It has been said that the only constant in life is change. One who doesn’t anticipate change of some sort—in careers, economics, home life, and more—is bound to be frustrated and possibly even angry when change comes his or her way.

Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life, may be the best-known book we have featured on this blog. Written as a parable of sorts, the book features four characters: two “littlepeople” Hem and Haw, and two mice, Scurry and Sniff. This quartet lives in a maze and their existence is about finding cheese. They eventually find plenty at “Cheese Station C.”

But later, there is no cheese there. The mice start looking for new cheese, but Hem and Haw simply get upset that someone moved their cheese. Over time, Haw finally decides to leave Cheese Station C and find new cheese. He writes, “What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid?” on the wall of the maze and embarks on his new journey. What will he find?

As we teach in our Max Living seminars, it’s essential for us to recognize what we can control and what we can’t. Change on some level is inevitable for all of us; we can’t prevent it, we probably can’t control it, but it may be possible to mitigate its impact on us. That is the message of this book—being prepared for change and not getting complacent.

The recent economic upheaval has resulted in a lot of moved (or vaporized) cheese. Many have been through a lifetime’s worth of change in the last couple years. This book won’t solve all problems, but I’m sure it will help you realize, as Haw states, that “when you move beyond your fear, you feel free.”

This is a short book and a quick read. You may find it more economical to purchase a used copy, or get it from your library. Otherwise, find Who Moved My Cheese on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

This little journey we’re on that we call life takes some interesting turns. Sometimes we reach a new summit and the view is breathtaking, only to later find ourselves in another valley, unsure of where the road is leading.

To end up on peaks of significance, the key is to take time and find our bearings. In Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance, author Bob Buford suggests that life has two halves, and we need to use a personal halftime to effectively transition from a focus on success to a focus on significance. As Buford states,

One of the most common characteristics of a person who is nearing the end of the first half is that unquenchable desire to move from success to significance. After a first half of building a career and trying to become financially secure, we’d like to do something in the second half that is more meaningful—something that rises about perks and paychecks into the stratosphere of significance.

After outlining “The First Half” and “Halftime,” Buford explains different ways one can find significance in “The Second Half”—identifying a life mission, lifelong learning, money issues, etc.

The legendary management guru Peter Drucker, whose wisdom is sprinkled throughout the book, was a mentor to Buford. Toward the end of the book, he writes, “Peter once said to me, ‘The beginning of adult life is when you ask the question, “What do I want to be remembered for?”’ Essentially, this is the question of halftime.”

What do you want to be remembered for? Get this book and answer that question.

Find Halftime on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Think with the end in mind and be proactive, not reactive.

Only then will you change and create using your imagination, conscience and willpower.

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I was at the gym this morning and started into my standard thirty minutes on the elliptical machine.

Sure enough, less than five minutes into my workout I wanted to stop.

This urge has hit me consistently every morning since I started a new workout routine three weeks ago.

I’m glad to say I ignored it, and after another five minutes of it pestering me, the feeling finally went away.

Any time you start something new or try to develop a new habit, the work can seem much more difficult than if you’re already in a groove.

Each of us has the voice or urge that tells us to stop something after we’ve begun. And if we listen to it, it can lead us to disastrous results.

Like my experience at the gym, the majority of the resistance is mental, even though I’m attempting to change physically.

But it does get easier.

The resistance comes from the old mindset refusing to relinquish its grip, while we fight to break free of our comfort zones.

Think of this in terms of Newton’s laws of motion: “Objects at rest tend to stay at rest. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion.”

If it isn’t already moving, it takes more effort to get it moving.

When you learn to recognize the resistance and ignore it, you’re well on your way. This principles applies whether you’re starting a new exercise regimen, establishing better eating habits, or starting a new business or venture.

• Be prepared to work harder, mentally and physically, when you start something new.
• Recognize the resistance, and when you get adept at recognizing it, you should even come to expect it.
• Prepared for the challenge, you will know that it’s time to push through the difficulty.
• Stay consistent and the momentum of your efforts will build.
• Results come after the hard work; persevere, and success you shall have.

So back in the days when I weighed 340…

“Oh, here he goes again on his ‘big’ days.”

I was in Panama City, Florida doing a training and I had some time to kill.

