“Yes – I can do this!”  We have all been there at some point.  We start out with a great deal of energy and excitement as we head into our journey towards that next big objective.

Many times we encounter some catalyst for change brought on by a meaningful event in our lives:  A significant change in our personal life, the ideas of a great speaker, the insightful guidance from a friend or family member, or some helpful concept in a book.  Some situation triggered our response to get motivated to take on that next challenge and go after another well intentioned goal.  We take off from that mountain top “high” with a great deal of enthusiasm.

After traveling a little ways into our journey, we eventually find ourselves off the mountain top “high” and into the valley.  The valley we encounter towards our objective is difficult.  The ability to clearly see our goal gets more challenging and somehow the journey does not seem as exciting as when we set off from the mountain top.

I am sure we can all relate to a few valley moments:

• After some time in a new job, when our coworkers and boss don’t seem as supportive as they did at the start and the work is no longer exciting
• After some time of progress on our new diet and exercise routine, things slow down a little and we notice a few pounds creeping back on the scale
• When that “sweet bundle of joy” we brought home from the hospital becomes angry and rebellious
• When the “I do” in marriage becomes “when you know what freezes over”
• When a poor choice brings about a bad outcome and there is no hiding from the consequence

We could all come up with a good laundry list of excuses to quit when we are struggling in the valley…and some of them are legitimate.  Storms do come and destroy much of what we tried to build, tragedy does strike, people do fail to keep up their end of the contract, etc., etc. 

However, for the vast majority of our endeavors, the consistent application of timeless, universal, and self-evident principles like courage, commitment, loyalty, and perseverance will rarely cause us to fall short of crossing through the valley and reaching the next mountain top in our journey.   

Below are a few suggestions around these principles to support moving through the valley and up to the next mountain top:

1. Set Priorities: We cannot do everything.  Be very selective and declare a clear “yes” or a clear “no” so our energy can be channeled into a few really important goals.
2. Be Intentional: “Winging it” or “going with the flow” is not an effective strategy. We need to be intentional about outlining the direction we are heading and the habits we need to keep moving forward. 
3. Develop Effective Habits: This should be the mechanical process of day in and day out developing the thoughts, decisions and actions that will deliver on our plan. Our habits will help keep us heading in the right direction when we are in the darkness of the valley.

We will all have our share of valley moments throughout life.  However, when our habits (thoughts, decisions, and actions) are guided by principles like perseverance, commitment, loyalty, and sacrifice, we build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity to move through the valleys and achieve that next milestone in our journey.

The smorgasbord concept became a part of the American restaurant scene after the Swedish brought this part of their culture to the 1939 New York World’s Fair.  Most baby boomer generation families will remember the original all you can eat concept as the smorgasbord.  Somewhere over the last 30 years or so, the term smorgasbord has been replaced by the All You Can Eat buffet in our current vernacular. 

Regardless of the term we use, the all you can eat buffet concept is still with us today.  What a wonderful blessing.  I can eat all I want of a variety of foods: fruits, vegetables, meats, breads, soups, and of course, desserts, for just one low price.  In addition, the different likes and dislikes of everyone in the group are seamlessly addressed and there are almost no complaints about the choices.

Unfortunately, we all know what often happens at the buffet.  We eat way too much.  We regret the choices we made as we walk out the door and uncomfortably squeeze into the car for the drive home.

In today’s world, we have a virtual smorgasbord in every area of our lives.  The old style industrial concept of whoever is in power determines what styles are stocked on store shelves, music stores, bookstores, and certainly what we watch on television, has been flattened with the efficiencies of point and click convenience in today’s world.

We all can get what we want, when we want it, often for prices that seem unbelievably low…many times for free.

As we continue on our journey to build and strengthen our character, the “all you can eat” lifestyle presents us with some challenges to ensure we don’t overeat in too many areas and to ensure we take full advantage of the opportunities to customize and support our own unique style.

