Marcel Legros - Play the Game of Life

When I was 9 years old I read the book “My Side of the Mountain.” It was the story of a young boy named Sam, who ran away from home and learned to live in the wilderness of the Catskill mountains. The book captivated me - it became a long-time dream of mine to do just what Sam had done in the book. I didn’t run away for two reasons; I worried about devastating my mother, and I realized that the batteries for my Sony Walkman would eventually run out.

I still think about what would have happened if I’d followed though with my plan for adventure and solitude, but the real value of that dream for me, was to open my mind to the world of possibilities.

How the Hell Did I End Up Here?

I’ve met many people with a promising professional career and buckets of money who wish they’d become an actor, painter, or musician.

Ask a ten year-old kid, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” They’ll never say, “I want to be a regional manager for a large insurance firm. If I can’t do that, I want to sell carpet.”

When we’re kids, we want to change the world and explore our curiosity but we get lost in a sea of other voices telling what is possible and what is not. Don’t ever lose your curiosity - it is the one quality that will always bring true meaning to your work and to your relationships with others. Be a kid again. Allow yourself to dream and plan. It takes guts to admit you’re not happy and then do something about it.

Show Me What I’m Made Of

You will bring meaning and fulfillment into your live when you align yourself with what you value most. Unfortunately, most of us don’t really know what our values are. We say we do, but too often they are the values and expectations of the people around us. We make poor life choices when we listen to the voices of others and mistake them for our own.

The Search For Meaning

Look within yourself and question what really makes you tick. What makes the hair stand up on your neck? What are your real ideals? What motivations you? Are your daily actions in accord with your dreams and ideals?
Are your actions bringing value to others as well, or are your motivations selfish and hurtful? Goals that bring no value to the people around you will prevent you from having lasting success. Life is meaningless without love.

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When something aggravating, such as a siren, car alarm, etc, bothers you, that is a good time to check to see if what you were doing at that moment, was something that will take you away from your aggravations and towards your goals. So the next time something aggravates you, use that as a check to see if you actions are going in the right direction, or not. In that way, life’s aggravations can become good reminders to stay on the course towards a better life.

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Saintly patience doesn’t happen overnight - it’s like a muscle and needs to be exercised every day. You don’t just step into the gym and lift 500 pounds on your first day - you patiently work up to it. You build the strength and tolerance to lift 500 pounds over a long period of time by training your body every day. One day, after months or years of training, you are able to lift 500 pounds and everyone will be astounded by your strength. Instead of admiring your strength, they should be admiring the patience that allowed you to train so hard for so long.

Life gives you opportunities every day to exercise your patience, if you recognize them for an opportunity instead of an obstacle. I used to say, “I’d be more patient and calm if everyone else weren’t conspiring against me. The world just keeps throwing obstacles in front of me! Why are people so crazy, slow, dumb, difficult, etc.?” Now I try to look on every delay and every difficult situation as an opportunity to exercise my patience. I simply smile and recognize that the universe is giving me an opportunity to become a better, stronger person. It’s now become a challenge to see just how long I can drive in the city without throwing a fit and cursing out loud (I’m up to four hours now). Bring it on, old people, logging trucks, and red lights; I’m exercising my patience! Pretty soon I won’t be honking my horn and flipping you the bird; how are you going to piss me off then?

Patience Isn’t Inborn - Just Ask a Two Year-Old

I’m not a naturally patient person. In fact, I’ve gone through life continuously moving from one frustrating delay to another. I’m improving my patience by repeating the following phrase whenever I encounter delays and setbacks in my life.

Life’s delays aren’t life’s denials.

Just because you don’t get what you want immediately doesn’t mean you won’t get it eventually. If I’m stuck in a traffic jam and late for an appointment, my plans might not work out according to schedule. Getting angry and upset will do nothing to improve the situation - when I’m angry and impatient, bad things happen.

Develop Universal Patience

The power of water is an example of how patience can be applied to your life with amazing results. One drop of water falling on a stone does nothing but make it wet. But if that same drip is repeated over and over again for thousands of years, water will easily drill a hole right through the middle of the stone. Consider blogging: if you write three, five hundred word articles a week, for one year, you’ll have written an average length fiction novel at the end of that year. Just to give you perspective, J.R.R. Tolkien spent 14 years writing the Lord of the Rings; it’s word count is just over 300,000. If you apply the same blogging example above, you can easily write over 1,092,000 words - enough time to write two epic novels with room to spare!

Write your great novel one blog entry at a time.

