Each day this week seemed to race by, but last weekend seemed like a month ago. A lot has happened this week, so I suppose that made it seem longer than it was. I ended the first week of selling at work with 3 applications written, not bad for the first week. When selling over the phone, the lead time between quoting a prospect and writing a health insurance application is about 10 days, so it's nice to have 3 apps completed already. I have about 30 people to follow up with next week, 5 small groups to quote, and another 15 people to get in contact with when a specific health plan becomes available to us in the next week or two. In lay terms, this job is a health insurance guy's dream!
Back to the fast and what I've been learning. It's been so busy that the fast has been a breeze, really. It almost seems normal now to not eat. I've gone long enough without food that it seems almost strange for people to eat 3 times a day. When someone says, "I'm hungry" it doesn't quite make sense to me. How can you be hungry after 5 or 6 hours of fasting, when I've gone 11 days? I've thought about people in the third world who are fortunate to eat one balanced meal a day. It seems so unjust that Americans have a meal option on every street corner when a rural African child goes days without a morsel. And when life isn't quite going our way, we whine and flounder in self-pity. We have an abundance of all things, save one. Zig Ziglar calls it "the healthiest of all human emotions"--gratitude.
And to reclaim our self worth, as discussed in the last post, that's what Og Mandino suggests we start with--taking inventory of our blessings. We have warm homes, food to eat, and hands to earn a living with. Our eyes were designed with a hundred million receptors that enable us to enjoy the magic of a leaf, a snowflake, a pond, a star, a rose, a rainbow, and a look of love. We have 24,000 fibers in each of our ears that vibrate to the sound of a child at play, wind in the trees, an opera, tide crashing on rocks, and the words "I love you." We can speak. We're the only creatures on earth that can calm the angry, warm the lonely, praise the worthy, encourage the defeated, and say "I love you." We can move. We have 500 muscles 200 bones and 7 miles of nerve fibers that allow us to run, dance, play and work. We can think. Our brain has 13 billion nerve cells within its 3 pounds, letting us store every perception, sound, taste, smell and action we've experienced since the day of our birth, only awaiting our recall.
The second thing we need to do is to proclaim our rarity. Mandino says to consider a violin by Stradivarius, a bronze by Degas, or a play by Shakespeare. They are valuable for two reasons: their creators were masters and the works are few in number. But there is only one of each of us. Never in the 70 billion people that have walked on this planet has there been anyone like any of us. From only one of our fathers' 400 million sperm, through 23 chromosomes and hundreds of genes governing every possible physical characteristic about us, God could have created 300,000,000,000,000 possible humans (that's the population of 50,000 earths), but he chose each one of us, each different from another. We are special. We are not mediocre, so why act or perform like we are?
The third is to go another mile. The best law of success is found in the sermon on the mount. Whatever our task is, the only thing that will bring us success is to give more and better service than is asked of us. We shouldn't feel cheated if we deliver more than we receive, because life's pendulum, if it doesn't swing back today, will swing back tomorrow, tenfold. The mediocre man never goes another mile so that he doesn't cheat himself. But we aren't mediocre.
We have the power to choose. We have the power to think, love, laugh, grow, create, pray, act, and give. We also have the power to hate, cry, rot, destroy, curse, procrastinate, and steal. We must "use wisely our power of choice."
The 4 Laws of Happiness and Success:
Count Your Blessings
Proclaim Your Rarity
Go Another Mile
Choose Wisely
And one more law, to fulfill the other 4: Do all things with love. Love for our Creator, love for others, and love for ourselves.
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