Every year at this time, we are reminded of our solemn duty to “remember” our fallen heroes of wars past.

One of the great challenges of this word “remember” is the impossibility of remembering what you have not experienced.

Perhaps that is our generation’s greatest gift and at the same time, our most glaring ignorance.

It is particularly difficult as we witness the terrible atrocities of war that seem to be a daily occurrence across the globe.

These last few years with what has transpired in Ukraine, and now in Israel and Palestine, the fog of war seems lifted, more tangible and evident to our eyes.

But that’s just it, unless you live it, you don’t smell it, feel it, or acknowledge it’s disturbing and unyielding cost.

The cost of losing everything of meaning. The cost of living in unimaginable circumstances, seeing the unbelievable savagery of humanity exploited every day all around you.

You go about your day, a life unexplainably anointed. So strange is this dichotomy of birth. Born to a place of wealth and prosperity, or born to a place of savage and unyielding pain.

Better yet, there are those within our ranks who choose to leave the soft underbelly of our comfortable lives and place themselves in harm’s way simply to protect us, and to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

Those who chose to give everything away, just because they felt the call to duty.

Then we are subjected to the rants of those among us who would wish to believe that our civil liberties are being constrained, our freedoms removed. Yet, here we reside still with roof overhead, food on our tables, and the opportunity to live a life so many elsewhere could never even imagine possible.

We who are so anointed by circumstance and luck must simply understand that there have been men and women who gave everything they had, in great suffering, so that we might have our freedom and serenity.

Our debt must be paid always in our thankfulness to the many souls who sacrificed on our behalf, not in complaint of our seemingly difficult first world problems.

Lest we forget…….we are the lucky ones.

A few years ago I was really struck by the definition of success penned by Earl Nightingale.

“Success is a progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”

He reported this definition in his book the “Strangest Secret”, and I think it is the best definition I’ve ever heard to describe success.

Success is not about:

How much you have

How much you are doing

Who you are hanging with

What you can buy

Who you are wearing

What deals you can make

How many followers you have

How many likes you get

It’s not about acquiring and accumulating.  It is about working towards a WORTHY IDEAL.

What is a worthy ideal you may ask? Something you believe in, something that you think about positively, something that keeps you up at night in a good way!

It’s your contribution to something greater than you.

And by the way the opposite of success is not failure!

I would argue that the concept of failure as we often identify with it is not the opposite of success but really just opportunity.

Think about all the things that may not have turned out the way you originally planned, or desired. Think about what happened afterwards, what life is like now, compared to then!

In most instances, when we “fail” we create an alternative conclusion, and this alternative conclusion can often result in consequences, although unforeseen or predicted, that end up being very desirable.

Real failure is perhaps the essence of making a mistake, and not learning from it.  Not having the awareness or reflective process to turn it into opportunity.

I was working in New York as a performance coach for the New York Rangers in the spring of 2001. I got called into the General Manager’s office one day and drove the long drive into Manhattan so I could be told I was going to be fired.

I remember it like it was yesterday. The legendary Glenn Sather leaning back on his chair with his hands behind his head, cigar in his mouth, looked at me and said, “Scotty, I’m not going to fire you, I’m just not going to re-hire you.”

Wow, the first time you get fired, well it is a strange feeling. Leaves you feeling quite empty. 

What had I done? What had I not done?

The loss of my job with the team appeared as a failure to me at the time, but several months later, when I was available to come home to Montreal to take a job with the Montreal Canadiens, the team I had dreamed of working for since I was in university, well it didn’t seem like a failure very much anymore!

My epic failure in a marriage, which happened at the same time as being fired (yes, all kinds of fun!) resulted in my finding the best partner I could have ever wished to have, and the consequent creation of my wonderful daughter.

So when you are beating yourself up about so-called failure, realize that it is really just opportunity.

Understand that the opposite of success is really the absence of  a worthy ideal.

Instead of burning your life candle with no intent, concentrate on establishing who you are and what you want your contribution on this earth to be, and set your life up so you are invested in that ideal.

There is no such thing as failure as it has often been labeled, the alternative pathway called opportunity is simply a part of the process of life.

My mom was born in 1930.

It was right in the thick of the world’s worst economic disaster, known to us all now as the great depression.

Her father and mother, like so many at the time, struggled to make ends meet.  The family was everything, and her family lived all around her, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and everyone supported everyone else.

