I took an empty tin can and cut both ends out and split it on the side. I wrapped it around the rusted hole in the exhaust pipe and clamped it on with hose clamps. I started the car up and it sounded so much better. I was so proud of myself for fixing my car with very little cost or effort. My worries were over – or so I thought!

The next day as I was driving to work I began to smell a strange odor in the car. It got worse and worse and suddenly I realized it was smoke. I looked down to see where it was coming from and saw smoke coming from the carpet on the floor between the two front seats.

I quickly pulled over to the side of the road and turned the engine off. I looked under the car and found my clever exhaust pipe patch glowing red hot. Had I driven my car much further it most certainly would have burst into flames. That was a close one! I ended up taking my car into the muffler shop anyway and having an expert mechanic weld a new pipe on. It ran great after that.

How many times do we have something in our lives that needs to be fixed and we attempt the quick-fix, the clever and easy method, only to end up with a near disaster in the end?

Some things in our lives take more than band-aid fixes. Are you guilty of trying the fad diets, the miracle creams, the instant-hypnosis, the get-rich quick schemes, the insider trading tips, the instant piano courses, and on and on? Some things can’t be fixed or done overnight. Some things require patience and real, determined, effort.

Thank you.
Copyright © 2010 Garold N. Larson

So you can say today, “That’s it! I’m done. I’m never going to do that again” or “this is the way I’m going to be from now on.” It’s the power of a decision. No change was ever made in anybody’s life without first deciding. Once you make a decision then you can move forward. A lot of times you say, “Oh it’s so hard to change, it’s so hard to do this, it’s so hard to do that” but really it’s not hard because you’re really not doing it yet, you’re really not making any effort until you decide.

The decision – when things begin to happen

Once you have made that decision, things start to happen in your life. Making that one single decision, saying from this point on, from this time, this minute, this second, I am going in a new direction. I am no longer going in the direction I was going. I have turned my life. I am headed in a new direction and everything I do and everything I say and everything I feel is different. This gets you on the road. You won’t totally change your life in a day but you will be amazed at how quickly you move in that direction.

Think for a moment about the story that Charles Dickens wrote, A Christmas Carol. Think about Scrooge. Think about what happened to him, how in an instant his life changed. After he was shown all the pain and misery of his past and the mistakes that he had made, and the person that he had become, and then as he looked into the future and was shown what his future would be if he continued on that path, if he continued in that direction – he made a decision, in an instant. He changed his direction. He changed his glasses, his lenses that he sees his life through. Suddenly everything changed.

Can you change in an instant?

Is it possible for a person to change in an instant? I believe it is. Think about Scrooge and how he changed in an instant. He totally changed his direction. He became a different person. Now, did everything change in his life all at once? No! But his direction changed and the lens through which he looked at life changed. The lens through which he made decisions, his feelings, his actions changed by changing that lens that he looked through. He changed the direction that he was headed in his life. Everything changed and he was now on the road in a different direction to a different life, to becoming a different person. You can do the same. You can make that change.

Now you don’t have to have spirits come to you in the night to show you the mistakes you have made in the past. You can do that on your own. Review your past. Review the pain that you’ve had in your life by going the direction you’re going right now. Think about all the pain you’ve suffered through. Think of all the opportunities that you’ve missed because of the actions and direction you’ve taken in your life. Think about where you could have been now.

Ponder your future

Think about your future. If you continue on the road that you are on now where will you be one year from now? Will you be any better of a person? Will you continue down hill? What about five years from now? Where will you be if you continue on this road that you’re headed without changing? What will your life be like? Is that where you want to be? Is that where you want to go? Experience the pain of this. Think about it. What kind of a life do you want? What kind of person do you want to be? Do you want to continue heading in the direction that you’re heading right now? Is that what you want? No!

As you experience this pain of your past mistakes and what it will mean to you in the future if you don’t make any changes – let it sink deep down into your heart, into your mind, into your emotions. Feel this pain and make a decision now, at this moment, that you will not put up with this any more, that you will not live another second in this world headed in that direction, that you are tired of tripping up, falling down, making mistakes, following the easy path and suffering the misery from this. You want better things in life.

You know deep down inside of you is a different person, a better person, a great person, a person with potential. The real you is deep down inside you. You know who the real you is and it’s trying to get out. Why not let him out now? Defeat the old “you” and let the new “you” out. You can do all this with the power of decisions.

Copyright © 2008 Garold N. Larson

Fork in the road

What if there was a key behavior that if you could master, would save you untold pain, worry, effort and time? What if this behavior could make your efforts to achieve total self-mastery ten times easier? Today I’m going to teach you a simple concept that seems to elude most people, yet is so simple.

One thing you share in common with nearly every one else is that your day is full of decisions. Dozens of times a day you are faced with a fork in the road and must decide which way to go. Humans are naturally lazy creatures so when you are faced with two choices you tend to gravitate toward the easiest path. Why choose the long, hard road when you can take the short, easy one? Or why do something when you just don’t feel like it? As you stand there at the fork in the road and evaluate the situation, the pull to the easy road becomes powerfully strong. More often than not, if you are like the average person, you are sucked into the easy road.

