Get Out of Your Rut!
During pioneer days, covered wagons or “prairie schooners” carved deep ruts across the Midwest. In this blog post, Gary teaches us how to get out of ruts! He and Mary are pictured here on a Young Living wagon train in 2000.
Folks, I think the prairie schooner’s rut we talked about last week is one of the greatest metaphors that we could use as an example. Have you chosen your rut? Every one of us has one from childhood, because we look at our parents as our mentors; and as we’re growing up, we want to be just like our parents, true or false? Not until we get in the teens do we often start saying, “Maybe I don’t want to be like my mother and father.”
I listen to Jacob and Josef and can tell you that all they aspire to be is to be like dad; and every time I hear this, I have to reevaluate myself, my position, and where I’m at in life. Am I being the kind of example I would be proud for the boys to follow? Am I doing the right thing to lead my boys to greatness? That’s my greatest goal. I want both of the boys to be greater than I could ever be. That’s my greatest goal in life, and any parent’s greatest reward should be to see their children rise far beyond where they stopped. So it’s time for self-evaluation.
Coming back to changing your paradigm, how do we do that? It’s really difficult; it’s a challenge. I’ll tell you this, 99 percent of the people in the world live out their lifetime and never change their paradigm. They change some of the feelings about it, they change some of the attitudes about it, and they change some of the behavior about it. But 99 percent of the people in the world never change their paradigm. They change the attitude, the behavior, the feeling from time to time, but they don’t change it.
Why? Because they don’t change themselves. They don’t change who is inside. Most people just want to go along—like in trying to lose weight. “Well, I’ve done this, and this, and this, and it doesn’t work. So this is just my life.” Same thing about their finances: “Well, I’ve been in this company and I’ve been in that company and I had this business and I tried that business and I’ve done sales before—and it just doesn’t work. So my lot in life is to be a poor person for the rest of my life.”