She nearly lost her leg and arm from infectious diseases no one had the medicine or solutions for, resorting to putting maggots in the cast on her leg to eat the dying and diseased flesh.

Her sister had to have her leg amputated to save her from disease.

Her mother lost two boys in pregnancy, and the girls grew up without the brothers they might have known.

Untold hardships, things my mom has never told me most definitely live behind her eyes.

She grew up through the time of the most devastating war in the history of the world.  Every other war pales in comparison.  

Her father served in the Canadian Air Force as a mechanic, away on the airfields of Britain throughout much of the war.  Spared the trauma of serving on the front lines.

My mom was 15 years old when the war ended, the same age as my only daughter is today.  Different lives they have lived.

We sometimes think what we are living with and through today is quite destabilizing, but perhaps much of what we feel is our own self-doing. Focused too often outward to find our compass, stuck in comparison and judgment.

There was no time for that when my mother grew up.  All she had was the immediate requirements laid before her, where to sleep, what to eat, what was the next task to complete.

No time for self-pity, or worse, looking around at others to see who you are.  Simply faced with getting each day done.

She married an Air Force pilot in the 50s.  

My Dad was searching for his own medium of expression. Himself a victim of a father jailed, a mother overwhelmed, and life growing up in a church-run boarding school (knowing what we know now about those places, who knows what challenges he faced).

He soon found identity in higher education, studying political science, and then joining the foreign service.  Not the life my mother expected.  Strange foreign lands, travel, cocktail parties, and no community. She was a small-town girl with small-town thoughts and these were people not of her tablecloth.

My mom had lost a battle with cancer that left her unable to bear children.  She instead chose to adopt, and I was the benefactor of that decision. Who knows who or what I would be today if she had not chosen me?

She was immediately whisked off to figure out motherhood in Singapore, a new life, and new love, and no family or friends to support her…..but she was strong.

She figured it all out, not without her share of mistakes and missteps, just like all of us.  We are imperfect you know…….we sometimes forget to respect that about ourselves.

She came back from overseas and they soon added my brother, he was not like me, and she struggled with that.  She struggled for the rest of her life because of that, and so did he.

Not many years later, the strain of a life misunderstood, and the misalignment of two people’s growth, my parents began a very challenging time.  There was an ever-growing crack in the foundation.

A lot of pain, a lot of yelling, and a lot of misunderstanding and harm.

And one day it was all over.  I was sixteen years old, and I was relieved.

There she was now, alone, a mom of two boys, trying to find a way to make a living, be a mom, and find a way to be a dad too…..

Her work ethic was never something you could challenge.  I never saw my mom complain, or give up, it just wasn’t in her DNA.  Her dad was a fierce workhorse, and she had his genes.

She did what she had to do, and I grew up like there was nothing missing.  My brother struggled, and she struggled with him.

He spent some time with my father, which didn’t work out, then boarding school, and then he found his birth parents, and life began anew. 

I know that hurt my mom…..she couldn’t figure him out.  She has always carried that with her, another emotional scar to add to the many over the course of an uneasy life.

Years after both my brother and I had become adults, my mother found a man who loved her just as simply and as honestly as he could. He cherished her.  I was happy for her, she deserved such love.

But true to the nature of my mom’s life, it would not last, he would pass away, 15 years older than her, he was struck by disease and lost the battle.  She would be denied her fairy tale.

For the last 30 years of her life, she worked, then retired, built a life of friendship with many, and remained steadfastly, and fiercely independent.

The scars of life with nothing made her a champion of saving, something that serves her life today in a way that is difficult to comprehend.  

She is financially independent, and that is something really important for a son.  I would be heartbroken if I could not care for her after all she has done for me.

In the last few years, she is now 93, her health and independence have deteriorated.  She is slowly but surely slipping away.

The Louis Armstrong song, “We Have All the Time in the World” made me lament my life with her, what remains is short, and not the same.  

Time is running out.

We have all the time in the world

Time enough for life

To unfold all the precious things

Love has in store

We have all the love in the world

If that’s all we have you will find

We need nothing more

Every step of the way

Will find us

With the cares of the world

Far behind us

We have all the time in the world

Just for love

Nothing more, nothing less

Only love

Every step of the way

Will find us

With the cares of the world

Far behind us, yes

We have all the time in the world

Just for love

Nothing more, nothing less

Only love

I wish I had more time, but that’s not what life is all about. It’s about being present, and recognizing what we are experiencing because it will not always last.