I was walking along the beach and I saw a guy parasailing. I had the crazy thought that I should try it.

So went and paid the fee and got all hooked up in a harness.

It wasn’t particularly assuring when the Hispanic guy hooking me up said, “Okay, when the rope geets tight, you run.”

Just as they were about to gun the boat engine and [attempt to] pull my fat butt off the ground, I looked down and saw that the rope connecting to the harness was fraying.

Alarmed, I said “Hold on a minute. How often do you guys change this rope?”

My heart skipped a beat when he responded, “Oh, every time eet breaks.”

“Okay, nevermind,” I said, with no small amount of nervousness in my voice. “Unhook me.”

“Oh, señor, eet’s safe.”

“No, unhook me, man.”

So I chose not to parasail that day. I had visions of me skipping out over the water and spreading my 340 pounds like butter for the sharks. It wouldn’t have been pretty.

Maybe the rope would have held me, I don’t know. What I do know is that we all need to perform consistent preventive maintenance in our lives.

Our “ropes” get frayed when we don’t take time to assess, evaluate, plan, introspect, and relax.

We can easily get caught up in urgent but less important matters that drain our time and energy without adding to our results.

We can lose our sense of balance — for example, excelling in business while neglecting our health.

We need to take time to plan, and we also need to focus on every aspect of life: mental, spiritual, physical, emotional, financial, family and other important relationships.

I spend a half hour to an hour a day in solitude. I unplug from my cell phone, the Internet — any and all distractions — and reconnect with my values and priorities. I compare what I’m doing with where I really want to go and see if I need to re-align.

It’s my way of “checking the rope.” So how about you? Are you doing adequate preventive maintenance?

Get in the habit or you could become the regrettable victim of the “Every time eet breaks” mindset.

I’ve written previously on the importance of identifying your values through conscious introspection.

But not only is it important to identify your values, but you must also prioritize them.

In the classic movie “Chariots of Fire,” the protagonist Eric Little had three values: his religion, his love for his country, and his love for running. He was clear and solid with those values.

He had also prioritized them. How do we know that? If you remember in the story line, it came time for him to run in the Olympics, and he wanted to run, and he wanted to represent his country, and he had to run on Sunday. And he turned down the opportunity because running on Sunday conflicted with his religious beliefs.

At one point a high-ranking government official told him, “You know, Eric, there comes a point where you must give everything up for your country.” Eric still refused.

Had Eric valued his country over his relationship with God, the outcome of that story would have been totally different.

And so it is with you: The outcome of your life will be determined both by what you value and how you prioritize your values.

Just as you don’t want to live life by default and be tossed about by the values of others, neither do you want to be caught in situations when your values conflict, and feel torn and ultimately make a poor decision.

The hard decisions aren’t between clear rights and clear wrongs; they’re between equally good things.

It’s your life and your story. You organize your values anyway that suits you. But whatever you do, do it consciously and before you’re forced to choose under duress.

There’s no guru that can tell you how your values should be prioritized. The best I can tell you is to take time to look deep inside and make the choice.

This prioritization will make a much bigger difference than you may realize. It could save your marriage or your relationship with your children. It can bring you more peace, stability, and confidence in your life.

If you have four values — love for your wife, love for your children, love for God, and a desire for financial security — and you value financial security more than the others, your life will be completely different than if one of the other three took precedence.

You’re going to make a whole different set of decisions based on how you prioritize those things, or how you feel about them, or the passion that surrounds them.

And they need to be yours. I can’t stress enough how important it is that it be your story, you’re not trying to impress anyone else, this is your story, this is what you live by and your quiet moments.

Eric Hoffer wrote,

“In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”

So how does one constantly learn?

Transformational learning starts with introspective curiosity. The most useful knowledge a person can gain is a knowledge of oneself, one’s motivations, one’s most fervent desires.

Without this foundational knowledge, everything else you learn lacks context. Knowing who you are and what you stand for is the anchor that holds you steady through the waves of change.

In his excellent book, Half Time: Moving From Success to Significance, Bob Buford lists the following questions that will help you spark this introspection and get on the path of learning.

Take time to answer these with true insight:

What am I really good at?

What do I want to do?

