Jolt! (5 page)

And that's exactly where you need to be. As long as there's a way out, a second chance, or another alternative, you'll never be committed enough to change. You have to face the fact that circumstances won't change until
you
change. Family members won't change until you change. Your job won't change until you change. And your future will never change until you make the decision to change.

Embrace the wall. Let it help you focus your mind and face the real truth about your situation.

But how do you face the truth? Sometimes, the key lies in your past.

» JOLT #3
THE REAL TRUTH
ABOUT CHANGE
Letting Go of Your Past

Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past. It loses the future.
—KATHLEN NORRIS, WRITER

Keeping score of old scores and scars, getting even and one-upping, always make you less than you are.
—MALCOLM FORBES, PUBLISHER,
FORBES

T
he third step toward jolting your life is to face the truth and let go of your past. Significant numbers of people never change their lives because they just can't let go of history. Some can't forgive people who abused them, cheated on them, lied to them, fired them, or more. Perhaps you suffered from childhood abuse and can't bring yourself to forgive and let it go. Perhaps you were cheated financially or experienced business failure and refuse to get past the experience. Perhaps you discovered something as an adult about your parents or spouse that has changed your perspective of your family.

Perhaps it's not being cheated or abused by others; it could be your own personal failures. I recently spoke to a large business gathering in Los Angeles, composed of leaders from a wide range of companies. During my talk the audience wrote questions on index cards for me to answer at the end of the event. The single most asked question was:
How can I overcome a failure from my past and be successful again?

That seminar taught me just how many people live under the bondage of past failure.

Whatever your particular experience, you can't feed it, ignore it, or deny it. You have to forgive and let it go. Ultimately, when you refuse to forgive— for any reason—it only hurts you. Someone said that not being able to forgive is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die. I've had things stolen from me, money cheated from our company, lies told about me, and more, but it didn't take much to realize the longer I focused on it, the more bitter I became.

» IN THE DIGITAL AGE, YOU CAN'T HIDE FAILURE.

Google isn't just about
search
, it's about reputation management. The river of information that flows online is a tsunami, and whatever failure you've experienced in your past will show up in a Google search. So get used to it. Today we need to embrace our pasts and live more transparent lives than ever. Even more important,
we need to stop looking in the rearview mirror and instead concentrate on the road ahead
.

I know one pastor who early in his career was forced out of a church because a leading church member felt the pastor had slighted him. It was an insignificant and completely innocent act on the part of the pastor, but the petty church member was enraged and used his influence in the church to have the board eventually dismiss the pastor. It was wrong, but the pastor was booted out of a church he had invested years into and had built from obscurity to being one of the leading churches in the city.

It was a difficult and embarrassing time for the young pastor, so much so that he could not bring himself to forgive that church member or the church board. Everywhere he went he talked about how he had been cheated. He brought it up at family gatherings, business meetings, and other events. After a while, people got tired of hearing about it. It was consuming the pastor's life. He pastored other churches, but they soon tired of his unrelenting stories of how the previous church had cheated him and tried to destroy his ministry. Before long, churches stopped interviewing him because he simply would not let up. Bitterness controlled every aspect of his life.

Eventually he retired, never having accomplished his potential in the pulpit. His ministry was crippled, and his life came to very little because he refused to forgive. In essence, the pastor had not only been cheated by that church member years before, but worse, had allowed the church member's act—however wrong—to control the rest of his life.

Which is worse? Suffering abuse at the hands of someone in the past or allowing that incident to destroy the rest of your life?

In order to move forward, you have to let go and be at peace with your past.

Some think it's holding on that makes one strong; sometimes it's letting go.
—SYLVIA ROBINSON, VOCALIST

Is it hard? Of course it is. It may be one of the most difficult things you'll have to do in your life.

At the
Apollo One
monument at Cape Canaveral, Florida, there's an inscription that reads:
Ad astra per aspera
. Translated, it means: “A rough road leads to the stars.”

Sometimes I think reaching the moon is a piece of cake compared to the difficulty some people have with change.

THE FOUR KEYS TO MOVING ON

In my experience, there are four important keys to getting past your hurt, brokenness, and failure and moving forward. Throughout the book we'll discuss each in detail.

Key #1: Realize the benefit.

Once you face what happened and acknowledge the damage it's cost your life, you have to
realize the incredible benefit of forgiving the offender(s) and moving on with your life
. Letting it go and looking forward will allow you to focus on the future and begin making positive changes in your life.

Key #2: Learn to live with ambiguity.

There are no easy answers. If there were, life would be great, we'd never face any challenges, and the future would be rosy. To change means to face things we've never seen, visit places we've never visited, and encounter the unknown. It means a spiritual quest as much as an intellectual one.

But most people prefer easy answers. Just visit a typical bookstore and check out the self-help section. The shelves are filled with titles that feature easy steps to financial achievement, trouble-free keys to success, and simple strategies for health, wellness, and fulfillment in life. Most business and even religious books aren't much different.

But life is hard. And somewhere deep inside, you know that all those simplistic approaches to life just don't work—especially for the long haul.

» SUCCESS IN LIFE IS MORE ABOUT ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS AND MAKING THE TOUGH JOURNEY.

Don't feel that just because life is difficult, you're not on the right path. An old Southern preacher said, “If you don't come face-to-face with the devil sometimes, then you must be going the same direction he is.”

Key #3: Expect to lose some friends.

The moment your life starts to change, someone—somewhere—won't like it. Chances are, some of your closest friends are people who will never change and don't like people who do. Your decision to change doesn't mean others around you will do the same. But you have to be committed to growing, expanding your knowledge and experience, and moving to the next level in life. I've discovered that when some of your friends decide against making the journey, you'll be more than compensated by others you'll meet along the way—people who have the same interests and goals and who want to make a difference.

