“From This Day Forward . . . “

One of the central tenets of Get It! is that your past does NOT define you, your future is entirely in your control, and you can design your Perfect Life as long as you stop making excuses.

Simple, right?

Actually, it is. But even we need to be reminded of those ideas every once in a while. For us, a few little things like vacation help us reset our compasses and get back on the road. But what has to happen first is to acknowledge that maybe we’ve drifted a little from our vision, not attempt to rationalize that drift, and start to work our way back. So repeat after us:

“From this day forward . . .”

We’ll let you fill in the end of the phrase. The key here is to concentrate on what IS in your control (your choices), put aside what you have no control over (the past), and GO FORWARD!! Whenever you feel like you’ve drifted, use that phrase to help you re-claim ownership over your PERFECT LIFE.

The Gurus of Get It!

“To Thine Own Self Be True . . .”

We spend hours a week researching other approaches to Building Your Perfect Life, often by tooling around the internet reading other peoples’ blogs. We do that because, from the very beginning of our project, we’ve acknowledged that other people have a great deal of wisdom–often from hard experience. That’s why so much of our book is based around responses from our survey.

Invariably, we find a disconnect between what people told us in the survey and what we are finding in online sites devoted to this topic. And that disconnect is in the area of character–personal qualities that define who you are and what you stand for. There are many blogs and sites devoted to planning your life, to picking a college major, to acheiving your dreams . . . And there is a lot of smart advice out there.

The problem we see is that very few of these begin with you. Your dreams, your plan, your passions . . .these are all very important, but they all begin with YOU. And without a real understanding of who YOU are, none of those other things have a great chance of coming to life. For example, your dream may be to be the world’s most-renowned brain surgeon; unfortunately, YOU grow faint at the sight of blood and have the attention span of a tsetse fly. Probably a dream that isn’t tailor-made for you. It doesn’t mean you can’t make it happen, it just means there will be a few extra things that you have to overcome along the way.

That is why our program begins with “Who Are You?” That was THE number one answer our respondants gave in our survey, and it is the critical first step that you have to take to build your Perfect Life. Take some time over the next few days and think about that question. If you get to a point where you can answer that question easily, then the next steps become a whole lot easier.

The Gurus of Get It

Beware The Easy Road

One of the seeming bits of contradiction we wrote into the book was this: “the only shortcut is that there are no shortcuts.” But a little thought will reveal that there is no contradiction here.

People–not wise people, but people–are constantly looking for ways to make life easier, to find the short path to the dream life they’re chasing. Unfortunately, most of those paths involve the handing over of hard-earned cash and a series of strings and hurdles that one has to jump over to realize that the only dream life is the one being led by the person collecting the hard-earned cash. Don’t be fooled–despise the “shortcut”.

You can have YOUR perfect life, and it won’t involve affirmations [like these] and it won’t involve a four- or eight- or twelve-step plan [like here]. But it will involve your engagement in your life, it will involve you building a VISION of your life, it will involve you setting GOALS along the way, and then . . .

it will involve work. And the beauty part? It will then involve reward. And it’s all yours . . . just waiting for you to start.

The Gurus of Get It

Our challenge to you!

One of our favorite lines through writing our book (a mantra of sorts) is “if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got!” In essence what we are are saying is if you want something different, be prepared to make a change. There are some out there who are already a Get It, and have a life they have designed and one they love. To those of you, we say congratulations. Unfortunately, we feel a high percentage of people (while still happy) would like to see some differences in their lives.

To those people who are not experiencing their perfect life we would like to issue a challenge (this is for our audience of all ages). For this week, go out and MAKE A CHANGE! Flip around a routine, take those first steps on a new project (career, hobby, family, etc) or just do something big that you have been putting off. The point is, make it significant (ordering a regular coffee instead of decaf is not what we have in mind).

Our hope is that the feeling you get from this change (the new energy, the new jump in your step, etc) may be just the spark needed to start going after your perfect life.

The Gurus of Get It!

Update

A couple of weeks ago we told you about a young man named Zac Sunderland. Zac was attempting to be the youngest person to ever complete a solo around-the-world sail.

Zac completed his journey on Thursday by docking at Marina del Rey, California. Asked about reports that a young Brit is trying to break his record already, Sunderland replied with true Get It! perspective: “I really don’t care. Somebody’s going to beat it someday.”

Congratulations, Zac!! Proving you’re never too young to make it happen!

The Gurus of Get It!

Life Is Not Fair

Get over it.

That’s one of those important lessons that people hate to learn, but which is critical to understanding your place in the world and how to make your dreams come true. That was obvious at the baseball All-Star Game.

