Are You a Stowaway on Your Ship of Life?

Tuesday, 20 January 2009



Og writes, “Yet I will not fail, as the others, for in my hands I now hold the charts which will guide me through perilous waters to shores which only yesterday seemed but a dream.” (scroll I)

Og Mandino describes his Ten Scrolls of time-tested ancient wisdom as “charts” we can use to navigate the perilous waters raging between where we are and where we want to be. What are these charts? What is the perilous water? And what are the shores?

Imagine Og standing on the helm of his ship, the captain of his destiny. Aloft he holds the charts of destiny containing a clear map of the principles of success. Around him rages a dark, portentous, stormy sea. Surging waves crash onto distant shores, which are lined with shipwrecks. The wind swirls, the sirens call yet Og stays true to the course. He knows where he wants to be and the charts are pointing the way, revealing the dangers and guiding the mariner.

In the darkness of today’s world and the storms of our own lives, we can learn so much from Og and his Scrolls. First we can learn that storms are part of life. No one who wants to travel the journey to success can avoid them. Second, we learn to stand at the helm of our own ships, holding our own charts of destiny high as we keep our eyes fixed on the goal while navigating the perilous waters. Third, we learn to trust that when we follow the principles of success we can reach the promised harbor. This is in such contrast to the pervasive purveyors of the “millionaire magic doctrine” who want us to believe that there is a fantasy fairy that will magically manifest this safe harbor if we but visualize with enough intention.

What does it take to become the captain of our own ship? What does it take to hold aloft the charts of success and hold close to our hearts that which guide us to success?

Og Mandino was born, like all of us, filled with infinite potential. Like all of us, he had hopes and dreams and a plan in place. But then life happened, like it does to all of us and he drifted from his plan. For Og, it was the death of his mother and the slow creep of failure that provided the impetus to take a stand.

He stopped by a local bar for just a quick nightcap, which quickly became a destructive habit and addiction. He was such a poor father and husband that his first wife and daughter left him and stayed estranged from him for the rest of his life. He lost his job because he did not perform and he lost himself to the pain and the desire to escape the pain. It got so bad that one dark night, he seriously contemplated buying a gun with the last of his money and ending his miserable wreck of a life.

Og spent years on the ship of his destiny, but not as the captain. He was the stowaway waiting for someone else to become captain, someone else to provide direction, someone else to do the work. Og was the dreamer, always thinking of great ways to use the talents and abilities he was given and then never actually doing anything. Og was the lookout, always keeping an eye on the horizon hoping someone else would steer the ship away from the rocks of failure and the storms of defeat.

Then suddenly, one day Og woke up. Suddenly Og, the homeless man with nothing to live for awoke from a deep sleep that had held him captive for the previous ten years. He woke up. He stopped waiting for someone else to do something for him and the stowaway became the captain. He stopped waiting for others to issue orders—he began to impose order in his own life and he became the captain – and a master mariner. He stopped living in the dream and began to take on his own life and so became the captain of his own destiny - finally facing the full rage of the storms of life and the rocks of his own failure and deciding from that day forward he would live differently.

He writes in Scroll I, “To create the olive, king of all trees, a hundred years is required. An onion plant is old in nine weeks. I have lived as an onion plant. It has not pleased me.”

What does he mean when he says that he had lived as an onion plant? One answer might be that he never stuck to a plan for long. Another might be that gave up easily. Another might be that he had been unwilling to invest in himself over the long term – he may have been looking for a quick and easy way. In an effort to avoid the “sting of the blade” he tried to escape and avoid the rigors of life. The result? Emptiness in his own heart. He longed for answers. He felt empty inside, jaded and hopeless. He had lived subject to the buffetings of life in hopes of avoiding the pain of taking on his own life only to realize he was filled with pain anyway – the bruises of failure and the wounds of mediocrity.

What is your heart telling you? Have you been a stowaway on your own ship of life? Have you lived as an onion plant and are now unpleased? Are you ready to become an olive tree—the king of all trees—and are you willing to begin the responsibility of taking on your own life and becoming an accountable captain of your own fate?

If you can honestly answer affirmatively that you want to take on your life and you are willing to do whatever it takes to be successful—congratulations! You are about to embark on the most exciting and the most amazing journey of your life! You are about to embark on the journey of making your dreams become reality by acting with confidence and living by principle! And this will bring you untold joy because you are now using your potential, exercising your ability and growing and becoming the real you.

This new course requires more of you than you have perhaps ever given. Leadership and success are rare qualities possessed by people who made a similar choice when faced with difficulty. They made the decision, invested in themselves and stayed the course. They embraced Og’s invitation to “develop my skills as the mariner develops his by learning to ride out the wrath of each storm.” You can be one of them.

It is natural if you find yourself wanting to go back to your old ways to find comfort in your old ruts. And it is only if you actually go back to your familiar life that you begin, once again, to live as an onion plant. To become the king of all trees requires a continuing effort to improve, to actively chart your own course and to live according to the principles of success.

Og writes elsewhere in Scroll I, “As a child, I was slave to my impulses; now I am slave to my habits, as are all grown men. I have surrendered my free will to the years of accumulated habits and the past deeds of my life have already marked out a path which threatens to imprison my future. My actions are ruled by appetite, passion, prejudice, greed, love, fear, environment, habit, and the worst of these tyrants is habit.”

Og had literally lived as an onion plant. He had run away from his responsibilities, from his opportunities, from his failures and tried to forget himself in an endless haze of alcohol. It could be said that he worked very hard to be the stowaway in his own life instead of becoming the captain.

Then something clicked inside him and he made a different choice. For him the choice was a complete 180 degree change in direction. As he made this choice he writes, “Failure will no longer be my payment for struggle. Failure, like pain, is alien to my life. In the past I accepted it as I accepted pain. Now I reject it and I am prepared for wisdom and principles which will guide me out of the shadows into the sunlight of wealth, position, and happiness far beyond my most extravagant dreams…”

Wisdom and Principles.

Take special note of these two words. Og realized that onion plants live unguided by principle and unaware of wisdom. They live within themselves and they live quickly and die quickly. The king of all trees is created over time, without haste and in accordance with both wisdom and principle.

Here at The Og Group, we know how dark the storms of life appear in today’s world. We know how frightening the storms can be. We know the dangers and also a little bit about a crash or two on the rocky shores. We also know how tempting it is to abdicate responsibility of your own ship of life to someone else. How tempting it is to hide out as the stowaway instead of reaching out to grasp the helm and take on these storms and navigate these crushing waves.

It is our mission to inspire and to elevate your efforts to take on your life. Og’s life appeared at one point to be worthless. He was a bum and worse, he was an alcoholic drunken bum who wandered from city to city escaping his own life and refusing to captain his own fate.

Yet he changed. He became something else, something magnificent – he become his real, genuine and authentic self. His words continue to give comfort to the lonely and advice to the lost. His impact on others is incalculable.

Imagine what you could do with your life and the powerful impact you could have on others as you courageously take on your life and become the captain of your destiny, following the time-tested principles found in Og’s Scrolls and in other great books.

We hope you will rise up and be counted in your own life. We hope you refuse with fury the efforts of others or life circumstances that may tempt you to go back into your comfort zone. We hope you reach out to others from a center of power, secure and rooted deep in principle and wisdom as the olive tree and as Og. As you do, you will find yourself at a place almost unimaginable, filled with unspeakable joy, over flowing with gratitude. You will be a skilled mariner – the captain of your destiny.

We are here to serve you in this decision and journey!