Here are a few thoughts to help guide us as we walk up and down the smorgasbord table of today’s reality:

• Choices. The number of options in life has exploded.  We can start our “dream” business overnight with an easy to build website.  We can customize the sneakers we buy.  We can watch our favorite TV show when we want to watch it.  We can go to classes at Harvard online for free.  Now, more than ever, we have to determine priorities and make choices. “Winging it” with all of the opportunities available to us today, will cause most of us to overeat everywhere and regret not making specific choices.
• Responsibility. With choices, comes responsibility.  We can no longer say, “Well, I just did not have the opportunity.”  We are no longer confined to what is on a store shelf to get what best fits our unique style. We are no longer confined to the public library or an expensive degree program to get a formal education.  When we overeat at the dessert table instead of eating some fruits and vegetables, we can’t play the blame game.
• Individuality. Many times in life, our unique talents, gifts, and desires get minimized in the mass production model of our industrialized world.  We picked certain careers based on what we saw around us and some perceived set of expectations.  We wore the clothes that seemed to help us fit into those expectations and through it all, we have minimized our own uniqueness. Today’s “all you can eat” opportunities give us a chance to re-birth our uniqueness in areas of work, family, fashion, and culture. We all should do a little soul searching to make sure we did not lose who we are based on some past confinements.  We should exercise the courage to be ourselves. 
• Time. We all have some uncommitted time. Time when we are not on the job or at school, taking care of critical responsibilities at home, or working in some other area of service.  With today’s “all you can eat” entertainment offerings, we run the risk of overeating on entertainment under the concept of just needing some time to chill out, veg out, or honestly admitting to wanting to be a coach potato for the evening.  Our point and click entertainment choices combined with everyone’s personal electronic devices presents a unique and complex challenge to “family time” being customized to everyone going into their corner of the room with their own entertainment device.  The entertainment industry no longer controls a limited offering of watching Walter Cronkite deliver the evening news or I Love Lucy to make us laugh.  We all need to be vigilant to ensure we use our uncommitted time wisely and keep some family time as “together time.” 

With today’s “all you can eat” lifestyle, if we don’t guide our thoughts, decisions, and actions with principles like moderation, self-control, and discipline, we will soon realize that we can’t make pants or belts big enough to contain our habits.  However, when we effectively leverage these principles, combined with cultivating our own uniqueness, we will build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity for us to learn, grow, and have a positive impact on those around us. 

I am sure we can all relate to the strategy of cramming to study for that big end of semester exam.  We kind of paid attention throughout the semester, but in the end, we believed an all-night session of studying will be an effective option to make up for a semester in which we did not give our full attention.

More often than not, we probably found that despite all the warnings of how ineffective the cramming strategy was to learning, cramming for an exam seemed to result in the outcome we needed for the moment in that we passed the test. 

Unfortunately for many of us, we continually employ the cramming strategy we learned in school to solve many of life’s pressing challenges.  We cram in a great deal of catching up on relationships with that much needed date night and family vacation to shore up those critical, close relationships.  We provide the all-encompassing life skills motivational speech as we prepare children to leave the home for summer camp, college, or to move out on their own.  We have that upcoming class reunion, wedding, or annual health check-up and we figure we can starve our way into losing that much needed weight in the last few weeks before the event.  

As we continue on our journey to build and strengthen our character, it is important that we face the reality that we will fall short of our full potential if we deploy the cramming strategy to the really important things in life.

• Building and sustaining a healthy relationship is not built on that one weekend get-away to rekindle love and caring.
• Preparing children for life outside of “home sweet home” is not accomplished in a 15 minute send-off speech prior to that all too sudden good-bye.
• Maintaining optimal health is not accomplished with the occasional crash diet and two week exercise routine.
• Achieving financial freedom is not established through that one great idea for a get rich quick scheme.

The really important things in life will always be judged by one of the most important guiding principles of life, the Law of the Harvest. Simply, we reap what we sow.  

The law of the harvest, in the natural world, is as true as the law of gravity.  If we want to reap an abundant harvest of corn or soybeans, there is only one pathway to follow: The Law of the Harvest.  If we asked any farmer 2,000 years ago or one today in the fields of Nebraska, we would get the same general response.  There are no shortcuts to an abundant harvest. 

