>  I am not a baseball fan but I can’t miss the fact that Barry Bonds just broke the all time record for home runs set by Hank Aaron. It’s a good time to write about desire, certainty and action. You don’t accomplish what Bonds just did with a healthy amount of some…if not all three of them. 
   Living in the fast-paced, high-tech world we live in, our children are raised with the experience and belief that everything is quickly and easily replaced. As a result, they are short on patience. 
   It’s not unique to our children. 
   Ever since the 1970’s, things have been exponentially speeding up in our world due to the rapid technological advances and how they have impacted the quality of our lives. The almost frantic pace at which we live provides neither time nor energy to contemplate or dedicate ourselves to the necessary stages for achievement. 
   Achieving a goal first requires setting a goal. Setting a goal means knowing what it is you want. Once you have certainty about what you want, it becomes easier to make decisions that support that goal and eliminate things that do not. But having a definitive goal is meaningless without taking the action steps to manifest it.  Action steps almost always include some form of practice or physical action that performed over time reach a level of completion (some would say perfection) that eventually, and often suddenly, create the intended outcome.
   Whether it’s Barry Bonds, Tara Lapinsky, Tiger Woods, Kevin Costner, Hillary Clinton, Mother Teresa or you, it really makes no difference.  You need an intention, a goal, about which you are certain. You have to take the action steps and make decisions that support your goal. And while it’s not a sure thing that doing so will get you where you want to go, or what you want to attain, not participating in all three stages of achievement is pretty much a guarantee that you won’t. 
   So the real harm of today’s pace of life and endless, replaceable “things” is that it breeds a type of laziness and lack of stamina that undermines our inherent need and purpose to uniquely create something of real value…beyond the material.
   Barry Bonds has made a lot of money playing baseball. He will make a lot more money as a result of his latest achievement. Two things I am certain of are these: 1) he did it all because he had a goal, believed he could achieve it, and took the action steps to make it happen and, 2) all the money can’t equal the feeling he had when he hit that 756th home run.
   The money is the perk. 
   Life’s all about the feeling of purpose.
   Ask Barry Bonds.

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