Are you a follower or a trailblazer?

If you blaze trails, you risk getting lost, risk having no one follow, risk being laughed at, risk starving, disillusion, and dying in obscurity. You also risk becoming rich and famous (which, by the way, has its own set of problems).

If you are a follower you must decide how close to follow, who to follow, and how to reconcile your life with the fact that you have chosen to follow. The real sadness is not in whether you lead or follow (both of which are honorable pursuits), but the position of doing neither, of merely wondering about, lost in a haze, gazing at empty spaces in which we find ourselves.

So many people “miss the boat” because it's easier and more comforting to follow without questioning the qualifications of the people just ahead than to do some independent thinking and checking.

A hard thing for most people to fully understand is that people in such numbers can be so wrong. A little checking will reveal that throughout all recorded history the majority of mankind has an unbroken record of being wrong about most things, especially important things.

For a time we thought the earth was flat and later we thought the sun, stars, and planets traveled around the Earth. Both ideas are now considered ridiculous, but at the time they were believed and defended by the vast majority of followers. In the hindsight of history we blindly following the follower out of habit rather than stepping out of line to look for the truth. It's difficult for people to come to the understanding that only a small minority of people ever really get the word about life, about living abundantly and successfully.

Success in the important departments of life seldom comes naturally, no more naturally than success at anything — a musical instrument, sports, fly-fishing, tennis, golf, business, marriage, parenthood. But for some reason most people wait passively for success to come to them living as other people are living in the unspoken, tacit assumption that other people know how to live successfully.

It's a good idea to step out of the line every once in a while and look around to see if the line is going where we want it to go. If it is not, it might be time for a new leader and a new direction.

Come on dude...Falling Isn't Failing ... Unless You Fail to Get Up!!!