Week 19 – I love(ed) My Blueprint(s)

Did you ever stop to wonder how we ended up here? Here as in “HERE” doing what we are doing, living where we are living, loving that which we love, struggling with our struggles? Our path to the now has been creating as well as been created by “our blueprint”. Our belief system, our thought processes, and how we react to our environment. According to Mr. Haanel, we draw the environment to us, making it quite difficult to blame the circumstances surrounding us for our troubles. We can only blame ourselves.

This package of thinking we hold in our head (or – some may argue in our heart, rightfully so) that carried us here has been referred to as our “old blueprint”, with progress to a new way of thinking and living being dependent upon disposing of this faulty programming. I am not qualified to do this, but I am about to challenge how many of us think about this process (and I have to thank Daniel H. for helping think this through).

I remember sweeping the floor of a dingy auto body repair shop “free gratis” with the hope of being asked to stay around to learn the trade. My blueprint of that day is what carried me to a labratory as a graduate student in Electrical Engineering. I remember walking out of a wonderful Engineering design facility in Phoenix, walking away from a successful career, allowing my Blueprint to carry my young family and I back to Nebraska, to family, with me completely unaware that in a few short months I would be holding my father’s hand as he breathed his last. An experience I wouldn’t have if my Blueprint had not taken me away from that job.

So why refer to this past way of thinking in any sort of negative way? If I speak of my old blueprint in derogatory terms, somehow I am discrediting me, the me that got me where Me is today. Now I understand that there are things in life that any one of us would rather be without (or maybe with), but how about thinking in terms of “getting better” instead of “getting rid of”?

I love the old blueprint that took me from a slacker, barely passing my sophomore grade in highschool math to an A student in college calculus and physics. I love the determination my blueprint exhibited as I labored to build the house I now live in, have raised a family in and am perfectly happy to end my days in. I love the blueprint that took me from what could have been a depressing career repairing office equipment to a rewarding career designing world-class scientific instruments. I love the blueprint that took me from what could have been a drinking habit to maybe two or three beers per year.

There have been stacks of blueprints in my head. I love all of them, they all served their purpose. Each better in some obscure way than the previous model, each serving a need, taking me somewhere I needed to go. Our work in this MKMMA class is about learning how to change a blueprint, accelerating this change, and observing the things that need changed to achieve a goal. All VERY valuable, but for myself to abhor the old blueprint – I ain’t gonna do that. I love Me, warts and all.

Hah – you think you’re gonna change ME?

Now, I do know that the blueprint in there now will have to change. It has some issues which need resolved. Tomorrow it will be slightly different than today. The next day, different again. And as long as I understand that I am in charge of the improvements, and can significantly alter how I think about myself, where I am going and how I treat people, then I KNOW I will love the next Blueprint as well. The Big J. is helping us make these blueprint revisions much faster, and I am eternally grateful for his unselfish work.

The last line of my DMP is:

     “I love my life”

Does that mean everything is perfect? Absolutely not. But it is definitely getting better.