Is it difficult when you must produce a report on a Sunday afternoon for Monday morning and can't go to your son's football game?

Is it difficult hearing the phone ring on Christmas morning ... and because you had to appease your boss, you miss the excitement on your daughter's face as she feverishly tears into another box?

Is it difficult knowing the rust bucket you call a car is eating you alive in maintenance, but you can't afford a new one?

Is it difficult to go to your annual performance review, and even though you have worked hard for another year, you come away empty handed?

Is it difficult knowing that you shop by price rather than whether the garment looks good on you?

Is it difficult knowing that you live in your house because prices just went up, your budget is to the bare bones & you can't afford a higher mortgage?

Is it difficult telling your children, "If we get this, we cannot have that"?

Is it difficult always lowering your dreams to meet your means?

Is it difficult knowing that you have spent 40 years of your life working for someone else only to realize that you will be retiring on 1/3 of what you already cannot make ends meet with today?

Is it difficult when your children move out, and you can't visit them often because traveling costs too much?

Is it difficult knowing that the fish are biting this week and you can't drop what you are doing and take your 70-year old Dad fishing?

Is it difficult watching the spark in your partner's eyes fade because both of you realize the house you want is just a dream, because someone else is controlling your finances?

Is it difficult waking up one morning and realize that your children, the most precious things imaginable, no longer need bottles, diapers or have tea parties, eat things found under the sofa, are shorter than the baseball bat they are trying to swing -- but are grown and starting their own families and you missed their childhood because you agreed to be locked in an office for twenty years by a boss who watched his children grow up?

Is it difficult dropping your one-year-old at daycare because you have to be at work by 9am to stand by the Xerox machine or handle irate phone calls and realize someone else is going to watch your daughter take her first step, or have your son say "dad" (or "mama") to the playground teacher?

Is it difficult knowing you have diligently worked only to be down-sized, laid-off or forced into early retirement?

I'll tell you what is difficult. 

What's difficult is realizing that life is short and once gone can never be retrieved. It slips through our fingers one second at a time.

What are we doing with our time? We have nasty habits about rationalizing, procrastinating and skirting important things rather than facing the issues. Too often we allow others who do not pay our bills, who do not share our dreams, to dictate our future.

• We have absolutely no freedom as a child.

• We rebel in our teen years and scream for freedom.

• We die for the right to be free.

• We fight vicious wars to have the seemingly innocent ability to choose.

• We reach adulthood and we relinquish freedom because "we think it is too difficult."

• We do not want to take responsibility.

• We do not want to make a wrong decision so we obligingly give away that awesome power to someone else.

• We feel it will take too much time. Then, we have the audacity to complain when the decisions made were not what we wanted.

• We wake up too late; (we say) phrases like "I wish I had only,"and "If I could only have that time back" etc.

I believe the majority of people want to sing, but die with the music still inside. 

• Face the music and shoulder some responsibility. 

• You cannot have that time back.

• You have chosen your direction.

If you have not spent your time wisely, too bad.

You have no one but yourself to blame. You had the chance. Perhaps the opportunity was presented many times and each time you elevated the trivial to a higher priority than yourself.

Is network marketing really difficult?

Is it so traumatic to show someone an exciting product or idea -- or how they can make the extra money they need?

Is it so difficult to understand that if you work this marketing idea for a couple of years, you might not have to confront some nasty options?

Would you work real hard for a year or two or three so you could put your family in the home of their dreams? 

Would you work real hard for a year or two or three so you could send your children to college chosen by excellence rather than one chosen by price?

Would you turn off the idiot box, the soaps, the talk shows, sporting events or (CSI) for a year so you could take dream vacations several times a year?

Would you apply yourself for a year or two so you would have the freedom of being able to roll over, yank the covers over your head and wake up at the crack of noon because you wanted to?

Would you work really hard for a couple of years to mold a lifestyle of your choosing so your family could live a lifestyle of their dreams, rather than trying to live how someone else thinks you should live?

Can you identify the words "next time?" How many "next times" will you have?  What will it take to get you off "dead center"?

What will it take?