The Life Squared Challenge Part 3 – Building Your Support Footings

In part 2 of your Life Squared Challenge we discussed the importance of having a solid foundation upon which to create a plan for life achievement and balance. The metaphor that we’re using is that of building a physical structure. The idea is to make it easy to mentally visualize this process for creating a focused approach to reaching and maintaining your goals throughout your life.

You were given your first two challenges; the first being to begin keeping a written notebook or journal as you build your personal plan for achievement and balance. The second challenge is a thorough self evaluation consisting of twenty questions that will identify your perceived strengths and weaknesses, both in your opinion and the opinion of two people you trust and who know you well enough to honestly tell you what they think. If you completed these first two challenges you are good to continue on. If not, then you must complete these two challenges before proceeding.

Here’s a little encouragement for you if you are struggling with the first two challenges. If you should choose not to evaluate yourself you will be like the person in the previous part of this challenge who built their hopes and dreams on a foundation that could be undermined and washed away at any minute. You will have nothing tangible or realistic upon which to build the life you desire. I encourage you to overcome whatever is holding you back from moving forward, look past your fear and procrastination and make a choice for positive change.

Often your lack of action is a result of your lack of confidence or even fear at confronting what you know to be true. I get it. Fear has a very controlling influence on decisions throughout your life and it’s up to you to be in control and not let fear take away your freedom to choose what’s best for you. There’s an old saying that gets right to the heart of the matter; “know thyself”. It’s time you got to know yourself so you can get on with building the rest of your life. What? You thought this would be easy? Nothing of true value is easy to come by. We are destined to struggle in this life and often the most difficult struggles we face are those we create through our own thoughts and fears.

Now that you and your evaluators have answered those twenty questions, and you have written proof of what you have to work with and build upon, it’s time for the next step in your challenge: Laying the footings on the four sides of your foundation that you will begin to build your Squared Life on. Each of these four footings has a specific name. They are Abilities, Hope, Education and Discipline. Each footing lies atop one of the edges of your foundation, so if this were an actual physical structure you were building, and you’ve rolled out the architectural floor plans to look at, this is what you will see looking straight down onto your foundation.

Your foundation is made up of who you are at your very core. Each of the twenty questions you and your evaluators were asked to answer about you are integrally tied to these four footings. Your strengths and weaknesses can all be addressed by assessing your abilities, beliefs, education and how disciplined that you are.

For instance, if you have a specific physical ability that you excel at, you have most likely learned as much as you can about how to perform this ability through reading about, listening to or watching others that have perfected this ability to the level you aspire to. That’s the education footing. You probably have practiced many hours to perfect this ability and that takes a footing of discipline. This ability makes you feel a certain way about yourself and to believe in your ability and to desire even more. This builds confidence and hope within your mind. You may even have felt a strong emotional or spiritual connection in some way while performing this skill or ability. A strong symbiotic relationship exists between each of the four footings that sit upon the core foundation of who you are. It’s time to begin setting those footings in place.

The next challenge in getting your life squared away involves understanding the relationship between these four footings of Ability, Hope, Education and Discipline and relating them back to your strengths, weaknesses, beliefs, goals, opportunities, challenges and preferences. Taking the information you’ve discovered through the twenty questions you and your evaluators addressed in the last part of this challenge, you will now go through and honestly evaluate the answers you received or gave for each of the questions, basing your evaluation on each of the four footings.

Let’s take question six for example. “What do I need to improve at?” How do the answers you recorded in your journal concerning this question converge or diverge with your abilities, hopes and dreams, education and discipline? Could you be more capable, think differently, be more educated on or disciplined in your thinking and approach to improving in the specific areas you wish to excel at? Do this exercise for each of the twenty questions and any others you may have added along the way.

Take your time and really think about your answers to these questions and how the four footings relate to each. This isn’t a speed race to see who can get done quickest. This is a challenge by and for you, so challenge yourself by applying adequate time and effort to your answers. This challenge isn’t a quick and easy solution to magically changing your life. You will find the pacing to be steady and planned so that you can give yourself time to get it right. I’m not offering you a process equivalent to a get rich quick scheme. This is a planned process to create not just results, but a mindset that will become ingrained within your life to help you achieve your goals. There are plenty of other people peddling stuff that will claim to give you instant results. This isn’t one of them. This is a disciplined approach with a realistic and achievable purpose. You just need to do the work required to get you to your desired destination.

