It’s a famous scene in the movie “City Slickers.” Curley, the cowboy character played by Jack Palance, says to Billy Midlife-Crisis-Angst Crystal:
“You city folk, you worry about a lot of [stuff]… You all come up here about the same age, same problems. Spend about 50 weeks a year getting’ knots in your rope and then you think two weeks up here will untie ‘em for ya’. And none of you get it. Do you know what the secret of life is?”
“No, what?” says Crystal.
“This,” Curley says, holding up one finger.
“Your finger?”
“One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean [nothing].”
“That’s great, but… what’s the one thing?”
“That’s what you gotta figure out.”
Tough times have a way of bringing out complicated questions. Ever since Cain killed Abel, or Job’s friends made a “sympathy” visit, people have responded to adversity by haggling and hand-wringing over the deep, often-unanswerable questions in life. Questions like, “Why is this happening to me?” or “Who’s responsible for that?”
During times like that, we all need somebody who can again bring us back to consciousness. [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on April 23, 2008
in Allocating Your Resources, Consumers, Enlarging Your Capacity, Executing Your Plan, Five LV Laws, Life Currency, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Money, Principle of Increase, Time
I mentioned in my previous post that it’s possible to live in such a way that laughs at the future. Just so we’re clear, we’re in “life hack” territory. We’re talking about what to do with your money, your time, your relationships, your attitudes, and your spirit.
Look at this biblical description:
“She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future.” (Proverbs 31:25)
What is it about this woman that put her in a place where she wasn’t wringing her hands every time somebody predicted the end of life as we know it?
1. Establish trust in those who know you best.
“Her husband can trust her, and she will greatly enrich his life. She brings him good, not harm,all the days of her life” (v. 11-12, NLT).
For years I assumed that her husband trusted her in a moral sense, but this is much deeper. This man trusted her with his business, his family, and his money. She had earned his trust. How? By adding value to his life.
By doing a little more, being faithful to tasks assigned, or by keeping the trust of those who know you best, you create a compelling future. Take it from somebody who has both earned and betrayed trust: it takes months and years to earn trust, and you can destroy it – and your confidence in the future – in a matter of minutes.
2. Buy like an investor, not like a consumer.
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I guess it was the first face-off between parent and teacher in Carrie’s life. She was a little freaked in first grade about some impending disaster reported as fact in her science class – global warming, the death of the ozone layer, or something. We were riding in the car, and she asked me what I thought (in first-grade language, of course) about the certain impending doom of planet.
I found myself speaking from the depths of my soul – using words I’d never put together in the same sentence before.
“Carrie,” I said, “never, never, never believe anyone who would make you afraid of the future.”
I came by that honestly. I remember asking my dad at about the same age, “Did you know that the Russians have enough bombs to destroy every American?” He replied, “Yes, and we have enough bombs to blow up every Russian.” That more or less ended the Cold War for me. (By the way, you just haven’t lived until you’ve heard “Shout to the Lord” sung in Russian. Those American Idol contestants got nothin’ on our brothers and sisters in the former Soviet Union.)
This all came back to me last week. I was shopping with my wife at Walmart and passed a display of some sort of DVD series or books or something. The basic idea was, “spend your money on this to learn about how we’re all going to hell in a handbasket.” I passed.
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It’s a famous scene in the movie “City Slickers.” Curley, the cowboy character played by Jack Palance, says to Billy Midlife-Crisis-Angst Crystal: