-so-good to get GREAT (adapted from Glen Campbell.)

So let’s define the question more specifically: 

What have you got to lose by risking everything you’ve got

to achieve your highest Destiny –

and to get what you really deserve?

Examples of things you might have to give up for a Greater Good include:

·         Television sit-coms, soap operas, reality shows and late night variety shows

·         Web surfing, tweeting and twittering

·         Excess sugar, fat and salt

·         Excess everything else

·         Mindless connections to significant and insignificant others

·         Getting “passed over” for promotions

·         Pettiness

·         Gossip

·         “Free Time”

·         Drug dependencies

·         Artificial crutches

·         Insouciance

·         Cultural dogma/drama/indoctrination

·         Outsized ego

·         Lame excuses and explanations

·         Unrealistic expectations

·         Unfounded assumptions

·         Mediocrity

·         Abject failure

·         Regret/Remorse

·         Lack of accolades

·         Feeling “wasted”

·         Feeling guilty

·         Feeling unworthy

·         Feeling “cheated”

·         Bad Luck

It’s also important to point out that stress, anxiety and frustration – while not necessarily becoming less intense – will become more self-generated than externally imposed, and will, thus, become more controllable / more manageable and more focused toward productivity than toward destructivity. 

Summation: Lose the chains of pandering underachievement and overindulgence in mediocrity: Start shedding the non-necessaries and frank hindrances and start claiming some well-deserved victories!  Quartermaster

Somebody Do Something!

In my diverse wanderings about the world, I experience variable angst about “the way things are”.  And, when things aren’t the way they should be, I catch myself thinking “Somebody should do something about THAT!”  (Quite inauspiciously, at this very moment, I have a dripping water tap in the bathroom which needs fixing.  Grumph-frumph-frumph!  Somebody really does need to do something about that!) 

Then, without missing a beat, a still, small voice inside me says, “If YOU’RE somebody – and if you’re anybody of any account – YOU do it!”   

Of course, if you’re nobody,

you don’t sweat the small stuff!

In my previous real-life, work-a-day role in administration, I would frequently encounter disorderliness in anything from a refrigerator (salvaged from the loading dock) that needed defrosting – or decontaminating … to dust bunnies in stairwells … to errant trash in the hallways or surrounding grounds … to a piano out of tune ... to phones that needed to be answered … to a jammed copier … etc.  But we were a “skeleton crew” at the mercy of support services that had many other priorities and significant delays in response.  So if it needed to be done NOW, guess who got “fingered”?  [NOTE: Most of this stuff could be sandwiched between comings and goings with very little extra time or effort involved. (The refrigerator stuff I did on Saturdays or Sundays while catching up on more mainstream essentials).  And simply doing it and having it DONE kept all of us from tripping over it … i.e., from thinking “Somebody should DO something about that!”]  I once went ballistic with a security guard/parking attendant posted at the front traffic circle of our main building, who was blithely asleep-on-his-feet without regard to accumulating wind-blown refuse from a nearby waste receptacle.  I thought I could provide a positive example, or perhaps even “shame” him into action, by picking it up myself. It turned out to be a wasted thought; he was somebody who wouldn’t be caught dead stooping to such a level!     

I’m guessing that part of my sense-of-duty and angst about small things awry is about ownership.  I don’t relish being part of anything that isn’t all it can or should be.  I don’t deny that some of the angst could be an OCD aberration.  But part of it is also about fighting attrition – feeling compelled to resist anything suggestive of the world “going to Hell in a hand basket”.  Whatever the driving force, a sense of “doneness” is wonderfully therapeutic.

Gotta go fix a water drip.

There is much to be done in the world to make it all it can and should be.  When you’re caught thinking “Somebody should do something about that!”, you’re IT.  Either call in the troops for help or stoop to it, DO it and move on.   Be somebody – and DO something!  Quartermaster

Decide -Or Else!

An annotated excerpt from Expect to Win by John Mason *

After his first audition, a casting director told actor Sidney Poitier, "Why don't you stop wasting people's time and go out and become a dishwasher or something?" It was at that moment, recalls Poitier, that he decided to devote his life to acting. He wasn't going to let someone else decide his life path. "There's nothing in the middle of the road, but yellow stripes and dead armadillo," says Jim Hightower. Decide to do something now to make your life better. The choice is yours. "My decision is maybe—and that's final." Is this you? Being decisive is essential for a successful life. If you deny yourself commitment, what will you do with your life? Every accomplishment, great or small, starts with a decision. David Ambrose remarked, "If you have the will to win, you have achieved half your success; if you don't, you have achieved half your failure." The moment you definitely commit yourself, change begins. All sorts of things happen to help you that never would have otherwise occurred. Kenneth Blanchard observed, "There is a difference between interests and commitment. When you are interested in doing something, you only do it when it is convenient. When you are committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results." Lack of decisiveness has caused more failures than lack of intelligence or ability. Indecision often gives an advantage to the other person because they did their thinking beforehand. Helen Keller said, "Science may have found a cure for most evil; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all—the apathy of human beings." Don't leave a decision for tomorrow that needs to be made today. Remember, don't be a "middle-of-the-roader" because the middle of the road is the worst place to try to go forward. You can do everything you ought to do once you make a decision. Today, decide on moving your dream forward.

Quartermaster’s Perspective:  The world is continuously moving on – in its own way, on its own course and according to its own terms … with or without our participation.  If we want to participate – and if we want any of OUR terms included, we’ve got to get on track and consciously commit to making something positive happen.  If we don’t decide, circumstances or others affected may do the deciding for us.  And the decisions others make on our behalf – particularly without our personal consent, commitment and impassioned determination – will almost certainly yield a poor outcome.  You be the “Decider”.                    

*SOURCE: Simple Truths, LLC, 1952 McDowell Rd Ste 300, Naperville, IL 60563