Sorry Louis, but we don’t have all the time in the world.

Cherish the time you have.

I had the honor of working with one of Canada’s great Alpine skiers. Near the end of his career he was fortunate enough to win a Super G World Championship race by .45 of a second, but the next day, he lost the top of the podium by just .12 of a second!

Think about that for a second (which is more time than the time he had to win or lose by the way!), how little time that actually is!

Take out your cellular phone and go to the stopwatch mode. Set it up and push the button as fast as you can to start it and then stop it.

How long did it take you to stop and start it?

I bet you could not stop it in under a tenth of a second. 

Probably the first time you were up around .3 or .4 seconds. Isn’t that crazy? In the time that it took you to simply start and stop a stopwatch, someone’s life will be in the winner’s circle and someone else’s will not!

Why is this important? 

Basically, it’s that time is of the essence, but not necessarily the way one would expect. You see, we would normally react to this concept by saying that in order to win, or to reach above your competitor, or simply be better at what you do, you have to go faster, do more, and just get after it. 

You need to succeed, not fail.

But that’s not what I am saying. In fact, I want you to think of it from the exact opposite perspective.

I want you to think of it not in a manner that should cause anxiety, or stress, or a sense of urgency. Don’t think of it as a win or a loss, or a success or a failure, but think of it as an opportunity.

Life is about every moment. Every moment has an effect on our lives.

In the movie “Sliding Doors” when the main character played by Gwyneth Paltrow arrives at a train she needs to catch, the movie plays the moment out in a tale of two choices.

In one scene she catches the train, and then shortly thereafter, the scene plays over again and she misses the train. The rest of the movie is played out revealing what might have happened had she made the train, and what might of happened had she not.

The moment of catching or missing a train can change your life. 

More importantly, we understand these metaphoric forks in the road are happening every second of every day or every tenth of a second.

Neither story that gets played out is the best one or the worst one, they are just the story that gets played out. In every life story, there will be moments that we have been socially influenced to view as positive and moments that we might regard as negative, or as some would say successes or failures. 

You won or you lost. 

But are they really successes or failures, or are they actually just opposite sides of a piece of blank paper ready for the next line to be written?

In “Sliding Doors” catching the train, which would normally be considered a positive outcome leads Paltrow’s character to the disparaging reality that her partner is cheating on her, which would most likely be considered negative!

The point is to label the outcome as our failure, not the outcome itself. 

The outcome just leads to other moments, moments we need to embrace, live, and experience. 

Moments create the shape of our lives while we live them.

The paradox of .10 seconds is that the choices you make along the way change the outcome. 

Sometimes very slight course adjustments can be the difference between winning and loosing, or the difference between making the sale, not making the sale, or getting the project or not getting the project. 

So the key is not to overthink each moment or try to pre-define each moment but to spend more time in each moment. Live it rather than manipulate it because all of the above examples are neither successes nor failures but just further opportunities.

There is never just one race, one project, or one sale, there are many, and each one offers you an opportunity to refabricate your pathway, make choices, and find a new line.

Stop thinking about the one result or the outcome and start investing in the moments and the process. Understand that by beating yourself up about every choice you make, you slow down, and that by thinking too much about how you will get there or what you must do better to get there, you lose time rather than save time.

We get so focused on being first, or being the best, that we lose track of the fact that what separates first from second, or second from third is tiny adjustments, momentary risks, instantaneous challenges, and many things you can’t control. So stop trying to control them, stop trying so hard to win, and focus more on the process of getting there, and the feelings you have along the way.

Looking at life as a constant flow of opportunity and not as a journey to a destination, with hardened socially acceptable outcomes will allow you to live in the moment, live freely, and realize that life really is about letting go, not holding on!

In my career as a Performance Coach and Reconditioning Professional, I am always shocked at how often athletes think that they can jump the line and somehow beam themselves to a state of expertise or greatness. 

They don’t necessarily want to do the work or pay the price required to be great.

It seems this phenomenon is getting even more prevalent in life in general because of all the access to high-quality (and many times low-quality!) video and audio coaching living out there on every social media stream. 

People seem to believe these days that they can just watch a video, take a weekend course, or consult an online resource and they become……snap……experienced!

