Book 118 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: The thin thread that leads from you to hundreds of thousands of other lives

Book – The Traveler’s Gift: 7 Decisions that Determine Personal Success by Andy Andrews

Book Description: Forty-six-year-old David Ponder feels like a total failure. Once a high-flying executive in a Fortune 500 company, he now works a part-time, minimum wage job and struggles to support his family. Suddenly an even greater crisis hits: his daughter becomes ill, and he can’t even afford to get her the medical help she needs. When David’s car skids on an icy road, he wonders if he even cares to survive the crash. But an extraordinary experience awaits David Ponder. He suddenly finds himself traveling back in time, meeting leaders and heroes at crucial moments in their lives—from Abraham Lincoln to Anne Frank. As David speaks with each of these historical figures, they share their personal philosophies with him. By the time his journey is over, he has received seven secrets for success—and a second chance. The message is simple: Life is about choices. While we have little control over the events that occur in our lives, success is determined by the choices we make daily. The Traveler’s Gift will challenge you, inspire you, and give you seven decisions that you can employ to determine your own personal success.

Reflection:

What you do each day matters to this world, and not just yourself! We often don’t know why it matters, but it does.

The Compound Effect of the tiny actions we take each day that we learned about from Darren Hardy earlier in our journey is real. We learned that Hindu’s call this phenomenon Karma when we read The Bhagavad Gita.

Whatever you want to label it as, I’m a believer in its power!

As the author says, “There is a thin thread that leads from you to hundreds of thousands of other lives”. This can be in the present, history, and the future. This was such a great reminder to myself that the Compound Effect / Karma / Invisible Thread of your actions today doesn’t just affect your own life, it affects the lives of so many others that you may never know.

I’ve always naturally focused on this compound effect concept as having the biggest impact on my own life for the most part as it is so much easier to see and feel. I haven’t spent too much time really thinking about how me living my core values each and every day will have an impact on some random stranger in the future.

I have no idea if anyone other than myself will ever actually read any of these book reflections. Frankly…I don’t care as these reflections aren’t for anyone other myself and my daughter in my mind. This is our memory palace, and my way of “Living For 2” and continue expressing our shared values each day.

Even though this is just for us, that doesn’t mean that what we do can’t bring value and inspiration for others. I would be doing myself and Emilia a disservice if I kept our world hidden from the rest of this world. It is my job to share the output of our values with the world in whatever way I can. From there…come what may.

Who knows, maybe someday, 1,000’s of years in the future, some parent that just lost a child will stumble upon the writings from my journey and it helps them to reframe their own loss and turn it into their own unique purpose. That person then goes on to live that life of purpose which starts a movement that changes the world as we know it.

That could happen I suppose, but that isn’t my focus. That is the job of the universe and God.

My focus is Living for 2 for my daughter, expressing our shared values through daily action, and living our life of purpose.

I’ll do my job and let’s let the universe work its magic…we both have important roles to play.

Question: What ways have you learned that your actions played an unknowing role in stranger’s lives?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - The Traveler’s Gift: 7 Decisions that Determine Personal Success by Andy Andrews