Nightingale’s Challenge: Are You Willing to Pay the Price of Your Wonderful Life?

Monday 3 May 2010 - Filed under Preparing Yourself

Earl Nightingale (you may be familiar with his record-breaking 1956 recording, “The Strangest Secret“) defines success as the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.  If you know what vision of your life inspires you right now, and you are taking deliberate steps toward living this vision each day, you will soon find your circumstances adjusting to match the kind of person you now are.  This requires some faith, yes, when you are at the bottom of a mountain and too close to the details of life to yet appreciate the inspiration of the big picture view.  So at first, hold the goal in your mind and take small, simple steps, in your mind, to feel more like the person you really are.  And THEN take action.

The price is not a sacrifice — the price is your attention.  To what experiences are you giving your attention?  Do you want more of that?  If so, then keep paying that price, keep investing in that future.

Nightingale lists the responsibilities of each of us that constitute the price that each of us must pay to start being the person we want to be:

1. You will become what you think about. Make a decision about how you want to feel.  YOU set the scene; circumstances respond to your example.

2. Remember the word Imagination and let your mind begin to soar.  Take time in the mornings to set intentions for the day.  Most importantly, make the decision that nothing is more important than that you feel good.  Your actions and interactions flow from how you feel about what you’re doing and where you’re going.

3. Use your courage (focus despite prevailing attitudes) to think positively about your goal and concentrate on it everyday.  Only think about what feels good; get into the feeling place of where you want to be.  Relax and enjoy knowing that it is yours the moment you made the decision to be/do/have it.

4. Save 10% of what you earn. The simple act of saving boosts your confidence, your assets and shows you the power of doing a little at a time.

5. Action. Ideas are worthless unless we act on them.  The key here is not to take action out of a sense of pressured urgency, but to take action out of an inspired sense of how this action fits into your overall vision of your life.  Take action that feels right and that pulls you forward.

Beautiful thoughts make beautiful lives, for every word and deed lies in the thought that prompted it, as the flowers lie in the seed.
A.E.Godfrey

Action Plan:

1. Set yourself a definite goal.

2. Stop running yourself down or beating yourself up for not being there yet.

3. Think about what you want.

4. Change the image you have of yourself by writing out a description of the person you want to be.

5. Start acting the part of the person you want to be.  Cultivate a positive self-image of yourself as one capable of living this life, starting now.

Our lives are made up.  If you are making it up anyway, why not make it up so it’s fun?

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