You need only Google how to do something, and there are 10 to 20+ how-to blogs, or videos available on YouTube that you can digest and become knowledgeable in a myriad of interesting topics. 

But you can’t YouTube or Google experience. 

You can’t WordPress a resume. 

You can’t be something you haven’t earned.

If you don’t pay your dues, you will eventually pay a price.

I worked in the National Hockey League where veteran players used to refer to rookies who thought their S-H-I-T didn’t stink as two-year ten-year guys. They would regularly joke about the character of rookies who thought they knew it all, carried themselves with plenty of attitude, and basically felt they were the man long before they had truly paid their dues. 

Paying your dues is a basic tenant of respect and trust in elite sports, and it is the same in the corporate world and life as well.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t aspire to be the best you can be, or shouldn’t have confidence in yourself, or dive in and learn as much as you can every day. In fact, it means exactly that; work hard, learn more, establish a plan and execute it daily, and go from average, to good, to great.

During that process, cultivate great habits, stay humble, respect those who take the time to mentor you, and be thankful for those who help you rise. Recognize that you cannot be great at something unless others who are greater than you take the time to show you the way.

No one does it alone. 

Anyone who tells you they did it alone, they did it all by themselves, is absolutely full of it. All great ideas are iterations of other great ideas, all great achievements are final steps in a long and meandering discovery process. 

There really is no such thing as “overnight success”.

And even when you can make a case that someone leaped rapidly to high achievement there is, generally speaking, always a moment of reckoning when a price is paid in some form for the skipped steps.

A few years ago, my daughter experienced her first sleep-away camp.  I didn’t know what to expect at the time, I hoped it would be an extraordinary experience that would in some way contribute to her growth and development.

To my amazement, she had a great time. It was so much fun that she lamented that she wished she could go back right away!

Even better, she wanted to go back every year, and every year since, it’s been a powerful growth experience.

What was really wonderful at the time though was to see that not only had she had a good time, but she learned some amazing life skills that will truly make a difference in her life for years to come, several of which I have only learned to practice myself most recently!

The first lesson that struck me was not being overcome by “What if?”

Sure, she went in with some trepidation about meeting new people, what if she didn’t fit in, or what if she didn’t know anyone?

But she fully embraced the opportunity.

The day we dropped her off, she simply accepted that she would explore this new experience and see what would come. There were no tears of fear and no clinging to mommy or daddy, just acceptance that what was to come would be a new experience.

The takeaway; “what if?” discussions serve no purpose. At the end of the day, you can’t control everything, so beating yourself up and churning over the possibilities only serves to create stress and discomfort with what is about to come, even if it is not about to come!

If you are going to get stressed, get stressed about what you do know, not about what you don’t know.

The second lesson was that even when you lose or fail in life there is a win or an opportunity that usually comes out of it.

She described a game called “freeze” that they played at the dinner table each night that saw each camper try to outstare the others.

One camper got to shout out “Freeze!” (he/she didn’t have to participate), and then everyone would have to stop moving and the first one to move was the loser.

As the losers, they had to clean up the table after everyone else. But, they also got to be the ones who yelled, “Freeze!” the next day. So losing always led to a little win the next day when you got to be the caller.

Opportunity is often a side effect of failing.

The third lesson was to never think you have won or succeeded until you “know” you’ve won or succeeded.

The camp had a game that campers played on a dock where each person stood at opposite sides of the dock, perched precariously on the balls of their feet while holding a rope between them both. Each had to pull on the rope trying to get the other to somehow fall in the water. 

You would lose if you let go of the rope, or fell in the water.

Well, she learned a hard lesson when she thought her opponent had put her full feet on the dock (against the rules) and as she went to point it out, she lost her balance, and the other person took advantage, sending my daughter into the drink!

Never believe you’ve won until you have solid proof!

The fourth lesson she learned was that sometimes you are going to reach higher than you ever have before, and it’s going to feel scary.

Don’t give up.

Pause, take stock, and keep reaching higher, it’s the only way to go.

She was climbing a climbing wall for the third or fourth time in her life, each time having aborted about halfway into the climb. She was scared but she was also only 5 or 6 years old at the time.

This time, being a little older she had developed a little more hutzpah and was going to give it a shot.

