Be Grateful For Your Problems; Be VERY Grateful

So often people cry out at life wondering why they have been cursed. Why no opportunities have been given to them. Why they must continue to lead the lives they so desperately want to change. The truth of the matter is, the opportunities that they’ve been seeking have always been there; only in the unrecognizable form of their problems.

Life has handed us numerous opportunities on a silver platter covered in the finest gift wrapping paper with a nice bow tie and a bright red cherry on top of it to boot. The problem is that these opportunities reside inside an ugly, torn up cardboard box labeled as “Problems”. Our job is to open that box and take out the treasures that lie within. What treasures can we find? We will always without a shadow of a doubt find these two treasures inside.

1. Leverage to Change.
2. Personal Responsibility.

Here’s the best part. The bigger the problem, the bigger the box, the bigger the treasures are inside.

As we read stories of those who have initiated remarkable change within their lives, we begin to realize that the instigation of that change always lied within a problem, and a big problem at that. One example that comes to mind is Tony Robbins. You probably know him as the motivational guru you see late at night on infomercials. If memory serves me correct, Tony Robbins was working as a janitor and living in a studio apartment by the beach. One day while washing his dishes in his bathtub, he had that moment. What was that moment? He was sick and tired of all the problems in his life. He was overweight, depressed, not making enough money, unhappy, etc., so he ran out of his apartment and ran on the beach as fast as he could for as long as he could, till he could run no more. He let it all out on his run.

When he came back, he wrote down everything in his life that he would not stand for and then wrote down everything he wanted to achieve. On that day, he made up in his mind that it was up to him and him alone to change his life and that realization coupled with his leverage to change initiated the domino effect to where he is today. That was the spark that started the wildfire. So often people try to find that spark outside themselves. That spark must be found within. YOU have to reach down deep inside and pull that spark out of you and the easiest way to do that is use your gift of problems.

Problems give us unimaginable potential for training and growth in life. When we resolve to solve these problems rather than become weighed down by them, we effectively enroll ourselves in the University of Life. There are no books, no classes, and no professors in the University of Life. You are the professor. You are the student. You must search for the books. You must search for the classes. You must seek out whatever you need to solve this problem and what will happen is that you’ll find you are perfectly capable of doing it. Why? You have the leverage which gives you the resolve to solve the problem and you have embraced that all powerful notion of personal responsibility. You have the desire to change and you know that it’s all up to you to do it. If you give your full trust to somebody to complete a task, they will feel empowered to do it. Similarly, if you give your full trust to yourself by embracing this powerful notion of personal responsibility, you will feel empowered and that power combined with your leverage to change is the formula for the beginning of the solution to your problem.

The leverage to change is something that cannot be bought. It is a huge factor in the catalyst of change because it gives you that all important ingredient to the start of any change. Not belief, not action, not persistence, but desire. White hot desire like the temperature in the center of our sun. Who is more likely to win a boxing heavyweight championship match? The reigning champion or the challenger who has been dreaming of the opportunity to fight for the title from day one? The challenger who has shed blood and tears training in the gym to the wee hours of the night, studying the footage of his opponent, and imagining the victory every time he breathed or the champion who has lost his desire because he achieved his goal? The edge goes to this challenger without a shadow of a doubt. Why? He has the leverage. He has the hunger to win and he knows it’s up to him to do achieve it. Nobody else. Nobody else can step into that ring for him. Only him.

When the fingers stop pointing outward from yourself and slowly start to turn 180 degrees and point inward, you know from that moment on your life has changed. You’ve crossed the bridge. There’s no going back. When a person is first hit with this realization, that everything lies upon him, that he and he alone inevitably brought everything into his life, the typical response is one of overwhelming despair, of depression, of hopelessness, but in the blackness of that despair, a ray of bright white light will pierce through it and he will dawn upon the empowering realization that if he was the cause of everything in his life, he is also the cause of all future change within his life. When that realization hits him, a wave of calmness comes over his body. He experiences confidence for the first time in its rawest form. He does not leap for joy, but rather smiles as he realizes that he has found that certain something that he felt eluded him his entire life. The key that starts change. Personal responsibility. If it’s up to you, which it most certainly is, then it’s up to you, and you alone to change. That coupled with the leverage to change is all one needs to turn a problem into an opportunity to create a better life. Everything starts flowing from that like a river and the ironic thing is that the problem brings along with it everything you need to find the solution.

