Sitting on Your Laurels

Most of us spend a great deal of our time thinking about our ultimate achievement.  Maybe yours is writing a best-selling book.  Maybe it is making some financial goal.  Whatever the ultimate goal, once you achieve it, where do you go from there?  Do you just say “Well, I made it, time to relax?”

If you stop once you’ve achieved your “ultimate goal,” you are really cheating yourself. You made that goal, what is to keep you from doing more?  There should always be something else you want to try, something else you want to do.  Are you sure that this achievement is it?  Can you improve on it?  Maybe you wrote that best seller.  Can you update it?  Can you expand on it?  Is that really all you have?

Many of us work so hard to reach that ultimate goal that we burn ourselves out a long the way.  Take a little time once you get there to reflect on the journey.  But don’t spend so much time reflecting that the world passes you by.  Maybe you never want to do it again and that’s fine, but are you really so secure that you really think you never need to do anything else again? 

Times change, people changes, things happen.  Sitting back and basking in your own glory can be dangerous.  After all, there is always someone else out there ready to steal your limelight.  After all, if it worked for you maybe there is a way to improve or change what you did and be even more successful.  Even if what you did was great, you probably learned something along the way that no one else knows.  No one else has your experiences and your knowledge, but, as time passes, that knowledge can become outdated.  Becoming older can also mean becoming wiser, but if you stop learning and are content to sit on your laurels, you will almost certainly be left in the dust. 

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.Winston Churchill