I was recently in New York and attended a Broadway play about the six wives of Henry the 8th. Their lives ended tragically and even if you don’t see the play, you probably have heard something about at least one or two of them.
Their lives with the King were a tragedy—some were beheaded, some were banished, and all suffered a great deal to capture a story they believed would be their greatness, but it wasn’t.
The producers of the play really turned the plot around and ended up telling us something that we believe deep inside and that is to rewrite your own story. Don’t fall into the trap of walking the same pathway that you have seen others walk. Live your own story and live it to the fullest!
This very thought ties into the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s life. He discovered a way through suffering, banishment, dismissal, and unspeakable rejection and physical abuse to rewrite his story and in doing so, he taught millions how to do the same.
Make Any Failure a Stepping Stone to Success!
A quote that really resonates with me as I think about his courage and the courage he instilled in others is very simple but very powerful. In fact, it could be a Perfect Day quote: “If you can’t fly then run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.”
After my business partnership failed in 2007, I wondered how I would go forward. But I found the strength inside to tell myself the truth: I will not give up and I will not retreat. I didn’t and today, I have more in life and business than I could have dreamed possible with God’s help.
You can take the most negative experiences and turn them into your greatest success. Our failures are steppingstones. Period. They take us higher to mountain peaks we never dream we could climb. Remember, I climbed my fifth world’s tallest summit last year.
A few years ago, I never dreamed I would summit Mt. Everest but I did, and it was not without struggle and difficulty. Those steps to the top were far from easy. They were lonely, frightening, and just plain hard. I trained and you can train to take hold of every opportunity—negative and positive—and turn it into something of purpose.
You can do hard things, but your focus must be on the right thing. Hard is relative. My study on turning hard things into victories tells me that when difficulty is involved, people often quit two to three times earlier. When I left base camp at the foot of Mt. Everest, I did not tell myself that I would just go to camp one or two and then return. No, I went to camp one to go to camp two to quickly go to three and then to the summit.
Learn to Have Good Plans in Place
Many times, our minds are our worst enemies. The fact is: when we believe something that is not true, we will be tempted to give up. It’s a mental thing. You mind will give up before your body.
Sitting in my tent on Everest waiting for the green light to climb was hard. Imagine the thoughts that ran through my head concerning my family and my life—would it all end there? No, it didn’t because I was steady mentally. I had trained. I listened to those, who knew more than me; and most of all, I planned and had good goals in place.
We live in a tough environment where there are times we need to turn the nightly news off. I do! In fact, I have an entire plan on shutting off and out the noise around us and focusing on
what we know is true. Perfect Day recall: Perfect Days are not perfect. They are the result of how we handle each challenge.
The Perfect Day process gives you the process to keep moving forward. Really, I want to plant a new idea in your head. There are no failures! The very fact that you would get started and try to reach a new goal or even an old goal is labeled success. For someone who is battling depression or anxiety, getting up in the morning and walking outside is a huge victory!
Small steps forward add up—no matter how short or small. Are you ready to get started to more acceptance, freedom, hope, and yes, success? Then let’s get started today.
Take a moment and go to perfectdayconnect.com and sign up to learn how you can liberate your life, relationships, and business from stress, worry, doubt, and even fear of the future. Even if you don’t sign up, there’s a short video on that page that will give insight into how you can begin.
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About The Author: Cokie Berenyi
Cokie Berenyi has been in financial services and serving the needs of individual and institutional clients and entrepreneurs since 1996. Mother, author, business owner, financial “samurai” and Perfect Day engineer, Cokie loves food, wine, travel, stray dogs, goat cheese, tennis, and alpine mountaineering.
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