For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. –HEBREWS 4:15

He was the kind of fellow you’d invite to watch the Rams-Giants game at your house. He’d wrestle on the floor with your kids, doze on your couch, and cook steaks on your grill. He’d laugh at your jokes and tell a few of His own. And when you spoke, He’d listen to you as if He had all the time in eternity.

And one thing’s for sure, you’d invite Him back.

It is worth noting that those who knew Him best remembered Him not as Jesus Christ or Lord Jesus, but as Jesus. Think about the implications. When God chose to reveal Himself to mankind, what medium did He use? A book? No, that was secondary. A church? No. That was consequential. A moral code? No. To limit God’s revelation to a cold list of dos and don’ts is as tragic as looking at a Colorado road map and saying that you’ve seen the Rockies.

When God chose to reveal Himself, He did so (surprise of surprises) through a human body. The tongue that called forth the dead was a human one. The hand that touched the leper had dirt under its nails. The feet upon which the woman wept were calloused and dusty. And his tears…oh, don’t miss the tears…came from a heart as broken as yours or mine ever has been.

So people came to Him. My, how they came to Him! Why? Because He refused to be a statue in a cathedral or a priest in an elevated pulpit. He chose instead to be Jesus.

SPREAD THE WORD THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

The Jesus we serve in our lighthouses is not some religious icon or set of rules. He’s Jesus, and if we show our neighbors who He really is, some will come to Him.

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If You’re Not Failing You’re Not Growing

“Never let the fear of striking out get in your way” (Babe Ruth, strike out king, home run king).

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. We all make mistakes – especially those who do things. Failure is often the first necessary step toward success.

Stop trying to be perfect. When you have a serious decision to make, tell yourself firmly that you are going to make it. Don’t expect that it will be the perfect one. The pursuit of excellence is gratifying and healthy; the pursuit of perfection is frustrating, unproductive and a terrible waste of time.

The fact is that you’re like a tea bag. You won’t know your own strength until you get into some hot water. Failure is something we can only avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing and being nothing.

“Remember there are two benefits to failure. First if you do fail, you learn what doesn’t work; and second, the failure gives you an opportunity to try a new approach” (Roger Van Oech). Some people learn from their mistakes; some never recover from them. Learn how to fail intelligently. Develop success from failure.

Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success. No other elements can do so much for a man if he is willing to study them and to make the most out of them. Your season of failure is the best time for sowing your seeds of success. Successful people are not afraid to fail. They go from failure to failure until at last success is theirs.

The best way to accelerate your success is to double your failure rate. The law of failure is one of the most powerful of all success laws.

- John Mason, from the book Let Go of Whatever Makes You Stop (Want to purchase this book? Go to www.freshword.com/resources)

John Mason is a national best-selling author, nationally recognized speaker and book coach. You can visit his site at freshword.com/signup freshword.com/signup to receive this nugget and ones just like it in your email inbox every week. Very inspiring!

I bet that you can’t tell me the name of the man who said, “The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.” That man was Alfred Lord Tennyson, and the statement is very true, for there has never, in the history of humanity, been any discovery, innovation, or creation that was not first a spark of passion, curiosity, or devotion. Truly, the manifestation and realization of such discoveries, creations, and innovations is nothing more than the mastery of the creators’ passions.

“Passion” from the Latin Passus literally means, “to suffer.” This all-consuming desire to be, and to do is vitally important to success, for it is the source from which the successful person must draw his or her inspiration. Remember that everyone who succeeds in life typically gets off to a bad start initially. They pass through many heartbreaking struggles before they “arrive” at “success.” They literally SUFFER for not having achieved their passion. The turning point in the lives of those who succeed usually comes at the very moment of crisis, when they must choose to follow their passion, or surrender to mediocrity. Would you rather live your life’s purpose and become the person you were meant to be, or remain locked in lifestyle of tolerance and indifference, merely existing from one day to the next?

Without passion, you will never be inspired to act. Without action, you will never manifest your vision, and therefore, you will NEVER be successful! To truly live in a paradigm of conscious choice; a paradigm where you know your beliefs, your purpose, your goals, and you CHOOSE to act on them, then you must know that which stirs YOUR heart. This is crucial if you are truly going to create the reality you desire; a lifestyle built on your preferences and your goals.