We cannot vacation in the spring and summer and then deploy our cramming strategy for an entire growing season in September.  There is no way to pay for the “Speed Pass” lane on the farm and there is no “Easy” button.  The natural law of the harvest will always be our judge.  Just like the law of gravity governs our eventual return to the ground no matter how high we jump, the law of the harvest governs our ability to produce our most essential food sources for life. 

The law of the harvest also governs our ability to reach our full potential in the most important areas of our lives.

When we face the reality that the cramming strategy we deployed in school will not produce the abundance we desire in the important areas of life and we being to take meaningful, consistent steps overtime to reap an abundant harvest, we will build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity to reach our full potential and have a positive impact on those around us.

If we want to make any progress in life, we need to make decisions and take action.

Decision making around the important things in life is tough work.  It requires thinking and it requires making judgments with limited information.  At times, many of us would just prefer a checklist that requires little to no thinking and just a robotic like obedience to achieve a certain goal in life.  The reality is that the important decisions around family, education, career, and areas we choose to serve, are all complicated.  The decisions are rarely between right and wrong, they usually land somewhere between “pretty good” and “maybe a little better.”

Even though making decisions in the complex, important areas of life is not easy, one of the potential barriers to our success in the decisions we have made is the time we spend pondering what could have been with “the other choice” not taken.  The “what could have been” debate if we had taken the other path like in the Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Taken, can hinder our progress.

As we continue on our journey to build and strengthen our character, how we deal with “the other choice” will be critical to our emotional health and the eventual achievement of our hopes and dreams.  

Psychologists say much of the mental strain they see today is brought on by our tendency to struggle with the “what could have been” debate in our lives.  As these were big decisions in our lives, there is most likely a fair amount of emotion and perhaps pain associated with the choices we have made in the past.

I will state the obvious – There is no rewind button or do-over rule in life.  Our capacity spent trying to hope for a rewind or a do-over is an unfortunate waste of our limited resources.  A more effective option is to productively face the “other choice” concern that we all encounter at some point in our journey.  Here are a few suggestions:

• Reality: We will never know the full outcome of “the other choice.” We have a tendency to overemphasize the potential positives, but disaster also strikes on The Road Not Taken. This is one of the great mysteries in life, we only know for sure what we have in front of us today.
• Understanding: Our most productive use of “the other choice” should be on understanding our thought process around the decisions we made at the time – What drove our decision? We will become more self-aware of our weak points and our strong points that will help us in many aspects of our life.
• Growth: We can only press the forward button in life.  There is no pause and there is no rewind.  Our most effective efforts on dealing with past decisions is to grow from them so we can apply those gains to be more effective in our present set of choices and perhaps share our learnings with those closest to us.

As we reduce the emotional burden associated with the “what could have been” debate and focus on growing based on learnings from our past decisions, we will build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity for us to reach our full potential.

Today, we have an abundance of choices to pursue a basic education, on-the-job skills training, and traditional life skills like marriage, parenting, and household finance that are taught in various parts of our communities. In addition, via the internet, we have a global education system, many times free of charge, at our fingertips for any subject of interest.

The unlimited opportunity to gain direct access to training for any school subject, work skill, or critical life skill highlights two important realities:

1. From a practical standpoint, we can teach people the best techniques to be functional at coding in C++, setting a family budget, playing guitar, driving a delivery truck, cooking a good steak, or even improving communication with our spouse J
2. The vast majority of people can learn to be really great at something, if we make the choice. When we choose to make the effort, work through the disappointments, short-term failures, and the inevitable grind in the journey, we will develop the functional skill we seek.

As we continue on our journey to build and strengthen our character, we need to be reminded of a necessary decision that is not routinely taught in the classroom, the workplace, and on the home front: Commitment.  Making the decision to commit is a prerequisite for developing any new skill in life. 

