You cannot escape the gloominess out there. Even if you are not personally hurting financially you may be making cut backs in your spending as a preventative. It’s a natural inclination to look at this time as a survival situation.
It seems this is a time where many are sacrificing greatness for survival and that would be a mistake. You can be great in anything you do if your mind is right. Of course part of that is preparation, this does not happen overnight but there are clear steps a person to take to be prepared for greatness yet these are generally hard habits to create, thus so few people are truly great in life. Another part of this is being generous. If not with your money than with your time or at the least with your heart. Have a sense of gratitude that coveys a love of people and life without expectation of return, this is what changes the hearts of other people.
When it comes down to it, the government is not going to get this country out of a recession, it’s us the individual American who exudes appreciation that will do it. To add on top of that for us as individuals, there is very little difference between doing something good and doing something great. So be great. Don’t settle for survival. Don’t settle of anything less than excellent. Become indispensable in your relationships and in your office. Really there are only a very few things that each of us must do each day that are the most important things in our life; when you master those things and execute them perfectly we find the rest of our life gets better. The easier things we would want to do first either get done as consequence or they really didn't need to be done to begin with.
I know how tough it is in this economy to keep an honest account of finances. I have never shied away from expressing my money issues on CMS. Perhaps the moral high ground is that it is family medical bills and not dissipation issues. I struggle mightily with cutting back my financial footprint and being generous at the same time and I am certainly not great in all areas of my life. Its the application of getting better every day that moves a person from just surviving to being great. By making the hard decisions first, you grow the envelope around you to manage more things with less effort.
Be brave. Be Strong. Be courageous. Be great.
5 comments:
I agree... times ARE tough. We need to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, though, not just scream about our government not doing it for us. This correction was a long time coming.
Living on credit was a facade, and we as individuals AND as a nation need to get real, and live off real money! Credit is supposed to be for emergencies (like medical surprises) and homes and maybe cars and tuition. Of course this is just my opinion, so please no angry messages on my or Comm's site!
;-)
Great Post! I'm not sure anything else could be said that would increase the impact.
Wow. Can you blush through the comment box? Those are both great comments. I'm honored and flattered that the post made sense.
This comment struck me the most:"It seems this is a time where many are sacrificing greatness for survival and that would be a mistake."
YOU are right Comm...if have felt for a while now that I have been sacrificing greatness and just surviving...it's time to LIVE!
Good and timely thoughts.
Let's have pretty wide lattitude for what we regard as great, and let's be context-sensitive.
Heck, under some circumstances, survival is a great achievement!
For many of us, we are unlikely to starve or die of exposure; the downside is limited, granting us greater capacity to take risks in pursuing what we perceive as great.
And when we contemplate "master those things and execute them perfectly" let's be clear to distinguish between striving for perfection and negative perfectionism.
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