Further, you must recognize that designing and creating the life that you choose requires that you first discover the purposes for behaving the way that you do. If you act without purpose, then you are likely to create a lifestyle that is hit or miss; a lifestyle that wanders about, and is based on old habits and reactions to circumstances, rather than creation. Inevitably, this eliminates the potential for success, as the truly successful consistently work toward the achievement of their vision.

Therefore, to genuinely create the lifestyle that you choose, you must face each challenge, each encounter, with purposeful choices. You must reprogram your thinking to “act”, rather than “re-act.” To choose solutions and actions that are directed toward the realistic goals of your vision that are workable in your everyday world. Find your purpose, and you will find your passion! Find your passion, and you will HAVE your vision!

So, what can you do, today, that will point you toward your passion, your purpose? You can begin by defining you vision and creating your own personal mission statement.

1. Allocate some time alone. You need to allow yourself space and time to think, reflect, and evaluate.

2. Select an important question from the list below, or use a powerful question of your own. Be sure that the question you choose has deep, personal meaning for you and causes your heart to stir.

• What motivates me?

• If money were no object, what would I do?

• What energizes me?

• If I had no responsibilities other than myself, what would my future look like?

• What brings me the most joy, pleasure or satisfaction?

• If I had only three months to live, what would I do during that time?

• What is it that I REALLY want in life?

3. Once you have chosen your question, isolate yourself. Quite you mind. Take several deep, cleansing breaths and ask the question of yourself. Allow the answers to bubble up through your intuition. Do not force them, or search them out. Wait… Be patient… Ask the question again after a few minutes. Know that the answers will come! The answers are yours; they have always been yours; and they have always been within you!

4. Over time, ask all of these questions; but ask the questions one at a time. Record your answers in a journal or notebook. Give yourself permission to take a break between these sessions. Self-reflection can be hard work, and any progress is good progress! Congratulate yourself for work well done!

5. Once you have responded to the questions, consolidate your responses. Look for patterns or themes. These patterns and themes will become your personal mission statement. Share your responses with a coach or mentor so that you can merge his or her perceptions with your own. This is vitally important, as this will serve to establish your vision and affirm your purpose.

Having a mission statement will center your actions on the goals that YOU choose; on the lifestyle that YOU select. It will lead to your ability to direct your effort toward these goals, rather than wasting effort on things that do not meet your needs and your vision, and that do lead to success. This is your first step toward creating success and toward purposeful living.

Only one question remains. Are you ready to begin?

Ms. Potavin is a talented manager with over 15 years of experience and an entrepreneurial spirit. She now works with up-and-coming managers and entreprenuers to help them grow into tomorrows’ principled leaders. Ms. Potavin’s business is to provide the means that allows you to discover, unlock and harness your hidden talents, inspiring you to live fully AND purposefully; to acknowledge your achievements and accept your downfalls; and allow yourself the opportunity to BELIEVE in your abilities and SUCCEED in your professional and personal life. See Amy’s profile at linkedin.com/in/potavin06 linkedin.com/in/potavin06, or visit her at believe-network.com believe-network.com.

It’s been quite awhile since we’ve had house guests. We live in Florida.
Like most people who live in Florida, we have more friends in winter than we
do in summer. Our friends come to see us in the winter months. Soon, they
will begin to call.

We have a guest room in our home. Adjacent to the guest room is a guest
bath. The other day it was leaking. I do not know how long it was leaking,
but it was leaking for sometime. Water went in many places water isn’t
meant to go. I shut-off the water, cleaned it up and removed the parts from
the toilet. I went to Home Depot to buy replacements. The Home Depot dude
helped me. He said the problem was that we had not been using the toilet.
He said I should make a point of flushing the toilet at least once every
couple of days. That way, he said, it won’t develop leaks from lack of use.
I am looking forward to having house guests. It will take “flush toilets”
off my things to do list.

It may seem strange, perhaps inappropriate, to compare our personal talents
to toilet parts, but they have something in common. Namely, if they go
unused they become useless. Unlike toilet parts, talents can not be
replaced. However, with use talents are subject to the law of increasing
returns. The more you use your talents, the greater they become. They are
like muscles. They become weak and atrophied from lack of use. They grow in
strength and tone when exercised. Talents are our natural thoughts,
feelings and instincts. They are what comes easily to us.

It might not be a bad idea to do an inventory on your talents. Check and
see that you are using all of them regularly. I wish I had done that with
my guest bathroom toilet.

