Carpe Diem
This is Latin for “Seize the Day.” Or in today’s English, “Seize Today.” These two words are going to rock your world if you understand them and embrace them.
Two Primary Principles:
- You can’t seize today if you are looking into the past, holding onto regrets or even past glories. Let them go. It is ok to remember the past and learn from it, just don’t live there.
- You can’t seize today if you are worried about tomorrow. You certainly want and need goals, but don’t worry about the “What ifs” that might or might not happen to keep you from attaining your goals. Stay focused on today. In the end, that is all you are guaranteed anyway.
So that is great advice, right? We all KNOW that we need to seize today, but HOW do we do it? Very simple. There are two things you must do:
- Change the way you think. Concentrate on the glass half full, not the glass half empty. Be thankful for what you have. Set and focus on what you have to accomplish to meet your goals, and refuse to get sidetracked with pity parties, negative talk, or time wasting activities. Think out of the box. Think bigger than yourself.
- Change what you do. If you ever expect to change your circumstances, once you have changed the way you think, employ the rule of massive energy. It takes an enormous amount of energy to get a jet off the ground, but once airborne, they can literally put it on auto-pilot. Be willing to put massive energy into what you want to do. If you are making 50 calls a day, do 100. If you are knocking on 20 doors a day, do 40. If you are setting 5 appointments a week, do 10, 15 or more. If you are working out for 30 minutes a day, workout for an hour. Throw what you have been doing out the window. It is not getting you where you want to be more than likely (unless you have already changed the way you think and applied the rule of massive energy).
You may be looking at me side-ways right now thinking I must be smoking some wacky- tobaccy. But think about this analogy. See yourself in a beat-up car that is struggling to get uphill. You are out of fuel and have the car stuck in neutral. That is not a pretty picture, is it? What happens to a car going uphill that is in neutral? It actually starts going backwards! That could apply to your finances, your relationships, your faith, or whatever you have in your life that is important to you.
Now what if you apply Carpe Diem? What if you change what you think, and change what you do? What if you put fuel in your vehicle that propels you OVER the mountain and you coast from that point forward. What would THAT look like to your finances, your relationships, your faith, etc?
It takes 21 days to create a habit. I am throwing out a challenge to you. I don’t care what goal you want to pick. It could be to lose 10 lbs, to exercise every day, to make X amount of calls a day, to close X amount of deals a week. Whatever you choose, make today day 1 of Carpe Diem. Set the goal higher than you think you can normally do. Why? You have to stretch beyond your expectations, then be willing to apply the rule of massive energy. Do THAT for 21 days, and you WILL see results. You will see improvement in every area of your life simply because you are starting to put to work the gifts you have already been given. You do have what it takes, you just have to use it.
I can show you how to light the fire, but it is up to you to light it. Seize today.
Shalom!
Dan Skognes