Abraham Maslow wrote in The Further Reaches of Human Nature:

“Think of life as a process of choices, one right after another. At each point there is a progression choice and a regression choice. There may be movement towards defense, towards safety, towards being afraid; but over on the other side, there is a growth choice. To make the growth choice instead of the fear choice a dozen times a day is to move a dozen times a day towards self-actualization.”

 Cicero wrote over two-thousand years ago:

“Every man is the Architect of his own fortune.”

So what does this phrase mean to you and me personally? Our self-worth is our ultimate fortune, something more precious than diamonds or gold. Much of what we think about our self is fake- we just make it up to justify our emotional state and our present circumstances. In our personal universe our self-image is shaped by our thoughts which are the result of our own emotional response to various events in our life; how our parents treated us as children, how they expressed their opinion of us, how well we did in school and our relationships with our parents, friends and teachers as we progressed from being a child to adulthood.

As we live in adulthood we look in the rear-view mirror and accept as inevitable the image of our-self that we allowed to take form without any debate or reconsideration. Our life is not fixed or written in stone – we have the ability to make better choices daily- the capacity to grow and change.

Sports As A Metaphor

[In 1980] “The Soviet Union entered the Olympic tournament as heavy favorites, having won the ice hockey gold medal in 1956 and every year [from 1964 to 1976]. In the four Olympics after the Soviet squad was upset by team USA in the 1960 Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley, Soviet teams had gone 27-1-1 and outscored the opposition 175-44. In head-to-head matchups against the United States, the cumulative score over that period was 28-7. The Soviet players were classed as amateurs, but soft jobs provided by the Leonid Brezhnev government (some were active-duty military) allowed them to essentially play professionally in a well-developed league with world class training facilities. They were led by legendary players in world ice hockey, such as Boris Mikhailov a top line ice hockey right winger and team captain, Vladislav Tretiak considered by many to be the best ice hockey goaltender in the world at the time, the speedy and skilled Valeri Kharlamov, as well as talented, young, and dynamic players such as defenseman Viacheslav Fetisov and forwards Vladimir Krutov and Sergei Makarov. From that team, Tretiak, Kharlamov, and Fetisov would eventually be enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

[US Hockey Coach] Herb Brooks conducted tryouts in Colorado Springs in the summer of 1979. Of the 20 players who eventually made the final Olympic roster, Buzz Schneider was the only one from the 1976 Olympic team. Nine players had played under Herb Brooks at the Minnesota Golden Gophers men’s ice hockey program. Four more were from Boston Terriers men’s ice hockey at Boston University (Boston, Mass.) Assistant coach Craig Patrick had played with Brooks on the 1967 U.S. national team.”  -Wikipedia

        Losers visualize the penalties of failure.

        Winners visualize the rewards of success.

The Soviet team was clearly the favorite in any contest and their opponents were intimidated by the record of the Soviet Team – the opposing team expected to lose and the Soviets expected to win, in most cases they were both right. Herb Brooks had a vision of how to defeat the Soviet team and designed a plan which included picking specific players who had the ability to beat the USSR’s Hockey Team at their own game. Team USA won the Gold Medal at Lake Placid, NY in the 1980 Winter Games, now known as the Miracle on Ice.

University of Making Stuff Up:

Your life is not pre-determined- we make it up as we go along. To succeed: 1. Create a Vision 2. Live into that vision.

In 1976 Arnold Schwarzenegger was in Tucson Arizona publicizing his movie “Stay Hungry” which was a box office failure. Steve Chandler was a sports writer for the Tucson Citizen daily newspaper and was assigned to write a feature story about Schwarzenegger (who was not well known at that time). Chandler sat down with Arnold Schwarzenegger and over lunch interviewed Arnold:

Chandler: “Now that you have retired from body building what are you going to do next?”

Arnold’s response was: “I’m going to be the number one box office star in all of Hollywood.”

Then Chandler asked Arnold “Just how he planned to become Hollywood’s top star?”

Arnold said: “It’s the same process that I used in body building, what you do is create a vision of who you want to be and then live into that picture as if it were already true.” [100 Ways to Motivate Yourself by Steve Chandler]

One of my mentors taught me:

“To get what we want in life we must think what we have never thought before,

 we must do what we have never done before; think, dream, plan, act.”

–Sam Seiden

We are the author of our own life and we have the power to make choices every day eliminating fear and limitation and create our own vision just like Arnold Schwarzenegger, to create the life of our desire.

Action steps:

Create Your Life Vision

     See Yourself Living the Vision

     Set Goals with steps to achieve them

     Find mentors                

     Learn to become competent in the vision

      Act!