Mental Food :)

Mental Vitamin - The Wrong Forest

from AdvoCare's Facebook Notes by AdvoCare & Ron Reynolds

A man left his home with a ladder and walked for several miles toward a dense, wooded area where he thought he remembered having built a tree house when he was a young boy. He maneuvered his ladder through the thicket to what he thought was the right tree, and propped the ladder against the tree and climbed to the top. It was then, as he could see more of where he really was, that he discovered that not only was this the wrong tree, but he was in the wrong forest. Something similar happens to lots of people; we don't carry a big ladder all the way to a distant forest only to discover we've gone to the wrong place, but many do wake up one morning, and discover that we've chosen the wrong occupation. That can be a horrifying discovery - to conclude that what we chose to do many years ago hasn't turned out to be as rewarding, as exciting, and as fulfilling as we thought it would be. There was a moment in my life when I felt trapped in a job that simply was not feeding my spirit, and it wasn't enabling me to earn enough to keep up with ever-increasing expenses. There is such a thing as being able to "see the future in advance," and at age thirty-two, with my future moving in upon me. I was weary of being told when I could take a vacation, when I could eat lunch, when to take a break, when I had to arrive at work, when I could go home, when - or if - I would get a raise, and who I was to take orders from. It seemed to me to be a form of enslavement, and I knew it was time to change. On impulse one day, I wrote a letter of resignation and then went home to tell my wife. Good fortune smiled upon me and I found a new position at another company doing very much the same thing, although the pay was much better. I still didn't know what I wanted to do, but I did know what I didn't want to do anymore, and once again luck visited me and I went to a meeting involving a "business opportunity" and after one year, became a full-time distributor. That led me to do what I do today, and my life has surely been blessed. Through this whole process, I was at least smart enough to "follow the still, small voice." I knew what I did not want to do anymore, and I simply kept listening to a subtle, persuasive and whispering voice that seemed to be guiding me to make some crucial decisions. I often wonder about those who keep doing "what they don't want to do" as I had for about a dozen years. If you are one who feels captured by your circumstances as I was, I would offer a reminder; a job is where you work just hard enough to keep getting fired and the boss pays you just enough to keep you from quitting. That is not a way to live, and there are other choices that can lead to better - and sometimes challenging - changes, if you will make some serious choices. Or, you can stay and do what circumstance forces you to do. We all must make our own decisions about what's best for us and for our family, but for me, I have a strong conviction; we can limit our dreams so they conform to the level of our income, or we can find something that can expand our income to the level of our dreams and then commit ourselves to its attainment. We call such an approach "taking more control over the quality of your own life." My conclusion is simple; it's easy for us to find ourselves with the ladder of our life up against what we thought was the correct tree only to find that we're in the wrong forest. And, if you think the pain of change is too difficult, try the pain of not changing.