The Ladder Of Life Part Two

Author: Dr. Wm. G. Seavey
Source: free-articles

The Mustard Seed – Lesson For living

No. 20

THE LADDER OF LIFE

PART TWO

As you climb your ladder you will meet others on their way up or their way down. Those on the way down find life to hard to handle and have gone to join the easy crowd at the bottom of the ladder just milling around waiting for something for nothing to show up so they can grab it with minimum effort. But not you. You continue your upward climb taking those with you headed in the same direction and with purpose in mind.

When is a good time to check your progress? Right now would be a good time and everyday thereafter if you are interested in maximum performance. If not, you can just lie around and let the years creep up on you, and believe me, they will before you know it. But suppose that has happened. Suppose you are older now and have come to the realization that you’ve missed the boat and let life rock away and you are still on the bottom rungs of the ladder having made no significant progress. Is it too late? Absolutely not. You can start where you are and with what you’ve got even if it is nothing. You may be on the bottom of the heap, but you can start the forward motion. All it takes is a little push. Hopefully I can provide that push for you as your personal coach and mentor. All you have to do is email me at winnow@earthlink.net and we can get the ball rolling. Sure life is a tough, long haul. When I climbed the Enchanted Rock in Fredericksburg, Texas while in my mid and late 60’s I didn’t make it all the way in one fell swoop. I had to stop every once in a while to catch up. Life is like that but you can make it to the top just as I did. Now I teach people how to get to the top. You’ve got to experience the top before you can bring others with you.

On a scale of 1-10 where are you relative to where you should be? Where should you be at age 25, 35, 50 and older? How far should you go on this success journey? Here is a great question for you. How tall should a tree grow? And the answer is, as tall as it wants to. Have you ever heard of a tree growing just half way and stopping? I haven’t. Suppose the tree says I don’t like it where I’m at. I think I’ll stop growing. I don’t like the climate here so I’ll move to another state. But what if the climate is the same there? What then? What if the tree says I don’t like the weather here? It is to hot, to cold, to wet and to dry. I’m quitting this game called life. Do you know that is exactly what people do? They complain about the seasons of life when that is all they have. Sometimes you just gotta put up with where you are at in life and get on with it. Stop complaining. It doesn’t help if nothing changes because of your complaints.

Now let the bottom rung of the ladder be the minimum and the top the maximum. Use that for your standard of measure. You say, “I’ve not gone very far.” “How hard have you tried?” I would ask. And you would say, “Not very hard.” Then I would say, “You aren’t where you should be on the ladder of life because you haven’t given it your all.” Life demands and expects your all. You cannot take from life all the time and keep expecting her to hand you everything. Pretty soon the well is going to go dry and you’re going to be left holding an empty bucket waiting for the well to fill back up. It is time to start giving life everything you have. You’re probably wondering where IT is. Well IT is on the inside of you. All you have need of is on the inside of you. Now you have to persuade it to come to the surface and you do that by attending the lectures, reading the books, taking the extra classes, listening to the audio tapes and watching the videos, all of which, should pertain to personal growth; your personal growth. And it wouldn’t hurt to sit in on a few good bible lessons and sermons. Who knows what that might bring out of you? You’ll never know until you try. Take the initiative. Don’t settle for someone else’s plan for your life. YOU be a product of your own conclusion. STOP letting people sell you on plans that will not produce anything for you. By the way, you would be surprised at how much you already know and it’s already on the inside of you. The extra time you spend on you will draw it out. You can work hard on the job and make a living. You can work hard on you and make a fortune.

Let’s examine your standard of measure that I mentioned earlier. It is very important to your growth. If you have no standards by which to measure progress, how will you know if you are ascending or descending? Or, how will you know if you have arrived if you don’t know where you are going? The Bible says, “By your standard of measure it shall be measured to you.” The word shall is a mandatory clause. It means it is going to happen just the way it is spelled out. What is a standard? Here are a few definitions.

1.It is a basis for the measure of value given.

2.A standard is something established for use as a rule or basis of comparison in measuring quality.

3.A standard is certain criterion set for usages or practices (moral standards)

4.It is a level of excellence, attainment etc. regarded as a measure of adequacy.

So, what you set as a standard for your life determines the income from your outflow. If you have poor standards, you will receive in like kind. Set poor standards and receive poor measurements. It will not be a full measurement. It will not be running over. The Bible again says that if you give, your return will be overflowing. It will be a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over. I would call that a good measure. If you will establish early on in life good standards, that is, those that will produce good results, then your end result will be a running over of good, and more than you can handle. Jim Rohn says if you want to balance your checkbook, give a chunk of it away at various times. That is a good standard to live by. It brings balance to the whole of things. No one then has too much of anything. That is the way it was intended according to Old Testament teachings. But we’ve gotten greedy. Now some have too much and some have to little.

