Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 191 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom.

Conquering Alibi Mountain

Thank you for joining us for our 7 days a week, 7 minutes of wisdom podcast. This is Day 191 of our Trek, and yesterday we learned how to overcome the obstacles of conflict that may be blocking your trail to success. Today we are going to climb and conquer Alibi Mountain. If you miss any of our Wisdom-Trek episodes, please go to Wisdom-Trek.com to listen to them and read the daily journal.

We are recording our podcast from our studio at Home2 in Charlotte, North Carolina. We traveled safely back to Indian Trail arriving late Sunday evening. As always, I am blessed to have Paula drive so that I am able to work on the Wisdom-Trek episodes. Our week is starting out busy as we had anticipated.

We were able to set up our outdoor silhouette Christmas Nativity set, which was made for us by a friend a few years ago. We are also decorating the house for Christmas. It is a little later than usual, but since we were at The Big House since before Thanksgiving, we did not have the prior opportunity. After discussing Christmas with our five grown children, we plan on having our family Christmas celebration on January 9th at our home in Indian Trail. This will allow them to have their own celebrations with their children on Christmas. Since we travel between The Big House and Home2 so often and the fact that The Big House has additional on-going renovations, this was the best solution where everyone could be present. We are looking forward to our delayed celebration.

On today’s Trek, we want to climb and conquer Alibi Mountain, which is one of the most difficult hikes that we make in our lives. It is so easy to come up with excuses for why we are not able to do or accomplish certain things in life. In our hearts, though, we realize that it boils down to the fact that we don’t want to pay the price in time, energy, or resources to succeed at a certain task. We all do this, and none of us are exempt although there are certain individuals that are much better at coming up with convincing alibis.

So let’s head out now to…

Conquering Alibi Mountain

People who do not succeed have one distinguishing trait in common. They know all the reasons for failure and have what they believe to be valid alibis that are impossible to overcome. Very few realistic goals or ambitions are unachievable, except for in our minds. Now it is true that at 5’ 4” in height, it would be very difficult for me to become a quarterback in the NFL or a center in the NBA, but we are speaking of realistic opportunities that we have in life.

Our true choices that we have available for this season of life are somewhat controlled by choices that we have made in the past. But be very careful that you do not manufacture alibis that are not true. As we hike up Alibi Mountain, let us destroy all of the “If Only” rabbit trails that we find ourselves going down. I will read off each trail as we pass them, and then we can move beyond each one as we scale to success summit.

The “If Only” Rabbit Trails for not achieving in life are…

If only I had time…

If only times were better…

If only other people understood…

If only conditions around me were different…

If only I could live my life over again…

If only I did not fear what "they" would say…

If only I had been given a chance…

If only I were younger…

If only I were older…

If only I were thinner…

If only I were better looking…

If only I were in better health…

If only I had the talent that some people have…

If only I dared assert myself…