Lead the way.
The power of one wish.
Just wanted to send love & support to those who have been affected by Hurricane Sandy. To everyone else in the world - Whoever you are, whatever you are doing, and wherever you are, just stop for a minute. Think about those who are currently going through tough times and just pray for them. That is all that I ask you to do.
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
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| — | Winston Churchill |
It is the worst thing to be rejected, or to be told that you cannot do something. But it is even worse, to feel like it is the end of the world. You must not feel like this. You must not let you defeat you. You must stand up to your obstacles, and say - I can, and I WILL, defeat you.
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| — | Beyond Motivation |
Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do something. If you want it, go get it. Period.
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| — | Beyond Motivation |
The secret to success…
Have you ever thought to yourself? Why is that person more successful than me? What are we doing differently? Or contrarily, have you just come to accept that some people are ‘born with talent’, or are child prodigies, gifted genius.
Well my friends, neither of the above are true. What differentiates successful people from unsuccessful people are 3 things:
1. Successful people do what they love.
2. Successful people love what they do.
3. Successful people work hard at what they do every single second, and minute of each day.
You’re probably thinking to yourself now, well I knew that! You didn’t have to tell me because that’s what my parents, or grandparents have told me throughout the years of growing up. Well, they’re right. There is no secret ingredient to success. But then how come only a mere handful of people are successful? Well, that is because the mixture of the above 3 things are extremely difficult to achieve, and require large amounts of motivation, continuous dedication, sweat and hard work. See, to almost all successful people, there is nothing that is ‘too hard’ to achieve, there is no ‘9-5’ deadline in their daily jobs, simply because they love what they do and if they could, they would work 24/7 a day. This would not be true for all individuals.
A famous quote by William A. Ward goes like this - ‘Recipe for success: study while others are sleeping; work while others are loafing; prepare while others are playing; and dream while others are wishing’.
I can tell you now, a majority of people dread Mondays at work, they dread waking up early to go to work, they dread the atmosphere once they arrive at work, and they repeatedly tell themselves “only 2 more days left till the weekend” each and every Wednesday. Now, if you can wake up every morning before your alarm, eager to go to work, and you get to work feeling like nothing in the world matters besides what you’re doing. Then, and only then my friend, will you be truly successful.
It’s true what people say - Follow your passion, and the money will come. If you’re merely going to work to bring home the bacon, and you’re hating what you’re doing, then you can never be successful. Everyone has a passion, and everyone has a dream. And everyone can make their dreams come true and become successful. But only a selected number of those actually make their dreams a reality, because people get caught up with their day-to-day lives that they forget to chase after what is important to them. And as time passes, they can only look up and admire those who have made it.
Oh, and you know one more secret that define successful people? They don’t have a limit on the amount of time required to achieve their success. They have a goal in mind and they chase after that goal, regardless of how long it will take, they never deter away.
So, take a minute and just breathe here. Think clearly about what you do that makes you happy. Now picture yourself doing that for the rest of your life. If you can see yourself doing that for 5, 10, 20 years. Then, that is what you should do. Simple isn’t it? But only a handful of people recognise it. The majority, well, they still believe in the ‘secret’ to success.
Are you living your life through your technology?
I want to discuss today the dangers of technology that we, as citizens of the 21st century, have fallen into. Are you like the person in the image above? Glued to your mobile phone 24/7, constantly on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Whatsapp and all the myriad of apps, updating and changing your status, seeing what your friends are doing, messaging and messaging, because after all, you have unlimited number of messages and data! If so, then welcome to the TA club - Technology Anonymous.
Unlike the previous generation, we do not fall asleep reading a book, we fall asleep holding our phones. When we wake up, the first thing we check are our phones for any ‘important’ messages which we might have missed in our group chat last night due to falling asleep, and then we visit Facebook, Twitter, etc, checking what everyone else was doing in the past 10 hours in which we were not awake. Well, the obvious answer is that they were asleep too, but we just had to check to make sure.
I think the virtual atmosphere created by technology such as the internet and mobile phone, has allowed us to create this ‘virtual identity’ in which we define ourselves. This is especially true in the example of Facebook in which we have control as to what information we want to share. It also means we get to edit, which means we get to delete, and retouch…not too much, not too little, just right. In a way, technology helps us clean up our ‘imperfections’, whatever they may be. So to those who thought they believed in beautiful imperfections, well, who would want to be imperfect when you can now be perfect? This can be done with the best photos, with the best lines of information about who you really are (or aren’t).
Because of technology, we are now sacrificing conversation for virtual connections with other human beings, we avoid direct contact, phone conversations, because technology has allowed us to ‘perfect’ ourselves and edit what we say, before it comes out of our mouths (or as guided by our fingertips). Funny example; I had a friend say to me the other day that someone was calling her and she deliberately didn’t pick up because she didn’t want to face the ‘awkwardness’ of speaking on the phone. Well… why do you have a phone then? Oh that’s right, to text saying you’re sorry you missed the call, to tweet your feelings , to Facebook stalk, and to receive +20 likes on the one status update (WOW!).
Due to lack of communication, and human interaction, technology is actually preventing us from showing love and affection. Overtime, we will just stop caring. We turn to technology because there are myriad of automatic listeners, because the feeling that no one is listening to us makes us want to spend time with these machines, which seems to be caring about us. Overtime, we become attached.
Great and efficient as they may be, technology cannot constitute real emotions. Novelist Max Frisch said “Technology… the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it.” It cannot substitute the touch, the smell, the body movements of another human being. It cannot define how we learn about each other, how we come to understand each other. It cannot substitute the love and appreciation we gain from one another.
So, the message is this. Technology is great. It has helped us do many things which were impossible a few decades ago. But do not make technology a priority, or worse, a replacement of your life. Hence wherever you are, tomorrow morning when you wake up, go and have aconversation with your family and loved ones. After all, they are what you have left that is truly real.