She described to me how she got about half the way up and then wanted to stop. She looked down towards the instructor who encouraged her to keep going. With one over-reaching thought of ringing the bell, she pushed through her fear and kept climbing.

She was so proud to tell me she had rung the bell at the top!

She overcame her fear of the unknown.

Did she grow another inch perhaps?

The last lesson she learned is to reflect on and celebrate each day.

Each evening at dinner the campers had to tell everyone their thorn, rose and bud for the day. 

The thorn was something that hadn’t worked out for them, the rose was something they most enjoyed about the day, and the bud was what they were looking forward to doing tomorrow.

The opportunity to reflect and re-set for each new day is something we should all do every day, it keeps your subconscious focused on the positive, and not so much dwelling on the negative.

Mindset rules so make yours a positive one!

These five simple practices are life-changing, so wonderful she’s experienced them already at camp, but for those a little older it’s never too late to try.

No one teaches you how to intentionally reflect as an act of growth.

For the most part, it’s simply something you do, mostly subconsciously as you navigate each day.

If you’re like most, you followed the process laid out for you at different stages of life.

You went to kindergarten, then grade school, then high school, and then off the higher learning or vocation.

The path was defined, the objectives laid out, the lesson plans constructed, and the outcomes measured and compared.  You passed the grade and moved on, or you did it all over again.

You tried out for the team, or the sport, you followed the practice plan, you did the drills, you learned the plays or the skills, and you played the games, competed, sometimes winning, and sometimes losing.

Winning and losing, getting cut, or riding the bench gave you the feedback.  Is this working, or not? Coaches gave you feedback, you implemented it, or you didn’t.

You followed the rules set out by mom and dad, or you broke them.  You recognized what the consequences would be for your decisions, and you decided they were worth the risk, or not.

You played and created, and explored, and realized what you liked, or didn’t like, and decided if it was what you wanted to keep doing, or stop doing. In some instances you had the choice, in others, you did not.

You got a job, did the training, learned the ropes, figured out the expectations, and you worked the process.  Maybe you moved up the chain, took on more responsibility, got a pay raise, got a promotion, and kept on going.

Or maybe you decided then or later, that working for someone wasn’t your jam. You decided something you knew or created would be worth something to someone else, and you endevoured to build your own business or career.

You built a business plan, or maybe you just winged it!  You added more pieces, more people, more work, more time, and slowly, but surely, your business venture either flourished or folded.

In all of this, there were indeed moments of reflection.  Do I like this, do I not, do I want this, do I not, am I willing, am I not.

But you weren’t likely taught how to intentionally reflect.  

You might have been one of those who simply learned through a measure of experience and insight. But there really isn’t much in the way of a formal education in reflective practice.

What I mean by intentional reflective practice is that you use the idea of past, present, and future in a way that serves you rather than simply occurs around you.

Intentional reflection means that you first recognize where you have come from, and how you have grown (the past), then grounds you in what you are doing now, and why you are doing it (the present), and finally empowers you to visualize a future possibility that inspires you to further growth.

There is no resentment of what has been, simply a recognition of how it has shaped you.

There is no pining for a future state.  No, “once I get there I will be good” statements. No grass is greener. There is simply an ownership of the present, and how you can make the best of it and experience growth in your effort.

The future represents an imaginary possibility, something you are pulled towards like gravity, but not something you are attached to like it must occur.  There is no “there” to get to, instead there is an image to inspire.

The future vision exposes the work you need to do to grow so that you may meet the mark of its demand.

Reflecting with intention means that you own a process, you are conscious and connected, and that you regularly look back for recognition of growth, see yourself now as a clarification of growth, and look forward as an inspiration toward further growth and change.

It’s a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly experience.  

It’s who you are, not what you are.

Try exploring intentional reflective practice:

1 – Recognize yourself and mind the gap – “where have I come from?”

2 – Ask yourself to be present; “Who am I now? Do I see my purpose?”

3 – Inspire yourself; “where do I wish to go, and why do I wish to go there?”

Regularly engage in this internal conversation. Make it a part of you.

When you begin to do this, you will see yourself like you have never seen yourself before.  It might be uncomfortable in the beginning, but over time, you’ll begin to see your life with more clarity.  

You won’t pine for a future state, or regret what has been or is now.

You will be living your life with intention.

In my life as a performance coach I’ve watched Olympic and professional athletes and many executive athletes I’ve supported toil with the concept of life balance.