Invincible

I just watched the movie Invincible with Mark Wahlberg today for the first time. What a true inspiration this movie was, not unlike other great movies of the past Rocky, Rudy, and The Rookie. This movie was about a true underdog coming out on top. I loved it! This movie was based on a true story of former Philadelphia Eagle Vince Papale played by Mark Wahlberg. Vince was a bartender/part-time school teacher who had 1 year of high school football under his belt. When Dick Vermeil played by Greg Kinnear holds open tryouts to try and Save a miserable Eagle Football Team from another losing season, Vince reluctantly goes to give it a whirl. Out of 300 hopefuls Vince is the only one invited back to participate in The Eagles Training Camp. Vince not only makes it past the first cut, but in due time Dick Vermeil reluctantly against anyone else’s wishes, but his wife’s, decides to put Vince Papale in the Eagles line-up. Vince successfully made it through 3 ½ seasons with the Eagles, before having to retire at the age of 34 from injuries.

How could anyone ever predict the future? With talent drive and a little luck this story has happened over and over again in America. How did Vince make it? In the movie Dick’s Character said that he had heart. None of the players liked him at first. His father was an underpaid factory worker, his most successful friend owned a bar, and his wife of 5 years left him because he couldn’t amount to anything. One thing Vince did have going for him was he had determination and the willingness to not be afraid to step out there and take a risk. Had Vince never gone to the open tryout he would probably still be bartending somewhere in Philly? But since Vince gave it a chance and went to the tryout, he rose to the occasion to shine where he had been told to shine.

This story could apply to many who have risen above great odds to make it in America. Most recently, Carrie Underwood comes to mind. This young gal drove several hundred miles from her hometown in Oklahoma to try out for American Idol. Did you know that her album is the biggest selling album in country music since 1991? I actually put her song “Jesus Take the Wheel”, on my ring-tone on my phone to remind me of 2 things: 1) that I am not in charge he is, and 2), that dreams belong to the few who dare to make them come true.

While you are beating yourself up this week and not feeling worthy, think of Papale, Rocky, or Underwood. Think of the underdog coming out on top. If you come from a poor family, or find yourself struggling in this thing called life, just remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and that we were all designed for greatness. I think Zig Ziglar said it best when he stated, “You were designed for success. You were endowed with the seeds of greatness”. If we are all are created equal and we all are great to begin with, how come only a few succeed? It’s only because of 3 things lack of ambition, lack of belief, and lack of opportunity. I believe that we all start out as geniuses and over time life degenius’ us. There is a reason that Jesus spoke so highly of children in the bible? Belief is instilled at an early age either good or bad. And if bad must be smashed. Opportunity and Ambition are born by just simply showing up and always giving it your best shot.

I stated to my wife recently, Wow it’s amazing if I just get out of bed early in the morning, take a shower, and somehow start working, great things begin to happen. Not bad for a guy who was once a drug addict, would sleep in until 10 or 11, and could barely even hold down a job for any length of time. We may not all become household names like Carrie Underwood, or Vince Papale, but we certainly can arise to the occasion and become much greater if we just simply show up keep a positive attitude, most importantly give life our best shot.

A house is made of walls and beams, a home is built with love and dreams. In dreams and in love, there are no impossibilities.There is only one happiness in life “to love and be loved.” Love is strengthened by working through conflicts together. Love is the only thing that can be divided without being diminished. Our ephemeral life in this world should not be directed towards mere acquisition of material comforts. Material comforts may provide us with luxuries or happiness that is often short lived. It is our mind that needs eternal bliss, which material comforts can never provide.

The real measure of a man’s wealth is what he has invested in eternity.One keeps longing for more comforts and makes all attempts to satisfy his unending desires. In his rush for amassing wealth, man forgets to live for himself or for others. There are two ways of being rich. One is to have all you want, the other is to be satisfied with what you have.

We must take time to enjoy life.The life and love we create is the life and love we live. Life is too short to be selfish. Do what you can, for who you can, with what you have and where you are. Love people for what they are and how they are. No one is perfect, learn to love everyone irrespective of their flaws. Nurse no hatred towards anyone, it is only going to hurt you in the long run. Try to make your loved ones happy no matter what state of mind you are in. A smile can do miracles.The happiness of your loved ones will surely be a good sight to see and you will definitely be happy for it. When each one of us thinks so, we ourselves will be surprised to see and experience the beauty of a home filled with love and happiness.Try to make your house a home so that each time you leave your home, you nurse within the yearning to be back as soon as possible to your sweet home “the most beautiful paradise on earth.”

