Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 105 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom.

Life is Like Eating Humble Pie

Thank you for joining us for our 7 day a week, 7 minutes of wisdom podcast. This is Day 105 of our Trek. Yesterday we discussed the 9 Rules for making a great pot of coffee and a great life.  Today we want to explore why all trails eventually end, specifically the trails of success and failure.

In celebration of our 100th day of our Wisdom-Trek, please check out Wisdom-Trek.com and sign up for our drawing for a free Wisdom-Trek T-Shirt that will take place on October 5th.

We are recording our podcast from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. It is somewhat cooler and a little rainy today, and we are hoping that it clears up completely before the grand fireworks display this evening as Marietta celebrates the 40th annual Sternwheel Festival. Our friends Bev & Katie arrived last night from Charlotte and will be spending Saturday and Sunday with us. While I am preparing for my message at church tomorrow and working on this podcast, Paula is showing them around Marietta, which has many grand old homes and is a beautiful small town. Marietta was on the western frontier of the fledgling nation after the U.S. declared its independence from Britain.  The area is noted for its military outpost which was called Fort Harmar.

My family has a long history of living in the Marietta area dating back to the earliest settlers. Marietta is the oldest organized settlement in the Northwest Territory. According to Wikipedia, "On April 7, 1788, Ebenezer Sproat and a group of American pioneers to the Northwest Territory, led by Rufus Putnam, arrived at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers to establish Marietta, Ohio, as the first permanent American settlement in the Northwest Territory." It seems somewhat humorous to refer to southeast Ohio as the "Northwest Territory," but it was at the time. Rufus Putnam was an ancestor of mine, so the bond to Marietta is strong. General George Washington was also one of the surveyors of the land around Marietta.

The adventurous and entrepreneurial spirit runs deep in my blood, and two topics I am passionate about are success and failure, more specifically gaining the proper wisdom from both. So, let’s head out on our trail today to discover and understand that every trail, whether it is success or failure, will always come to an end. It is up to us to be prepared for both trails.

Whether it is an entrepreneur who thinks he is his own boss, a person who works for someone else, or one of the highest callings of all, a mom or dad who has the privilege of staying at home focused on their children, the outcome of their stories is all too common...After years of hard work pouring their lives into their calling, the trail of life takes an unexpected and seemingly disastrous turn.

So often when we experience success in any area of life we start taking credit for it and feel our success was based solely on what we did. We push aside colleagues who’ve helped us achieve success. We abandon the values and principles that have made us successful. We start making decisions and choices that are unwise.

We may also start believing that because we are successful in one area of life, we become experts in everything.  It is true that not everyone treats success the same. Some people who achieve success remain humble, never forgetting who they are and whence they came. For many though, we don’t remain humble.  On our Trek today, let us learn how to stay off the trail of pride and ego and eat these 12 tiny pieces of humble pie.

1. Success is temporary, but so is failure.

Success is a journey,