"MANUFACTURING" THE RESULTS YOU WANT IN LIFE
THE OVERVIEW OF WHAT IS NECESSARY
Life does not happen to you, it is actually much more created by you, through the "manufacturing process", producing the most valuable products for you (happiness producing).
From one perspective, it looks like this:
Resources → Process (utilize) them → Product
(Results)
↑
Priorities
And each part is a simple concept.
RESOURCES
Resources are what you need in order to make something. They would include a brain, some raw materials or knowledge, time, helpers, skills/talents/abilities, and such - and even, for the believers, God (him/her/itself).
As essential as resources are, we cannot get the results we want in life if we do not utilize them to make what we want in life. How we do that is called "a process".
PROCESSES
Without a good process and/or without applying and using the good process, we cannot produce well what we want in life. (No miracles happen, at least not often nor reliably: see And Then A Miracle Happens...Wanna Bet?) Processing is "converting" raw materials to a well-formed, well-designed product.
To produce good processes, we utilize the same overall diagram, as the well-developed, well-designed process is a product of our manufacturing a system to do things better. Without good processes, we cannot design other good processes. Here is where we definitely cannot wait for a miracle to provide a good process for us.
We must manufacture those using our best resource (our brain's power of reasoning and thinking), time, experience, existing information by processing them with a process of reasoning, a process of gathering and screening information, a process of learning, a process of creating, a process of deciding, a process of problem solving - and all of those basic megaprocesses should be super well done, for they will enable you to do all the processes in life better, quicker, and easier, producing many times the "life product" that you'd produce otherwise.
Yes, these megaprocesses can take some time to develop and require patience to get the reward, but the rewards start to flow in early in the process of learning - as we make a little better decisions at first, then a bit better, and then a bit better... all the time reaping a few extra benefits and avoiding a few extra problems - until, one day, we reach a point of mastery - at which time life will be unbelievably great! (See discussion of The Essential Life-Skills Without Which There Is Little Personal Power Or Happiness.)
Notice that people who are highly compensated will have very well developed mega skills, as those help the person produce much more value in the economic world (and in life itself). Hoping for high compensation without those skills is seldom (except by luck and happenstance, which are not reliable sources) fulfilled.
THE PRODUCT, BUT THE RIGHT PRODUCT (PRIORITY)
And, of course, if we produce alot of stuff that is no good and/or not valuable to us, we have wasted our most precious resource: time. And accordingly we are wasting our lives by not experiencing the good products that life has potentially in it. So we must prioritize what we want. In order to do that we must write out what it is that is important to us - and then prioritize it. (And periodically update it, as we get smarter.)
Make sense?
IF THIS IS CLEAR RIGHT NOW, THEN YOU MUST COMMIT TO IT
Then the question is whether you will actively engage in improving this whole process or, at least partially, wait for life to produce it.
Clearly if you read this article (the resource) and you do not think deeply about it (the process) and make a decision, then you will not produce any product from this resource - and thus you've wasted your time and/or blown an opportunity to embrace what will make all the difference in life.
OK, NOW HOW DO I APPLY THIS IN LIFE
For most of us, at some stage in life, we have two major objects of opportunity.
1. Create our own great life process.
2. Help our kids create the processes that will enable them to create great lives. (You also could insert in here, if you wish: help others.)
As a person about to live the rest of his/her life, you must increase your processing ability.
And, as a parent, you MUST (obligation, opportunity, cared for objective) help your child to increase his/her processing ability. If, instead, you just throw alot of activities and even rich resources at them that might not do the trick - they are resources and resources unprocessed are useless for any long term benefit. If you rescue them, you take away the opportunity for them to develop the ability to process problems - and thus they live much less of a life.
If you don't heed this warning, for your children or for yourself, their lives or your life will continue on the path it is on, to repeat the same things in life over and over, at only a slightly upward level that naturally occurs as we learn a little bit. (It is essential that you learn and understand the dynamics of The Path Of Life: Your Choice: Cause It Or Be The "Effect" Of Other Forces.)