When you buy product at the market place, you want a just weight. If you bought something for $3.00 a pound you would expect to get a pound for your hard earned money. Unless of course you did not care if you were short changed or not and then you would settle for anything, which is what many people do in life. If you paid $3.00 for something less than a pound, you lost. You got the short end of the stick. When you pick up one end of the stick you also get the end opposite.

It is the same way with life. You must get your moneys worth. But if you put nothing into life you will receive back a like measurement. Nothing is a measurement. Nothing equals nothing. You get short changed. It is called a just return, a just weight. The problem is we let so many people short change us by setting standards for us that will not produce profit. Profit is a measure. The measure is determined by what you have put into the product and the product is you. Put nothing in and get nothing out. So, with no set standards of value, you will always receive a poor measurement. You will always be living on barely get along street in poverty city.

Do you remember the foundation I had talked about earlier in this presentation? It was the bedrock upon which you would stand your ladder. But so many times people build upon sinking sand. As you climb your ladder of life, the ladder simply disappears into the sinking sand beneath it. When you reach life’s end, you find yourself on the same rung of the ladder as you started out with. Now that is not called progress. It is called disaster. The one thing that will drive your ladder into the sinking sand faster than anything else is the weight of regret. Regretting that you have done nothing with your time and opportunity up until this day of your life. Everything looks bleak and blah, no hope in sight. Ah, but there is hope. You can start again. All you have to do is move your ladder onto solid rock. And may I suggest to you that it is closer than you think. The bedrock could mean truth, integrity, hope, self worth, a right attitude, a positive outlook on life; a help to others and the list is endless. You can make your own list. Make sure it is a list of things that will withstand the storms of life and prove themselves to be faithful to those who will embrace them.

Have you ever seen someone holding a ladder for someone else to climb? Sadly you will seldom see that in today’s society. Have you ever been asked to hold the ladder while someone else climbed it? Hard to do isn’t it? And the reason is because we don’t want any one else to get ahead of us. If you don’t think so, watch the traffic on a busy freeway at quitting time. Everybody wants to be first in line. Here is the key. No man is an island unto himself. You cannot pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. If you want to be first, be last. Now that is diametrically opposed to man’s philosophy. But God knew man would want to be first so He put that principle in the Bible for man. But, you must USE this principle when climbing your own life’s ladder. Who cares if another person gets to the top before you? That’s what it is all about. Believe me, if you will help enough other people to get to the top, there will come the time when you to, will be at the top. There will always come the time for reaping if you will plant great disciplines in your life. As you grow, share with others what you have learned. Begin mentoring someone. What a change that will make in you when you get you out of the way by putting others first.

Now why this Lesson For Living? It is to get you to start looking at your life and where you are right now. Are you where you should be? Are you where you want to be? Only you can answer that. It has been my experience with people that most are not where they want to be. But a better question is are you where you SHOULD be? To answer that would require some work on your behalf because no one else can give you the answer. Here is one very important rule. Don’t compare where you are in life to where others are. It is foolhardy. Find you where YOU are supposed to be. Read the books on development. Go to the workshops and seminars. Listen to the audiotapes and view the videos. Listen to the sermons and bible studies. Above all, get WISDOM. You would be surprised where it will lead you. Start working on YOU. What a difference that will make in your journey.

I Wish You The Best Of Success,

Dr. Wm. G. Seavey

Email the Doctor for lecturing at winnow@earthlink.net

Web site www.thewinnerscircle.org

Subscribe to The Mustard Seed – Lessons For Living www.thewinnerscircle.org

Dr. Seavey is the author of Lessons For Living and several workbooks all relating to personal development and growth. He leads you through the maze of negativism using age old disciplines and principles teaching you how to live a successful lifestyle one day at a time.

