So What Does It Take?

Sunday, 13. July 2008 by Ronald T. Brown, Ph.D.

To fully experience the life you were created to live – and see your dreams become a reality – will require that you embrace and develop three critical elements in your thinking and life. They cannot be neglected, for like a three-legged char, without any one of these, your life will rapidly fall into a mediocre state.

These three pivotal “legs” are: 1) Taking time to clarify and define your Dreams, 2) Developing inner fortitude, or the virtue of Courage, and 3) Exhibiting a compelling Belief (or faith) regarding your future and potential. Other qualities, like wisdom, knowledge, hope, and self-control will be needed, but without the three pillars of Clarity of Focus, Courage, and Belief, these other qualities will be of little use.

No matter how much wisdom, knowledge, or self-control we can muster, if we do not have clarity what our personal dreams and passions are; if we have not developed the virtue of courage in our life, and if we do not have enough belief to compel us to take steps of faith into the unknown – we will not realize our potential and dreams. All around are examples of smart and virtuous people who choose to remain safely tucked away in their comfort zone, letting their potential and dreams pass them by.

** Best selling author, Robert Cooper, PhD, writes about his grandfather, who had just witnessed the death of two of his patients. He tells the story as follows:

“One summer afternoon when I was nine years old, I was sitting on a wooden bench under a window at the end of a long hallway at Sacred Heart Hospital in Le Mars, Iowa, where my grandfather was chief surgeon… Finally, I saw him walking toward me. I jumped to my feet, then stopped, stunned to see he was still in his surgical gown. His scrubs were soaked with sweat and covered with blood. Something was wrong.

He sat down on the bench, obviously exhausted. I’ll never forget the look on his face.
“Are you all right?” was all I could say.
“Yes,” he said. “Sometimes I learn a lot about life from people who are dying.”
“Did someone die today?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“A man and woman.”
“What happened?”
“They were in a car accident,” he said.
As usual, he talked to me more as if I was grown-up than a child.
“They made it to the hospital in the ambulance,” he went on, “but I couldn’t stop the bleeding inside them. It was remarkable, though. They talked the whole time we were prepping them for surgery.” He shook his head at the recent memory. “Side by side on the emergency carts, they talked to each other and to us.”
“Weren’t they afraid of dying.”
“Yes,” my grandfather nodded. “They could feel the blood flowing from their wounds. But they were fully awake. Hemorrhaging is like that sometimes. But what they talked most about was not being afraid of dying but being afraid they had missed everything that mattered most about living.”
“They talked about being so busy all the time, distracted by all the things that weren’t the most important, falling into ruts and routines instead of seizing every chance they had to give their best to each other, to their work, to their family…”
He went on. “Robert, it’s a strange thing. Sometimes people have to be dying before they realize they haven’t been living.”

Because they are too distracted, too scared, or whatever, many people are living unfulfilled lives that are leading them nowhere. Like a ship securely tied up in the harbor, their lives remain stagnant and not fully used for its ultimate purpose. These individuals have never fully experienced the vastness of the “sea,” and the immense and exciting possibilities of where the voyage could lead them. But, when a person combines both belief and courage to their dreams, they will eventually experience the excitement and possibilities of what their lives, and the world, has to offer.

Challenge: Toward what destination is your life headed?