A Masters student in computer applications interested in writing articles,editing and proof reading
Contact at: mailto:leenavijayakumar@gmail.com leenavijayakumar@gmail.com

It doesn’t take long for you to forget about what’s important, or to even care about what’s important in your life when you allow priorities outside of the basic well-being of your family to take control of your life.

For too long, my career was the centerpiece of my life. This imbalance cost me in so many ways. Strained relationships with my children, a growing detachment from my wife and non-existent friendships were the outcome of this imbalance. My focus from the time I woke up until the time I went to bed was spent on work-related activities. During the workweek I would get up at 4:30 a.m. and be in my office not later than 6:00 a.m. I would make it home around 5:00 p.m. and take only one hour for dinner and a quick check-in with my family then it was down to my home-office to call customers, do paperwork, etc. I was completely unaware of what was happening around me. What was going on around me was a family who needed their father, their husband, to do things around the house that needed attention. I would walk by lamps with burned out lamp bulbs without even considering for a moment to put in a new bulb.

There are plenty of other examples when someone was asking for my attention and for my love and I said no. When my youngest daughter Emily was about four-years-old, she would bring board games to me and ask to play. I said no. Watching a game on television was more important. My oldest son Brandon asked often to go to ball games together and I never made the time to make this happen, Right now, I can’t remember the event or activity that kept me from ball games with my son, but I can remember his disappointment. That’s a place I will never go back to again. Realizing the need for a healthily balance is a thought, a goal, and even a purpose that is in front of me every single day now.

Learning to keep your balance must be learned

Indeed, I have learned that a key contributor for both the mistakes, and the successes, in my life is whether or not my life is in balance. I alone have to acknowledge this, to take personal responsibility for this and be the agent of change if and when imbalance occurs.

More specifically, if my values and if my properties are not in balance then poor decisions and mistakes are certain to follow. Alternatively, times when I am centered, I do tend to make better decisions.

Do you remember when you learned how to ride a bicycle? It’s a rite of passage to have the training wheels removed and to enter the grown-up world of the other seven and eight-year-olds. The one skill that was repeated to you the most often during this life-changing lesson was certainly “to keep your balance.” There is no other way to ride a bicycle. Keeping your balance is not an innate or hereditary skill. If it were, there would be no need for training wheels in the first place. Once learned though, the speed, agility and confidence of the bike rider soars. New doors and new opportunities become open and available.

With my children, once they mastered the skill of riding a bicycle, their lives changed and their worlds expanded. No longer was their circle of friends and their world confined to just our cul-de-sac. Riding a bicycle meant exploring the far reaches of our neighborhood. New friends were made and new adventures waited at destinations such as the elementary school playground or the neighborhood convenience store. These were once parts of the world that my children never visited on their own. But now, by mastering the art of “keeping their balance” they did indeed cross the passage between a confined and predictable world to one that possessed new opportunities and challenges.

There are other obvious examples that illustrate the importance of “keeping your balance.” Learning to walk, hitting a fastball or maintaining an accurate checkbook is just a few. Each time balance is achieved; the person’s life changes forever and more success is made.

For most of us, keeping our balance is needed on a daily basis. By now, most of us know how to ride a bicycle and very few of us have the need to hit a fastball; but all of us need to have balance in order to deal with the ordinary, and sometimes extraordinary, life events that we all face.

Life can, and will, throw you off balance

Think of the bumper sticker that proclaims Stuff Happens (a loose translation here, but you get the point). The simplistic thought this statement conveys might be that no matter how hard we plan, prepare or train, life will be unpredictable. With this reality in mind, it’s important to accept this Stuff when it Happens and understand that sometimes there is nothing that we can do to prevent it. Therefore, you shouldn’t be too shocked or angry – just accepting. Not accepting of the fact that you were thrown a curveball when you were expecting a fastball and just struck-out, but accepting of the fact that it did indeed happen. What you do with the experience is up to you – no one else.

The point is this: We are all responsible for our own actions and how we react to others and to events. Understanding this is crucial to staying on our bicycles for the entire journey. Sure, there are bumps we must contend with. Some bumps we can navigate around, while others just surprise us.

