Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 48 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom.

Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life (Part 5)

Thank you for joining us for our 7 day a week, 7 minutes of wisdom podcast and journal. By consuming these daily wisdom nuggets, you will discover the principles needed to help you live a disciplined and successful life, which will result in doing what is right, just, and fair on each day of life’s journey.  This is Day 48 of our Trek, and we will continue  looking at how changing our thinking can dramatically change our lives for the next three days.

We are recording our podcast from our studio at Home2 in Charlotte, North Carolina. We are focused on client work and also preparing to head back to The Big House on Friday.  By the time this episode is released, we will be in Marietta and then heading north to the Akron/Canton area for the annual Robb reunion, which is Paula’s mom maiden name. We try to attend every year. Family ties are important, and it is a good time to celebrate together. I will give you an update in a few days on the day’s activities.

The hiking analogies that we use for Wisdom-Trek fit so well with our Trek through life each day.  It is when we take one step at a time over a long period of time that we make the progress we desire. Being on life’s trail allows you to truly experience the full spectrum of human emotion, sometimes all in one day. A moment of frustration and despair is seamlessly followed by peace and beauty. And so it is with life.

Just like in hiking, we need to plan and also take time to think and rest.  So far we have stopped at waypoints 1-7 to analyze our thinking so that we will become more wise and successful. Today we are working towards waypoints 8 and 9.

As we ended our podcast yesterday, I asked you to consider two more questions:

Am I unleashing the enthusiasm of possibility thinking to find solutions for even seemingly impossible problems?

Am I regularly revisiting the past to gain a true perspective and think with understanding?

I do encourage you to consider these questions each day and apply them to your lives.  This will help you to change your thinking and start down the trail to a changed life.  One of the benefits of hiking on trails that are not used frequently is that we do not have to compete with masses of people as you would on a busy thoroughfare.

This also applies to waypoint number 8 where we have just arrived.

8. Question Popular Thinking

Questioning popular thinking can be challenging, but there are valid reasons for you to do so. When people follow a trend, they usually do not give it much thought. Although you may view popular thinking as a source of safety and security, there is a large difference between acceptance and intelligence. Because popular thinking favors the status quo, it discourages innovation and brings average results. Being an entrepreneur and someone who tends to question anything that the masses are following all my life, I have not had a major issue with this point.  Here are five different ways for you to question the acceptance of popular thinking:

Think before following. You need to consider what is best, rather than what is popular. When you challenge popular thinking it means that you will need to step off of the well-worn trail. When you go against popular thinking, you may be blazing your own trail, but it often hold the seed of vision and opportunity that others won’t recognize.

Appreciate different types of thinking. When you appreciate the ways that other people think, you open yourself up to embrace innovation and change. It is useful to spend time with people who think differently.