We are often advised that creating a balanced life is important in establishing good health and well-being.

I believe a lot of the frustration in trying to attain “balance” is in the interpretation of the word.

The term balance conjures a perception of a scale with equal amounts of weight on either side. The word balance is often interpreted in the sense of equality amongst all the competing interests and demands of our lives.

Many may advocate against such a concept, for the notion that we might somehow be able to truly create an equal effort in every area of responsibility in our lives would seem daunting, if not impossible.

Maybe functionally when we speak of balance the perception and expression of the term should be more like the concept of how music is composed.

In music balance is a weighting of the various frequencies of sound or the instrumental arrangement. Certain elements are more pronounced at different times throughout the arrangement, and certain frequencies are more dominant.

There is always a “foundation” or baseline of sound frequency, each element being a part of the overall sound, however for a true piece of music with melody and flow to be expressed, there must be constant change, otherwise we would just have sound, or worse, maybe just noise.

In a video created by David Lindberg presenting the thoughts of Alan Watts, Alan described why your life is not a journey, he describes life using the analogy of a musical arrangement.

“No piece of music is created to arrive at a completion, unlike travel, where one is trying to get somewhere, in music one does not make the end of the composition the point of the composition. If that were the case the best conductors would be the ones who played the fastest, there would be composers who wrote only finales.”

Music is an analogy for life. 

The marriage between flow and structure in music is really how we should consider balance in life. There need to be consistent relative structures, and there need to be various elements that ebb and flow.

Sometimes in our lives, we will stay close to the original arrangement, and follow our composition, and sometimes we will define a new arrangement or direction based on what we want to achieve. There should be no guilt about the expression or composition of our lives, and certainly no final destination in mind.

There are so many different types of music, each establishes a different mood, energy, or intention.  In just the same manner, our life requires a different mood, energy, or intention given what we wish to accomplish in the moment, and in the future.

The feeling of being out of balance is just like walking into a booming rave in the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday morning when you expect to be working on a project, but instead, your head is pounding with the massive weight of the bass vibration. It’s the wrong music, for the wrong moment, and the desired intention.

The idea of life balance is to modify the music of life just like we modify the music for mood.  Don’t play the same music day after day, situation after situation.  Play the music that meets the mark.  Being balanced is playing with the “frequencies” in your life, and ensuring that you are playing the right music at the right time, exploring the full spectrum of what’s possible.

Don’t try to live a balanced life, instead try to better recognize the time for variation, change, and revision.  Reflect more often on where you are, where you have been, and where you wish to go, just like a beautiful piece of music that takes you on a wonderful momentary ride.

Think of balance like a mixing board, and find the frequencies that work to make you stronger, better, and more fulfilled each day.

When I started University back in the 80’s just like everyone else, I was on a mission to follow the program, learn the curriculum, pass the exams and graduate!

Along the way, I knew I was going to experience epic parties, all-nighter study sessions, lack of sleep, sleeping through class, sleeping in class, meeting friends, new relationships, break-ups, F’s, D’s, C’s, B’s and A’s!

It would all likely happen, and I would get through it, and on the other side I would be something, or somebody! 

I would go out and get a job, I would arrive in the real world and off I would go to earning money!

Money! Ya! I would have money, real money!

Not have to collect beer bottles after parties at my residence and bring them to the grocery store for five cents a piece so I could have enough to buy some Kraft dinner, and maybe on a good night, some wieners.

Enough money so I could really afford to go out for dinner, maybe order a good bottle of wine, maybe own a “new” car, and maybe one day own a house instead of renting a dingy apartment.

I believed, as did most of us who enrolled in university, that my raison d’etre was to get a job and make a living! If I made a good living, I would be successful. If I somehow did better than that, well hey, I would be living la vie da loca!

I believed it when I started University, and I still believed it when I graduated. In essence I believed that success would be attained through becoming something.

It’s always been the way, right?

I once read a book where the author described success as the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.

What I have come to realize since graduating university, and immersing myself in a professional life, is that what I do is not who I am.

That actual success is much deeper and more profound than what I do, or what I have accumulated, or who I have been labeled.

I have realized that who I am is much deeper than what I do, and that in order for me to feel as though I am truly on a pathway to success I must be reaching towards my own worthy ideal.

There is no definition of what that is for every person, no mandatory pathway or script. 