However, when we do loose our balance and are thrown from our bikes, it’s up to each of us to decide what we should do next. It would easy to avoid any more by not getting on the bicycle again. No more pain, right? But how can we complete our journey and find the measure of success that each one of us is looking for?

If you are one to brush the dirt off and climb back on your bike, it’s also important to be aware of the fact that you can be thrown again. Confidence should co-exist with awareness. Confidence enables us to go forward, no matter the odds or potential obstacles. Awareness provides a context of how we should go forward. Properly executed, awareness can provide a better path to travel, and in return, completion of the journey.

So, how can we learn to keep our balance? What are the necessary skills or techniques to make this happen? Consider the following:

First you must open your mind and heart to the reality that not everything in your life will always be stable or steady; and it never will, but it is up to you how you choose to experience and deal with these periods of balance and imbalance alike.

The best bet to experience more of a balanced life is to think about what you really want in your life. Remember, don’t worry about the how, detail-by-detail (the how will be revealed to you in due time), this is not your job right now. Your job is to stay focused on what it would look like to have a better job, to improve a relationship, or to explore an interest (like traveling) or a hobby.
Staying more in-touch with the want than the how will provide you with a more positive state of mind, attitude and, indeed, a better sense of balance. Each day you should focus for a few minutes on how it would feel to begin to achieve the things you desire for your life.

As you begin this process (the wanting and feeling) begin to look for a few quick-wins. Meaning, in one day you may not get that promotion at work or book a trip on an Alaskan glacier cruise, but you may begin to take on a sense of empowerment and optimism when, as your attitude shifts from a defeated point of view to a positive point of view, those around you, including yourself, will begin to experience you in a different way. At this point, some quick-wins might be improved communication with others, a greater sense of self-confidence, and a better focus on what’s important to you!

From here you must learn to take baby steps. You know the expression “you can’t eat an elephant in one bite” is a great lesson for this point in your life. Just begin taking those first steps, and those first bites. Soon you will gain more momentum and a clearer picture of the how, because you will become more centered, or balanced, with the wants in your life.

Key points to remember:

1. Keeping your life in balance, or not in balance, is a key contributor for both the mistakes and successes in your life.

2. Staying in balance keeps you open to experiencing a world full of possibilities for yourself.

3. When you are knocked off balance, it’s your own personal responsibility to get back on track; no one will do it for us, nor should they.

4. Learning to keep your balance is a skill that is learned over time. Stay focused more on the wants of you life than the hows and build from the quick wins you experience.

Alex Blackwell is the author of The Next 45 Years – a website dedicated to sharing and creating happiness, life balance and success for the rest of our lives. To read more inspirational stories and articles, please visit: thenext45years.blogspot.com thenext45years.blogspot.com

We often think that our thoughts and feelings affect how we live and move in our bodies, but it can also be the other way around, too.

How you move can affect how you feel, and how you feel can affect how you think, and how you think can affect the state you’re in and the outcomes you produce.

The best way to feel really, really depressed, is to look down, slump your shoulders, breathe in a shallow way, and mumble. Try this for five minutes or less, and you’ll notice how awful you feel. Then notice how you find thoughts to fit into this mood. Finally, notice how other people start to avoid you and how your creativity, intelligence, and productivity are at a near standstill.

Alternatively, you can decide, right now, whatever mood you’re in, to change it, to move your body in such a way that you send a signal to your brain that you are alive and well and ready to change the world.

Now try this. Start breathing more deeply, straighten out your shoulders, puff out that chest, look up, smile, or preferably, grin. Walk briskly. Speak in a louder tone. In five minutes or less, you’ll wonder why you were ever in a bad mood. You see possibilities everywhere. Your ingenuity kicks into high gear. You can be, do, and have anything.

Physiology does more than affect your moods; it can affect how much vital energy, called prana, that you absorb into your body. You are literally sucking into your body positive life-force particles from the air, from the sunlight, from the food that you eat. Your nadis or subtle nerves, open up and can conduct more life force.

Go for a walk on the street. See how most people are pretty down. Look at how their shoulders fall, their walk shuffles, and their faces reflects agitation and despair. But you will see a few bright people, too. They are smiling and laughing with shoulders thrown back, and their whole body is open to life and new adventures.

