“Life is like a 10-spreed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.” (Charles Schulz) – from the Jack’s Winning Words blog.
Jack went on to write: An old song says, “You can be better than you are.” We all have potential…unused abilities. I’ll never forget a high school teacher who handed a test back to me, saying, “Jack, you can do better than this.” He was right. We all can do better! In school, at work, at home, in relationships. Is today that day when we begin to use a new gear? I can do better! I will do better!
If you think back to your bicycle riding days (assuming that they are over, like for me – long over in my case) you may have used 2-3 of the 10 speeds on your bike. Sometimes you
might have shifted down to a lower gear when you were going up a hill and pumped a little bit harder and faster; but for the most part you settled into a comfortable gear for the flat portions and just pedaled along. Life can be like that. We all hit tougher (uphill) stretches during which we must shift gears and pedal harder and faster; but for the most part we just settle into a comfortable gear and pedal along through life.
Perhaps it’s time to challenge yourself. Can you do better at work or in school? Can you do more to have a better relationship with your life partner and family? Can you do more in your community to help others? Can you do better? Maybe it’s time for you to switch gears and pedal harder and faster in life. Why? Because, in your heart, you know that you can do better.
The thing that works well in this analogy is the fact that switching gears is a conscientious effort. In times of emergencies (the uphill times in life) that switch of gears happens without giving it a lot of thought. The situation demands that you do something different, that you switch gears; and, you just do it. You may go into problem-solving mode or even life-saving mode; but, you definitely do so in a different gear than you had been in – you swing into action.
Making the conscientious decision to switch gears in your day-to-day life is more deliberate, but can be no less demanding of you to pedal harder and faster. Making the 
decision to volunteer at a local charity means switching gears. Making the decision to work with special needs children or adults requires a switch in your gears. Deciding to volunteer at your church or maybe at your child’s school will require choosing a new gear. Even the decision to just try to be a better partner in your life-relationship or a better parent to your children means choosing a new gear and pedaling harder. Doing those things means raising your life to a new, higher level and requires a new, uphill gear and that you pedal faster and harder.
All of these decisions require a commitment first that you want to change and you want to do better. It would be sad, indeed, if you ended life with a bad case of the “coulda, woulda, shouldas” about gears that you never used because you wouldn’t make the effort to switch from your comfort zone and try something that required you to use a new gear and pedal harder. You don’t get extra credit at the end of life for turning in unused gears.
So, think about your life and the gears that you aren’t using. Can you do so
mething out of the ordinary to help someone else? Can you put more effort into your relationships with your family members? Can you show the world your faith in actions, rather than just talking about it? Can you do better? Can’t we all?
Have a great day – Switch gears and pedal hard!
Posted by Norm Werner 
career and the need to make more and more money, that one forgets the important things in life – why and for who they are supposedly doing it. All too often it is the parting embrace of the father-daughter dance at her wedding that a father realizes his little girl has grown up and that he missed most of it, because he was so hard at work. Perhaps it is when his son drives away with his bride that the father stops to reflect on years of missed ball games and lost opportunities for father-son bonding.
people who fall into that trap find out that the most important roles that they ever had in life were husband and father. At least Dorson recognized that enough to plan Daddy Days when he was home.
the foundation upon which your life is based. The boat will almost certainly try to float away and take you from that foundation. It is tempting sometimes to just jump into the boat and see where it takes you and you may not even look back at the dock until it is out of sight. It takes a stronger person to keep a foot on/in both and not let the boat drift away with you in it. If you really think about it; everything that you really want and cherish is on the dock and not in the boat; so, never give up your foothold there.
finds God first, He will give you the wisdom to see the important things in life and show you the right path to take.
sometimes that we have no time left for family, friends or other things that are important to a healthy, balanced life. And when I do pause on what I’m busy doing, sometimes I realize that much of what is stealing my time is way less important than the things that I’m ignoring.
Comparative Market Analysis I could be researching, another class I could be taking or another open house I could be conducting. At the end of the day, I don’t want to go to bed
the better. Inertia keeps us glued to one spot, to one way of thinking or to our prejudices. Momentum keeps us headed in the same direction, rather than take a different path.
You may say that you are happy with your life as it is; happy to be in the little rut that you’ve carve out for yourself in life by treading the same path every day. Yet most of us have enough self-awareness to know that there may be (must be) something more to life; something that will increase our sense of self-worth and accomplishment; something that is currently missing in or lives. That something is likely not on the well-worn path that you are on; otherwise you might have encountered it by now. You have the choice to make to take a chance or not, in order to change your life for the better by finding that missing element in your life.
live openly in the lifestyle in which they feel most comfortable. For Transsexuals it is the choice to identify and live with the gender that they feel in their heart, not the gender that was inscribed on their birth certificate. For everyone on that spectrum it is the choice to take the chance to change their lives by living openly as they wish to live, instead of hiding their identities in fear.
they find the missing sense of accomplishment and self-worth that their day-to-day work life was not supplying. For some the change may be to finally establish a relationship with God, through the acceptance of Jesus Christ as their savior. Many may have gone through the motions of going to church all of their lives and never taken that final step of accepting Christ. Make the choice to take that chance and change your life forever.
