Building Guardrails In Your Life!

I remember in building the George Bush Tollway in Far North Dallas where I live all the head on crashes we had for awhile with the cars on each side of the road crossing the median until they installed concrete barriers serving as guard rails to keep people safe.

The safety happened overnight. Problem solved.

We also need to

Build Guardrails In Our Life

 

This is simply knowing your danger areas and protecting yourself. Denying that danger is all around you is living with your head in the sand. There is financial danger, emotional danger, health danger, spiritual danger, your time being sucked away from all things you don't value, relationship danger, etc. No need to panic. Just work on buildiing your guardrails for protection from your core out.

• Spiritual guardrail - at your core is your faith or where you are on your spiritual journey. You come into the world alone and go out alone so you need to have that bond with your understanding of it all with God, your higher power, your rationality of what this life is all about and your anchor for explaining it when everything and everyone else in your life abandons you or can't be counted on. For me, it is my unshakeable faith in God
• Your inner circle guardrail - I hate to use family and friends here, even the closest of spouse or children or extended family, cause as a support resource your 3 to 5 people that make up the best of the best in your life may actually be "others." You know who you count on with the fingers on one hand. Be very clear on that. When your personal life house is on fire and burning down know who those people are. After your faith, these PEOPLE are your in person guard rails for you.
• Resources guardrail - outside your inner circle what happens with financial, relationship, health, time or energy disasters that deplete you of your happiness? You have to build guard rails of financial cushions, emotional backup, exercise and good nutrition keeping your body in good shape to withstand illness, saying no a lot to save your valuable time and energy keeping it away from the trivial in life and putting your time into the valuable, what YOU value most. Also always staying educated with your mind, feeding it good information, going to classes to build a better and stronger you internally.
• Finally, a terrific guardrail are coaches or what you might consider mentors. While I like to think we all are our BEST mentors individually, many people we come across in life are great teachers for us formally or informally. We need to slow down and listen to their counsel, their imparted knowledge to us, and get better from their education of us.

Build those STRONG guardrails in your life to not drive off the cliffs that pop up on all sides of the road we travel.

Knowing others is very smart, but knowing ourself, and PROTECTING ourself, is very wise!!