The Journey to Level 1

I read a long time ago that if you have nothing to say, then read, but, if you have too much to say, then write. That made a lot of sense to me. Lately I seem to be going back and forth between those two things. For a while it felt like I knew what I wanted to write about for the next month or more. During that time, I found that finding time to read was difficult. Now it seems like every time I go to sit down to write an article, I can’t put a whole article together. Right now, I think I have four half written articles that I just can’t seem to make into a full article. So that puts me in a tough position, I haven’t been reading a lot and I don’t have a lot to say. So, I spent some time kind of searching for something. In the end I found two interesting things that caught my eye. The first thing was a YouTube video that started off by saying that you need a strong reason to change. They talked about people who have had a heart attack but still refuse to change their diets. For them, the reason isn’t strong enough to change. It really had me thinking, what is my reason for ever wanting change in my life? Why do I do something or not do something? If I want to be serious about change, I need to know my reason. The next thing was in a book I was reading. It talked about the five levels of emergency room triage. I had heard all these things before, but for some reason it stuck with me this time. The five levels were:

Level 1 – The patient needs immediate care; life is in imminent danger.

Level 2 – Needs immediate attention, but their life is not in immediate danger.

Level 3 – Does not have a life-threatening injury and can be seen in the order that they arrived.

Level 4 – The patient is already deceased or there is nothing medically that can be done to save them.

Level 5 – The patient has no injury and does not need any medical attention.

Why did those two things stick with me? Do they have anything in common with each other? I don’t work in the medical field, so I don’t think I am thinking about it from that perspective. The more I thought about it, I came to this conclusion. If you need to change something in your life, and you don’t do it, you will probably find yourself sitting at one of these five levels. I want to work backwards on this one. For me, level five is I need to change, but the pain is bearable. I really don’t like something about my life, but the pain just isn’t great enough yet for me to even think about changing. I would call it going through the motions. Level four is what happens right before you get fired or have that heart attack. You did nothing to change for so long, that now what happens is out of your control. I worry that I spend more time at this level than I want to admit. Level three is probably where most of us spend our time. We dream of hitting the lottery. We think about what it would be like to do something we are passionate about, but in the end, we really don’t change. We just want to talk or dream about it. I’ll take a few action steps here and there, but in the end, I just want the stability of my boring everyday life. Level two might just be where I am right now. I’ve suffered some pain and I have taken serious steps to do the things that I really want to do in life, but I still haven’t committed to doing everything that I can to take that huge step forward. I know I need to work on things every single day, but instead it’s three times a week. I get started on projects, but I may walk away for a few weeks and lose momentum. If I decide to push myself, I can be awesome. If I don’t find my reason to make the change, I will go right back to being average. So, what is level one then? Level is one is that I know my vision for three years from now. Level one is when I am thinking about what I want every single moment of the day. I start each day with a plan, and I don’t sleep until that plan is finished. I have daily goals, weekly goals, quarterly goals and yearly goals. Nothing can stop me from completing my vision. So what level am I at right now and what do I need to do? As I said before I hope I am spending enough time at level two, so that I can say that I am there. I worry that right now I am spending time going back and forth between levels two and three and not making enough progress. What I need to do is make sure that I am doing something every single day to get where I want to be. I need to write down the vision of where I want to be and make sure every step I take is in that direction. I also know that I still have some roadblocks in my life that are preventing me from advancing to the next level. I’m just not sure how to get rid of them yet. That seems to be one of my biggest struggles. My plan for this week is to go back and look at my vision and make sure I am still on the right path. I also need to spend some time reflecting on what my biggest reason is for change. I think if I can figure that out, it might just take care of my roadblocks. Go out there this week and find your vision!