What is your story?
Do you have a burning desire, a dream, something you wish to achieve in this lifetime?
What is your purpose? Is it 'to be happy' as the Dalai Llama says, or is it a particular goal, like the explorers of the world. Do you wish to forge a path that someone else can follow. Would you even die to achieve your goal?
Having a purpose, a strong desire, is perhaps one of the greatest Natural Energy Boosters.
It may be something small, or much larger. It may be something that can only be achieved in small steps, but by remaining focussed, and persisting no matter what we reach it in the end.
Some goals are so great that they will energise despite emotional and physical hardship.
Last night I presented a talk at my Toastmasters Club on the great Australian Explorer John McDouall Stuart - a man so focussed on a dream that he persisted against great odds.
I called the talk 'John and Polly'.
Between 1858 and 1862 John, with Polly his gallant little grey mare pony, battled for four weary years over six journeys and a total of ten thousand miles to explore from the south to the north of this great land.
With little resources or government backing, he led his small groups of men and horses across the Australian inland. Stuart forged his way through stony deserts, swam flooding rivers, climbed mountain ranges, battled thorny lancewood scrub and faced fierce aborigines - up and back six times from Adelaide until at last he reached the Indian Ocean at the north of the continent on 24th July 1862.
Before his last journey, John had been kicked in the temple, and his right hand was nearly ripped off by a rope. He rode in agony all 3400 miles to the north and then the same distance back again. His eyesight failed, his right hand was rendered useless, and he was so sick he had to be carried on a makeshift bed slung between two horses the last 950 miles, an indication of his men's devotion.
Was it worth it?
Though he died back in England in 1866 at only fifty years of age he had achieved his dream.
Because of John McDouall Stuart, the colonies were able to build the Overland Telegraph Line from south to north and to connect the continent with the outside world - a revolution in communications, and to build a railway line from Adelaide to Alice Springs (now all the way to Darwin).
Perhaps Stuart's greatest memorial is not the statue erected to him in Adelaide in 1904, but the wide black ribbon of the 'Stuart Highway' that stretches from south to north - the longest highway in Australia bearing one name. If you ever travel this road, give a thought to those that made it possible, and especially to John and his trusty pony, Polly.
Not all of us are prepared to give away our health and our lives for a dream. It is a high price to pay.
But what we can learn from Stuart that 'all things are possible to him who believes'.
Whether your goal, or your purpose be large of small, having a dream is a Natural Energy Booster that will make your life meaningful and worth living day by day.
If you would like to receive the free ebook 'The Journals of John McDouall Stuart' go to my webpage, http://www.joansmall.com/joansmall_Australian_BushPoetry_books.htm
Live with Energy
Joan
Joan Small empowers people to make positive changes in their lives. If you want to discover more Natural Energy Boosters and lead an energized life, obtain your copy of ‘The Energy Book for Life’, the Guide to Energetic Living, Visit http://www.natural-energy-boosters.com/Joan is also the author of the book series, ‘Allow Yourself… You Deserve It’, How to Free Yourself from Stress and Control and Live with Fun and Love. http://www.joansmall.com/
Do you have a burning desire, a dream, something you wish to achieve in this lifetime?
What is your purpose? Is it 'to be happy' as the Dalai Llama says, or is it a particular goal, like the explorers of the world. Do you wish to forge a path that someone else can follow. Would you even die to achieve your goal?
Having a purpose, a strong desire, is perhaps one of the greatest Natural Energy Boosters.
It may be something small, or much larger. It may be something that can only be achieved in small steps, but by remaining focussed, and persisting no matter what we reach it in the end.
Some goals are so great that they will energise despite emotional and physical hardship.
Last night I presented a talk at my Toastmasters Club on the great Australian Explorer John McDouall Stuart - a man so focussed on a dream that he persisted against great odds.
I called the talk 'John and Polly'.
Between 1858 and 1862 John, with Polly his gallant little grey mare pony, battled for four weary years over six journeys and a total of ten thousand miles to explore from the south to the north of this great land.
With little resources or government backing, he led his small groups of men and horses across the Australian inland. Stuart forged his way through stony deserts, swam flooding rivers, climbed mountain ranges, battled thorny lancewood scrub and faced fierce aborigines - up and back six times from Adelaide until at last he reached the Indian Ocean at the north of the continent on 24th July 1862.
On all his journeys through the most severe conditions he never lost a man and rarely a horse.
Polly was with him on every journey, and he cared for her as his favourite, though she suffered much. In the dreaded 'steel-shod desert' of the gibber plains horse-shoes were torn from her feet, and her hooves were cut to shreds. She floundered through bogs, swam rivers and was once stolen by one of Stuart's party and staked in the fetlock.
When Polly gave birth to a foal near what is now Alice Springs, Stuart rested the party until she could go on, and he called this waterhole Polly Springs.
Before his last journey, John had been kicked in the temple, and his right hand was nearly ripped off by a rope. He rode in agony all 3400 miles to the north and then the same distance back again. His eyesight failed, his right hand was rendered useless, and he was so sick he had to be carried on a makeshift bed slung between two horses the last 950 miles, an indication of his men's devotion.
Was it worth it?
Though he died back in England in 1866 at only fifty years of age he had achieved his dream.
Because of John McDouall Stuart, the colonies were able to build the Overland Telegraph Line from south to north and to connect the continent with the outside world - a revolution in communications, and to build a railway line from Adelaide to Alice Springs (now all the way to Darwin).
Perhaps Stuart's greatest memorial is not the statue erected to him in Adelaide in 1904, but the wide black ribbon of the 'Stuart Highway' that stretches from south to north - the longest highway in Australia bearing one name. If you ever travel this road, give a thought to those that made it possible, and especially to John and his trusty pony, Polly.
Not all of us are prepared to give away our health and our lives for a dream. It is a high price to pay.
But what we can learn from Stuart that 'all things are possible to him who believes'.
Whether your goal, or your purpose be large of small, having a dream is a Natural Energy Booster that will make your life meaningful and worth living day by day.
If you would like to receive the free ebook 'The Journals of John McDouall Stuart' go to my webpage, http://www.joansmall.com/joansmall_Australian_BushPoetry_books.htm
Live with Energy
Joan
Joan Small empowers people to make positive changes in their lives. If you want to discover more Natural Energy Boosters and lead an energized life, obtain your copy of ‘The Energy Book for Life’, the Guide to Energetic Living, Visit http://www.natural-energy-boosters.com/Joan is also the author of the book series, ‘Allow Yourself… You Deserve It’, How to Free Yourself from Stress and Control and Live with Fun and Love. http://www.joansmall.com/