Though there are probably several different examples of this, we’re homers, so we’re going to talk about what happened to Brad Hawpe. The Colorado Rockies outfielder, who is having an outstanding season, came up in the bottom of the seventh of a tie ballgame. He’s leading off against the Red Sox Jonathan Pappelbon, who just owned him in the World Series two years ago, so he has some experience. So what does he do? He takes the first pitch, a fastball right down the pipe, and drives it to the opposite field, with enough power to leave the yard and put the National League ahead. Except for one thing: the American League left fielder is a great player, and he ran the ball down, jumped, reached over the fence, and pulled the ball back. A perfect at-bat overcome by a superior performance.

Sometimes, you do everything right and things still don’t go the way you want them to. That is one of the great lessons that competition teaches, and it is one of the crucial lessons you have to embrace to Get It!
But the most important part is to never allow that to deter you: keep working, keep dreaming and keep trying. Over time, if you’re diligent, enough of those “breaks” are going to go your way that you’ll find yourself very close to realizing your vision.

The Gurus of Get It

No matter your age, “Just Do It!”

Phil Knight of Nike was really on to something when he created his tag line. Regardless of what you may be thinking of trying, changing or doing, the answer would still be the same…..Just Do It!

We have continually explained that our program is not a book about career. Our philosophy is that in order to build your perfect life, it has to be done from the inside out (the right career is a by-product of that). That being said, there is no denying that your career takes up 1/3+++ of your life so you may as well put some effort into that decision.

We recently talked to a friend of ours who is north of 40 and absolutely hating his job/career. Since a lot of what we do is consulting, it was a good time to sit him down and remind him (which we all need from time to time), that it is never too late to find your passion. Our program may target 16-24 year olds, but the concepts, philosophy’s and activities are good for any age. The best part about taking that time with him is that we can not only help to create change for him, but also help him to be more conscious of helping out his kids as they near these important decisions (as all parents should).

The point is, that no matter your age, where you are in your life, or what your dreams may be, take that first step and Just Do It!

The Gurus of Get It!

Borrowing Others’ Wisdom

One of the really cool functions of WordPress is that we can link to our Twitter site. That way, anytime we don’t have a chance to go for a full-out blog post, but put something up via “tweet,” you can still see what we’re doing and thinking about. So keep your eye on the right sidebar for new tweets. And don’t forget to check out our Facebook page for similar content.

Is There A Purpose?

Why, exactly, do we spend time and energy providing thoughts and commentary? Well, because, as we’ve said before, we want to change the world. And the best way we can think of to do that is to make it possible/likely for the next generation to choose a life driven by their passions rather than stumbling into whatever life finds them. So we provide hints and tips, and a bit of a roadmap to help them arrive at that point.

But this blog does it piecemeal, and it does it in a bit of a random and haphazard fashion. Wouldn’t it be great if all of this were in one, easy-to-follow, organized place?

Oh, wait!–IT IS!! All you have to do is follow the links over there (—>) to the Get It! website, and check out the book. If you know (or if you are) a recent graduate who doesn’t know what’s next, or if you know someone headed into their junior/senior year who don’t seem to know what they want, this book is a perfect gift. Do yourself or your friend a favor: get the book, work through it, and start to build a perfect life!

The Gurus of Get It!

Can You Stretch Your “Normal” Self Into Your “Best” Self?

There is a commonly held belief that the ordinary person only uses about 10 percent of their total brain capacity.

Do you suppose the same rough estimates hold true for the rest of our capabilities? Do we only use, in general, 10 percent of our emotional capacity? Is it possible that Ghandi used more?

What if we use only 10 percent of our physical capabilities? Stories of people who do extraordinary things in moments of high need–like lifting a car off of a trapped child–are the stuff of urban legend. That demonstrates that we are capable of more when the need arises. And do you suppose Siddhartha’s spiritual capacities were substantially greater than 10 percent, which is what allowed him to attain Enlightenment and become the Buddha?

The point is this: we are capable of vastly more than we generally believe we are. But we get so used to our everyday selves, we get so comfortable making decisions through the prism of our doubts and our fears that we never actually get a chance to find out what happens when we’re bold and working at higher capacity.

So try this: in the next seven days, stretch yourself–try to get a glimpse of yourself at a higher level. But you can’t do that if you just do the same old things you do every day. So you have seven days: plan, prepare, and execute something difficult. Go for a very long hike to the top of a hill that lets you look down on something spectacular; write a poem and then read it at “open mike” night; spend a day building a home through Habitat for Humanity; read all of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Only if you do something hard will you start to get a picture of your Best Self. Try it–you might like it.

The Gurus of Get It!