Ultimately we are all on a different path and will reach toward our own worthwhile life when it aligns with our spirit and energy.

But there are a few principles worth considering along the way. Ones I wish I knew when I was much younger than today.

Principle number one is that mindset might just be the most important part of living a successful life.

Most of the prevailing research on mindset today resonates around the concept of fixed versus growth mindset.

In essence, in the fixed mindset all the shitty things that happen to us happen for a reason, and most of the time we attribute it to bad circumstances rather than recognizing how our mindset drives how we perceive the experience .

Nothing is bad or good, we just like to label it based on our own personal experiences and bias.

In a growth mindset, everything that happens to us is really just an experience and usually these experiences lead to opportunity.

The problem is that if we spend all our time dwelling on the label we have affixed to that experience, we often miss the opportunities that arise all around it.

A simple example that happens to most of us often enough is just trying to find parking! I see a spot, I drive towards it, and someone else grabs it!

A fixed mindset tells me to blow up! How dare that person take that spot from me! Couldn’t he/she see I was about to take it?

We start blasting the other person, yelling at them and yelling in our own little bubble about all the injustices of the moment. Instead of actually noticing that another spot freed up, just up ahead, and because we were too focused on what just happened to us, we missed it as well!

Opportunity missed!

This is but a simple example, we do this every day with so many other more significant realities like relationship break ups, or job losses. We get transfixed on what happened, rather than focused on where the next opportunity appears.

A growth mindset allows us to see the opportunity, it relieves us of the label, and allows us to simply observe life as it comes at us rather than react to it and become embroiled in it.

The second principle is the  power of consistency.

The power of consistency is simply this; if I apply a reasonable amount of effort towards a task, skill, project or goal, and I do it consistently every day, I will eventually achieve it.

Sounds simple enough, right?

Well it doesn’t end up to be as simple as it should be, as most of us don’t do this very well and as such, we often miss out on achieving a lot of things that we would like to achieve. We give up too soon. We ebb and flow on our effort, on our commitment, or our actual getting it done!

If you want to get good at something, apply the power of consistency!

The third principle lives off the back of the power of consistency. If you want to have a lot of money one day……you have to invest.

Investing money, even just a little money, regularly and consistently in blue chip investments will yield an eventual financial bounty. It’s just an absolute fact.

However, most of us fail to do it early enough, consistently enough, and with a complete commitment to the long-term.

Get rich quick? 

Ya, it happens, it happens to some people who win the lottery in life. But if your approach focuses on how to do that, and you miss the boat on the long-term approach and the application of the power of consistency, well, you will likely never have what you perhaps desire.

Which brings me to the fourth principle; stop focusing on the money!

There are actually three kinds of currency in life:

1 — Money

2 — Time

3 — Energy

We tend to get focused on having as much of the first as we can get. And we unfortunately spend a lot of the other two currencies in our life trying to get it!

Instead, focus on how you use your time and energy most efficiently and effectively. Then the money will come!

We all need to do a “time audit” on our life on a regular basis, I’ve written about this in a previous blog post. Where do I waste time during my day? What actions am I doing that are taking me towards my goals of achieving a worthy ideal, and what actions am I doing that are not?

Time is a very limited resource, we only have so much available to us, and all of us have no real idea when it will run out on us.

So good heavens, let’s not waste time!

Everyone needs to take the time to identify what things we do in life that inspire or recover energy and what things suck energy from our being.

It might be tasks, projects, environments, or even other people in our lives that either, bring energy to us, or they take energy away. Once we know these, we need to work towards removing or minimizing the energy OUT elements, and maximizing the energy IN elements.

When our time is accounted for, and our energy is strong, we can do anything, and money will most certainly accumulate.

The last principle I wish to share is, plan your life! 

Plan it, prepare it, review and revise it, and execute it — don’t be a passenger! And celebrate your life daily! That’s the bonus principle.

Build yourself a 3–5 year plan. What do you want your life to look and feel like in 3–5 years? 

Don’t be afraid to dream big. As Bill Gates purportedly said once, “most of us overestimate what we can do in a year, and underestimate what we can do in five.”

Now reverse engineer the plan!

What does it need to look like halfway? What does it need to look like in a year?

Now take year one and break it into quarters. What do you need to do in each quarter to help you move towards that vision?

Now break each quarter into weeks and establish what you have to do in week one to get started.

