Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 533 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

The Need for Intelligent Activity

Thank you for joining us for our 5 days per week wisdom and legacy podcast. This is Day 533 of our trek, and today is Philosophy Friday. Every Friday we ponder some of the basic truths and mysteries of life and how they impact us in creating our living legacy. Currently, we are on an extended multi-week trek as we explore the teachings from some of my virtual mentors, such as Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, and Earl Nightingale. The core of our current trek is based primarily on Jim Rohn’s book The Five Major Pieces to the Life Puzzle. I have learned a considerable amount from reading and re-reading this book on my own trek of life, and I trust that it will benefit you also. Keeping with the continuity of Wisdom-Trek, I will be adapting it to The Five Trails on Life’s Trek.

We are broadcasting from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. This week’s client work has been extra busy. We help our clients with their tax processing and preparing their year-end financial statements. In addition to that, I am also utilized to conduct technical sales demos for the client that I provide remote technical support on their SaaS-based software program several times per month.

My workload requires that I plan my activities intelligently and carefully so that nothing is overlooked. This ties into the topic of our trek today on the Trail of Activity as we will explore why The Need for Intelligent Activity and why Activity Must Be Planned.

Proper planning of our daily activities allows us to maximize the return on our time invested in those activities. A good plan does not have to be overly complicated. In fact, it is best implemented when it is kept simple.

If you have missed the past few Philosophy Friday treks, it would be good to go back and review them to get caught up on our progress so far. We have a lot of ground to cover today, so let’s break camp and continue on the third trail of this extended trek as we cover…

The Five Trails on Life’s Trek – Activity Part 5

As a reminder, our overall extended trek covers these five trails:

1. Philosophy

2. Attitude

3. Activity

4. Results

5. Lifestyle

1. The Need for Intelligent Activity

Many of those in search of success and happiness are already working hard, but they just do not seem to be getting anywhere. The problem is that to produce the desired results, you must put intelligence as well as intensity into your activity. Action without intelligence can be destructive. You must not invest too much time in the process of acquiring intelligence. All things must be in their rightful ratio.

It is so easy to mistake motion for progress and movement for achievement. That is why activity must be deliberately planned, carefully refined and consistently executed.

2. Activity Must Be Planned

You must become wise enough to use today to plan tomorrow. You must design the future, not just dream about it. If you discipline yourself to put intelligence into your plans, you will put fortune into your future.

Your journey toward success cannot be like the long forgotten Sunday drive when you drive around aimlessly looking at the scenery. You need to select a specific destination. You also need to anticipate the obstacles and the risks and be prepared to respond to them whenever they appear.

Having well-defined goals is an essential part of any life plan. These goals should be recorded in writing and should reflect both short-term and long-range planning. Short-term goals serve as landmarks along the journey. They are the small stepping stones that lead to the achievement of your long-term fortune and help you to stay on track over a long period of time. (For guidance on life planning, download the free PDF version of Your Life Plan Blueprint on the free resources tab on Wisdom-Trek.com.)

Long-range goals serve as milestones. They are the points of achievement along the way that give you cause to celebrate the fruits of your efforts. The most important part of planning and goal-setting is to see in your “mind’s eye” the major objective that you are pursuing. This is the “magnificent obsession” that we explored in previous weeks. This is the very nerve center of your ambition. This is what drives you forward.

Major objectives are the unseen force that pulls you into the future. Through your daily activity and discipline, you provide the push to propel you toward success. It is the dream of the future achievement of your objectives that pulls you along day after day and pulls you through the major obstacles you will encounter along the way. The exciting thing about this process is that the more you push, the more the future begins to pull. As you demonstrate your unwavering determination to conquer your limitations, increase your intelligence, and achieve your objective, that still, small voice within you begins to speak its special and promising message adding to the pull of the future. As you listen carefully to this voice and respond instinctively to its urgings, the pull becomes stronger and your future more certain.

3. A Good Plan Is A Simple Plan

Your better future begins with a worthy objective and a simple plan. You must not allow your plan to become excessively burdened by complexities. Many of the answers take time to discover. It is virtually impossible to plan every detail or to anticipate every obstacle. As King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 11:6, “Plant your seed in the morning and keep busy all afternoon, for you don’t know if profit will come from one activity or another—or maybe both.”

You must also be careful not to allow the opinions of others to unduly influence the development of your plan for a rich and satisfying life. Others will have dozens of opinions about what you should do, but the final plan for progress must be your plan. You should listen to the voices of value, but you must remember that no one else will see your plan or sense your obsession quite the way you do. It must be a personally designed plan, and its creator and architect must remain at the helm of the ship throughout the entirety of the journey.

We are deliberately taking our trek slowly on The Five Trails on Life’s Trek as we continue our hike on the Trail of Activity. Today we learned that our activity needs to be intelligent, planned, and simple to complete. It must be our plan, and although we may obtain advice from wise mentors, we must lead on our trek of life, even when few follow.

Next Philosophy Friday we will complete our third trail, which is the Trail of Activity. Our trek next week will focus on why it is so important that your activity is disciplined and allows you to reach the destination you planned. Join us next Friday for these additional insights. I know you will find these insights interesting and profitable in living a rich and satisfying life.

Our next trek is on Monday, and we will continue our series called The Tools in Gramps’ Backpack in which we equip you with the tools needed to impact the lives of others. So encourage your friends and family to join us, and then come along on Monday for another day of our Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.

If you would like to listen to any of the past daily treks or read the associated journals, they are all available at Wisdom-Trek.com.

Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and most of all your friend as I serve you through the Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal.

As we take this trek of life together, let us always:

1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
2. Love Unconditionally
3. Listen Intentionally
4. Learn Continuously
5. Lend to others Generously
6. Lead with Integrity
7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

This is Guthrie Chamberlain reminding you to Keep Moving Forward, Enjoy Your Journey, and Create a Great Day Every Day! See you on Monday!