Ambition
March 22, 2011 by Chris Oldcorn
Filed under •-Headline, Personal Growth, Purpose
Our world is filled with ambitious people. Ambition to be the best at whatever we feel is our calling is in this life. People are even ambitious about their hobbies and sports they participate in. Pete Wilson (Pastor of Cross Point Church in Nashville) uses the following CS Lewis quote on ambition in his blog post today:
Ambition! We must be careful what we mean by it. If it means the desire to get ahead of other people…then it is bad. If it means simply wanting to do a thing well, then it is good. It isn’t wrong for an actor to want to act his part as well as it can possibly be acted, but the wish to have his name in bigger type than the other actors is a bad one…What we call “ambition” usually means the wish to be more conspicuous or more successful than someone else. It is this competitive element in it that is bad. It is perfectly reasonable to want to dance well or to look nice. But when the dominant wish is to dance better or look nicer than others – when you begin to feel that if the others danced as well as you or looked as nice as you, that it would take all the fun out of it – then you are going wrong.
It is interesting how our entire culture is obsessed with being the best. Being good at something is not enough. We need to be #1. Second is the first loser and that is not acceptable to most people. Our kids are pressured to get good grades from Kindergarten. What is actually accomplished by putting pressure on your kids to get good grades in Kindergarten? When they apply to go to college, no one looks at their Kindergarten grades.
CS Lewis lived in the early 1900s but his quote is as real today as it was when he wrote it. Human beings have always been interested in competing. The Olympics are one example of a long-standing competitive event.
Do you feel the need to be the best or just the best you can be?
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
Label Maker
March 14, 2011 by Chris Oldcorn
Filed under •-Headline, Personal Growth
Don’t accept the labels people place on you. We live in a world that labels us from the time we are born. Why do we feel the need to label and categorize each other? Is life just easier if we can put each other in boxes instead of truly connecting? The million-dollar question is how do we escape our labels?
First, we are a cute little baby who uses smiles to get what we want from our caregivers. Second, we hit the terrible twos and become a house wrecker. Third, we hit school and have to become a great student until our mid-twenties when we hit our working years. Our job defines us until we retire. One of the first questions people ask is “what do you do for a living?” If we answer a professional career such as a doctor or teacher, we receive instant regard. If we answer a lawyer watch the room empty out.
So, what is the solution? Allowing people to label us is fine but we don’t have to accept every label as being truth. If someone says you are a kind person and you feel that you are a kind person, accept the label. If someone says you are an evil person, ignore it. The evil person is probably the person accusing you.
Recently, a minister who put words into my mouth because I refused to answer his questions attacked me online. He was misinformed about my beliefs and accused me of various “heresies.” I ignored him, which only fuelled his fire to attack me even more relentlessly for weeks (as anyone on my Facebook Public Figure page knows from his 20+ postings a day). He demanded that I answer his questions as if he got to play God. The safest place to attack someone is the anonymous Internet world where people can hide behind usernames as they post to blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and other online communities. I learned years ago when my writing first started to hit the Internet, ignore the naysayers as they are usually just jealous of others successes because they aren’t living to their full potential. I hope that over time I have inspired them to do whatever they are meant to do on this planet instead of attacking me.
Only accept the labels that connect to who you are as an exceptional human being. Keep you head up and have a great week!
Expectations Part 2 – Efficiency Expectations
December 25, 2010 by Chris Oldcorn
Filed under •-Headline, Personal Growth, Spirituality
“Envisioning the end is enough to put the means in motion.”
Dorothea Brande
In part one of this article, we discussed Outcome Expectations. They were the “Thinking from the End” perspective. Now that we have our five goals from part one, we can look at Efficiency Expectations that are the “Thinking about the Process” perspective. If you have not finished the exercise from part one, here is a link to go back and do it (http://vividlife.me/ultimate/6156/expectations-part-1-outcomes/). It will help you get the most out of part two but is not necessary to understanding part two.
Efficiency Expectations make us look at how we are going to accomplish a goal. This is the ABC’s of how we plan to get to our Outcome Expectations (our goals). The way we think about our Efficiency Expectations influences our Outcome Expectations. Literally, by changing our thought patterns we are capable of attracting into our lives the process and goals we want to manifest. The change from “I can’t” thoughts to “I can” thoughts makes all the difference. By paying attention to what you say, you can control what you think. A thought happens before you say it. If you can control what you say, you can control the thoughts that create the ideas you will talk about. This is a big step into creating the future that you want to live. Every time you speak a thought, you are painting the canvas of your future.
