Bargaining With Life for a Penny…

There is an old adage that says: "I bargained with life for a penny, and life would pay me no more..." What are you willing to settle for? A penny? A nickel? A dime? A dollar? A million dollars? Or, is there something so much more important than money you would not sell it for any price?

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Most of America's entrepreneurs believe there is something more precious. It is called creativity. It’s called the ability to positively impact your world. It’s called knowing you matter. It’s the satisfaction of leaving your part of the world a better place than you found it. It is the privilege of controlling your own destiny. The most pressing obligation anyone has in life is to find his or her limits. The second most pressing obligation is to test those limits by going beyond them. If you don’t test them, how do you know you’ve reached them? That’s one big reason it is a huge error to remove from children the opportunity to learn to deal with small failures. It’s the only way to expand personal limits. When we do not achieve what we are capable of, we are never really happy. We always feel like something has been left undone. People who do not understand this principle are the first ones to say "I tried, but it wasn't in the cards." Or, "Everyone else seems to be lucky... a little brown cloud follows me around and rains on my parade." Opportunity does present itself. The question is have you developed the capacity to be able to take advantage of it when opportunity knocks? Most people want opportunity to come before they are prepared to deal with it. It doesn’t work that way. To be ready, it’s helpful if we know what we want and prepare ourselves to get it. We must know our limits – do what we can and must do today – but go beyond the limits and expand our horizons. How many times have you heard someone say "If I only knew then what I know now"? Had they developed their capacity at the pace of which they were capable rather than lazing along at the speed of a slug, they would have known much more far earlier. The future holds for us those things for which we prepare ourselves today. People who do only the things required of them each day get stuck in a rut. Life gets boring. Knowledge is gained in much the same way as muscles when lifting weights. The person who starts lifting fifty pounds today reaches a level where that is no longer sufficient to increase muscle. Today’s exercise with fifty pounds will sustain gains made until today, but it will not add more muscle. Weight lifters who want to develop muscle must move on. They must lift 100 pounds, then 125, then 150. How big do you want your muscles to be? The same is true of the quest for knowledge to the person who wants to succeed. Before you can go beyond your limits, you have to know what they are. That means learning your capacity to achieve. If your achievement quotient is 300 pounds, but you stop at 150 (because you started at 50 pounds, after all) you are operating at only 50 percent capacity. Opportunity does present itself. The question is: Have you developed your capacity so you can take advantage of it when it does? If people could be seen as containers, it would be easy to draw an analogy between them and their potential. No two people are alike. Each, like a snowflake, is unique. Each person has a different capacity to work, live, love, and be creative. If people were containers, some would look like small juice glasses, holding four ounces. Others would look like eight-ounce water glasses. Some others might look like sixteen-ounce iced-tea glasses. Some might resemble half-gallon jugs. The person born with the potential to hold eight ounces must fill that eight ounces of knowledge and achievement to reach their potential for productivity in life. When we reach our full potential, fulfillment follows. By the way, fulfillment – synonymous with achievement – should not be confused with gratification – synonymous with momentary enjoyment. People born with the potential to hold sixteen ounces must fill the full sixteen ounces to reach full potential, achieve success and become fulfilled. The size of each person's potential is not nearly as important as whether all of the potential is developed. A person with a four ounce potential who develops all four ounces will be much happier, much more successful (and fulfilled) than the individual with a sixteen ounce potential who develops only half of it. The four-ounce person has lived up to his or her full potential. The sixteen-ounce person who developed only eight ounces is only halfway there. No one in the world may know which people have a sixteen-ounce capacity – but the sixteen-ounce person knows. Each of us knows if we achieve at capacity. Happiness and fulfillment eludes those who do not use their capacity to live. There is always a feeling of “I feel like I could have done something more.” Too, we need to remember that the greater the capacity to succeed, the greater the capacity to fail. Too often success is viewed as accomplishing an objective rather than achieving our potential. People who achieve only a portion of their capacities are usually frustrated. They know their potential even if they deny themselves the fulfillment of achieving it. People often refuse to develop the discipline required to reach capacity. In short, they are lazy. Or their security drive kicks in and they don’t want to rock a boat by showing leadership qualities. There are many reasons to seek gratification, or a happiness of the moment rather than fulfillment, the satisfaction of achievement at full capacity. An unhealthy need to be secure is probably the biggest reason most people make so little effort to find their limits… to happily push themselves forward. It takes commitment, discipline, and a continuous, lifelong learning curve. Nothing stands still in nature. If we do not move forward, we move back. That is one of the reasons it is so important to be informed about both sides of all issues. Many people just want to hear the conservative or the liberal side of political issues, for example. If we never hear the logic behind the other side’s position, we do not grow (nor do we fight effective battles against the enemy). What’s your limit... or, capacity? Have you disciplined yourself to develop all of it? Or, have you settled for less than you are capable of achieving? Are you striking a good bargain with life? Or a bad one? We all define success differently. To me, it is not defined as accomplishing "things" or earning large amounts of money. There is little doubt money makes the fulfillment of achievement more enjoyable. There is also little doubt that money gained without achievement gains only momentary gratification that may be replaced tomorrow with disillusion and disappointment. Through achievement comes purpose. Without purpose and some degree of fulfillment of that purpose, success has no meaning... it does not exist. There are dangers we face along the way. Perhaps the greatest one comes after we attain a modicum of success. The more comfortable our lifestyles, the more difficult it is to force ourselves to continue to grow. Another danger is becoming so focused on our own objectives that the needs of others in our lives becomes blurred… is given less significance than deserved. What successful people learn is that to maintain their status they must keep finding their limits, keep going beyond them. They must learn to be sufficiently meek to keep an open mind. They understand limits are found in many areas, not just those that put bucks in a bank account. They seek balance in the worldly physical, the non-worldly spiritual, and the mental. It is impossible within the span of one lifetime to find our limits in all of these areas. One never needs to worry about running out of limits to seek and surpass.