Sometimes it does seem that we live entirely in our heads and that our bodies are something that we move around in. But really, you live in your whole body, and if you want to be more responsive to life, the trick is to create an expansive feeling in your body by changing your posture, your breathing, your facial expression, and your rate of movement.

What you perceive to be reality is always only your own interpretation. All events are complex but we tend to shape them according to our personal story. This interpretation is not only acted out on a mental and emotional level, but also on a physiological level. Further this interpretation then shapes the experience in subtle ways until you can feel fully justified that your interpretation is the truth.

The only truth is that you are making everything up as you go along.
Rather than seeking truth, which is a relative phenomena, it is far more meaningful to make a choice as to what is empowering.

The most empowering thing possible for anyone of us is to be ourselves more fully, and as we permit ourselves full self-expression, whether or not this fits in with the currently prevailing cultural norms, we expand our ability to feel more alive.

Your body is a powerful to interact with the world as an empowered soul. This is much more than positive thinking. It’s positive living by experiencing the vitality of your body and how it affects all aspects of your life. You are not an abstraction, but a living, moving, thinking, and feeling being. How you move your body can have a profound influence on how you live your life.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas with you. Hunting everywhere for a life worth living? Discover the life of your dreams. His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. theempoweredsoul.com/enter.html theempoweredsoul.com/enter.html

Copyright 2004 Saleem Rana. Please feel free to pass this
article on to your friends, or use it in your ezine or
newsletter. It’s a shareware article.

The children are playing by the sea shore. Some are making sand cakes while others are running behind a ball. No adult is nearby to supervise or keep a watchful eye on their youngsters. In the distance the huts have smoke coming out from the roof while occasionally a brightly dressed woman comes out and looks at the horizon. The children take turns to kick the ball as more mud pies line up against the shore. The sun’s rays are getting hotter and everything around looks great like any other summer day. There was no school to attend so the kids could play as long as they want or till, “Daddy comes home.”

In this fishing village there are a lot of hard working men who go out to sea early in the morning. Once they come back there is work for everyone. The children help to carry, the catch of the day, home or to the nearby market. Mothers clean and cook the fresh fish each day in a different way. Fishermen come home hungry and consume a lot of food. They come after they clean their boats and attend to their nets. Usually they go out to do their daily job along with friends. They help each other and share their bounty.

What has happened today? Where are the fishermen that went in the grey boats? The children replied, ”They have gone fishing. Some days their boats are full and they come in late.” Finally four of them with father Zebedee, pulled to shore and unburdened their nets. The children helped and mothers were busy in the kitchen. Some strangers were walking around looking for good fish in the market. The boats were cleaned and the holes in the net were being attended, when they heard a Stranger call out to them. They were puzzled and wondered who he was. The Stranger conversed with them and invited them to follow Him. He wanted to make them fishers of men. We cannot understand their reaction but the four youngsters immediately left their nets and followed Him. The rest of the story you can read in the Bible in the Gospels.

Can you imagine the commotion in that little village? Families missed their fathers and bread winners. Everyone was asking, ”Where are the men? Who had the answer? They went to serve with the Lord Jesus.

If this happened to us today what will our answer be? Will we leave our jobs and comforts to follow the Lord? Are we efficient in our daily activities so that we can be entrusted with more? There is a work for Jesus none but you can do.

Leela Abraham email mailto:leelaab@yahoo.com leelaab@yahoo.com

Experienced Educator, Interested in writing devotionals to encourage teenagers and women. A sinner saved by faith, desires to share God’s love

Sometimes major life lessons come from the most unlikely of sources. As strange as it may sound, I learned one of my biggest lessons about the importance of knowing what I want out of life and the best way to get it, from a green sea turtle.

I was snorkeling off the coast of Hawaii. The day had already been spectacular, in that I had seen a purple spotted eel and an octopus, both of which were new for me. There were also thousands and thousands of fish, representing every color you can imagine from the most striking of neon blue to the deepest reds. I was about 100 feet away from the beach, and diving down among some large rock structures, when I turned to my right, and saw a large green sea turtle swimming next to me. This was the first time I had ever seen one in the wild, so I was ecstatic. I rose to the surface, cleared my snorkel, and floated on top of the water, so I could watch him.