The problem here is that the easy road is not always the best road to follow in the long run. In our minds we know which road is the best road but somehow we end up going the wrong way. What I am explaining here is the answer to a long held question. It is:

“Why do we do what we do when we know what we know?”

In other words, why do people do things they know aren’t good for them? The answer is because we are making our decisions at the wrong time. We are making our decisions when we are standing at the fork in the road.

Let me give you an example. If every morning you make the decision of whether to get up or not at the time your alarm clock goes off, you are making that decision at the fork in the road. In your mind you are deliberating, “Should I get up? Should I sleep for ten more minutes? I’m so tired! Just a few more minutes of sleep.” And back to bed you go.

Do you see the problem here? The time to make the decision of when to get up in the morning is not at 6:00 in the morning!

“Right decisions are easiest to make when we make them well in advance, having ultimate objectives in mind; this saves a lot of anguish at the fork, when we’re tired and sorely tempted.” – Spencer W. Kimball

There are dozens of decisions we face every day that should already have been decided long ago. We shouldn’t have to agonize and re-decide the same decisions a hundred times! Many of these decisions only need to be made once. This statement by William James describes it so well:

“There is no more miserable person than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work are subjects of deliberation. Half the time of such a man goes to deciding or regretting matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.” — William James

The whole point we are trying to make is to determine early on what things you will and will not do and be done with it. Look at your long-term objectives and make the decisions now that will lead you in that direction. You only need to make those decisions once.

For example, my wife made the decision long ago that she will go out running every morning, no matter what. There is no deciding each morning as to whether she is going running or not. That decision has already been made. There is no painful deliberation and analyzing that takes place. It is as automatic for her as the rising of the sun each day.

Now I want you to think about the decisions you make on a daily basis. Aren’t there a number of them you could make once and for all and be done with them? Aren’t there decisions about what you will eat or not eat, decisions about exercising, decisions about daily habits, decisions about all kinds of things that you can make once and forever be done with them?

I challenge you to consciously examine your life and make this one key behavior change. Examine each fork in the road you come across on a daily basis and see which ones you can decide once and for all. You will be so much further along the road to self-mastery.

“We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.” — Aneurin Bevan

What are your thoughts about making decisions once and for all? What are the ones you have the biggest challenges with? Have you found ways to make this process easier? Please share with us in the comments below.

Thank you.

Master Yourself, Master Your Life

Copyright © 2009 Garold N. Larson

Price tags

Everything is this life has a price tag. It’s up to you to read it correctly and decide whether you want to invest in it or not. You are the one who does the buying and selling. There are no special bargains or half-off sales. You reap all the profit or loss. Nature never fails. It always has and always will reward you for your right choices and punish you for your wrong choices.

What I’m talking about are The Price Tags of Life. What this means is that everything we do, every habit that we have, every action we perform, has a price tag attached to it. If you think about it and examine your actions and habits closely you will discover what their price tags are. We need to examine the price tags of life and see what it really costs us to do the things that we do. After we count what it costs and add up what we gain and then strike a balance, we can see if we are coming out ahead or not.

Smoking Example

There are many different examples. Let’s look at smoking. Let’s suppose you smoke. To determine whether you should or shouldn’t you need to determine what it is costing you. You take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle from top to bottom. In the left column write down all the benefits that you gain by performing this habit. Then in the right column write down what doing this habit is costing you.

You could do this with any number of habits or behaviors. One would be getting up every day and running. One could be the improper use of drugs such as painkillers. It could be an addiction to pornography. You can take any of these things and examine them closely and write the benefits and the costs and strike a balance. It helps you see clearly the price you are paying for that particular action or habit. Then you can determine whether or not it’s worth it. Some may be obvious but it’s still good to look at it because we may not realize what it’s actually costing us.

Drug Abuse Example

For example, let’s suppose you were a person who uses painkillers improperly. So you would write on the left-hand side of the page the benefits of using the painkillers. The benefits may be that whenever you use painkillers it gives you a sense of wellbeing. It just makes you feel good all over. You feel calm inside. It takes away the pain, not only physically but emotionally. That’s what a painkiller does – it removes pain. Other benefits perhaps are when you don’t feel good or are tired or don’t feel like doing something you could take a painkiller and after a while you feel pretty good. I can’t think of any other benefits of taking painkillers but if there were more you could list them.