There are several roadblocks that we may have on the path to our goals. There are motivational deficits, which are a lack of desire to create the circumstances to attract your goals into your life. If all you say is that you “want” something. You will always want it but never achieve it. The mind needs to attract the situation, person, or item into your life. Merely wanting something is not enough to attract it. There are learning deficits, which are self-defeating learned behaviors. An example of this is Learned Helplessness, which weakens the immune system and shortens life expectancy. If you throw up your hands and give up trying to change a situation, you are suffering from Learned Helplessness. You feel as if there is no hope of escaping your situation. There was a recent AIDs study that examined the thought patterns of patients with full blown AIDs. The optimists lived longer and more fruitful lives than the AIDs patients with a pessimistic attitude. All of the participants in that study could have given up and accepted their “perceived” death sentence. But, some of them chose not to even though the prevailing medical position about AIDs is an inescapable death sentence and a shortened life expectancy. Attracting what you desire can only happen if you change the behavioral patterns in your mind.
Action Exercise:
Write out all the steps that are necessary for you to accomplish one of your goals. Look at the list to see if you have overlooked any of the required steps. Immediately, do the first step. The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. Try and let me know how it works.
Expectations Part 1 – Outcomes
July 6, 2010 by Chris Oldcorn
Filed under •-Feature, Personal Growth, Spirituality
We live in a world of expectations. We are expected to be good parents, sons, daughters, grandparents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and others that I have probably missed. But, what about our expectations for our own lives? What do we expect to accomplish with our lives outside of others expectations?
Parents seem to be doing more doing for their kids instead of being with them. This isn’t a cheat shot at parents. Parenting is a challenging and vacation-less pursuit that lasts at least 18 years. Sometimes, all your kids need is 10 minutes of your time and not money for the latest video game. Instead of your kids thinking that Blackberry’s are phones, let them know that they are also a fruit that has been around since before TV (back in the “Electronic” Dark Ages). Why not take them to a berry farm and pick blackberries as a family?
It is time to consider the expectations for your life. There are two types of expectations. First, there are outcome expectations which are “Thinking from the End.” Second, there are efficiency expectations which are “Thinking about the Process.”
Outcome expectations are what goals to we want to accomplish in this life. What are the “Ends” that you want? Do you want inner peace? What about a satisfying romantic relationship? How about good friends? When we start to think about all of what we want from life it can become a daunting task that seems never-ending or impossible. Especially, when many of our life goals overlap. Don’t we want our romantic partner to also be a best friend?
I would make a list of what you want in your obituary. Kinda morbid but a great starting point. Ok, really morbid but life isn’t all roses until you expect that it is. Patanjali said, “There is nothing wrong in my world.” I would suggest that you write Patanjali’s statement and carry it with you. It will really help you. Stop reading this article and make the list. Once you have the list, review it. What will you need to do to have that obituary? Narrow it down to the 5 most important goals. This is the starting point of the second part of expectations which is efficiency expectations that is in my next column.
Life Exams
June 16, 2010 by Chris Oldcorn
Filed under •-Feature, Personal Growth, Spirituality
Do you ever wonder why life keeps making you repeat the same circumstances over and over again?
Maybe the God/Source/Universe wants you to learn from the mistakes and take a new direction for your life. It is possible that you are faced with the same situation over and over again because life wants you to learn something from it that will propel you to a new life dimension. We all fall down and not meet our personal standards all of the time. Our shortcomings can be our learning opportunities. We just have to be open to them. A closed mind doesn’t learn much, but an open mind is capable of anything.
An open mind is the catalyst for overcoming life’s exams. The only way to live your ultimate life is to be open to what life throws at you for you to catch. When we drop the ball, we fail. It is possible to fail forward and not backward. We might try to pass a certain life exam and fail but that doesn’t mean we can’t try again. For example, let’s say you don’t get along with one of your partner’s siblings. You can leave the strained relationship or you can try to create a healthy relationship. It might not happen with just the next visit but if you truly send out positive and loving thoughts towards them, over time they will come around. I have seen the sourest people become friends and even lovers. It is possible but without thinking about it and focusing on the process, it will not change. The mind is very powerful. There is no computer capable of the processing power of your three-pound brain. You will need to focus your mind on the process of getting to the end goal. If you focus on the process and don’t think about a desired outcome, the outcome might surprise you and be better than the outcome you wanted.
Action Exercise:
Pick a situation in your life that you seem to be repeating over and over again. Think about the process of repeating and find a way to change the process to reach a different outcome.
