Taking Responsibility For Your Life

A story is told by Zig Ziglar of how a certain village in the U.S had trouble with wild pigs.

The pigs had been a theirs and a few of them managed to escape and became wild over time. They ravaged their crops and were a constant menace. The only way to stop them was to go out there, hunt them down and ensure they killed every single one of them. So the village folk geared up for the trek but after a week or two they figured this was a futile exercise and told themselves they are to live with it, as the pigs had become sufficiently clever as to be impossible to catch. Just as they had lost heart, along came a queerly dressed man with a horse-drawn cart full of long wood planks. They wondered what this fellow was up to and he informed them he had heard of their predicament and was come as their solution. After a lengthy presentation on how he was going to catch the wild pigs, in which the village folk could not grasp he went up the mountains to do his job.

He came down a fortnight later. Informing them were he had all the hogs trapped in a certain place. Amazed and unbelieving, the village folk inquired as to how he did it. He told them of how the wild animal is protected by instinct in its quest for survival. He had, on the first day dug four holes to make a rectangular shape and put some grain right in the centre and went away. The pigs came along to check who and what the intruder to their domain was up to, and whoa! there was grain. They were suspicious and didn't even attempt to go for it. So the Queer man came again to continue his project, putting a pole in each hole, this day the pigs came a bit closer, still paranoid. The man, continuing plank after plank in building a pen, the hogs became more tolerant and to cut the long story short...one day they were all in the pen munching on the free food as he jumped to close the trap door and that was the end of it.

How could these seemingly witty animals be outfoxed by this guy? He knew that putting free food before the pigs over a period of time would let down their guard and make them dependent. They would resist the urge for a time, but it would dawn on them that the food was there, and it was good, and free for their taking...and having done so for a week or so they would stop to fear for their lives but be expectant of a free daily treat of grain found in the pen.

Our lives are so created that we have a charging force in us, that compels us towards the best we can be, to keep us from danger and such things as would destroy any such possibility of becoming what is within us to be. It is that sudden reminder of an important appointment, or the pain we feel when we fail in a certain respect, that small voice that makes us believe the impossible and pushes us into actions contrary to our will but turn out to be the best things we could have possibly done.

The story above relates of how the pigs lost their plot. They were drawn from their natural course by the strong enticing force of ...something for nothing. That power in them to know how to care of themselves was lulled by the availability of their need for no price. Their self-preservation mechanism was tripped down, leaving them susceptible to whatever came their way. They stopped acting of themselves but began to live on what another handed to them without heir input...and it was their point of ruin.

This is the fate the many of us, our brothers, sisters and kindred face. The lure of getting something for nothing. Such possibilities have detrimental effects on our lives and futures as they pull us away from our right of responsibility. They make us slavish, beggars unable to live for ourselves, no longer responsible for our lives and what they will become. The responsibility to live one's life is one of the noblest burdens we all carry. To be able to face our troubles, and make the most of our lives.
 
We receive our lives as seeds not fruit. We receive a piece of land to and by the power in us we make out of it castles, we do not receive wealth but Talents and Skill and by their perfection and exchange we build our wealth, we receive tests and by assailing them we create our testimonies. If we refuse to take responsibility and are content to pile them elsewhere, we lose our true self and the futures that could be ours. Our creativity, is hinged upon the responsibilities we face, upon the problems we are created to solve and the mountains we are to climb. It becomes dormant and dies down should we shun obstacles and shy away from the tasks that are ours. Our intuitive power to win in life wanes whenever we let go of this right of responsibility.

Think through this, search your life and make the point of living the best life possible. Taking responsibility and working your duties you will not fail to become that which is within you to be.

Attention: The Key to Influence

Attention is the key to influence. A token by which individuals, occurences and the various constituents of life are given power to affect one's decision(s). All decisions be they productive or indolent, find their roots in this gem. Wherever one  places his/her heedfulness there, are his/her choices and preferences hinged.

By virtue of the occurences and people we surrender our attention to, to them we give power to alter our perceptions and shift our views. One's direction will go only but one way: that of his vision. A man's mental disposition is in absolute correlation with those of his teachers he heeded the most: and his truths also align with the thoughts he has habitually chosen to entertain. He who hearkens to a soldier, will surely regard life as a battlefield. He who delights himself in sweet quiet music will surely appreciate the inherent beauty, both of nature and Man. 

Your world view, is the rock from which your actions are hewn. A man's way falls within the confinements of his Perception. He only acts in the way he perceives a situation. Our perception is the way we analyze activity, scrutinize the scripts of life and pass judgement. Our perceptions are the aggregation of the great many scenes we have passed through in life and the conclusions we have gathered therefrom. No man is without one: each of us is bound by some viewpoint, wrong or right. How you and I will fare in life, is dependent on how we have defined our world and interpret it. 

Give your attention to things that matter: surrender your time to that which be worth your thought. Be watchful only for those things that are needful and inspire you. Let your focus be that which tends to better decisions and brighter dispositions.

It is a statement of proven truth, that a lot many things that call for one's attention, only excite, in one way or the other, the senses, with no profit delivered. It is therefore called-for that we, you and I, guard our life, that we be only alert to higher thoughts, higher activity, that our lives may shine, for its totality is but a reflection of where our vision, ears and mind have been inclined.

Perceptions and Future Creation

How Our Perceptions Shape our Future                                            

An eagle deems an Adder lying in the undergrowth vulnerable, but to a man passing through, its a potential death threat, to the eagle flying high, it is but a small winding tube (lunch), yet to the, man it is an enormous monster...

What determines how we intepret the situations we go through is our Perception. Perception is the point from which we view situations, assess people and analyse scenarios., it is the principal determinant on how we react to the stimulis of life. When one's perception is lowly, even the mediocre things appear frightful and intimidating, but he that has set his perception high, considers those things that be at great planes only

The pessimist say the glass is half empty, while the optimist says the glass is half full, though rationally speaking, the water level is the same. Our success, future, relationships are dependent on our chioces, but you see, you can only make choices in the light of how you see things/ the scenario in question. This chain often goes unnoticed, so people create within their minds the very perceptions that are fighting their most yearned for idaels. This is why creating a winning perception is all-important, it appears too trivial due to the chain it follows, but its consequences can go far beyond the foreseeable future.

Perception is but built in one way, the embedding of information into one's habitual thought system. Information comes in through a host of media, experience, instruction, movies etc...Experience! what we go through in life, many a time builds frames within our mind of how life works, this happens the very second we make a conclusion after any occassion. By this conclusion all occassions which fall within the limits of this scenario (having related feelings, location and persons) will be considered as the same therefore they will be intepreted within the barriers of the conclusion, nothing more. Instruction (parental, academic etc) brings in information from other people's experiences and if communicated consistently over a season, the same conclusion the instructor made will be cultivated into one's thought system.

Consider well the Information that you take as true, it with other embedded philosophies, will create new Perceptions. Take charge of all the conclusions you make...though tedious, it is essential to do so, if you're to ensure your desired future!