The Ladder Of Life

Author: Dr. Wm. G. Seavey
Source: free-articles

The Mustard Seed – Lesson For living No. 20THE LADDER OF LIFE PART ONEPicture with me a ladder, a straight ladder with no supports. Not a stepladder or an extension ladder but the type you would lean up against the house to climb up on the roof. Picture it as long as your imagination will allow you. Let the bottom of the ladder represent your birth into this world and the very top of the ladder represent your departure from it. Stand this ladder in an upright position for it is going to represent all your life from start to finish. If you picture long life for yourself, see the ladder extending to a great height, even out of sight, it goes so high. Now how is this ladder supported? It is supported by standing it on solid ground. The solid ground represents, among other things, faith, integrity and truth. Remember the ladder represents you. Let it represent you well after your departure. If people have nothing to say about you after your departure, then perhaps you didn’t do all you could have. Let the foundation for your ladder come from a solid philosophy about life. Let it be the philosophy of a winner. Let it be the philosophy of one who has experienced both winning and loosing for life is a mixture of up and down. You cannot expect to win at all things but you can expect to receive all that life has to offer if you will take the good with the bad, mix them together, knowing that all things work together for good and hopefully your life will make a statement in your philosophy that there was more good than bad.Let the rungs represent your successes. You can picture as many rungs as you want on this ladder because it is your ladder. You and you alone are responsible for it. Let the rungs also represent your failures for there will be many throughout your lifetime. As you venture deeper into life, years having passed by, you can look back and hopefully the success/failure ratio will be to your benefit. I hope you do not look back and say, “My, what a waste.” Others might say that about you, but not you. There will always be jealousy from others because of your accomplishments. There will also be those who will tell you, “I told you so.” Pay no attention to them. Get as far away from them as possible. Their goal is to make everyone else look bad and they look good. You do not need them on your ladder. They will only take up space. The people that you want on your ladder are those who are going the same direction you are, and that is up. No other direction in life satisfies like ‘up’ does.Let me quickly define success. It is a few simple disciplines practiced every day for the rest of your life. Ancient Script gives this definition for success. It is acting wisely in the affairs of life and/or handling accurately the affairs of life. I cannot leave this without giving you the definition for failure. Failure is daily errors in judgment left unattended resulting in chaos and failure. When you fail, and you will, you must attend the errors in judgment that caused the failure and correct them, otherwise, you will continue to fail until you care not about failure. It will then become part of you and you will have missed life still standing on the first rung of your ladder.Let the first few rungs on the ladder represent your years of life from birth up to your teen years. Since this is your life you can place yourself on whatever rung of the ladder you think you have achieved to and you get to show your own personal growth record. Suppose everything goes really well and you are now approaching adulthood. Life takes on a different meaning. It becomes a struggle as you climb the ladder. Prior to this things were not that difficult. You rocked along with not much responsibility and life was a fun game. But now life is no longer a game. You are now a participant in a serious adventure called life. This adventure will include other people and relationships will enter the picture. Had there been only one of you and no other people, life would have been a breeze. But others have come to intrude on your adventure and cause complexities. It is called living.The rungs of your ladder could represent your past accomplishments and successes and perhaps a few errors in judgment called failures which means something less than hoped for. You say, “I didn’t bargain for this but here it is. I guess I am going to have to deal with it.” Errors in judgment are things that happen when you are out of focus on what is really required for living life successfully. However they must happen in life since that is how we learn. Hopefully we don’t go back and repeat the same errors. This would be foolhardy and there is nothing to gain from such action. Sadly, too many people do this. They live in the same old ruts day after day satisfied that life has dealt them misery and there is nothing they can do about it. They have surrended to failure and failure has them in its grip. The grip is so tight that it chokes any visions of hope and success. They can see no further than the failure that lies within them.Life is a mixture of wins and losses. Don’t count just your wins. You did not learn from them. But count your losses and celebrate them as learning times for from them come the greatest lessons of life. Continue life. It is going to go on anyway, with or without you so you might just as well enjoy the ride. Hopefully your life’s ledger will have more assets than liabilities. Remember that no team wins all the games. But if you continue to swing every time the ball is pitched, you will eventually hit a homer. So don’t give up swinging. Practice your swing every day. Who knows when you might just hit one out of the ballpark? When you do, don’t forget how you did it and continue doing it the same way. Some balls are pitched to get you out of the game. Some are pitched to see how good you are. Swing at the good balls and forget the others.Let’s proceed up our ladder. What is our purpose for climbing the ladder? Why should we reach out to success? Because it is within us to do so. It was created in us. The Master Creator did not create us as failures but as winners. All we have to do is follow the rules given us. It would be sad indeed if at age fifty we looked back and saw that we had barely left the first few rungs of the ladder. That was where we were when we first started out in life.There are at least two reasons why man will climb the ladder. The obvious is to get to the top. But why the top? One, man is greedy and selfish. His only reason for reaching the top is for personal gain at the expense of others not at the service of others. The second reason a man climbs the ladder is to take others with him. It might be called mentoring. If you were on rung X of the ladder and saw others beneath you seeking success, what would you do for them? Most would bring those beneath them to the rung they are on. That is called positioning so that you do not get any higher in life than I do. But the person who loves to see others win