He was right underneath me when I looked down, and he was swimming away from the shore. I decided I would stay on the top and watch him for a while. To my surprise, although he appeared to be moving pretty slowly, sometimes paddling his flippers, and other times just floating in the water, I soon found that I couldn’t keep up with him. I was wearing fins, which gave me propulsion power through the water, and didn’t have on a vest or anything that would slow me down, and yet he kept moving farther from me even though I was trying to keep up.

After about ten minutes, he lost me. Tired, disappointed, and a little embarrassed that I couldn’t keep up with a turtle, I turned back toward the beach and snorkeled to shore.

The next day I returned to the same spot, with the hope of seeing more turtles. Sure enough, about thirty minutes after walking into the water, I turned to look at a school of tiny black and yellow fish, and there was another green sea turtle. I watched him for a while as he paddled around the coral, and then I tried to stay with him as he swam out from shore. Once again, I was surprised to find I couldn’t keep up.

When I realized he was pulling ahead of me, I stopped paddling, floated on the top, and watched him. It was at that moment, when I learned the major life lesson.

I realized that the turtle linked its movements to the movements of the water. When a wave was going toward the shore, and in the face of the turtle, he would float, and paddle just enough to hold his position. When the pull of the wave was back out to the ocean, he would paddle faster, so that he was using the movement of the water to his advantage. The turtle never fought the waves, but instead used them.

The reason I had not been able to keep up with him, was because I was paddling all the time, no matter which way the water was going. At first this was fine, and I was able to stay with him. I even had to slow my paddling sometimes. But the more I battled against the incoming waves, the more tired I became. Pretty soon, I didn’t have enough energy to take advantage of the waves that were going out.

The turtle didn’t have this problem though. While I became more fatigued and less effective with each wave that came in and want out, he kept optimizing his movements with the movements of the water, which is why he had plenty of energy and was able to swim faster than me.

We face a similar struggle in our everyday lives, only the incoming and outgoing waves aren’t composed of water. The incoming waves are made up of all the people, activities, and things that are trying to get our attention, energy, and time, but that don’t support what we want out of life. The outgoing waves are the people, activities, and things that can help us fulfill what we want out of life.

In the ocean, I wasted my energy by paddling against the incoming waves, and then didn’t have strength to achieve what I was trying to do which was stay near the turtle. If we’re not careful, we can make the same mistake in life. We can waste so much time and energy on things other people want us to do, or just on random things, if we haven’t figured out what we want to do, that we don’t have the time or energy to experience or achieve what we want out of life.

There are so many people trying to get us to spend our time and energy on them through E-mails, faxes, phone calls, mail, meeting invitations, and advertisements. It is an almost non-stop onslaught every single day. Think of just the mail alone. If we were to participate in every activity, sale, and service offering we get notified about, it would take up every minute of the day. And that is just the mail. Add on people who want to capture our attention for television time, places to eat, travel destinations and a multitude of other offerings and it can be overwhelming.

Because most of the things people want us to do are not lengthy in duration, it may not seem like much of a problem. When you put some numbers to it though, it starts to really add up. For example, spending 40 minutes per day on “incoming wave” items from the time we are 22 until the time we are 72, fills up over two of our fifty years of life. Two years entirely devoted to junk mail, spam e-mail, pointless meetings, telemarketers, whatever. That can be a sobering thought, especially when you start thinking about exactly how much time we really spend each day on incoming wave items.

So the next time you answer the phone, open your mailbox, or click on something in your inbox, ask yourself, “Is this an incoming wave item, or an outgoing wave item?” Does it take up my time, or help me achieve what I want out of life?

Remember, the more time and energy we waste on the incoming waves, the less time and energy we have for the outgoing. If you keep that thought in mind you’ll find you become much more selective about how much “paddling” you do, and for what reason.” And you’ll owe it all to a green sea turtle.

John P. Strelecky is the author of “The Why Are You Here Café”, and a nationally recognized speaker on the topic of “Creating Your Perfect Life”. He also is the author and narrator of his CD series, “The Big Five For Life.” John has a master’s degree from Northwestern University with a focus in Organizational Development, and is the founder of the Why Café Institute. He has enjoyed speaking engagements from high-school assemblies to keynotes for major corporations, and his articles have been published in many magazines. He’s been a guest on radio and television shows. John Strelecky can be reached through his Web site at whycafe.com whycafe.com or by calling 407-342-4181. Press inquiries please contact Starlyn J. First at mailto:sfirstpr@aol.com sfirstpr@aol.com or call 407.327.2495.