Each week, review what you’ve done, revise the plan, then wake up each day and execute the plan.

Every day, at the end of the day, celebrate what you achieved. Count your wins!

Most of us finished school and thought we’d get a job, and then we’d settle down, have kids, and build a life.

Most of us wake up one day and realize that getting on that boat and passively waiting for it to arrive at port led to an awful lot of disappointment or miss-direction.

You get but one life on this earth, use these principles to make it an amazing adventure. 

These principles work just as well if you’re 21 or 75, just live them!

Have you ever watched the movie “Saving Private Ryan”. 

If you’ve never seen the movie, may I suggest you probably should take the time to watch it, even if the violence in it is too much for you to digest?

The first thirty minutes of the movie and the last 30 minutes of the movie are perhaps the most realistic depiction of war ever made by Hollywood. Steven Spielberg directed an unfortunate and horrifically real masterpiece.

The movie, without giving away all the plot elements, is about a small platoon of soldiers on D-Day who are asked to find the only living brother of four after his brothers have all been killed in recent action.

General Marshall sends orders to save the one living brother to prevent their mother from having to grieve over the loss of all four of her boys. No doubt a noble cause!

At the end of the movie, as the leader of the band of men (played by Tom Hanks) who have finally found Private Ryan (played by a young Matt Damon) is literally passing away, he whispers in Ryan’s ear, “Earn this!” 

You see, at that moment many men had passed away in an all-out effort to save Private Ryan’s life and Hank’s character didn’t want the effort lost on this young man’s conscience.

Watching this movie, you cannot separate yourself from all the unbelievable heartbreak and horrific sense of loss that these men and their families must have suffered during the war, or any war for that matter.

Imagine being with your grade twelve graduating class and within a minute of landing on the beach, all but three of you are left alive! 

Then you must piece together with a whole host of others to create a new class, only for it to slowly but surely be dramatically culled right before your eyes over and over again!

Hanks’ character’s words in that moment of the movie made me think a lot about the concept of earning your life. Something I’ve tried to remind myself of ever since.

You see, so many of us today just seem to believe that our life is a right, and how dare we not be automatically happy as we flow blindly through life collecting all our baubles and trinkets. We somehow expect it should be right, rather than earn the right to have it.

So for me, there are five important tenets of life that allow us to be worthy of our life on this planet.

The first is to work without complaint. 

Most these days again perceive that a job, or even better, a career is a right. 

Unfortunately for a great deal of the population of this world, a job that pays them a reasonable and sustainable wage is something they might only dream of, not expect. 

So if you have one, understand that it is a privilege and that the person you work for, or the person who buys your services has provided you with the privilege of serving them. 

Do your work with all you have, and do it like you know it might not be there tomorrow.

Second is to be gracious and thankful to your parents for bringing you into this world and providing you with a home (that is if they did so, for all those of you who lived tortured lives at home, this one might not be applicable). 

If your parents brought you up with whatever semblance of structure and provision, and they loved you as best they could, you owe them everything you have to honor their effort. They did the best they could as you are, or may likely do with your own children. Any parent knows it is not an easy task, and it doesn’t come with a playbook!

The third is to mentor someone else. 

We all get to summit our own mountains in life not by the sheer effort of ourselves, but by embracing the support and guidance of so many along the way. Without mentorship, we would likely make too many mistakes to ever achieve our summit. As such, it is our responsibility to pay it back and to mentor others so they may likely summit as well.

The fourth is to learn and grow throughout your life. 

Never stop learning, never stop challenging your thought processes, your habits, or your biases. Those who rest easy, those who take the easy route and do the same thing on different days, do not earn the right to prosper or succeed. 

This life we have been given is a blank canvas and we can paint the picture, we can revise the picture, we can add to the picture, and modify it as we see fit until such time as we pass away so we should never be satisfied with its composition.

The last one is to make a contribution to this world. 

When you give, you grow, when you take, you self-limit. Our life on this planet is about our contribution, it is all we can leave, and it is all that can represent what we have accomplished.

There will be people who take advantage of our contributions. There will be those who do not appreciate what we bring. That is not the point. We cannot live through another’s state of mind; we can only be in charge of our own state of mind, which must be driven by a sense of giving, not receiving.

Wake up every day and earn this life you have been given.

There is nothing trivial about the blessing of our life, never rest easy that it has been earned.