Most people slap away life’s gifts of problems and let them pile up and as the gifts that life gives keep on getting rejected, they will seemingly come on fewer and fewer occasions until they come no more. The truth is, they have always come and they always will. It’s just that people’s eyes have been gradually shut till they can see them no more. It’s time to open your eyes and see problems for more than what they appear to be because once you do that, you start to realize that the tools to finding the solutions have always lied within them.

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If You’re Making “Mistakes”, You’re On The Right Path

Why the quotes around mistakes? Because you know just as well as I do that they’re not really mistakes. They just look like them at first glance. They are in fact signals that guide you to the hidden opportunities that lie within. If you’re making these mistakes, you’re on the right path. You’re moving toward the inevitable achievement of your dreams.

One of the biggest traps that people fall into when they want to pursue their dreams is that they go on an information binge. They seek to devour as much information as possible to avoid making mistakes in the future. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly prudent to do some research beforehand, but the trap that comes with going on an information binge is, besides the fact that you don’t take action, is that you try to learn all you can to avoid every single mistake in the future and by doing that, you deprive yourself of the many opportunities that can actually help you to achieve your dream.

I know it sounds like an oxymoron. How can avoiding mistakes actually harm you?

It’s because you don’t see where you NEED to make progress on. Mistakes give us feedback on where we need to shift our focus on and we don’t get that if we constantly go on an information binge.

Mistakes give feedback on WHAT needs to be fixed.

Information will NEVER remove all the mistakes.

The only way you’re going to get that feedback is if you make mistakes and mistakes can only be made when action is taken.

Those mistakes will provide you the information you NEED to get what you want. In other words, it will point out where you are deficient in and give you the opportunity to strengthen it. If you look at it that way, you’re actually saving time because you now know what needs to be worked on and what doesn’t. The thing is you can’t get that feedback if you sit there and read all day. The experiences we gather from actually doing an activity rather than reading about it are different as night and day.

The only thing I can do is pound the fact that you WILL make these mistakes and they are FOR you, not against you. As ludicrous as it sounds, it’s right. You’ll find once you take action, all of that knowledge you read may not apply. Some of what you read might be more important so you start to refine the information, toss what you don’t need and focus on what’s working. Making mistakes are those adjustments you make while you sail toward your destination.

You’ll also find that each mistake you make builds off one another. Each mistake you say? Yes. Each mistake. Let me clear up any confusion that might be occurring in the minds of readers right now. You WILL definitely make mistakes during your journey. It will happen. Make no doubt about it. But they are for YOUR benefit. Most of us can’t really see how each mistake builds off one another, but it does. Again, it’s not a tit for tat or 1 for 1 exchange. You slowly get an exponential amount of growth from each mistake you make and learn from.

We can always learn something from each mistake that propels us to the next level. Each mistake builds off one another. That’s a very important concept to understand. In that way, you actually become grateful for it. Each mistake we make turns into an opportunity to become better and as we progress, we make better and better mistakes that create better and better opportunities. It’s a great cycle and you develop something that a lot of people don’t have; an appreciation for these mistakes.

Each mistake also has the potential to take us on a tangent that we never would’ve taken had we not made that mistake, and more often that not, it’s those exact tangents that take us closer to the achievement of our dreams. None of us have the foresight to project and see how each these tangents take us closer to the achievement of our dreams. We can only see how those tangents have helped us when we look back. We can try to guess, but it’s very hard to do it in that moment.

All we can do is look at the present moment and learn from it to move forward and slowly build off our foundation of “mistakes”. Look at any interview of a successful person and you’ll see them grin when asked the question of if they made any mistakes. Often you’ll find they’ll slap their forehead and go on a spiel of how many stupid things they did, but that each one helped them immensely and built off one another to get them to where they are today.

