Bridge to Success

Life's Like This — A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame others for his failures. I believe it would be safe to assume that we all go through life hoping, perhaps even dreaming of finding success in our life's ambitions. The path to success is often riddled with obstacles and a series of setbacks that keep us from achieving our goals. And with those setbacks, disappointment and depression can occur causing us to doubt if our dreams and aspirations will ever materialize. At times like this, it is easy to give up hope, to throw in the towel and quit pursuing our goals. Quite often, we are quick to blame others for our failures rather than examining our role in our inability to realize our dreams. Once we start down the path of blaming others, we will find increased difficulty in achieving success until we remove the blinders that hinder our personal growth.

The Power to Choose

Life’s Like This — Life can be either accepted or changed. If it is not accepted, it must be changed. If it cannot be changed, it must be accepted. So often we go through life fighting what seems to be an endless battle with adversity in our lives; adversity that can completely overwhelm us and leave us confused, uncertain and perhaps even angry with the challenge before us. We struggle to make the most of our lives; to find the personal fulfillment and happiness we want only to be knocked down by forces that seem beyond our control. These forces, or obstacles, are sometimes unpredictable and when they appear, we are faced with a choice. Do we accept them to be a reality and that nothing can be done about them, or do we make a decision to overcome that challenge by setting in motion our own personal force that can alter the effect of that adversity in our life. The decision we make is one that can be life-transforming. We can choose to resign ourselves to the hand dealt us in life, or we can choose to reshuffle the cards, and deal ourselves a better hand, one that will bring us the happiness we have been seeking.

Super Bowl of Life

Life’s Like This — There are many life lessons that can be learned from sports. As with any sport, football is one that provides an opportunity for both the participant and viewer to see first-hand the life skills needed to not only be successful in that sport, but also in life. Tomorrow, Super Bowl XLVI (46) is being played in Indianapolis. Of course the aim of the game is to win the Super Bowl and come away as the victor, the undisputed champion of a game that has become a sort of national holiday. For some people, the game of football is simply a game, one that pays millions of dollars to players to run around a field blocking, tackling, catching, and throwing a ball with the goal to get the most touchdowns. While that is the ultimate goal, football is much more than that. In my mind, as with any sport, it is how well you play the game. Just as in the game of life, there are certain attributes one needs to be successful. How well a player embraces those qualities is often the determining factor in his success. And in life, there are many attributes, similar to those in football, that we all need to be successful. Following are a few of those attributes:

The True Measure of Success

Life’s Like This — The true measure of success can and should be measured by something more worthwhile than money. When you think about it, our minds are thought factories that can produce good and bad thoughts — or ideas. In the living of my life, there have been countless ideas that have popped into my mind that could have been financially rewarding. But like the proverbial procrastinator, I failed to act on my ideas, and as a result, I was not able to reap the potential rewards. Fortunately in life, not everything has to be measured by how much money you make. Yes, we all want to be successful in life, but because of the way society thinks, we often measure our success in terms of how much money we will make. The reality is that success can and should be measured by something more worthwhile than money.