would position the success seeker a rung above him. Why? Because it is the right thing to do. But there is another reason. Suppose you get stuck on rung X. The person whom you elevated to the rung above you could now reach down and elevate you to the rung above him and the process continues throughout life. It is called helping other people. Someone said if you will help enough people in life get what they want, there will come a time in your own life in which you will get everything you want. It is called reciprocity or the law of mutual exchange.Have you ever climbed an ice-covered ladder? I have and many times because I was raised in Maine where the winters can get quite severe. It is quite a sight to see someone do that. Dangerous yes, but funny also if taken in the right spirit. One rung up and two down. You never seem to get anywhere. The top was always just out of reach. I use to climb the ladder in the wintertime to shovel the snow off the roof of the old house I had lived in. Rather than try to break the ice off the rungs for some sure footing, I would attempt this 7-8 foot climb barely making it at times. Most of the time I just gave up. That is what most people do; they simply give up. I know because I was one of them. When the going gets a little slippery and tough to manage and you seem to be making no headway, toughen up, don’t give up, and get on with it. Once past the rough, tough spots, you will make some major headway until the next storms of life come around. Here is some good news. You WILL survive the storms of life. You will handle the next rungs on your ladder of life because you had the guts to tackle those beneath you. Those are your victories. It is so much fun getting to the top and looking down realizing your determination to win outweighed the weight of regret for not having tried. Cleaning up the rungs on the ladder of life as you go helps you to maintain the forward motion necessary for the next rung, and the next, until you reach the top. Get the obstacles out of the way. Make a pathway AND keep looking up.I remember another time while working for a utility company, I climbed a high-line pole out in a pasture, which was totally covered with ice about a ” inch thick. To top that of it was in the middle of a sleet storm and at nighttime. President Eisenhower had just been elected president of the United States. Searchlights were beaming up at me from several utility trucks below making it even more difficult to see what with the sleet and snow. It all froze immediately as it hit the ground including the pole I was about to climb. A power line had come loose because of the weight of the ice on it and fell on a small herd of cattle below killing several. Our job was to re-string the wire. I was elected to climb the pole.Harnessed up, I began the long climb to the top carrying heavy gear as I went. Slamming my spikes in the side of the pole dislodged some of the ice but there was still some that remained. I was having a very tough time. It was so cold that my joints were aching and the climb was very slow and tedious. I slipped several times and would plummet a few feet towards the ground when I’d get a spike driven into the wood of the pole and stop the descent. Scared? No, of course not. Scared to death, yes. I finally made it to the top, did what I was supposed to do and began my climb down. New ice had formed on the pole and it was more difficult going down then it was going up.It’s not easy loosing ground especially when you have come so far. But it is necessary sometimes. Sometimes it is class time. It could be time to sit and be taught. Most adults don’t like that, but it to is necessary. Don’t stay in class to long. Put into practice what you’ve learned. That’s why they made those chairs so small in the early grades of school. Adults don’t fit in them. Stay only long enough to learn the lessons of life for your particular situation and circumstance. After all, a circumstance is only the place where you are standing right now. You can move from it anytime you want to. ‘Want to’ is the key. You’ve got to learn to handle trouble before you can be blessed.Now why these two stories you ask? Because both of them resemble our climb up the ladder of life. Sometimes it is perilous. Sometimes it is scary and sometimes fun. It is a mixture of things. But most of the time it is fun.What a relief it was to get to the top of that pole. I had not thought about the difficulty in coming down especially what with the new ice that had formed.A like situation happened to me when I climbed The Enchanted Rock in Fredericksburg Texas. I did it twice; once when I was 65 and the second when I was 69. It is about an hour to the top of the barren rock mountain and at an upward angle of about 30 to 40 degrees. It is tough to say the least and not for the faint of heart. Many gave up after just a few feet of climbing. It was especially hard if climbed in the summer and the heat soared in the afternoon sometimes to over 100 degrees. But the real problem was coming down. If you let your body momentum carry you to fast you would come crashing down possibly ending up with some very serious injuries. Life is a climb but not necessarily a continuous climb. There will be detours, many of which will be unexpected. The question is how will you handle them? There will be times in which you will loose a fair amount of ground but the good news is you can continue the climb after the battle. You do not have to stay on the bottom rungs of your ladder of life.There will be times in your life in which you will neither ascend nor descend. You’ll stay right where you are until valuable lessons are learned and experienced. It is called learning time. To ascend without learning valuable lessons for living will only cause you to plummet ground ward, sometimes never to recover from the fall. There will be many opponents as you strive toward that which is good. Who are they? Anyone who is opposed to your forward movement in life. It is anyone who cannot stand to see others win. You will find them on every street corner. Stay alert and be aware of them. Their goal in life is to see you fall and to stay in that fallen condition. You are not a threat to them as long as you stay down.Now there is a major opponent we ALL will constantly have trouble with. He seems to show up at every turn in the road especially when we are trying our best to move forward in our endeavors. He is the same one who whispered to Eve. “Go ahead Eve, make my day. Have a bite.” Well she did and she got knocked off her ladder big time. So did her husband Adam. In fact it was so serious, they were expelled from their own home called Paradise. Now that is a fall! What a way to go. They had it made, but that is another story and for another time.PART TWO FOLLOWINGDr. Seavey is the author of Lessons For Living and several workbooks all relating to personal growth and development. Using principles and disciplines ages old, he leads you through the maze of negativism to successful living one day at a time.