I’m reminded of the California Gold Rush here in the United States during the mid 1800’s. James W. Marshall started a movement that eventually brought 300,000 people to the Sutter’s Mill in hopes of making their fortune and seeing their dreams come true. It wasn’t easy and hardships abounded. In truth there were only a handful of the “forty-niners” who really struck it rich. Most returned home empty handed and broke. I’m sure many were discouraged beyond recovery and groveled in their bad fortune for the rest of their lives. And then there was John.

Like most young men John heard about the gold rush and became enamored by the stories of men striking it rich. Heck, the way the newspapers and personal accounts he’d overheard made it sound you could walk down a stream and just pick up huge nuggets by the hands full! He didn’t have much to begin with but being ambitions as well as impatient, he somehow managed to scrape together and borrow enough money to purchase ship’s passage to California. The trip wasn’t easy and what he found when he arrived was anything but what he had been lead to expect.

It seemed like most everyone he met was looking to rob him one way or the other. If it wasn’t through gouging him for the purchase of simple supplies it was literally wanting to physically rob him for whatever they felt he had of value upon his person. Just to take a warm bath or get your clothes washed cost an unbelievable amount of money and he continually had to keep a look out and his wits about him to survive. Disillusioned, but not discouraged, John bought some meager supplies and a slow wagon ride deeper into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. He was headed to a claim in a hidden valley that he was assured by the seller would bring him incredible fortune. He was headed to a new life and he was excited to begin this new adventure.

John found himself pretty much isolated and to himself for the next year. From sun up to sun down he toiled away with a pick, sluice pan and shovel, only taking a break now and then to wonder at the beauty that surrounded him. Wildlife was abundant so he didn’t go without food. He was beside a creek with abundant cold mountain water and tasty mountain trout so he didn’t lack the necessary resources to stay alive and even thrive. Sure he didn’t always have the flour, salt, coffee, beans and rice that would have made for better meals, but he discovered what he could harvest from the land, hunt and trap wild game and he became proficient at doing so. He learned how to make fire without matches and a solid shelter to stay dry and warm in when the summer and winter storms rolled through. As he grew more accustomed to his surroundings he began to appreciate the values of hard work and planning that went into each day’s survival in the wilderness.

Unfortunately the one thing John did not find in any great abundance was gold. Weeks became months and the months became a year and soon John had to admit that when it came to finding riches all he’d struck was dirt for all his hard work. Tools would break and he’d have to learn a way to fix them and make them useful again. Some things he didn’t own and would have to create from scratch, recalling what he could remember from school and experience working on a farm for a little while. He learned a lot about what didn’t work and then figured out ways to make things work. Most times his efforts paid off, but there were others when he just couldn’t find a workable solution no matter what he tried. That’s when he was reminded that patience is a virtue. When he really became frustrated he’d vent his frustrations by tossing large rocks. He made a game out of it, trying to toss larger rocks each time he got frustrated. He worked his way up to some mighty large rocks over the months but the action and challenge was enough to put his frustration back into perspective and even clearer headed thinking.

He’d always been somewhat of an impatient soul, which is what led him to California in the first place. It was tough for him but John finally had to admit to himself that this gold rush had been a personal bust. What did he have to show for all this work? How could he face the people he’d left back home when he arrived empty handed? What would he do for a living? These questions began to bounce around in his head, causing worry and even fear at what would happen next in his life. He gathered up his meager belongings, and a small pouch of nuggets and gold dust panned from the beautiful stream nearby and took one last look at the land he had called home for the past several months. He began to feel somewhat sorry for himself. Not just at his inability to striking it rich, but with leaving this place that had been so accepting of him as an outsider and provided him with so much. With mixed emotions he headed back into civilization.

John’s meager nuggets and gold dust were barely enough to provide a few warm meals, a hot bath, a change of new clothing and passage back to the East Coast. During the passage he took note of the fact that many of his fellow passengers seemed much worse off than himself. Tattered clothing, gaunt faces and bodies, stories of being claim jumped and worse filtered through his senses as he compared them to his own experience. A seed of awareness began to form in the back of his mind.

