GOAL-ING FOR GO-GETTERS

PAUSE A MOMENT

GOALING FOR GO-GETTERS

I'm starting tonight's Pause a Moment with the punchlines first –

• You will never change your fortunes until you change your mind.

• You can't score any goals, or runs, while you're sitting in the grandstand. You gotta learn the rules, find your best place within how it's done, and get into the game.

Hello, I'm Barrie Barkla, and this is Pause a Moment.

[Dream – Janet Seidel]

Are you unsure of what your dream might actually be? Perhaps because you are afraid to dream, or because there are just too many possibilities looking at you for you to be certain which is the one you came for, or because you somehow lost sight of your dream along the way? Well, it's not too late to change your mind and start preparing yourself to recover your dream by asking yourself four questions I'll give you in a moment. I invite you to do something in response to each question, something to put yourself in the best possible position to recognise which dream is the next one for you.

As you respond deliberately to these four questions, keep a dream in mind. No matter how vague the details may be, focus on how you'll feel when it materialises. You know that feeling already; you've experienced it before. Don't worry when or under what circumstances – just remember the feeling, and be grateful that you can still feel it. It's the feeling that will take you home. 

 

Right now it's important to cultivate that ground-bed of Gratitude. Allow it to grow and develop. As you do, keep this in mind: 'A dream is a realising of what you desire as you progressively discover for yourself what is possible.' A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more than we presently assume we're capable of.

OK. Now, here are the four questions --

1. What can I do now to prepare myself mentally and emotionally? Read and research areas of your greatest interest. Imagine yourself in that picture. Get your body in optimal shape to pursue your dream. Grow your self-awareness and take the opportunity to clear up any emotional baggage that may get in your way.
2. What can I do now to get the experiences I'll need under my belt? Engage in activities in areas related to your interests. Volunteer if you have to, and learn from those who already have the experience. Find a suitable mentor. Do all you can every day to increase your awarefulness, and enjoy, as much as you can, the process of enriching your treasure trove of experiences along the way.
3. What can I do now to inspire myself during the hard days? Put up pictures of people and things that inspire you. Take time to be with those moments that engender the most pleasant feelings. Enjoy those now, for their own sake.
4. If my best and closest friend came to me now asking my advice on this, what would I say?

Today is the best day to begin... today is the best opportunity for a new destiny.

[As Time Goes By – Grady Tate etc]

If you believe that time has passed you by, that your best days are behind you, or that somehow you've failed too many times to warrant another chance, know that nothing could be further from the truth.

After his first audition, a casting director told actor Sidney Poitier, "Why don't you stop wasting people's time and go out and become a dishwasher or something?" It was at that moment, recalls Poitier, that he decided to devote his life to acting. He wasn't going to let someone else decide his life path. He was going to go out on a limb, to create a new path for himself and enlist supporters.

Get off the middle of the road. There's nothing in the middle of the road, but yellow stripes and dead lizard or three. Decide to do something now to make your life better, and be gratedul that you still have the desire. The choice is yours.

"My decision is maybe—and that's final." Is this you? Being decisive is essential for a successful life. If you deny yourself commitment, what will you do with your life? Every accomplishment, great or small, starts with a choice that morphs into a series of decisions.

David Ambrose remarked, "If you have the will to win, you have already achieved half your success; if you don't, you have already achieved half your failure."

The moment you definitely commit yourself, change begins. All sorts of things happen to help you that never would have otherwise occurred. Kenneth Blanchard observed, "There is a difference between “interests” and “commitment”. When you are interested in doing something, you only do it when it is convenient. When you are committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results." Commitment changes your hierachy of priorities -- right across the board. Lack of wilful decisiveness has caused more failures than lack of intelligence or ability.

Indecision often gives an advantage to the other person because they did their thinking beforehand. Helen Keller said, "Science may have found a cure for most evil; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all—the apathy of human beings." Don't leave a decision for tomorrow that needs to be made today.

Remember, don't be a "middle-of-the-roader" because the middle of the road is the worst place to try to go forward. Bertrand Russell is quoted as saying “Nothing is so exhausting for everyone as indecision, and nothing is so futile.” You can do everything you ought to do once you make a decision. Today, decide on your dream.

[Chorale No.1: Sleepers Awake – Jacques Loussier Trio – 8:27]

This place is a dream
only a sleeper considers it real
then death comes like dawn
and you wake up laughing
at what you thought
was your grief
A man goes to sleep in the town
where he has always lived
and he dreams
he's living in another town.
in the dream he doesn't remember
the town he's sleeping in his bed in.
he believes the reality
of the dream town
the world is that kind of sleep.
Humankind is being led
along an evolving course,
through this migration
of intelligences
and though we seem
to be sleeping
there is an inner wakefulness,
that directs the dream
and that will eventually
startle us back
to the truth of
who we are.

Inner Wakefulness

Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi (13^th C mystic)

Have you every seen the ABC telemovie “Cliffy”? It was fittingly re-run last Australia Day. The year was 1983. and the long-distance foot race from Sydney to Melbourne was about to begin, covering 875 kilometres! About 150 world-class athletes had entered, for what was planned as a six-day event. So race officials were startled when a 61-year-old man approached and handed them his entry form.

His name was Cliff Young, and his "racing attire" included overalls and galoshes over his—work boots.

At first, they refused to let him enter. So he explained that he'd grown up on a 2,000-acre farm, with thousands of sheep. His family could afford neither horses nor tractors so, when the storms came, his job was to round up the sheep. Sometimes, he said, it would take two or three days of running.

What was the key to Cliff Young's success? It goes by various names: determination, perseverance, persistence, tenacity. Or maybe it simply never occurred to him that he could not do it. Whatever the reasons, the key means keeping one's eye fixed steadfastly on a goal, and not stopping, no matter the difficulties or the obstacles, until that goal is achieved.

Keep on going. The chances improve with every moment of you discovering something really important, almost when you are least expecting it. So stay awake and aware.

You will never change your fortunes until you change your mind. And once you've changed your mind, get ready to change it again. Your mind is like underwear, and needs to be changed often -- for the same reasons.

And as they used to say on radio “Keep on keeping on....” What you want is chasing you, tugging at your conscience....... Look!!!

[Change Your Mind – Paul Kelly]