Irene's Thoughts

Irene's Thoughts

The following words are the words of Brian Tracy, from his book “The Power of Discipline”

Your ability and willingness to discipline yourself to accept personal responsibility for your life is essential to happiness, health, success, achievement and personal leadership. Accepting responsibility is one of the hardest of all disciplines, but without it, success is impossible.

The failure to accept responsibility and the attempt to foist responsibility onto others has dire consequences. It completely distorts cause and effect, undermines our character, weakens our resolve, and diminishes our humanity.

When I was twenty-one, I was living in a tiny apartment and working as a construction laborer. I had to get up at 5 a.m. so I could take three buses to work to be there on time. I didn't get home until 7 p.m., usually exhausted. I was making just enough money to get by, with no car, almost no savings, and just enough clothing for my needs. I had no radio or television. In the evenings, if I had enough energy, I would sit in my small apartment at my little table in my kitchen nook and read.

It was the middle of a cold winter, with the temperature at 35 degrees below Fahrenheit.  One evening, sitting there by myself at the table, it suddenly dawned on me that, "This is my life."

It was like a flashbulb going off in front of my face. I looked at myself and my small apartment, and considered the fact that I had not graduated from high school. The only work I was qualified to do was menial jobs. I earned enough money to pay my basic expenses, but little more. I had very little left over at the end of the month.

It suddenly dawned on me that unless I changed, nothing else was going to change. No one else was going to do it for me. In reality, no one cared. 

I realized at that moment I was completely responsible for my life, and for everything that happened to me, from that day forward. I was responsible.

I could no longer blame my situation on my difficult childhood, or mistakes that I had made in the past. I was in charge. I was in the driver's seat. This was my life, and if I didn't do something to change it, it would go on like this indefinitely, by the simple process of inertia.

This revelation changed my life. I was never the same again. From that moment forward, I accepted more and more responsibility for everything.
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Irene's Thoughts

A man was lost while driving through the country. As he tried to reach for the map, he accidentally drove off the road into a ditch. Thought he wasn't injured, his car was stuck deep in the mud.

So the man walked to a nearby farm to ask for help. "Warwick can get you out of that ditch," said the farmer, pointing to an old mule standing in a field.

The man looked at the decrepit old mule and looked at the farmer who just stood there repeating,

"Yep, old Warwick can do the job." The man figured he had nothing to lose.

The two men and the mule made their way back to the ditch. The farmer hitched the mule to the car.

With a snap of the reins, he shouted,

"Pull, Fred! Pull, Jack! Pull, Ted! Pull, Warwick!"

And the mule pulled that car right out of the ditch.

The man was amazed. He thanked the farmer, patted the mule, and asked, "Why did you call out all of those names before you called Warwick?"

The farmer grinned and said, "Old Warwick is just about blind. As long as he believes he's part of a team, he doesn't mind pulling."

Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. It is the fuel that allows common people to obtain uncommon results.

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