I was in a world of trouble. Not only did I have the COVID pandemic to think about, but I was dealing with the economic chaos as the government shut down businesses and locked us all in our homes.
Plus, my wife had a heart attack.
My Parkinson’s disease was worse.
I had multiple tears in the muscles of my right rotator cuff, so my right shoulder was in agony. Because of that I couldn’t sleep. Which made everything else seem worse.
Then, one day I was at home and started feeling a pain in my chest and jaw…a sensation like a tight band squeezing the breath out of my lungs…I broke out in a cold sweat and began vomiting…I WAS HAVING A HEART ATTACK.
One trip to the ER, 24 hours, and $40,000 later, I found out what I really had was anxiety and acid reflux.
I also found out I didn’t want to die.
As bad as life may have seemed, when I had my darkest moments in the ER I realized I would HAPPILY trade that for one of my “bad days” I had previously thought were unbearable. Because… unbearable compared to what? 😉
More on that later…
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Spiritual Foundations
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
This is one of my favorite all-time pieces of borrowed wisdom, and it's usually attributed to Aristotle.
The problem is this: ARISTOTLE DID NOT SAY IT.
Those are actually the words of Will Durant, in his book The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World’s Greatest Philosophers.
In that book, Durant quotes a very different phrase from Aristotle, who actually wrote “these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions.” Durant restates Aristotle’s idea more eloquently by writing: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”It’s still one of my favorite quotes. And I will from now on attribute it correctly to Will Durant.
More on the misattribution of the quote from Caelyn Huntress and Frank Herron.
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It was Cliff Ravenscraft who reminded me of the “compared to what” exercise Tony Robbins shares in his book Unlimited Power. A book I read, incidentally, the year it was published – 1987!
That stark, startling, and extraordinarily powerful reframe made me reflect on how many tools I have learned about and forgotten over the years. Tools which could be serving me now if I had been more intentional in my learning. If I had not simply learned them cognitively, but learned to embody them in my emotional self. To make them part of my daily habitual routine. Because it’s not about what you know that makes you successful –it’s about where you live as a habit.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
— Will Durant
Going forward in 2020 I’m determined to make sure I live in a new, or elevated, place emotionally, spiritually, and physically. So here is what’s working for me now, and the habits I’m building…
1. I intentionally practice the habit of being in a beautiful and powerful state.
2. I am slowing down and going deeper in my learning, my study, and my teaching.
3. I have shifted my reading goal from reading one book per week to instead reading ONE book every MONTH or so, and really digesting the book. This means I am deeply annotating, making notes about, and writing an epic summary of each book I read.
4. I hired a coach. You might say, “Ray you are a coach, why would you hire one?” My response is: a coach who does not have a coach is no coach worth having.
5. After discussing a particular section of Think and Grow Rich with Cliff Ravenscraft, I realized the leadership team for each of my companies should be in fact a Mastermind Group. This may be something you already know, but it's new to me.
So I now have four new mastermind groups I lead:
1. The Copywriting Academy Training Company
2. Inklings – the Ray Edwards Agency
3. Revel 77 Coffee
4. Ray Edwards International, Inc.
6. I have created a blueprint for my perfect week – a week in which I enjoy every single thing I do. I am working now to make my reality match my blueprint. I’m quite carefully and selfishly guarding the gates of my mind. I can truly tell you today is my Best Day Ever, and life gets better every day.
EVIDENCE:
I woke up today! Another day on the planet! WINNING
I have now survived more days than EVER in my life. WINNING
I have now LEARNED more than EVER in my life. WINNING
I have a fresh opportunity to make today a MASTERPIECE. I have NEVER had THIS CHANCE for THIS DAY…ever. WINNING
And I can honestly say that my life is fantastic despite my problems – or as I now refer to them, DSPs – “Delightfully Surprising Puzzles.”
It takes courage to live like this because: Life will throw us curve balls…problems…DSPs!
Jesus promised: “In this life you will have trouble.”
Buddha taught: “Life is suffering.”
BUT…
We have the freedom to CHOOSE how we experience life, no matter what is happening. THE WORST can happen and we still can DECIDE: To USE this to our advantage…
To view this as an opportunity to LEAD by EXAMPLE…
To see the learning and wisdom that is available in this…
To demonstrate what is possible and light the way for others who aren't stumbling in the darkness. We have the ability to change our “set point” and make THIS state of mind our DEFAULT POSITION. Our EMOTIONAL HOME BASE. Our EMOTIONS OF HABIT.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
— Will Durant
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