Psychologists would have a few fancy terms to describe the reality that most of us don’t commit to something until we have discovered that we can be good at it.  If the technique or skill being taught seems interesting and we show some initial, marginal success at doing it, then maybe we will commit.

However, for most things in life, there is always the “honeymoon” period.  Where the initial excitement of something new and different energizes us for some time and then the subject gets difficult.  We spend one too many all-nighters studying for exams and still do not pass.  We work hard and give it our best in the workplace and the promotion seems to never come our way.  In the home, the strain of bills, schedules, and bad habits marches us into that valley of loneliness even while we still share the same bed with our spouse.

During the difficult times, when the energy surrounding new and different fades away, the necessary decision of commitment is exposed.  It is the decision to commit that carries us through the journey to learn a new language, to develop a new skill at work, and to build empathy and understanding with those closest to us.

We could all benefit from an honest, self-assessment every once in a while, on the necessary decision of commitment. Unlike some classes in school, this assessment is not graded on a curve by comparing our commitment to that seen in others.  We stand on our own with this grade.

When we set the bar high on our own level of commitment, we will build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity for us to learn new skills and reach our potential in the key areas of life.

Yogi Berra once said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” 

We are all familiar with times in our lives where we stood at that ‘fork in the road’ and needed to make a decision one way or the other.  The decisions span the spectrum from quick and easy to long and incredibly difficult. 

As we continue on our journey to build and strengthen our character, the decisions we make and the actions we take to move down one path or another are helpful opportunities for character development.

Success in various areas of our lives brings about a multitude of ‘fork in the road’ decisions.  If we have success in our careers, there are number of ‘climbing the ladder’ type decisions that need to be made.  If we have success in building strong relationships, there are a number of decisions that need to be made to maintain the commitments of lasting, healthy relationships.  

History demonstrates that for most of us, we only learn and grow through pain, discomfort, and challenge compared to the times we are riding high on the wave of success.  Books are filled with examples of companies that have been blinded by success which eventually resulted in their downfall and examples of great “turnarounds” from the challenges of bankruptcy and potential insolvency.  In close relationships, we only wake-up and prepare to learn and grow when our world is about to fall apart, and our spouse’s bags are packed, compared to the relative calm of a quiet night at home when everyone is well fed, well rested, and the bills are paid.

Discontent and frustration over our current situation are opportunities waiting to happen.  Discontent is the first step in any value creating endeavor.  The great medical discoveries were born out of frustration and near hopelessness in witnessing suffering and death from disease.  The great challenges of war brought about some of our greatest inventions.  The tremendous frustrations of a growing nation brought about incredible advances in transportation and communication in the most recent 100+ years of our nation’s history.

On a more personal note, when discontent and frustration hit us personally, our ‘inner voice’ that drives our thoughts, decisions, and actions spotlights our character. 

When we are at the ‘fork in the road’ of a difficult personal situation, which direction do we turn?

When faced with the normal and unavoidable frustrations between a parent and a growing teenager, which direction do we take?

When faced with the inevitable frustrations between couples, which direction do we take?

When faced with a frustrating manager at work, which direction do we take?

When a teacher in school seems unreasonable and illogical, which direction do we take?

When a missed promotion seems so unfair and politically driven, which direction do we take?

In those difficult times, when discontent accompanies us at the fork in the road, if our thoughts, decisions, and actions are based on principles like courage, honesty, responsibility, and understanding, we build and strengthen our character as we head down the most effective path.  If we let our thoughts, decisions, and actions be guided by anger, apathy, and the death knell of relationships, contempt, we weaken our character and head down the least effective path.

In the same way that discontent and frustration are the first steps towards incredible innovation in our world, personal discontent and frustration with the state of a relationship can be the fork in the road where there is a path of opportunity to build and strengthen the relationship and a path to destroying it.  We are responsible for the path we take.

When frustrations in relationships occur and we remind ourselves that we are at that fork in the road, choosing to move down the path of opportunity vs contempt is a choice that will build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity to improve our relationships and expand our impact.

The technology advances in support of renewable energy and recycled materials continue at a tremendous pace to ensure we protect the precious resources we have on our planet for future generations to enjoy.

