“Look straight ahead, and fix your eyes on what lies before you.”
— Proverbs 4:25
Planning Your Personal D-Day
We live in a world that is accustomed to 30- second commercials that offer instant solutions. But we shouldn’t be surprised when the easy solutions don’t work: There are no magic bullets, no simple solutions on the path to deep and lasting change.
In this stage, you work on making change your No. 1 priority. You can’t move into stage 4 until freeing yourself from the habit becomes your highest priority.
Your life will go in the direction of your most dominant thoughts. When you focus on the past, your thought s hold you back by causing you to relive events over and over.
Blaming ourselves for things that went wrong in the past is the most self destructive habit of all. It’s easy for our families and friends to see when a habit like drinking, overeating, or overspending is destroying our lives. But it isn’t always so easy, not even for the people closest to us, to know when guilt and self-blame are destroying our possibility for happiness.
The solution is to accept responsibility for yourself, to realize that you can decide to take charge of your life. There is a scene in Disney’s animated film, The Lion King , which illustrates this in a humorous and powerful way. Simba has been hiding the truth from himself ever since he ran away from Pride Rock.
He has constructed all sorts of verbal cages for himself: Hakuna Matata , he says, No worries .
But he isn’t happy, and he worries all the time. He blames himself for his father’s death. Simba is destined to be king of the Pride Lands, but guilt and self-blame keep him from taking action. Rafiki, the wise, old monkey and high priest of Simba’s future kingdom, tracks Simba down and tries to bring him to his senses. To bring home the message, Rafiki hits Simba on the head with his staff.
“Why did you do that?” asks Simba, rubbing the sore spot on the top of his head. “It doesn’t matter,” answers Rafiki, “It’s in the past.”
