Being Great! All the time! is no easy task. If it was, then everyone would be it. We all have two sides of our selves. Our good side, which positively drives us past our status quo and our bad side, which negatively either drives us backwards or at the very least allows us to wallow in our status quo.
If you want to be Great! All the time!, then you have to encourage your good side and discourage your bad side from the moment you wake up in the morning until you go to bed each night. And even while you are asleep if at all possible. To help you accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative and Get To It, Now! each morning, here are four ideas, courtesy of an old Rabbi, Yehuda Ben Teima, as written in Ethics of the Fathers.
Be as bold as a leopard, light as an eagle, swift as a deer, and strong as a lion.
To be bold as a leopard means that one should not be ashamed before people who scoff at him with respect to his service.
To be light as an eagle means to be quick to close one’s eyes to avoid seeing evil as that is the initial stage of wrongdoing; for what the eye sees, the heart desires, and the body completes the seen and desired wrong acts.
To be swift as a deer means one should hurry to do good deeds.
To be strong as a lion means on should fortify one’s heart to overpower the evil inclination, to conquer it, just as a strong person overpowers his enemy, vanquishing him and throwing him to the ground.
Therefore, as soon as you perceive there is work to be done in pursuit of your practically perfect performance of your life, you should, immediately wake yourself to this realization, arise before your evil inclination overcomes you with arguments and excuses about why the task you see needs to get done should wait, disregards any temptations to delay, and Get To It, Now!
If someone were to summon you for a lucrative business deal, or to repay you a large debt they owed you, or to save your valuable property from an impending loss because there is a fire in your house, then certainly you would get going and do whatever needs to be done, immediately, practically perfectly, lest you be accused of being neglectful.
As you plan, prepare, and practice ways to Get To It, Now! more and more it gets easier and easier to do so.
Throughout our mutual lives, whenever my dad, Leo, saw me standing still, he would spout at me loudly, “Don’t just stand there! Do something! Even if it’s wrong!” Now, I’m not a big fan of doing things wrong, though such may be the basis of my definition of experience (“Breaking stuff and having to fix it.”) Nonetheless, an am a big believer in constantly being proactive in order to be Great! All the time!
The Lion above is a lithograph by Jacquie Marie Vaux. Her paintings are inspring and this one has become one of my most prized possessions. I named the piece “Leo” after my dad. It hangs in my hall, facing the door to my bedroom, so I will see it and be encouraged by my dad as I come and go to my room many times each day to Get To It, Now!
Question: What is the last time you procrastinated about something and what did you do to Get To It, Now!?
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In the meantime, you GOTTABGATT! so go out there today and be Great! All the time!
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