To Be A Light

Recently, I read a book called The Traveler’s Gift by Andy Andrews. If you haven’t read it, I suggest you get yourself a copy and read it ASAP. It’s an amazing book that teaches the seven decisions you need to make in your life to achieve personal success.

I’m now reading Mastering The Seven Decisions That Determine Personal Success, which is the follow-up to that book and covers those seven decisions in more detail.

The first decision or principle is “The Buck Stops Here” and it refers to personal responsibility, which really hit home for me since I had just written about personal responsibility in my last post. It talks about how many people, when faced with adversity and difficulty in their lives, become mired in self-pity and spend a lot of wasted time

Failure to take personal responsibility is one of the most pervasive problems in America today. If your lives are not what you want them to be, you blame something or someone outside of yourself and stay stuck right where you are. Your lives are a mess because of:

• Your parents. They loved you too much or didn’t love you enough.
• Your boss. He doesn’t appreciate your hard work and give you the promotions you deserve.
• The economy. How can anyone get ahead when jobs are scarce, wages are low and the cost of living just keeps rising?
• Time. There’s not enough of it and, what little there is,  goes by too fast.

Don’t feel bad. I’m as guilty of this as you are. For most of us, it’s a habit so ingrained in our thinking process, we don’t even realize we’re doing it. We do it because it’s easier to get angry

Those are just a few of the things this book promises you can do.

I have to admit, when a friend first handed me this book, I thanked her and pretended to be interested, but my mind was really thinking “oh geez, do people really believe in this stuff?” I know I didn’t.

I took the book home and tossed it on my shelf and forgot about it. Or I tried to anyway. My friend is a very determined person and she kept asking me about it and, for a while, I kept making excuses for why I hadn’t read it yet. Eventually, I gave in and read it just so I could tell my friend I had and get her to leave me alone. It wasn’t enough. Once I read it, she