Something I’ve heard a lot lately is the following: “The definition of insanity is doing that you’ve always done and expecting different results.”

I don’t know who said this but I think it’s so true. It reminds me of a gerbil running furiously inside a wheel going nowhere fast. It’s great exercise, though.

There is so much behind this saying. We forget that without a vision of what we want in our lives most of what we do is an exercise. We’re bombarded with so many options, changes, choices, get-rich-quick schemes that, in our haste to grab at something, we forget what we’re all about. I know I’ve done that.

How can we jump off the gerbil wheel and stop the insanity?

Finding a coach who can work with you is of paramount importance. Without an objective look at what you want to do it’s easy to get off track. This is true whether you want to be a published author, a workshop leader, or you simply want to create a legacy for the generation that will follow you.

While watching the Winter Olympics, I noticed that the first person each winner hugged was his or her coach. These are the athletes who had a vision, knew they couldn’t do it alone, and had an experienced coach help them make corrections and changes so that they could claim victory.  It was the coach who kept them from doing the same things over and over again expecting different results.

We may not be competing for a spot on the Olympic team but we can create our own vision and live that vision.