What Are You Waiting For?
I had a flashback the other day to elementary school and a game we used to play called, Heads Down – Thumbs Up.
Picture a classroom of 10-year-olds sitting in neat rows. The lights are off and five students selected by the teacher are standing at the front of the classroom. The rest of the children are told, “Okay, everyone put your heads down and your thumbs up.”
The five chosen ones are tasked with selecting a student by pushing their thumb down and returning to stand at the front of the class. The classroom is dark and quiet as students patiently wait to be picked. The chosen tiptoe around in the dark, pushing thumbs down, relishing in their little taste of power.
Once all five chosen have returned to the front, the teacher asks all students whose thumbs were pressed to guess who was responsible for picking them. The rest of the students who were not chosen sit silently until told to put their heads down again for the next round.
I wonder how many of us still have our heads down on the desk waiting to be chosen.
Too many people spend their entire lives waiting to be chosen. They keep their heads down, work hard and hope to be noticed. They follow the well-trodden path, doing what they are told, and lose themselves little by little to the monotony of day-to-day life.
Napoleon Hill says, “When you control your own mind, you will never be controlled by another.”
Your mind is your most valuable possession. When you take control of your mind, you take control of your life. If you are dissatisfied with where you are you need to ask yourself: What am I waiting for and why am I waiting?
If you are waiting to be given opportunity, you will be waiting a long time. You must seek out opportunity. You must take deliberate action to achieve the results you want. Those who achieve great success define what they want and create a plan to get it.
Whatever success looks like to you, be it personal, professional, financial, spiritual or something else entirely, it is your responsibility to make it happen. It will never happen if you keep your head down and wait to be chosen.
What are you waiting for? Stop playing that stupid game. Raise your head. Stand up and turn on the light. Make things happen. Own your mind and take control of your future.
Where will you be ten years from now if you keep going the way you are going?
