Proverbs 29:18 reads, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
Perishing is the dangerous state of living in a mundane existence without even realizing it. There you are, living your comfortable life, going to the same job—day in and day out—doing the same things. You know your routine so well that you can probably do it without thinking. There are no dreams or aspirations in front of you, and if you were fired tomorrow, you wouldn’t know how to pursue a better life.
It would be a sad state of affairs to wake up one morning and realize that you have spent years wandering aimlessly in circles, unclear about your purpose, wasting your gift, and destroying your promise. What kind of life is that? You can’t afford to go another day without a clear direction and focus for your life. I’m not coming at this from a high-and-mighty place. I’m sharing this with you because I’ve been in that state of perishing, and I had no idea of how to get out until I created a new vision for my life and committed myself to living that new promise.
When I think back to my earlier days, it’s painful to remember how much of my life was disconnected from a real vision. I would take any job just to pay the rent and put gas in my car. I would date anyone who helped me pass the time. When I wasn’t working, I was hanging out with people who didn’t push me any closer to where I needed to be. I was dying slowly, and had I not created a new vision for my life, I would probably still be in Cleveland working job to job and making people laugh on the weekends.
Perishing is not always about some overdramatic emotional outpour or losing all of your possessions at once. Most often, perishing is a slow, painful process, and if you aren’t paying attention, it will trick you into thinking that this is the way things are supposed to be. By failing to have a vision, you are stripping yourself of every possible blessing, relationship, and opportunity. When you sit by and just let your life perish without a vision, it is the most painful kind of death.
How do you know if you are perishing or not? Let’s get honest about it. You can’t expect to create a new life and a new vision for yourself if laziness is part of your routine. Procrastination will not get the job done. Doing things halfway, improperly, or not at all won’t get the job done. Lack of enthusiasm will not get the job done. Unreliability will not get the job done. Being untrustworthy will not get the job done. Any negative trait that derails you from your dreams will not get the job done. Negativity can never be the fuel that drives your gift.
You can also tell if you are perishing if you are the smartest person in your group. If you are the smartest person in the group, you need to get a new group. You cannot be a person who knows it all and can’t be told anything, because it will stifle your creativity as well as the creativity of the people around you.
Another way to put your state of perishing into perspective is to realize that one day your life will come to an end. Whether you want to believe it or not, there will be a casket and a hole in the ground with your name on it. The next home-going service at your church could be yours. And the most important thing on that day won’t be the amount of flowers that surround your casket or how well the choir sings your favorite hymn. The only thing that will matter is how well you use that dash between the day you were born and the day you die.
I don’t want you to spend your days preoccupied with thoughts of death, but I do want you to live your life thinking about how your dash will make a difference in this world. If you’ve still got breath in your lungs and blood running through your veins, you’ve got another day to make your dash count. If you’re still blessed to wake up and see another day, God has a purpose, a plan, and a destiny for your dash.
The best way to start moving from perishing into your promise is to make what I call Dash Deposits. These are simply efforts you make on a daily basis to reach your destiny and add to your legacy. Reading a book that helps you master your gift is a Dash Deposit. The work you put in to completing a project that was due today is a Dash Deposit. Talking with your family members during dinner instead of watching TV is a Dash Deposit. Any small or large activity or action that adds to the quality of your life and your family’s is a Dash Deposit.
How you use your dash is completely up to you. Let today be the day that you make your dash meaningful as it moves you closer to your destiny.
In your journal, list three Dash Deposits you plan to do in the next twenty-four hours. Tweet or Instagram me your #DashDeposits to @ActLikeASuccess.
Now that you have some Dash Deposits in your success account, here are a few more yes-and-no questions for you to seriously consider as you move from perishing to reaching your destiny.
1. Regardless of your track record, are you willing to acknowledge, perfect, and use your gift to be successful?
2. Are you open to changing and evolving your thinking around success?
3. Are you willing to change your actions around success?
4. Are you willing to believe that you deserve all the riches that life has to offer?
If you answered no any of the above questions, gift this book to a person who is willing to acknowledge his or her gift. Give it to a friend who you know has been seeking success but has received no satisfaction through his dead-end job. In fact, leave it on the doorstep of a family member who wants to have a healthier marriage or a better relationship with his or her children.
Now, if you answered yes to all of the questions, keep on reading, because we have more work to do!
There’s no way you can move from a state of perishing into the Land of Promise if you don’t step up and let the world see your gift. What good is it to be a great chef if you’re afraid to let someone sample your dishes? What sense does it make to be a great speaker if you won’t let the world hear your voice?
It’s entirely possible that you could cash in your life savings to pursue your dream and a year later be flat broke. It’s not desirable, but your leap of faith could land you back in your parents’ basement. But, which is worse—leaping and falling and getting back up, or living your life regretting that you never leaped at all?
You can’t let your fear of the unknown keep you from your destiny. If God had told me that my path toward being a successful comedian would include living out of my car, divorce, and facing a $20 million tax bill, trust me, I would have stayed right on the assembly line at the Ford Motor Company. But taking that leap into a foreign territory prepared me to jump higher and further than I could ever have imagined.
There’s going to come a day when your pursuit of living your dream is going to cost more than the money in your checking account and the credit available on your credit card. What’s going to stop you from running back to your old boss and asking for your job back? As you pursue your dream, you have to be prepared for the times of lean, as well as the times of plenty. Nobody said that living in the Land of Promise would be easy. When someone gives you a harsh critique or comes to tear down your character, you have to be confident enough to know that what God has for you cannot be taken away because of one person’s opinion. Even if your financial responsibilities require you to take on a part-time job to get you over the hump, you have to stay committed to your dream until you get the break you deserve.
Nobody but you and God can see it, but you know your gift is in there. It doesn’t make sense to most people right now why you’re spending so much time on something that looks like a useless hobby, but you know in your heart that it’s the key to your future. At the end of the day, your personal resolve to nurture and grow your gift will be the deciding factor between your success and your failure. I don’t care how close you are with your mother or how much your best friend supports your dream; if you don’t know and believe in your gift for yourself, you will never have the life that God has destined for you.
When you are really living in your gift, you just know it. When you are doing what you are meant to be doing, you can just feel it. When the right opportunity comes along, you won’t have to force it. I want you to be able to live in a space where your dream is no longer a question of who you are but the answer for everything you are meant to be.
Moving from perishing into the Land of Promise won’t work if you aren’t motivated to stay there. We think that motivation comes from somewhere else, but our greatest motivation is inside of us. The only difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that successful people know what their gift is and how to focus on it at all costs. Once I discovered my gift, pursuing it became my sole focus. After I finished focusing on the insignificant stuff and started focusing on my promise, I began to move in the right direction.
We have to commit to taking the lid off our dream every day. Most of the world just wants you to get a job and make someone else rich. Too many schools and training programs will steer you toward serving a company while forgetting about you and your dreams. Blow that lid off of your life every day and say to the world, “I might be in this place right now, paying my dues and mastering my craft, but my dreams are out of this world!”
What is an out-of-the-jar, no-holds-barred dream that you have for your life today? Don’t limit your dreams to just your career. Think about your family, your relationships, and your contributions to your community or your house of faith. You’ve got your ideas? Now write them down in your journal. Make your descriptions come to life with rich detail.