The conversation gets kind of quiet when it comes to the technological advances on increasing our time. We face the same challenges people did 2,000 years ago and most likely those challenges will be the same for people 2,000 years from now.  We cannot make any more time.  We all get 24 hours each day and that is it.  

As we continue on our journey to build and strengthen our character, how we guard our time will be a series of important decisions we make daily that will impact our growth and our relationships.

Here a few thoughts on the importance of guarding our time:

 (1) Time is the great equalizer in our world. It does not matter how rich or how poor, how intelligent or how ignorant, how privileged or how shunned, everyone gets the same amount every day.  There will never be the possibility of a Congressional mandate to redistribute time from those who have plenty to those who have little.  With an equal amount granted to everyone, those who use it wisely reap the greatest rewards regardless of their current situation.

 (2) Time is our most precious asset.

“All my possessions for a moment of time.” Queen Elizabeth on her deathbed in 1603 

Most of us have experienced the clarity that comes with an end of life experience for someone we love and respect.  We have no desire to find out how the stock market closed, take a call from a customer, review the highlights from the big game, or check an update from our favorite social media platform.  In those closing moments, the priorities of life get simple and clear.  We remain focused on family, friends, and shared experiences with those we love.

 (3) Time is easy to track. Similar to how we can quickly determine our priorities when we review our bank or credit card statement, we can do the same for time with our calendars. 

• Just like writing down our goals, when we place things on our calendar, there is a certain clarity, objectivity, and force that gets things accomplished. If it is important, put it on the calendar.
• Be careful of gaps or unaccounted for time in our calendar. Many times, these gaps are spent drifting somewhat aimlessly with our favorite diversion or method of “chilling out”.
• Block time to think, assess, and refine the priorities of our life. The busyness of our calendar is not a proxy for success.  We need time to think, plan, and be intentional about the priorities of life. Sitting and thinking maybe a higher priority than hustling to “do something” for the next hour.

As we make daily decisions to guard our time, we build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity for us to reach our full potential.

With the wonders of modern technology, we now have previously unthinkable amounts of data at our finger tips.  We get instant access to updates from friends and family that no less than 20 years ago would have taken days of phone calls, hours of letter writing, and lengthy conversations over picture books at holiday gatherings. We also get a continuous update on news from around the world on every topic imaginable.

We scroll, we scan, we swipe, and we move on.  We are now tremendously efficient at getting a surface understanding of the world around us, including those we care about most.

As we continue on our journey to build and strengthen our character, it is important we still maintain the discipline to dig a little deeper with the things that matter most.

If we keep working on it, we will become continually more efficient at the scroll, scan and swipe routine to absorb a surface level of more and more content.  With technology improvements, we will probably just blink our way through content in the not too distant future.

The challenge for all of us in this day of scroll, scan and swipe, is can we still exercise the discipline to care enough to go a little deeper? Have we lost the ability to recognize the signal of something bigger beyond the headline or the comment below a post?  Regardless of how many headlines we can skim, the real satisfaction of human connection remains when we can make the decision to go a little deeper with an individual or an issue that matters.

Here are a few thoughts on the decision to go deeper:

Capacity:  We do not have unlimited capacity.  We need to make some choices. Once we choose to care enough to go deeper, to slow down, and to understand something, then we probably need to decide to not even scan the surface on certain topics.  It would be a more effective choice to just save that capacity for the things we choose to go deeper.

People: People are the gateway to understanding the issue in a more meaningful way. Whether we agree or disagree on a topic, understanding the individual on a deeper level will expand our understanding of the issue at hand.

Small steps: Take a small step each day to pause and choose to dig a little deeper.  Pick up the phone to talk, or sit face to face and have a discussion, or simply read beyond the headline. 

It is important for the relationships and issues we care about most that we do not lose the skill and ability to dig a little deeper to understand more and connect better.

As we make daily decisions to go a little deeper with people and issues we care about most, we build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity for us to make a positive impact in our world.