» LOVE YOUR FRIENDS AND RESPECT THEM, BUT NEVER ABANDON YOUR DREAMS BECAUSE YOUR FRIENDS LACK THE VISION TO JOIN YOU.

Key #4: Start with a clean slate when it comes to “how.”

Forget how you've done things in the past and open yourself up to new possibilities and ideas. It's amazing, but I still encounter the well-worn phrase “But we've always done it this way.” So many people are locked into old ways of thinking, tired methods, and useless techniques that it's almost impossible to get them to see the possibilities of the new.

I'm often brought into an organization facing serious challenges, only to be limited by their frustrating desire to continue old ways of thinking. The truth is, if the old way of thinking worked, why would they need me? And yet they persist in doing the same thing(s) in the same way(s) but wanting different results.

It's ultimately about insecurity, and I could write an entire book on that issue alone. I've discovered that when faced with the possibility of change or a new way of doing things, people react in two different ways.
Secure
people react with excitement and anticipation. But
insecure
people react with fear and hesitation. Insecure people are the ones who drag their feet, “forget” to do things they've been asked to do, subvert meetings, and figure out a million other ways to sabotage the process.

Perhaps you were told that you'd never make it, you don't have what it takes, or you'd never amount to anything. Whoever told you that had no idea of all your capabilities, because no one can know the full potential or the full range of possibilities in another human being, and no one can tell for certain where your limits are or how far you can reach.

You may believe in God or be an atheist or an agnostic. But I believe that you were born for a purpose. You were not a cosmic accident, and your life has not been a mistake. I believe that each of us has a purpose that only we can accomplish and a promise that each of us was born to fulfill.

Turbulence is life force. It is opportunity. Let's love turbulence and use it for change.
—RAMSEY CLARK, FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL

As you read this book, take control of your own story and stop letting fear control your life. You are not the result of random chance. You are here for a purpose, and you'll never experience real change until you discover it. Now it's time to start exploring that purpose and move to a new level of confidence.

» JOLT #4
START AT THE FINISH LINE
Knowing Your Dream and Destination

A sailor without a destination cannot hope for a favorable wind.
—LEON TEC, MD

S
hortly after college, I led a team deep into the headwaters of the Amazon River to film the work of a medical team in a remote village deep in the rain forests of Brazil. I discovered that getting there wasn't easy or safe—in fact, the greatest challenge was finding out just where “there” was.

We flew commercially about halfway up the Amazon River and then chartered a small private plane. I'll never forget sitting on a beat-up oil drum in the back of the plane, which about midflight I discovered was filled with the fuel for the return trip! Between the weight of that fuel drum, our camera equipment, and the crew of four people, the small plane could barely take off. As we finally lifted off the ground, our right wheel clipped a tall tree at the end of the airstrip, and we all gave a huge sigh of relief as the plane veered upward toward the clouds.

It was an exhilarating trip following the Amazon River from the air, and after a few hours, we landed at a remote dirt airstrip in the jungle. We then boarded an old river freighter for another long day traveling even deeper into the rain forest. When the freighter could no longer navigate the narrow waterways near the source of the river, we loaded the film equipment onto small canoes and paddled for a day.

We finally arrived at our destination. The four of us had arrived at a place for which there were few maps, and what maps existed had little detail, markers, or points of reference.

And yet we made it.

We made it because I understood our destination. I didn't completely know how to get there, and our methods of transportation were unpredictable, plus once we started we had no outside communications. We didn't have many resources or much money. But we knew where we were going, and we understood when we arrived.

» YOU CAN OVERCOME MANY OBSTACLES, AS LONG AS YOU KNOW YOUR DESTINATION.

Having that singular goal made all the difference. The relationship of change to a specific destination is critical to understand.

We all had goals in our lives when we were children. But life has a way of distracting us from our early dreams, and few of us could actually say we've become what we dreamed as children. In my case, that's probably a good thing. Some research indicates that something significant happens to most people between the ages of five and seven. For some reason, creativity starts to drop at amazing speed. We start to believe that we aren't really that creative, and I believe that, as a result, our dreams and goals begin to die as well. It's interesting that right in the middle of that five-to-seven age range is one major life event—starting school. Is the switch from childhood “free-range” living and learning to one of disciplined, often rote learning responsible? I don't know. There are certainly convincing arguments on both sides of the issue. But it does tell me that, as parents, we certainly need to reinforce, encourage, and celebrate our children's creativity during those critical years.

But what's worse than giving up childhood dreams is that most adults lose the ability to dream at all. Somehow we believe the adult thing to do is to be grounded in reality, forget our daydreams, and settle for the hard realities of life.

There's no question that life can be hard. We all have mouths to feed, families to take care of, and house payments. But reality is a poor substitute for the ability to dream about the possibilities life has to offer and, even better, to actually experience the benefit of those dreams.

Goals in writing are dreams with deadlines.
—BRIAN TRACY, PERSONAL SUCCESS COACH

Whenever I feel my dreams losing steam, I always think of Booker T. Washington. Because he was born a slave, his childhood years were anything but pleasant. The family's farm cabin had no glass windows, and any opening to let in light also let in the freezing wind in the winter. The floor of the cabin was dirt. The life of a slave was backbreaking work that started before the sun came up and continued long after it went down again. Washington's childhood was also lived out during the Civil War, which created turmoil, fear, and uncertainty in the lives of Southern slaves and added additional pressure to an already hopeless state of affairs.