When we experience these mistakes, we really learn. They tend to stay with us longer. How many of us have heard advice all the time on not to engage in certain activities but how many people go ahead and do it anyways and then truly experience the pain of making that mistake? There is something about the experience of making a mistake that gets seared in our brain so that we really learn from it.

Making mistakes also is a very humbling experience. It makes us realize we don’t know all there is to know so we reach out for help. In that sense, we really learn as well because we are forced to go outside ourselves and more often that not, the information we learn from seeking help outside ourselves in turn helps us to achieve our goals.

The point I want to make is people don’t realize the full potential that each mistake brings. They want to avoid making mistakes but the irony is that those mistakes are what they NEED. So don’t have a narrow minded view when it comes to mistakes. See how each mistake actually contributes and moves you forward rather than back and don’t be afraid to make them. They are there to help you. Make no doubt about it. Making them is a sign you’re on the right track.

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When You Feel Down About Going for Your Dreams, Read This

If there’s one thing that I wish to impart to those who have started down the path toward the fulfillment of their dreams, it is this: appreciate the journey.

One of the traps that many people fall into is focusing too much on the end goal in terms of only thinking that fulfilling it is a sign of success and disregarding everything else. People get discouraged because they don’t see the accomplishment of their end goal in the near future. It does take time.

This kind of thinking is further exacerbated when people ask you where your results are. Show me the proof they say or what have you accomplished so far? You’ll find that the majority of the people outside of you only care about what you’ve done, but don’t let that kind of thinking get to you because it can backfire. We need a pat on the back every now and then, even though our final objective has not been fulfilled. The exact prescription for those pats on the backs that will keep you going is the journey.

Every now and then along your journey, just sit down and take into account what you’ve done so far. You’ll be surprised at how far along you’ve come. You will have picked up a rich cornucopia of knowledge, contacts, skills, opportunities to test your resolve, experiences of triumphing over obstacles, etc., that you never would have got before had you not undertaken this journey of yours.

Make no doubt about it though, mistakes will be made along the journey. You might fall into heavy debt if you were trying to start your own business, you might go bankrupt, you might get rejected hundreds of times, people will mock and ridicule you, but that’s all part of the process. All of this is meant for two things. To separate those who really want it from those who don’t and to see if you learn from the lessons that are hidden within each mistake.

Every experience along your journey is meant to teach you something to propel you forward. Each time you feel depressed, it’s a sign to remind yourself of why you’re doing what you’re doing, to further reinforce the drive in you that keeps you going. Each time you encounter an obstacle, it’s a test to see how bad you want it and how smart you are in figuring out what to learn from it. Each time you are ridiculed from friends and family for following your dream, it’s a test to see how firm your foundation is and it presents another opportunity to fortify it even further.

If you focus too much on getting to the end goal, you’ll misinterpret all the things that happen along your journey. You’ll become frustrated because the end goal you so desperately want to achieve is not coming as quickly as you would like it to. Step back, breathe and realize that everything is part of the journey. Appreciate it. Be thankful for it. The mistakes, the setbacks, the small victories, the lessons learned, the new people you meet, the new knowledge you’ve gained, but most importantly of all, appreciate the fact that you found the courage to start and advance toward the direction of your dream. You’ve chosen the path that few take, the path of living YOUR dreams, not the ones that others have laid before you.

Appreciating the journey is a powerful frame to keep you going. It implies a beginning, middle, and end. You’ve already started and now you’re just in the middle and the end is inevitable. Keeping in mind our journey constantly reminds and encourages us that we we will get there.

Appreciate the journey because it is teaching you everything you need in order to get to your end destination. Don’t get discouraged because you equate your achievement with the attainment of your goal. You are already achieving. If you take stock as to what you’ve learned and accomplished so far, you’ll realize that you’ve underestimated yourself, that the limits you imposed only exist in your mind, and that you are truly making progress. Nothing breeds progress like progress.

The longer you stay on the journey, the wiser, the stronger, and the more determined you will become.