After an uneventful trip back to port in Boston John was able to work out rail passage home for the price of one last nugget he’d held back for emergencies. Now, penniless and humbled, he arrived back at his home town, not knowing what to tell the people who knew he’d left home with such lofty ideals of striking it rich on the West Coast. His homecoming was quite unexpected and greeted with enthusiasm by his friends and family alike. Everyone wanted to hear his stories and an explanation of how he, a somewhat unassuming physical figure in town before, had managed to morph into such an amazing physical specimen, tanned, fit and with a calm sureness about him. He hadn’t possessed these attributes before he left. It seemed everyone wanted to know his secret.

The town had a small church that sat on a hill on the outskirts of town. This church was used for spiritual sermons on the Sabbath and social gatherings on other important and celebratory occasions. The bell rang to call people to worship, to warn them of danger, and to bring them together for celebration. John’s return was deemed to be one of these celebratory occasions and soon after his return he found the bell ringing in his honor as he stood, somewhat nervous and fearfully, before the pews, filled to capacity, with the people from this little town he had left almost two years before.

So many thoughts glided swiftly through the recesses of his mind as people settled into the little church to hear about his great adventure. What could he say that wouldn’t be a disappointment to them as well as to his self? He had failed! He hadn’t struck it rich. His travels were for nothing. Yet, as he looked around the room he knew he couldn’t let these people down. They expected something amazing once he started to speak and he knew he had to deliver or risk being viewed as fool and a failure. As he pondered these thoughts that little seed of awareness came back once again, and as he stood there, that seed began to bloom into something he didn’t comprehend just yet or could ever have expected to happen.

He looked out into the excited and expectant eyes of those who sat before him and nervously began to speak. At first he stumbled over a few words here and there, but he noticed quickly that no one seemed to even care. As the seconds turned into minutes he found a surprising confidence and the words just came spilling forth as if from nowhere. More importantly, the more he spoke the more his thoughts became clear. He told how his original expectations were set in the wrong direction. He explained his initial disappointment at finding that the truth of the gold rush was quite different than he had been lead to believe. He related the hardship and the difficulties, the fears and frustrations experienced during his adventure. He described the beauty of the land and how he had learned so much and eventually fallen in love with an environment and a way of life that, although much harder and difficult than he could ever have expected, was intoxicatingly exciting because it was new and different. Not a single person fidgeted or became bored as John spoke of his personal gold rush experience.

While he spoke John began to feel a strange sensation. It was if a rising tide of emotion took over and washed over him as his memories came flooding back while describing each in detail to his listeners. At times he was serious, even sorrowful as he described his difficulties, then he would laugh as he shared moments of delight and wonder and eventually tears began welling in his eyes. It was all he could do to maintain composure and contain these waves of reverent acknowledgement for the memories he now knew he was blessed with. It was these shared feelings that he sensed and felt and saw in the faces and eyes of the people who listened that finally took to full blossom in his mind. John realized that he had not failed at all. He had truly lived an adventure and that each person listening to him desired to have a similar adventure as well. John had given them a gift far greater than any amount of gold and he finally realized that he was given a gift that you cannot not put any price too. After finishing his talk, and while people sat stunned by what they heard from a once unassuming impatient young man, now a fit and confident individual, John slipped outside for a moment, tears streaming down his face, now fully aware of the priceless gift he’d been given.

John lived a full life, going on to open his own successful business providing provisions and supplies to people who sought their own adventures either close to home or in far off places around the world. He travelled widely, speaking often to groups about how his fortune was found during the gold rush in California. He encouraged the young and old alike to find their own claim by the stream of life and whether they ended up tossing boulders, learned new skills, or worked hard at reaching their goals that they would always look for the adventure in life, because that is where the true gold is to be found. When he died he requested that his grave marker read; “The riches you deserve in this life and wish to find are not to be found above or below the ground, they are instead waiting for you within your mind.”

Each of us has our own Gold Rush Adventure that deserves to be lived to the fullest, and then shared, so as to serve as an inspiration to others. Challenge yourself to do just that.

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  "I simply write what I feel, because it matters to me. Hopefully some of it will resonate with and matter to you as well" - MDD

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