The Best Years of Your Life… Now!

I have to applaud Bob for his being consistent in posting to this blog. I realize it has been a long time since I last posted and I have been letting Bob take the responsibility for keeping the blog fresh.

He is doing a great job. Don’t you think? I am amazed at how he finds something relevant to write about each day. The tips and observations he puts forth are valuable and can be put to work in your everyday life.

I decided I needed to do some research into consistency. What is it? What defines consistency? How do you find it in yourself to be consistent?

The first place I looked was in my old tattered and duct taped Webster’s Dictionary. The definitions of consistent are: “1. in harmony or agreement; compatible 2. holding to the same principles or practice.” The definitions for consistency are: “1. firmness or thickness as in a liquid 2. agreement; harmony 3. conformity with previous practice.”

The reference to liquid doesn’t apply in this circumstance. I was surprised to see “in harmony”. I like having harmony in my life …And then there was agreement and compatible. Who wouldn’t want an agreeable compatible relationship with life and those you choose to share your life with…

But the definitions that most closely relate to Bob and his daily posting are the second for consistent and the third for consistency. They are about practice or holding to a previous practice or principle.

Bob practices writing for your benefit everyday! I’m sure his ability to do this comes from being a musician. To be any good on any instrument you need to practice.

So, the question of “what is consistency” is answered. To the question of what defines being consistent, the answer is practice. Now, what we are left with is the third question I posed which is: how do you find it in your self to be consistent?

When I asked Bob what his secret was to being able to write everyday, he responded with another “C” word. Commitment! …But that is a subject for another posting.

I thank you for your time and until my next post…

Live your dreams,

Gwen Baran

Polyanna refers to an excessive or blindly optimistic individual.

A person who refuses to “see” the obvious, looming, unavoidable downside. Sounds like the description of an extreme individual who doesn’t want to acknowledge the reality of a situation. Okay, but what if you truly adopted a positive outlook as a strategic approach to solving the challenges you face on a day to day basis?

It means you would put into place an attitude which would not automatically presume a negative outcome as being inevitable. What if you were to give yourself the opportunity to think out of the box of cynicism and entertain other possibilities?

I call this “hopeful analysis”

Let’s assume for a moment that no situation is really a forgone conclusion regarding how it must pan out. Viewing a situation this way, you could conceivably imagine alternate endings. Then reverse engineer backwards from that ending to create the necessary alternate pathway through the situation. In other words, what aspects of the situation must change for it to work out in a new way? Are these things that you can influence? Is it worth you time and effort to try?

Whenever I need to make a situation work out I have always applied this simple formula…And it has always worked! Sometimes the various aspects of the situation didn’t change in the way I thought they would… but because I applied my energy and action, the situation ultimately came out the way I had hoped. Often times better than I had hoped.

If it’s important for something to turn out a certain way, (other than what appears to be a foregone conclusion) it’s going to require you to observe the situation from a different perspective. Play the “what if” game. Then focus your time and energy on accomplishing the simplest and most easily doable tasks which will alter the pathway through the situation.

Sometimes it only requires a 1 or 2% alteration to the current pathway of a situation to change the outcome!

-Bob Baran