Musings on resources versus resourcefulness

Good day, everyone.

I had an interesting interaction today with an associate and it brought some interesting thoughts to mind that I wanted to share and to invite some dialog on.

In the goal setting / life architecture program that I incubated for inner city youth, one of the things the kids and I discuss is the notion of overcoming the limited belief that people cannot accomplish things because they have limited access to time, energy and money. This fear prevents many people from striving to reach their dreams, because they believe they don’t have enough of “what it takes” in order to begin on their path and to reach their goals. For that reason, many people wait until the right moment to execute, only to discover years later that they waited too long because the perfect alignment of all resources never seemed to arrive.

In helping a good friend of mine (a fellow ‘Softee) sort through some messy client stuff today, someone else stepped up and said “One of the reasons this failed is that we don’t have enough time or people to do it right” to which I replied “Lack of success doesn’t stem from lack of resources – it stems from lack of resourcefulness”. I seem to recall that Norman Vincent Peale or someone similar coined this phrase many years ago.

However, it got me to thinking. With the pressures on our personal and professional lives, it is sometimes easy to fall back on an inability to execute because we believe we have limited time, energy and money and because of this belief, our intention to execute is stifled by fear that we are not equipped to seek out our ultimate goals or to execute things successfully. However, if we start to believe this on a consistent basis, perhaps we open ourselves up to not only lack of progress toward life goals, but perhaps to the potential for failure, with the thought that we can leverage the excuse of lack of this, that or the other thing to back us up when we fail.

When one considers unlimited time, energy and money to accomplish that which we wish to accomplish, this doesn’t necessarily mean that we have it within our personal portfolio. It is through recognizing that out network contributes to our success just as we contribute to the success of our network that we have access to unlimited resources. So when we need time, energy or money to execute successfully, we need to be open to leveraging the help of those whom we collaborate with just as we can be counted on when someone needs our help.

Only by doing this can we reach new heights of success and to help others reach their own new heights of success. People need to recognize more often that they can’t do it all themselves and no one expects them to. Leveraging the talents of the wonderful people all around us will take us to new heights and create opportunities that we never envisioned that we would have the opportunity to partake in.

I am very much interested in how readers of this blog help others leverage appropriate skills to make them more successful personally and professionally and how you helped someone overcome barriers (or how someone helped you overcome barriers) towards success.

Comments are welcome and invited.

I wish you all a wonderful day. Create opportunities for success where you can.

Best wishes,

Harry