There is a different way

LIFE-CHANGING WORDS

It had been one of those heart-in-your-mouth flights between Johannesburg and Durban in South Africa. We’d landed—or rather, arrived—with a thud, a bounce, and a definite starboard list. Instinctively, we’d all leaned the plane back onto an even keel, and then clapped and cheered, so relieved had we been to be back on terra firma. 

And that’s when our brave British Airways stewardess unknowingly changed the world; “Welcome back to Mother Earth”, she’d announced with a song in her voice, “This is Durban. If it’s not where you want to be, then please keep it to yourself!” Laughter—lots of it—and much more clapping. 

A LIVING PHILOSOPHY  

As tough as it is to confront where you’re at with your life, unless you’re actively living it in accordance with a constructive and meaningful philosophy, then you’re at risk of being swallowed by the glitteringly irresistible appeal of recognition through the conventions of position and possession.

Living a conventional life—because that’s what everyone does—is the equivalent of a slow suicide.

SELF-ACCOUNTABILITY IS A SELF-LIBERATING CHOICE

• Who you’ve become is the consequence of the choices you’ve made. 

• Who you become will be determined by the choices you make.

• You’re always just one active decision away from a different future.

IT'S SUCH AN ELEGANTLY SIMPLE SOLUTION

Self-accountability hands you the keys to the rest of your life. You see, when you’re self-accountable—regardless—no person, no event, no situation, no circumstance, no history, no belief, no relationship, no habit, no convention, no conflict, no illness, no emotion, no pressure, and no thing—within reason, of course—has the power over you that it once had. 

As it stands, convention, in cahoots with our past, is the most accurate predictor of our future. Self-accountability is their natural anti-dote. It promises to unshackle us from convention and the endlessly self-defeating frustration of more-of-the-same. It introduce us to ourselves and the infinity of what's possible when we dig deep and do what others won't.