Look in the Mirror-That Is Your Problem and That Is Your Solution

by William E. Bailey

One of my favorite people, Winston Churchill, once said, “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but in the end there it is.” Now I’ll give you the Bill Bailey hillbilly version. “You might as well start with the truth; you are going to end with it.”
The words I believe, the words I think, the words I feel, may or may not be true. The words I experience are true. Where you are today is the sum total of every experience you have had in your life. And you had the opportunity to say “yes” or to say “no.” Whatever good happened to you, you ought to take credit. And whatever blame happened to you, you get that too. Because you could have said “yes” or said “no.” Wherever you are is okay, because you are here. And if everything hadn’t happened exactly the way it did in your life, you would not be here. You might have not survived.

Your direction is critical. Because one thing I will assure you of, in your life after seventy years of watching it, It Will Change! All positions are temporary. Take a look behind you. As Shakespeare said, “Straight satisfy yourself as the truth of it.” And again I’ll remind you. Whether you like it or not, you look in the mirror; that is your problem and that is your solution.
When I was very young I learned my first lesson in motivation: The absence of options will create a very quick and powerful decision. I was born and raised in the hills of Kentucky, what you all call Appalachia. We called it just plain poor.
There were eleven kids in the family. We had six flat acres, the rest of them were on the hills. We plowed with mules. I was born in 1930; we didn’t have paved roads until I was 15. We had electricity when I was 16. We never had indoor plumbing. So we were a family, but we walked to church together and we walked back together. We had a very unusual community feeling.
So one day when I was 15 years old, I was plowing corn. The last time you plow a field is in August, and in August, it’s very hot, it’s very humid. Well, I was plowing about three o’clock, back in a place called the Dorsey Holler. And I, like most young people, decided I was not going to plow anymore, so I spent about five minutes thinking up a nice lie I was gonna tell my father if he asked. So I backed up under this big beach tree, sat down, tied the plow lines of the mule up to the plow handles, lit a cigarette. About that time I heard a voice say, “What in the h__ do you think you are doing?” And there stood my father looking like a rain cloud about to burst. I quickly whipped out my best lie and said, “Well, the ground was hard and the mule didn’t want to pull the plow.” He asked, “Did you hit it?” I said, “No.” He said, “Well son you can hit the mule or I am hitting you.” I HIT THE MULE!

Here is the next statement for you. It is a shame that we wait for something outside us to cause us to do what we ought to do ourselves. Why did I wait for someone to force me to do what I should have been doing? We should all be truly excited about the rest of our lives because we have the greatest single tool in the world: the human brain.

"There is nothing wrong with affirmations, provided what you are affirming is the truth. If you are broke, for example, the best thing to affirm is, 'I'm broke!'" —Jim Rohn

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