NPR News

Excerpt: 'Reposition Yourself'

NPR | By T.J. Jakes

Published May 14, 2007 at 3:11 PM EDT

From Chapter 1:

Did you ever play baseball or kickball as a kid and get to have a do-over if you missed your swing or your kick? We all wish we could have a do-over for the many mistakes and missteps we've committed. We can't. We must live with the consequences, the mistakes. But let's not do so without questioning what we can learn and how we can grow from them.

You can't have a do-over but you can reposition yourself and have a make-over. It doesn't involve plastic surgery, a radical diet, or a new wardrobe, although by the time you're done, you may be inspired to do all three! No, the kind of make-over I describe in the pages that follow involves throwing off the shackles of your addiction to apathy and embracing the tools needed to reposition yourself for a life of freedom and enrichment.

If this feels selfish or self-absorbed to you, then realize how many other lives are affected by your well-being. One of the key reasons why an intervention is often successful is it produces an awareness of how your behavior hurts those around you. Any time you're not focused on what matters most because you're allowing yourself to be distracted and numbed by some feel-good urge, it's hurting those around you.

If you know it's time and you are more than ready for a major life change, your recovery has begun. Your desire to change will only fuel your fight to reposition yourself into who you were meant to be.

If you're dissatisfied with your life, long for much more, and feel the desire to take some risks and make some changes, but those impulses are countered and blocked by your past disappointments, by the safety of your present status quo lifestyle, and by the uncertainty of your future, you are on the fence. You are flirting with the tragedy of a life wasted and regretted. Get off the fence and onto the road of recovery through repositioning.

If you are so deeply embedded in your addiction to apathy and mediocrity that you don't see what you're doing to yourself, afraid to let yourself hope, committed to busyness so that there's no time to think and reflect on what your life means and where it's headed, it's time to stop. Don't be afraid to want more and go after more. Winds of change are blowing your way.

You can have a better life. The question is: Are you willing to fight for it? Like an alcoholic recovering from the throes of his addiction, are you willing to fight the urge to settle for less and to endure the hard work required to reposition yourself? If the answer is yes, then turn the page.