Today we will take a look at the baggage that we take with us on our Road Trip through life.
Take a few minutes and review the previous posts or if you have just started on this series make sure to check out the previous posts below:
Part 1 – http://www.lifetosuccess.com/2010/09/19/the-road-trip-of-life-part-1/
Part 2 – http://www.lifetosuccess.com/2010/09/20/the-road-trip-of-life-part-2/
Part 3 – http://www.lifetosuccess.com/2010/09/21/the-road-trip-of-life-part-3/
Part 4 – http://www.lifetosuccess.com/2010/09/22/the-road-trip-of-life-part-4/
Part 5 – http://www.lifetosuccess.com/2010/09/26/the-road-trip-of-life-part-5/
Part 6 – http://www.lifetosuccess.com/2010/09/27/the-road-trip-part-6/
Part 7 – http://www.lifetosuccess.com/2010/09/28/the-road-trip-of-life-part-7-obstacle-part-1s/
Part 8 – http://www.lifetosuccess.com/2010/09/29/the-road-trip-of-life-part-8-obstacles-part-2/
Part 9 – http://www.lifetosuccess.com/2010/09/30/the-road-trip-of-life-part-9-–-obstacles-part-3/
Part 10 – http://www.lifetosuccess.com/2010/10/01/the-road-trip-of-life-part-10-–-reading-the-signs/
Part 11 – http://www.lifetosuccess.com/2010/10/04/the-road-trip-of-life-part-11-–-the-power-of-focus/
I don’t know about you but when I am traveling anywhere, I find it a lot easier to travel lightly. With the least amount of baggage possible. It makes it easier to get around the airport.
It makes it easier to remember the things that I need to pack at the hotel. I don’t have that fear of forgetting something behind.
It makes it a lot easier to make sure I have everything.
Living your life this way is no different. When we are traveling through life with a lot of excess baggage, we are carrying way to much weight and it holds us back.
Let’s take a look at some of the excess baggage that may be weighing us down:
1. Past failures – If we are making any progress in life, we are bound to make a lot of mistakes along the way, but if we are holding onto these past failures and beating ourselves up daily because of them, we are holding ourselves down and quite frankly we are not making the most of what we could possibly be because we are taking very little risk because we are afraid of making anymore mistakes.
2. Resentment of others – As we move through life, we will end up resenting others to an extent. Others who have been mean to us. Others who have wronged us in one fashion or another. People who have cheated on us. The person who has cut us off in traffic. The person who cut in front of us at the grocery store.
These things if we hold onto them too long, will end up building in our lives and live as anchors that hold us back from making any progress in our lives.
This is something that we have to keep in mind… it is my belief that there was only one person who walked on this earth that was perfect and that is Jesus Christ. If we expect everyone around us to be perfect, we will end up being disappointed and very unhappy with everyone and this will end up in heartbreak and disappointment everyday.
3. Not living up to our capabilities or REGRET – This is a bag that will build everyday if we don’t start trying to do our best everyday. Everyday that goes by, we will never get back. If we are not constantly striving to do our best with our God given talents, we are wasting one of our most precious resources we have… TIME!
When we are not living our lives doing the best we can, deep down in side we know this and we start to regret that waste of time.
We start to regret not helping the person, we were in a position to help.
We start to regret that we took a little more time for lunch then we should have, stealing time from our employer.
We start to regret that we took something that we thought no one would miss, that we didn’t EARN!
We start to regret the slight on the person that we thought we were better than.
We need to empty these bags on a daily basis. We need to wake up every morning and realize that we can not do anything about the past except to learn from it. And hopefully look for different thoughts and actions that we can use today to change the course.
Lastly we need to renew ourselves everyday and realize that we have an opportunity to change the course we are on… daily.
To forgive and forget.
To forgive others who have wronged us.
And more importantly to forgive ourselves. To realize that we are only human and we will never be perfect but not to use that as an excuse to continue to make the same mistakes over and over again BUT to change the course of our thoughts and actions and NOT to make those mistakes again.
To progress forward and not to languish in the mistake of the past but to use those as lessons of what not to do and choose to make different and better choses with our thoughts and actions.
This is our responsibility as human beings. This is what we were put down here to do.
To make the most of our God given talents and abilities and to GROW everyday.
And the only way we can grow and move forward is by lightening our loads and emptying out the excess baggage in order for us to make the proper choses with the time we have in front of us.
As Always, Here’s to Your LifetoSucess,
May God Bless You.
John Clark