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Be careful whom you follow and pattern yourself after. Who are you following today? Are you following the people that are going for their dreams, or are you following people that have given up on their dreams. Are you in competition with someone? If so, what is the competition leading to, a better job, better health, etc, or will it lead to hurting your chances of success, or hurting your body? Ask yourself whom you are paying attention to and whom are you following, and where will it lead?

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Incorporate “after action reviews” into your life. The military uses these to analyze how an operation went. They ask:

1. What was our objective?
2. What actually happened?
3. Why did it happen?
4. What are we going to do next time?

You can use these same questions to review how things are going in your life. This prevents you from making the same mistakes over and over again, and builds on your successes. You can do more of what worked and less of what didn’t work. So incorporate AAR’s into your life and move your life ahead even faster.

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There are thousands of self development, self-help, psychology, motivational, and spiritual titles on the market today. Only a few rare authors make it to the best-sellers list. Even fewer build a successful, highly trafficked website with a dedicated readership. I can think of only 5 living self-development superstars:

1. Tony Robbins
2. Brian Tracy
3. Wayne Dyer
4. Deepak Chopra
5. Eckhart Tolle

How many high quality, best-selling authors of popular fiction can you name? The list in that category is massive by comparison.

Tony Robbins is heavily criticized for misrepresenting the truth and for his aggressive sales techniques. He was busy marketing products for the perfect marriage while going through a divorce. Deepak Chopra has also been criticized for writing questionable science.

Most self-development authors never achieve the kind of success they write about. They’re trying to teach us methods for success while they’re clearly not very good at it themselves. Where are all the great wisdom teachers?

Living in a Positive Thinking Bubble

Harsh criticism isn’t well accepted with this group. Peers don’t criticize for fear of losing credibility in their field. When someone does speak up and trashes the book or article, the criticism is denounced as being negative. Self-development authors need to be held accountable for the quality of their work just like everyone else. If the quality of my writing isn’t up to par, I have no chance for success by ignoring criticism. If my writing doesn’t sell, am I ahead of my time or living in denial?

You Can’t Sell Your Way Out of a Paper Bag

The most successful people in any field know how to sell their ideas. You must appeal to the customer’s desire for a solution to a problem. A best-selling author isn’t necessarily the best-writing author. You might be an excellent writer, but to reach your audience you must be able to sell your ideas. Take a sales course. Learn to appeal to your audience’s desire for answers and then deliver it to them in an approachable way.

The Field Is Crowded With Snake Oil Salesmen

Authors often sell their opinions as facts. Opinions are fallible; facts can be measured, proven, or demonstrated. How many times have you read titles like “43 Power Laws,” “7 Steps to Incredible Riches,” or “30 Secrets of Successful People?” Get rich quick schemes have damaged the whole genre. Anyone can make up a system of laws and principles for success but do they work? Where’s the proof? If those opinions and advice were factual, why is the author mired in obscurity and living in his parents’ basement?

People Want Progress, Not Perfection

Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, and Mother Theresa all had their bad days. Someone burned their toast or stepped on their foot and they might have reacted with anger. Spiritual teachers and motivational coaches don’t like to talk about this, but every human being has negative thoughts and feelings. To deny one half of our nature is to deny reality. I believe in self-improvement but no one is perfect. People give up on a unrealistic systems that work only half of the time.

Measure Your Own Success Before Teaching It To Others:

* Do you have healthy relationships with your friends, family, and co-workers?
* Are you earning enough to support your needs? Are your finances in order?
* Do you receive positive results from the efforts of work and service? Are your customers happy?
* Are you physically healthy and free from life-draining addictions or habits?
* Are you happy and fulfilled?
* Are you living the life you dream about or only wishing for it to happen?
* Do you have goals and the plans to achieve them? Do you have faith that these goals and plans will succeed?
* Do you sincerely care for the welfare of all living things? Do your actions reflect your beliefs?

I’m writing this because people urgently want answers to their problems. We need real life skills, authentic wisdom, and inspired teachers who lead by example. Are you selling a hard-to-follow set of opinions or is it simple and accessible? People know the truth when they hear it. The truth sells, because it’s simple and it works.

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Don’t confuse having and idea with having a plan. You need an idea first, and that is of key importance. But if you are going to turn your idea into reality it is going to take a plan and of course action on the plan. Many times the idea comes to us easily, in fact it almost hits us over the head. On the other hand, making a plan, takes real work carried out over a period of time, and stopping at any point along the way dooms your idea to an early death. Things like budgets, timetables, contingencies, etc, are not as much fun as having the big idea, so keep thinking of the final outcome your idea will generate and keep working to turn you idea into an action plan. And then do it.

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