Do You Have a Plan

Alright, so here we are, and I’m telling you, August is almost over, and it has been a whirlwind of a summer. It has moved so quickly, at least for me and my family.

My boys are not excited about going back to school; they feel like summer was a little too short for them, and I kind of get that. I don’t know about you, but I feel the same way. And I know that in just a few weeks, we’re going to start feeling the cooler air, and we’re going to start seeing leaves change. There’s some beauty in that and some fun in that, but today, I don’t want to just talk about today and what’s about to happen.

I want to go back to 1974. Now, some of you are sitting there going, “1974? Chad, I wasn’t alive in 1974.” I know, I know, many of you weren’t. That’s okay. So, let me tell you a story, and you can Google this. You can find this. There was this famous boxing match, maybe you’ve even already heard of it: Muhammad Ali and big George Foreman. That’s right, 1974.

Now, George Foreman, he’s a big guy, he’s strong, he’s just rippled with muscle, and Muhammad Ali, he was fast, he was quick. But for the heavyweight championship of the world, 1974, Muhammad Ali had a plan. He figured that if he would go in there, he would go to the ropes, and he’d just get hit on and let George Foreman just pound on him, and he’d wear him down until George Foreman was too tired to fight anymore. He figured he could outlast George Foreman, and it’s a good plan, right? All good plans, right?

I mean, when it comes down to it, when you have a really good plan and stuff, it all looks good on paper. But man, when you get in the ring and you start letting George Foreman hit on you round after round after round. You kind of gotta wonder. Did Muhammad Ali in round six go, “Is he ever going to get tired? This is starting to hurt. OMG, I don’t know if I can do this.” All of a sudden, his plan might have started to have a little bit of a wavering feeling.

Round seven, round eight, it paid off. I think it was right around round eight. George Foreman started showing that he was tired. He wasn’t hitting as hard, and it was getting to the place where he couldn’t even lift his hands anymore. And that’s when Muhammad Ali came off the ropes and just stuck him. I think he stuck him with a left and then a right, and bam, George Foreman went down. And heavyweight championship of the world, Muhammad Ali. But I’ll bet you the next day, there were parts of his body that were sore as all get out because of his plan.

So what am I trying to tell you? Well, you gotta have a plan. You have to have a plan to do something with your life. Then you have to be persistent to stick to it because life is much bigger, harder-hitting than George Foreman is. That’s right, life will hit you hard and sock and sock and sock and bruise you and knock on you and knock on you and knock on you. So you have to have a good plan, and you have to be able to withstand the blows that life comes at you with. You have to be able to stand up under it.

But you gotta have your plan, and then you have to be persistent and consistent to stick to it. I mean, as soon as you start to think, and I know this for a fact, as soon as you just start to think that you’re going to lose some weight, somebody brings chocolate cupcakes to work, or it’s your birthday, and somebody brings you a bunch of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Or, oh, it’s the holidays, and they just roll around, and boom, here’s Thanksgiving, and here’s Christmas, and here’s your anniversary. And there’s always a reason to break your diet.

Doesn’t matter what your plan is. “Oh, I want to go to school.” Oh, as soon as you do that, then your wife tells you that she’s pregnant. Or your professor is a pain in the butt, and you have to do stuff at work. And there is always going to be something where life is going to sock you and try to knock you off your game and to get you to not be persistent and consistent with your plan. But you’ve got to stick to your plan.

But here’s another thing I need to ask you, because there are a few of you out there, I believe this, that don’t have a plan. So you’re wandering in life, and you’re out at sea, and you don’t even have a rudder. You don’t even have a rudder. Some of you, your sails are ripped, and the wind won’t take you anywhere. You gotta fix those sails and you gotta get yourself a rudder. You have to have a plan and a destination and a decision of where you’re headed so that you can get there.

Because if you don’t have a plan, if you don’t have goals, then you’ll never achieve them. The reason we aim for the stars, right, is because you probably hit one of them, because there’s an awful lot of stars out there. But if you don’t aim for something big, you’ll get nothing at all. You won’t even get off the ground because you’re aimlessly wandering in the desert. There’s an old song, “Riding a Horse with No Name”? Anyway, long story. I don’t know why stuff flashes into my head. Probably because I’m 248 years old this year.

But hey, I just want to say, God bless you guys, and I wanted to remind you to have a plan. Write it down. Write some goals down. I put many of mine in my computer year after year, and it’s fun as you go through a few decades to go back to 1999 and look at all the things that you wanted to accomplish in ’99, and you realize that the number of those were checked off, that’s right, you checked those boxes off, and you made your goals. You built yourself up into that next thing. You got that next job or whatever it was. Those are really good feelings.

Alright, guys, so God bless you. Remember, life hits hard just like George Foreman, but you gotta be able to weather that storm, weather that punch, weather that hit, time after time. At some point, if you stick to your plan, you’re persistent, you’re consistent. End result? You will achieve your goals and your dreams. Stick with it. Stick with your plan. Alright, God bless you. I’ll see you later, later. Oh hey, don’t forget, be valuable, nothing less to do.