It's Just A Penny

It’s Just a Penny

What if I told you that I hid a penny in this room, how many would jump out of their seats to try to find it? Probably not very many. After all, it’s just a penny. You quickly considered the effort/risk versus the reward. Most of you decided that the work was not worth the reward.

What if I told you I hid a hundred dollars in this room, how many would rush to find it? You quickly decided that the effort/risk is now worth the reward. The difference is now all of a sudden the reward got bigger. The effort is the same in trying to find that penny, but now the reward is big enough to motivate you into action.

What if I told you that the hundred dollars was in pennies scattered throughout this room? The dream didn’t change, it’s still $100 but the effort changed. Once again, your brain is weighing the effort/risk versus the reward. Is taking the time to search for all those pennies worth the reward? Sure it’s worth it if you only have to find the one bill, but now you have to find 10,000 individual items.

This is where we often hold ourselves back in life. We keep setting goals, but they are not big enough goals that motivate us into action. A penny in the room wasn’t worth it, but $100, now we’re talking. We all want to have great things in life, and to be great in life and we all have the capability to do it. But what dream is big enough to motivate you into action? I challenge you to find that dream.

You see we can have a plan to go after our dreams, but life can change the rules. You have to be willing to adapt, improvise, and overcome those obstacles. The only rules that life has to follow are, there will be life, there will be death, and there will be change. All of you have the ability to find the penny and the $100. But who among you has the drive to find that $100 in the form of 10,000 pennies. You have to be willing to do today what others won’t, in order the have tomorrow what others won’t have. So the key to finding your dreams in life is finding a big enough dream to motivate you into action and then be willing to do the work. To many times people find a dream, get motivated for a “sprint” at it. But do you really want your dream bad enough when tough times blindside you? When life comes to knock you down, family or friends come and tell you that you can’t do it? What about when you realize that you don’t have the finances or knowledge, are these kinds of obstacles going to hold you back and prevent you from getting what you want, or are you going  to adapt, improvise, and overcome to continue towards your dreams? You see, anything worth having is worth working for. Is your dream really worth working for? Anybody can have a dreams for a day, a week, or even a month when things are going good. Do you have the drive, patience, and self-confidence to hang in there for the long haul, through both good and bad times?

You now get to search for the $100 bill however, you now have to search with a blindfold on and you can only look in one place everyday. Do these seem like unrealistic restrictions? Once again the rules have changed. How has your motivation changed? These obstacles are not very unlike the limitations that you put on yourself when you look at your dreams. You say that the time isn’t right, I don’t have the money, the education, I’ll start tomorrow, and so many other excuses. You are the only one who can take off that blindfold and look more than one place a day. But due to a lack of motivation and self-esteem you limit yourself and even those around you who want to help you achieve your dreams. You cannot control nor see most of the challenges that life is going to throw at you. So don’t get hung up on those things. Take them in stride, handle them and move on. There are enough outside distractions in life that will try to derail you and prevent you from getting what you want when you want it. You don’t need to add your own limitation to that list.

Let’s take a closer look at restricting you to looking in one place a days for the $100 bill. Day one…no luck, day two…no luck, day three…no luck, day 10...no luck. How many days would you keep looking before you give up? Are you looking as each day as a failure or a success? Every place that you look, even if you don’t find anything, is one less place to look later? All failures in life are a matter of how you choose to perceive them. Failure is a part of the process of success. So I would encourage you to go fail some more, go fail some more go fail some more. You have to have a certain amount of failure before you reach your dreams. The problem is that no one knows how much it is until you get there. As long as you are giving 100%, is it really failing?

You will do the work of finding all those pennies in your life. The option is, why not find them on your terms. You are going to put the effort in, you are going to get frustrated, discouraged, excited, joyous, and so on. You’ll ride that emotional roller coaster. But why not ride it on your terms. We are all chasing a dream, surprised? Hear me out. Some of are chasing the dreams that we want to chase. Like, cars, homes, time with your family, financial security, the list goes on and on. While others are forced to live a life less lived because we have lost our desire for life. They are chasing the dreams of the status-quo. When you chose not to chase your own dream, you will be given a dream to chase. Society will then tell you what kind of life you should live. I know what it feel like to live that kind of life because I did it for many years. I would go from home to work, work to home, home to work, work to home…etc. I got to do that for about 50 weeks a year. I didn’t have a Monday through Friday job so the days that I took off during the week I got to make on the weekend while my kids were home from school. I also was privileged enough to work six day work weeks usually for about 4 months a year. I’m not complaining about my job, I liked my job and I chose that profession. I’m just sharing with you where I’ve come from. I’ve always said that if I didn’t like my job I would find another.

People look at me funny when I pick up pennies while I am out and about. Family and friends both think it’s odd that I pick up what ever change I find. Some people won’t pick up a penny unless it’s heads up. My theory is that it’s a penny that I didn’t have when I left home, so now I am a penny richer. Over the years I have probably found well over a $200 in change on the ground. Do I believe that I can become rich by doing this? No. But there have been time that I’ve needed what I’ve found.

You may go several days without finding anything. You may even go weeks, months, or even years without finding anything. Are you willing to push through and let nothing stop you. Will you become unstoppable? When you can have that kind of determination, when you go through that dry spell of finding nothing, all of a sudden one day….all your efforts and determination are rewarded. Things start happening and all of a sudden all that work that you put in, you start reaping those rewards.

