The Last Word
Time is On Our Side - Ridgely Goldsborough
Or is it?
The general track runs like this: Finish secondary school, higher education, professional training. Get a job. Find an apartment. Work, work, work really hard to fill it up with furniture and pay the utility bills. Get a promotion. Move into a bigger pad. Work, work, work even harder to buy a first couch and a La-Z-Boy. And pay the now rising utility bills. Become a manager. Score a house. Work like a dog to scare up enough cash to purchase a dining room set, an entertainment center and an extra double bed for the guest room. Oh yeah, and take care of outrageous utility bills.
At the end, what? A mortgaged house, a bunch of outdated furniture and a pile of unpaid utility bills. All this effort for the glorious privilege of nine national holidays and the mandatory annual pilgrimage to some exotic, overpriced strip of sand on which to lie like a beached whale, hoping to recover from 11 months of dog-eat-dog beat-out-the-competition exhaustion.
Wait a second-- who came up with this plan?
Alternative two. Network Marketing. Time freedom. Time to coach little league, attend dance recitals, start work at the crack of noon. Maybe.
Maybe not.
How many of us know Network Marketers who, even after quadrupling their previous salaried incomes, still put in 24-7? Children come, children go, company opens a foreign country or launches a new product, ho, hum.
Don't get me wrong. Massive action works-- for a while. The three-foot rule can truly support recruiting efforts. Hammering the phone and surfing the net may be the two best prospecting methods on the planet. It's all good.
Unless we never stop.
My friend Gregory spends more time climbing mountains on his bike, forging trails on his skis, shooting rapids or snorkeling in search of exotic fish than he ever needs in his office. Why not? After a few years of consistent effort he has built a solid organization-- not the biggest, yet big enough for Gregory to live a rich life doing what he loves to do. Now he schedules work around play.
Who was the bonehead that came up with the five-day, 60-hour work week anyway? How about a four day-er or five-half-day-er?
Take this test. When was the last time you watched a rose bloom, from a tight green bud, to a maze of overlapping leaves, to a sea of red beauty unfurling in perfect harmony, stray renegade petal jutting off to the side? When was the last time your eyes followed a frolicking butterfly, darting hummingbird or lumbering bumblebee? Did you see your child's first soccer goal? How often do you take midday walks? How long has it been since lunch with a friend turned into dinner? You get the idea.
Decide when enough is enough and stick with it. Pick a number. Once you hit it, weekends end on Tuesday. Beach trips become quarterly events. Read the morning paper at noon. Take a spontaneous day off. Take another.
We are Network Marketers. We have leverage. Leverage gives us time. Time gives us freedom. If we take it.
Sunsets turn the sky from pale blue to myriad shades of crimson, orange and purple. Or so they say. Depends on whether we see them.
Some folks will always feel the need to acquire the latest, greatest, newest, biggest, to be the top producer, hardest worker, weariest traveler, all in the name of growth and progress. Knock yourselves out, drive ´til your tires go bald, talk ´til the larynx slams shut.
Or not.
Personally, I'd rather hang with Gregory.-- RG
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Reprinted with permission from Upline, The Last Word - April 1999, 888-UPLINE-1, http://www.upline.com
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