Tony, I am posting you a reminder of this week's assignment...

You need a solid achor

Your anchor is what you value. Even more, your anchor is the value that you place upon yourself. It affects your ability to make difficult decisions and to like yourself even when others express disapproval. It allows you to stand-up for what you believe, despite others believing differently.

Too often, we anchor ourselves to people, or circumstances. The result is usually chaos.

Consider what happens when people anchor themselves to their mates. Let’s say, for example, that you’ve just met someone who stimulates your mind and makes you feel alive in ways you haven’t felt in years, so you decide to anchor your lives together. You begin to see yourself as part of a team. You make every decision together. Everything goes swimmingly, until your rudder gets caught in their anchor. Suddenly, your decisions collide. Your perspectives alter. Your likelihood of success is based upon the whims of someone else. If the person to whom you’re anchored can’t move, you can’t move. When they go down, you go down.

And what happens if that person isn’t there any more? What happens to you if you’ve attached yourself to someone who abruptly disappears? Suddenly, you’re cast adrift on a river totally unfamiliar to you. Your fear-mechanisms may kick in. You may get depressed. You may want to drink, or eat your way back into comfort. You may even get involved with the first person you meet because you can’t stand riding the river alone.

Without a solid anchor, you drift about on circumstance. Without a solid anchor, you have no way to weather squalls. If you want your boat to outlast tempests, you need an anchor that won’t change from day to day. People do not make the best anchors because it is the nature of people to change. Circumstances do not make the best anchors because it is the nature of circumstances to alter.

So what does stand firm even in the most violent weather? What does hold fast no matter what life tosses towards you?

Ideals are the only things on the river that don’t change. Ideals make excellent anchors.

Think about the ideal of fairness. Did you ever say, “That’s not fair,” when you were young? Whenever I pose this question in class, nearly everyone raises their hand. Every child seems to understand the difference between fair and unfair, and they seem to expect fairness—until some adult tells them that life isn’t fair and they learn to believe it.

The curious thing is that we all know fairness when we see. The ideal of fairness is a constant that never changes. So if you were to steer your life towards fairness, you would always know which way to steer. If you were to anchor your life on fairness, you might actually begin to find fair. You could also anchor yourself to integrity, truth, dignity, justice, service, quality, excellence, kindness, joy, humility, compassion, or any ideal you choose.

Your ideals do not move with circumstance. No matter what the tempests around you conceal, truth is truth, and you’ll always know truth when you see it. Truth is a good place to set your anchor. Truth is a good way to steer your course. You may not always experience these ideals with others, but you will know each ideal when you see it, and you will know which way to steer. You will know when you have not lived up to your ideal. You will know when you have let yourself down.

Discover the ideals for which you stand—in the same way that America stands for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Integrate your ideals into your purpose and your choices, so that the next time the river tosses you into a whirlpool, you’ll be able to make your decisions based upon something you value. You’ll be secure in knowing that you’ve chosen the best possible response to your current circumstances.

When you base your choices upon the ideals you value, you begin to trust your choices and to find the strength to follow through on your actions. You begin to act decisively because you’re decisions aren’t affected by what other people say, think, or do. They’re based on a solid anchor, rather than on some opinion of the moment.