How many pennies will you try to find today? How much effort are you willing to put in today? Will you let your current situation control your thoughts today and perspective about your dreams?

Strategies For Looking For Pennies

-Following The Crowd   Many people in this life have decided that this is the best way to find their way through life. We believe that if they just follow what everyone else is doing that we will get what we want. The problem is, they are mimicking others and expecting different results. If I follow you and you are going to the grocery store, wouldn’t make much sense for me to expect to arrive at a hardware store. But everyday this is happening in mass quantity. We are programmed to just follow the status-quo. We get into the habit of doing what everyone else is doing, whether it’s because it’s just easier, fear of failure, fear of success and the responsibility that it might bring, or just plain laziness. You CANNOT get something different than everyone else if you keep doing what it is that they are doing.

- I’ll Do It Tomorrow  The problem with this mentality is that most of the time tomorrow never comes. If you continue procrastination, eventually you are forced to just take what life hands to you. That’s not a risk that I am personally willing to take. What are you waiting for? “The right time…the right amount of money…the right weather…the right status…what is it really? What is holding you back from taking even the smallest step DAILY toward getting what you want out off life? You didn’t get to where you are today overnight, what makes you think that you can dig yourself out overnight. It’s going to take some time and work. I guarantee you that it will be so worth it. The changes that you can have in your life starting now will not only change your life, but it will effect those lives around you.

- I’m Happy With Where I’m At In Life   I can respect this outlook and even relate to it. We get moments in life when all seems to be going like we want it to. Everything seems to be all falling into place. But consider this, “What if….?” We all know and have experienced life throwing us under the bus. From out of nowhere we are hit and now we are in a world of hurt. I believe in planning ahead and besides, chasing a dream is fun. If it’s not fun, you aren’t chasing YOUR dream, you are chasing something that someone else wants for you, you’re stuck in a rut, and/or your values have changed.

We can come up with all the reasons to figure out what you want your dreams and goals in life to be. We can quote all the famous people throughout history in all of their infinite wisdom to motivate. We can find pictures of all the material things that your heart can ever desire. What we can’t do for you is give you reason why. All these words are empty and will probably fall on deaf ears until you figure out your why. Once your dreams and goals get inside you, nothing will stop you. Until then, you will be vulnerable and people and situations will come and steal your dreams. Sometimes in life it takes us hitting rock bottom in order to make the changes that need to be made. Sometimes we have to learn the hard way. I can say that I was once one of those people. I used to have to learn everything the heard way. Some of that is because I don’t like following the crowd. I’ve always been on who wanted to make my own path. The problem is that if I would have listened to my parents and those around me that have already been there, I could have saved myself a lot of struggles in life. I can say that now, I have learned to learn from others. What has and what has not worked for others. It doesn’t mean that I am not one to make my own path, but knowing what will and won't work, prevents me from making certain mistakes. My family makes fun of me because I am so analytical. My wife used to ask me to help her to rearrange the living room. I would sit in the recliner for 30 minutes of more and then she would come back and ask me what I was doing. You see, my wife is the kind of person who would rather physically move the furniture a dozen times until she figures out what she wants. That works for some people. I am the kind of person who would rather move the furniture a dozen times mentally and once physically. We both end up in the same place in about the same amount of time, but our individual preferences to accomplish the end result would not work very well for the other person. We do what works best for each of us. What will work best for you to get the result that you want? What fits you best? It doesn’t mean that you will not have to acquire new talents and methods along the way, but start with your best. Trial and error are the best teachers, both your trials and errors and those of others. Be willing and open to learning from others. Find a coach or mentor who is doing what you want to do. The saying goes, “That if you want what they have then you have to do what they do. Because if you do what they do then you will have what they have.” I wasn’t able to get where I have gotten in my profession with out learning from others. I have had the opportunity to work with some great people and some not so great people. Realize that you can probably learn almost as much from a bad example as from a good example. Just be careful not to follow their bad examples. Take what you have learned from life and start piecing it together and start using what works for you. If you find something that doesn’t work for you, don’t just toss it out. Maybe that idea just doesn’t work for you right now but it might later in life. If it goes against your values then toss it, other than that, file it away, because you never know when you might need it. As you start getting where you want to go in life, please never forget where you came from. I made a promise to myself a long time ago to never forget where I came from. Not to the extent that I am stuck in the past or hung up on it. Just remember the struggle with admiration at what you have been through and all that you have accomplished. I think that this attitude helps keep us humble and relate-able. I have never forgotten what it was like to be a cashier, a stocker, what it’s like to clean bathrooms, or what it’s like to be an Assistant Manager. My Mom taught me a long time ago that a title and fifty cents could get me a cup of coffee. I tell all my employees that the only difference between me and them it that when the "it" rolls down hills, and it does, it just hits me first. When we remember where it is we have come from, I believe that we are a whole lot less likely to go back to it. We also have the heart of a servant to those who are trying to get ahead in life. We don’t have the attitude that they can’t get ahead of us, but we want to see them succeed and even become more successful than us. We take on the roll of cheerleader. Who are you the cheerleader for in this life? Become a mentor and stay humble. Don’t mentor for the recognition but mentor to help someone else. When we learn to give of ourselves because we want to, people start to give of themselves to us because they want to.

- Your patients and persistence will pay off someday by finding more than just a penny. However, you may even have days that you don’t find anything. I believe that wholehearted work never goes unrewarded.

Adapt, Improvise, And Overcome to become your very best.