In today’s find it now, buy it now, do it now world, having the patience, the perseverance and faith to wait for that greater happiness goes against the grain. We have become an instant gratification society, while religion has remained a “hope for it, pray for it, wait for it” practice.
we need to substitute much more believing, in place of all of the effort we make to try to understand the unimaginable. We can’t and don’t need to understand, we just need to believe and accept. Once we let go of the things of this life, we are ready for the things that come in the next. It is sort of like those cute ads for the web site LetGo.com; we have to let go of the things we don’t really need any more for this life and certainly not for the next. If I can let go of the baggage of this life and just believe; I’ll be better prepared to experience the promised greater happiness – maybe I’ll even experience a little of it here. What a wonderful thought that is to focus upon today.
why I often write about not wasting time on regrets about yesterday or worrying about tomorrow. That is time that you could be using to do something today. As today’s quote says, time is priceless; it is more valuable than money, but it is also fleeting. You need to invest your time wisely. If you do, you will get a return on it and that return will be the good feelings that you end the day with, having done the right things with your time.
That’s not to say that you won’t end up going to work and putting in your hours there; but a few moments of quiet reflection each morning might help you remember why you are putting in those hours and the important people in your life that the money which you make supports. Sometimes it’s hard to see your daily job as being God’s work; but it can be if you see it in the right light, as part of God’s larger plan for you.
u may have to give 8 hours to a job and you may sleep for another 8 hours; but, that still leave you with 8 hours that are totally yours to invest. If you choose to do nothing with those 8 hours, you will likely get nothing in return. However, if you find a way to use that time helping others, serving others or volunteering for others, you may find that the 8 hours you need for sleep come more easily and the feelings that you have at the end of the day transcend just being tired, because feeling satisfied makes being tired feel better.
Lincoln was not a very religious man, but a good man who did know the Bible quite well and made his life an example of trying to do good. I would hope that all of us live to some extent by the same philosophy. At the very least that philosophy is based upon knowing the difference between right and wrong, good and bad.
or even worse, knowing the difference and making the choices that they do to take the bad path. Do they feel bad when they do that or are they just numb to those feelings? Maybe for some, doing bad things makes them feel good, or so they think. I can’t even imagine how robbing or shooting someone could make one feel good. I feel the same about people who show prejudices and hatred against others, no matter how different they may be. How can that make them really feel good?
to point out my mistake?” I suppose feeling small in those moments is equivalent to feeling bad. I sure now that it doesn’t feel good. I’ve been known to comment out loud, in
For Abraham Lincoln and for most of us, just knowing the difference between right and wrong and between good and bad is no enough, we must choose to do what is right and good in order to feel good about ourselves and about life in general. So get out there this week and do good. It’ll make you feel good, too.
frame of mind have a huge advantage in life. The absurdity of clinging to the past is demonstrated in the ads for Let Go, the web site for selling stuff that you don’t really need anymore. A person dangling over a cliff but stubbornly holding onto a bowling ball is no more absurd than us carrying around the worry or guilt about something that has already happened or may happen some time in the future. There is little that we can really do about either, but they both could consume immense amounts of our time and energy.
h day by putting away the things that you’ve been thinking about or worrying about or regret having done. File a place to file them in your mind or resolve to discard them, but don’t keep them for tomorrow. Those things, those mistakes, those doubts, those losses are over, so let them go. They are so yesterday. Erase them as you would a blackboard at school. Tomorrow you start with a clean slate that has yet to have any failures or successes written upon it.
light on them. If you feel that yo still need a little more help in dealing with them, remember that God is always right there, ready to offload any burden that you want to give Him. The serenity that Emerson mentioned may be found in the act of prayer and the decision to let’s God’s will for you to prevail.
inspirational and I hope you do, too. I particularly liked this one as a starting point for thought and discussion – “Be what you are. This is the first step towards becoming better than you are.” – J. C. Hare & A. W. Hare. Too many of use try to be what we think someone else wants us to be, sometimes to fit in and sometimes because we think that is the key to success and sometimes just because we don’t yet like ourselves. The first step towards being the best you that you can be is to drop the mask and abandon the fake persona that you have been hiding behind.
direction in which you are heading, which I wrote about yesterday (see 
have the courage to stand and say, ‘This is who I am.’”
Corey) – from the Jack’s Winning Words blog. Jack went on to write a little about Professor Irwin Corey, who died recently at age 102. For those who don’t remember the Professor, here’s a link to one of his appearances on the show Late Night with David Letterman in 1983 – 
decision to change direction. All of the programs are really there to support that decision and change in direction your life.
lose track of the goals that initially set out to achieve or the dream that originally launched us on our journey. No one sets out to work until they drop or to ignore their family and friends in pursuit of more success at work. They just end up with their heads down charging full speed ahead so much that they miss the turns and changes in direction that are needed some times to reach their ultimate goals in life. Neither does anyone really define their goals in life purely in terms of money or position. People who take the time to really reflect on their goals in life tend to use terms like happiness or fulfillment or usefulness or love to define their ultimate goals.
really want to end up. It’s almost never too late to change directions, otherwise you will end up getting to where you’re going. If you do take that time during prayer, you might find the directions that God can provide for you to be the ultimate GPS system for your journey. Just like you do in your car, use prayer to reset your destination and then listen to the directions that God gives you.
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