Your Life's Foundation

“If you have built cas­tles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where there should be. Now, put foun­da­tions under them.“
– Henry David Thoreau

“When you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.“
– Jim Rohn

A ques­tion peo­ple often ask me in my sem­i­nars is, “Why are there so many peo­ple who suc­ceed, have every­thing a per­son can ever wish for, yet still feel unhappy, unsat­is­fied, or unful­filled?” Why, in other words, do so many peo­ple suc­cess­fully fail? You might won­der what this ques­tion has to do with self-​​esteem. To explain, let me draw on an analogy.

You see, life is like a build­ing. And what­ever we need, want, or do in our lives, there is one thing in this world that we will absolutely need and can never ignore, no mat­ter what kind of “house” we dream of build­ing for our­selves. Obvi­ously, it is the foundation.

A foun­da­tion needs to be solid, reli­able, and con­sis­tent with the size and type of build­ing you want to build. In other words, a foun­da­tion must be “true” to your build­ing. The big­ger and greater the build­ing, the more solid the foun­da­tion should be. There­fore, if you want a life that is richly reward­ing, it is com­mon­sen­si­cal that you will need a stronger foun­da­tion to work from.

For instance, did you know that tow­ers have foun­da­tions as deep as the height of the tower itself in order to pre­vent it from shift­ing or vac­il­lat­ing? Like­wise, being true to your­self means work­ing from a foun­da­tion that is as strong as the life you are capa­ble of build­ing. But if you vac­il­late from your val­ues, your life will have a ten­dency to vac­il­late as well.

With­out sup­port or a proper one for that mat­ter, then regard­less of how great the goal you want to reach your build­ing just won’t stand up. Like­wise, your achieve­ments won’t stand up to your expec­ta­tions when they’re built on a poor foun­da­tion. In addi­tion, you can not add to your build­ing with a foun­da­tion that was meant for a smaller or a dif­fer­ent kind of building.

There­fore, doing as much as pos­si­ble is like build­ing too hastily, using poor mate­ri­als and shoddy con­struc­tion work. And reach­ing goals that are not con­sis­tent with your upper­most val­ues is like a life that is built a foun­da­tion of sand; it may stand up but it won’t stay up — at least, not for long.

That is why you must ensure that you are build­ing upon a reli­able foun­da­tion that is con­sis­tent with the life you dream of build­ing. The only thing that will keep your build­ing stand­ing through the chal­lenges of time and the storms of life that come sweep­ing by is to start from a foun­da­tion that is made of solid concrete.

Your foun­da­tion is thus made up of your per­sonal set of inner­most val­ues. Brian Tracy, author of The Sci­ence Of Self-​​confidence, says that the foun­da­tion of a ful­fill­ing life is “to rec­og­nize, respect, and reach that which we are capa­ble of in con­sis­tency with our upper­most val­ues.” There­fore, the size and the strength of your foun­da­tion must be con­sis­tent with the size and the weight of your success.

Remem­ber that clearly defin­ing your val­ues is the foun­da­tion of suc­cess. How can you stick to your pri­or­i­ties when you don’t know what they are or what they mean?

Our lives are, more often than not, clut­tered with press­ing needs and urgen­cies, other people’s needs as well as their pri­or­i­ties, or goals that do not cor­re­spond to any of our val­ues. In order to man­age your life effec­tively, you must first define your val­ues. Then, when you align your­self with your val­ues, you will have greater peace of mind.

Remem­ber that if the foun­da­tion upon which you live your life is the wrong one, or in this case a weak one, you will either fall short of your expec­ta­tions or never feel ful­filled. Your suc­cess, in other words, won’t stand up. You must be orga­nized from the onset by clar­i­fy­ing exactly where you stand before decid­ing where you want to go. How can you reach any goal if you don’t know why for? In other words, how do you get to where you want to go when you don’t know where we are to start with?

So before you start reach­ing any goal, you must first man­age your life. In other words, you must begin by clearly defin­ing your deep­est val­ues. If not, you might pro­duce some results and reach some goals, but ignor­ing your true pri­or­i­ties will cause you to never be able to reach that which you are truly capa­ble of.

The key to effec­tive per­sonal man­age­ment is absolute clar­ity. Clar­ity increases self-​​esteem while clut­ter decreases it. If your mind is clut­tered, your life will be clut­tered as well.

If you do not have a clear sense of your per­sonal val­ues, that is if you don’t know what’s impor­tant to you and your life right now, then regard­less of how great the goal, how pro­duc­tive the day, or how effec­tive the sys­tem, you will never be truly happy let alone successful.

If your deep­est val­ues are not clearly defined, you are prob­a­bly fol­low­ing some­one else’s val­ues instead. Think about it. Have you ever worked on some of your goals but saw your suc­cesses as part of some­one else’s plan? Have you ever reached some of your goals but some­how got devi­ated along the way? Have you ever worked so hard but felt you were going nowhere?

When I was in school, I remem­ber my 6th grade teacher who once said, “Look­ing inside your lock­ers will tell me a great deal about who you are.” This applies to every dimen­sion of life, as it is true that a per­son will become a high achiever to the degree to which he is organized.

In this con­text, how one is orga­nized on the inside will deter­mine how well one will do on the out­side. To para­phrase my teacher, “If I could look inside your mind, it will tell me great deal about who you are.” In essence, you first need to put your life in order before you attempt to make some­thing of it.

About the Author

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