Now on the right side of the page you start writing down what it cost to use painkillers. First of all you jeopardize your health, knowing that the painkillers are not good for your body. They’re not good for your heart. Every time you indulge in this habit it is damaging your body. Of course there are the actual costs. Somehow or another you are either buying these painkillers or are obtaining them in some other illegal way. So you have the actual costs in money. Another cost would be the risk that you take because what you’re doing is illegal. So you’re taking a legal risk every time that you take these painkillers. Another cost is that it impairs your judgment. When you think you are thinking clearly and you think you are acting rationally you may not be because the painkillers are affecting your mental state. They are impairing your ability to reason. Another cost is that you’re putting yourself in danger when you drive a car or operate any equipment because your reaction time is impaired. Another cost is that after a while you need more of the painkillers to get the same effect. So you need something more or harder to get the same effect. It becomes an addiction and you need to increase the dosage. Another cost is that usually this kind of a habit is done in secret. Your children, your spouse and the other people around you don’t know because you go to great lengths to hide it and conceal it from them and you always have the worry of being found out. This costs you two things: one is the constant worry of being found out and two is the real cost of being found out and losing the trust and respect of those who are close to you – your loved ones, your children, your spouse, your friends.

As you go through this and add up the benefits and add up the costs and then strike a balance you can see if what you’re doing is really worth what it’s costing you. You may want to put a value or weight on each of the costs and benefits such as a scale from one to ten. Some costs may be small and some may be great. Same with the benefits, some are small in value and some are large. So put a value on it so you can more accurately see what your habit or behavior is costing you in relation to its benefits.

Exercise Example

You could do this same thing with exercising each day. The benefits would be increased health, more energy and stamina, living longer and so on. The costs would be that you have to get up early in the morning. It requires effort. It’s not enjoyable. It takes time. You list the costs and benefits and determine if it’s worth it.

Relationship Example

Another example would be a relationship that you’re in and what it’s costing you. I’ve worked with people who are in relationships that are very damaging to them, to their whole wellbeing, to their future, and yet they stay in that relationship. They give reasons like, “he’s such a good friend, he’s always there for me, he’s so understanding.” Yet this supposed good friend, this understanding friend, is using them and taking advantage of them and in some ways abusing them and yet they don’t see it. They see the small benefit they gain and yet they fail to see what it’s really costing them such as their future opportunities in life or their future happiness.

Pornography Example

Another example is when I work with individuals who have a problem with pornography. On the left side of the paper you list the benefits such as the ecstasy, the pleasure, the release of stress they get when they view pornography. Then you start adding up the costs on the right side such as the warping their sense of what a true, loving relationship should be. They risk their job. They risk going to jail if they are into child pornography. They risk losing the love and respect of their spouse, their children, their community or their church. They risk losing the things they hold dear as far as the spiritual aspects of their life such as their relationship with God, knowing that they are offending God and distancing themselves from Him. They risk affecting their ability to commune with their creator by indulging in these things that are clearly offensive to God. Other prices they pay are stealing time from work if they indulge at work. There is the cost of simply wasting hours and hours of time looking at pornography and wasting what you cold have accomplished with that time. Those are the prices you are pay.

Review the Price Tags Every Day

Once you have done this little exercise then read these two lists every night. Don’t just read it over but review and think about each item on the list. See what it’s costing you and determine in your mind if it’s worth it. Do this on a daily basis. I am aware of people who have done this and within three weeks have made startling changes. They experienced no more desire to indulge in their habit. By bringing to their mind every day what it was costing them they were able to make that mental adjustment. They gradually gained self-mastery over their habit.

So my message today is to examine your life and look at the things that you may be struggling with and examine the price tags attached to them. Count the costs and determine if the benefits are really worth it. You may be surprised what you find out. Resolutions seldom work. Promises to never do it again are rarely kept. But reading The Price Tags of Life can help you gain intelligent self –mastery and thus change the course of your life.

Thank you.

Master Yourself, Master Your Life

Copyright © 2009 Garold N. Larson

I once heard a story about two brothers who lived in a small town in the country. The story goes that both of these brothers were caught stealing sheep. For their punishment they were branded on the forehead with the letters “ST,” for “Sheep Thief.”

One brother was so ashamed that he left the community. Everywhere he went he had to constantly explain the letters on his forehead. He remained bitter about the whole thing and always felt he had been treated unfairly. He eventually died a lonely man and was buried in an unknown grave.

His brother, on the other hand, stayed in the community and tried to win back his neighbors’ trust. He did everything he could to show the people of the town that he was a changed man. He volunteered for community service projects, helped his neighbors when he saw the need, and did all he could to become the kind of man that he knew he ought to be.

Many years later a visitor came to town. He asked a local resident about the strange letters on the old man’s forehead. The resident replied that he had forgotten exactly why the letters were there, but that he thought “ST” most likely was an abbreviation for the word “Saint.”

Like the brothers in this story, each of us makes mistakes in our lives – sometimes big ones and sometimes little ones. And like the brothers in this story we can choose what we do about the mistakes we make. We are the ones that decide how our mistakes are going to affect us.

May each of us choose the good path and become the person we know we ought to be so that perhaps someday we may be known as a “Saint” and not a “Sheep Thief.” Thank you.

Copyright © 2008 Garold N. Larson