Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 724 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Great Expectations – Mindshift Monday

Thank you for joining us for our 5 days per week wisdom and legacy building podcast. This is Day 724 of our trek, and it is time for our Mindshift Monday series. Wisdom-Trek’s primary focus is to assist you in creating your living legacy.

Creating your living legacy can only be accomplished by gaining wisdom in many areas of life. You can only gain wisdom by changing what you allow to go into your mind, which is a result of changing the way you think. In other words, to create your living legacy you must choose to be in a continual mode of Mindshift.

It is easy to get stuck in a mindset that your current circumstances cannot be changed. This is not true, but you must understand this fundamental principle, “In order to change your life, you must change how you think and what you think about.” Our Mindshift Monday podcast and journal will be to provide you practical ways to make a mindshift to a rich and satisfying life. 

We are broadcasting from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. Last week was a busy work week and a bit difficult to balance between our focus on the needs of the family helping with our kids and grandkids and many work-related tasks.

Each morning I start with great expectations of how the day will go, which is good, but the day does not always go as planned. We need a mindshift throughout the day to adjust and adapt to a very fluid schedule. The expectations that you have for yourself will greatly influence overall performance and success. Since these expectations are so important, make sure that your expectations are…

Great Expectations

As we think about expectations, let me start with a story that will help to illustrate this. An elderly man and a young boy were fishing near each other by a lake. The older man noticed that the boy was having considerable success with his fishing, but observed a very unusual habit. Each time the boy caught a fish he would hold it up to his hand and measure it. If the fish were larger than his hand, he would throw it back into the water, and he only kept the smaller fish.

Finally, the older man’s curiosity motivated him to slip over to the younger boy and ask. “Son, why do you keep the small fish and throw the larger ones back into the lake?”

The boy replied, “I can’t keep the big ones, I only have a 10-inch frying pan!”

This brings to mind for me that a lot of people are shortchanging themselves because they are limited to a 10-inch frying pan. They think no bigger, see no bigger, and expect no bigger. Instead of expanding their horizons by enlarging their expectations, they reduce their potential by shrinking their hopes.

Too many people fail to realize that their expectation measures the height of their future possibilities. It is impossible to achieve success without expecting it and then acting on the expectations. Think of your expectations as seeds that you plant for future harvest. This reminds me of a verse from the Bible 2 Corinthians 9:6, "Remember this—a farmer who plants only a few seeds will get a small crop. But the one who plants generously will get a generous crop."

Many people are not harvesting abundantly in their lives because they have set their expectations so low. They have only planted a few seeds, so there is no possibility for a generous crop. Your expectations may have waned over time as life’s trek wears you down. Once you had dreams, but now you have doubts. Once the future looked bright with expectations, but now it looks bleak with reality. Sunny days ahead have been clouded by the bitter days behind.