“The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them” ALBERT EINSTEIN Germany/USA

2009 has been branded the year of change primarily because of a man named Barak Obama. Barak Obama used the theme of hope and change to become the first African American president of the United States of America. I believe this theme was successful because voters understood the the essence of the quote above this post. It seems that people are good at identifying when change is required. Despite our ability to easily identify a need for change when it comes to personal/individual change people almost never ever do it.

We often don’t change when we need to because most of us are experts at lame rationalizations and excuses. For example, let’s consider a current event, the abusive relationship of Rihanna & Chris Brown. Rihanna was badly beaten by her boy friend , Chris Brow. She reported that he has beat her several times and the beatings were escalating in severity. She must have know that she can stop getting beat up by this loser if she leaves the relationship. However, because of some lame rationalization he continues to be with him. Unfortunately, this is all to common and Rhianna is really no different than many of us. In my experience people often don’t change until things get completely out of hand and hit a bottom. I am guilty of this as well.

The past few years (2006 – 2008) have been very tough for me. I went through a layoff, a mother-in-law & sister-in-law being diagnosed with cancer, loss of a father-in-law, a surgery, huge financial loss and a divorce. This all occurred in a very short period of time and it seemed like things just kept getting worse and worse.

I got into a funk and stopped progress towards my salient goals. I was telling my self I couldn’t start my business because I did have the tens of thousands of dollars I once had in the bank. I told myself that I couldn’t afford to go back to school now so I stopped studying for the GMAT. I complained about my job daily but old myself I need the stability so I stopped searching for employment that would bring me joy. Then one day my brother told me about the book titled “The 4 Hour Work Week,” Written by Timothy Ferris. This book did gave me the slap in the face I needed. It brought to my attention that I was constructing excuses for inaction.

This year I will hop on the bandwagon of change. I now understand that the worst thing you can do when you know something needs to change is to do nothing at all. The same man I quote to begin this post once said that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing and expect a different outcome. To many of us do that same thing day in and day out and want our lives to improve, this is insane! 2009 marked the beginning of the end of my insanity. I have made many changes and have set very ambitious goals for 2009, one of them was this blog. So please join me on my journey and share your with me.

Note: My next post will tell you all about my goals and plans for 2009