Life can throw some curve balls at you. You can either get caught up in the frustration of it all, or you can use it as an opportunity to make something extraordinary. What follows is a story of how I did exactly that.

Some of you are familiar with a person who goes by the screen name of Fmragtops. If you don’t know who he is, that’s OK. All you need to know is that he was a blogger that I became friends with. So much so, in fact, that I was informally invited to his wedding. [If you like, you can check out one of my favorite posts he contributed to Radioactive Liberty.]

I made plans to attend, which means I made travel plans and reservations. I live in Pennsylvania, and he lives in Louisiana, so it’s not something that you just hop in the car and go meet up somewhere.

Time went on, and I didn’t hear from him again. I still haven’t. No one else seems to know where he is either.

My lovely fiancée, Jan asked from time to time if I had heard back from him. Of course, the answer was always “no.” As time closed in, she said that we should cancel the arrangements. I said, “No. We’re going, wedding or not. It’s a place that we would never think to visit otherwise, and we’re going to go anyway, and have the time of our lives.”

I was determined that it would be an amazing vacation. I kept this thought in my mind. Every time I would think about the fact that soon we would be on our way to Louisiana, I focused on the thought that it would be our best vacation ever.

Without a formal invitation, most people would probably have come to the same conclusion as Jan did. Most people would have decided that there was no longer any reason to go. I’m not most people.

Over and over again, I repeated in my mind, and to Jan that we were going to go, and our trip was going to be amazing, in spite of the lack of our original purpose for going.

Jan was skeptical. Really, what is there to do in Southern Louisiana, and why would we want to go there during the hottest time of year?

At this point, we didn’t have any plans beyond travel and lodging, but I just knew that it was going to be great. I refused to believe anything that was contrary to that. “We’ll figure it out. I’m sure that there’s plenty to do,” I said.

Once we got there, we picked up some brochures and started planning our days. Sure enough, there was plenty to do. My step-daughter, the malevolent little girl, was fixated on one single objective.

One of the brochures was for an alligator ranch called Insta-Gator. Every August – because that’s when alligator eggs hatch – they have a special tour that let’s you help an alligator hatch out of it’s egg. It’s something that people get on a waiting list and wait all year long to do. We called two days in advance and got a spot.

If I hadn’t been determined that we were going to have a spectacular time, I probably would have caved and canceled our plans to save some money. We never would have helped hatch an alligator.

It gets better!

We went to a plantation house. The owner has spent something like $150 million to restore the house. He lives there, and has a male and a female dog, and their two puppies. The dogs have free roam of the property.

After we were done with the tour, my step-daughter found the old male dog, and coaxed it into following us around the garden for a while. That wasn’t good enough, so she set out to find the puppies. She employed the assistance of one of the House Restaurant waitresses.

By the time Jan and I rounded the corner, she was with Mama dog, and the puppies, who were escorted by a somewhat slovenly looking man in a golf cart. Jan thought he was probably the hired dog handler.

Wrong! It turns out the man in the golf cart was the owner of the property (and the dogs). We talked to him for about half an hour, while my step-daughter played with the dogs.

Then Jan mentioned to him that the tour guide had said something about going over the levee to see the river, and asked what way we go to do that. He said, “Hop on. I’ll give you a ride.” The multi-millionaire owner of the property then proceeded to chauffeur us, in his golf cart, to the top of the levee to see the sunset over the Mississippi River.

When we were done admiring the view, we all hopped back on the golf cart, and he took us to the parking lot, where he dropped us off at the door of our car.

There’s no extra tour package option for that one. There’s no “have the owner drive you around the property and drop you off at your car” tour package. That one is special.

You can make amazing things happen too, if you focus your thoughts on making them happen. It has to be more than just wishful thinking. You have to know it. Just like I knew that our vacation was going to be incredible.

As I like to say, Life is not something that just happens to you. It’s something you create in your own image. I created a vacation that was in the image I held.

• Extraordinary
• Amazing
• The time of my life

The result even exceeded my expectations. It was extraordinary. It was amazing. It was the time of my life, and then some.

What image do you hold for your life? Is it extraordinary? Is it an image that you don’t like? Only you know what that image you hold is, but if it’s not what you want it to be, then you need to throw it out, send it away, and get a new image. Why not get one that’s extraordinary?

Then strap in. It’s going to be an exhilarating ride!

If you have an extraordinary story, please share it. Think about what image you held, and what you did to make it happen. That’s the key to making an extraordinary life.

If you want to keep updated on new content, Subscribe to Radioactive Liberty, or you can subscribe via email.

Category: Empowerment Tags: Make Your Life Extraordinary, Make Your Lives Extraordinary, Personal Development, Self-Help, Visualization