What is most important to me?

What do I want to be remembered for?

If my life were absolutely perfect, what would it look like?

What will I be leaving behind that will make a difference in the world?

Do I have an eternal perspective as a prism through which I view my life?

What is my purpose, my life work, my destiny? What does it really mean to “have it all”?

What would my life really look like if it turned out well?

What should I do?

How could I be most useful?

Where should I invest my talents, time, and treasure?

What are the values that give purpose to my life?

What is the overarching vision that shapes me?

Who am I?

Where am I?

Where am I going?

How do I get there?

The clearer you are on the answers to these questions, the easier and more fulfilling your life will be.

Interestingly, very rarely do we have them both at the same time. Usually we have a lot of time and no money, or a lot of money and no time.

The key is to optimize the balance between the two.

And how do we do that? The most important thing is to take time for introspection.

Opportunity Cost

In terms of time, opportunity cost is everything you could have done had you taken a different action than what you actually did. Every minute you spend is laden with opportunity cost.

For example, if you choose to spend two hours in a meeting, that comes at the cost of spending time with your children, playing, responding to email, whatever.

Now, in actuality that meeting may be the most important thing you should be doing at that time, but understand that there’s always a cost.

Planning & Opportunity Cost

This is why personal planning and introspection are so critical. They help you identify what matters most so that you can limit the potential downside of opportunity cost.

We all have time for planning and introspection time. Why don’t we do it?

Why won’t I take 10 to 15 minutes every day to plan my day? What am I afraid of? Is it easier to always be reactive? Am I afraid of failure? Am I afraid of success? Am I afraid to see who I really am? Or is it just that life is so dang busy it’s not on my scope?

What keeps us from looking inside?

Ironically, it is precisely opportunity cost that keeps many people from taking the time to plan and introspect. They choose not to take the time because they’re afraid they’ll miss out on opportunities.

Understand this: The best way to balance the commodities of time and money and to limit lost opportunity costs is to take time to reflect.

If you’re not choosing how to spend your time, other people are. And when other people and external circumstances dictate your life, you’ll never get to where you want to go.

“In the world, it is easy to live after the world’s opinions. In solitude, it is easy to live after one’s own. But the great man is he, who in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

This is particularly true in today’s world. We’re bombarded by gadgets and stimuli to keep ourselves busy and our minds engaged and distracted: cell phones, text messaging, email, Internet, television, radio, etc.

More often than not, however, these things prevent us from spending time on the truly important.

And the most important time we can spend is time in solitude discovering who we are, what is important to us, what our values and priorities are, who we want to be and do.

One of the most important, foundational keys to success is the willingness and ability to connect with your inner core—to internalize what it is that you’re all about.

Take the Time

There’s really no slick technique to this. It simply comes down to taking the time every day to ponder, reflect, study, and plan.

Personally, I spend two hours a day doing this, and it’s the most important two hours of my day.

Scheduling and keeping a daily solitude experience is how to find yourself. And staying consistent with that is how you “keep” yourself—in other words, stay grounded and in touch with what matters to you—when you go out into the world.

Economics, or Priority?

Some people say, “I understand that solitude time is important, but I don’t have the economic ability to do it. I’m too busy taking care of my family.”

This isn’t a chicken and egg quandary. Solitude time should precede working time. It’s simply a matter of priority.

The truth is that the more solitude time you take, the more you’ll earn.

To anyone who tells me they don’t have time to meditate, my response is that you have all the time there is.

Everyone has 24 hours in a day. When you say you don’t have time for something, what you are really saying is that you value something else more.

So if you don’t have time to start out with 10 to 15 minutes of planning every day, the reality is that you don’t value it, or at least that you value other things more.

So here’s my question to you: How can you consciously choose what you value if you don’t take time to think about your values and priorities?

If you’re not thinking about your values consistently and if you say you don’t have time to do so, aren’t you just living by default?

Are you choosing your life, or is life choosing your time for you?

Are you living by the world’s opinions, or your own?

Schedule time for solitude every day. Dig deep to discover who you really are and what matters most to you.

By doing so, you’ll be more peaceful, in tune, empowered, and confident. What’s more, over time you’ll begin to see a direct connection between your solitude time and income.