Our daily routines tend to be predictable and we tend to only look for the familiar. Yet all around us looms the unfamiliar and the unpredictable. If we desire something new and different, we must do something new and different, and we must look for the unfamiliar even in familiar places. Change is difficult, and sometimes we only change when it is forced upon us. Even when things are not working at all, we sometimes remain stuck in the pattern of the familiar. If we can discipline ourselves to do something different, we may find that success was simply waiting at our doorstep. As it has been said, “nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
As a world we have been forced into uncharted territory simply by our ability to communicate and do commerce throughout the world in split seconds through our satellite connectivity. Just as the pace of our world has sped up, so has the speed in which we can do good or harm. We now have greater potential for the unleashing of both, mindless hearts and heartless minds. We have avoided talking about politics and religion, preferring to hold those with private privilege. Our private beliefs are becoming glaringly public all over the world. Keeping our politics devoid of religion, and our religion devoid of politics, has created a pressure cooker that is fueled more by emotions than reason.
Being politically correct may lead to moral and spiritual suicide. Being disciplined for success is not just having knowledge or an opinion, it is living them out with integrity in public and in private. If our goal is for the good of the nearly 8 billion people on earth, we must begin to move in unfamiliar and uncharted territory every day in our personal lives. Soon it will no longer be business as usual for any of us.