Then when you accomplish your dream, when you make it a reality, you will come to realize one thing and that is: the journey has truly SERVED YOU.

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Happiness: 7 Steps To The Right Choices For A Happy Life

The roads of life can lead to places we might not want to go. There are long and short roads; smooth and rocky roads; crooked and straight roads. In our life we have the choice of many roads to find our way as we journey through life. There are roads that lead to a life of joy, family, and religious vocation. There are also roads that lead to fame and fortune on one hand, or isolation and poverty on the other. There are roads to happiness as there are roads to sadness, roads towards victory and jubilation, and roads leading to defeat and disappointment.

Many of our roads have hairpin turns, detours, and crossroads in life. Perhaps the most perplexing of them all is a crossroad. With four roads to choose from and with limited knowledge on where they would go, we must make a choice as to which road to take. What is the guarantee that we would choose the right one that will lead us where we hope will be a happy destination? Some gamble and take the road that looks smoothest, others just stand at the crossroad unable to choose.

Here are 7 steps that could help you choose the best option when you encounter life’s crossroads:

1. There are no guarantees.

You do not really know where a road will lead you until you take it. This is one of the most important things you need to realize about life. Nobody said that choosing to do the right thing all the time would always lead you to happiness.

Loving someone with all your heart does not guarantee that it would be returned. Gaining fame and fortune does not guarantee happiness.

Accepting a good word from an influential superior to cut your trip short up the career ladder is not always good, even if you are highly qualified and competent. Why? There are too many possible outcomes, which your really cannot control. The only thing you have power over is the decisions that you will make, and how you would act and react to different situations.

2. Wrong decisions are always at hindsight.

Had you known that you were making a wrong decision, would you have gone along with it? Perhaps not. Why would you choose a certain path when you know it would get you lost? Why make a certain decision if you knew from the very beginning that it is not the right one. It is only after you have made a decision and reflected on it that you realize whether it was the right one. If the consequences or outcomes are good for you, then you have decided correctly. Otherwise, your decision was wrong.

3. To take the risk you must decide.

Since life offers no guarantee and you would never know that your decision would be wrong until you have made it, then you might as well take the risk and decide. It is definitely better than keeping yourself in limbo.

Although it is true that one wrong turn could get you lost, it could also be that such a turn could be an opportunity for an adventure that leads to more open roads. It is all a matter of perspective. You have the choice between being a lost traveler or an accidental tourist of life. But take caution that you do not make decisions haphazardly. Taking risks is not about being careless and stupid.

4. Get as much information as you can about your situation.

You cannot find the confidence to decide when you know so little about what you are faced with. When I was a news reporter, I asked the 5 W’s: what, who, when, where, and why to determine the truth about a situation. What is the situation? Who are the people involved? When did this happen? Where is this leading? Why are they in this situation? These are just some of the possible questions to ask to know more about your own situation. This is so important that I still employ it. Oftentimes, the reason for indecision is the lack of information about a situation.

5. Identify and create options.

What options does the situation give you? Sometimes the options are few, sometimes they seem too numerous. And, what do you do when you think that the situation offers no options? This is the time that you create your own. Make your creative mind work.

From the most simplistic to the most complicated, entertain all ideas. Do not shoot anything down when an idea comes to your head. Sometimes the most outrageous idea could prove to be the right one in the end. You can ask a friend to help you identify options and even make more options if you encounter some difficulty, but make sure that you make the decision yourself in the end.

6. Weigh the pros and cons of every option.

Assess each option by looking at the advantages and disadvantages it offers you. In this way, you get more insights about the consequences of such an option.

7. Trust yourself and make that decision.

Now that you have assessed your options, it is now time to trust yourself. Remember that there are no guarantees and you cannot undo decisions once they are set into motion. So choose, decide, and believe that you are choosing the best option at this point in time.

If you have applied these 7 steps to your current situation, you will have made a decision. Now, be ready to face its consequences: good and bad. It may take you to a place of promise or to a land of problems. But, the important thing is, you have chosen to live your life instead of remaining a bystander or a passive audience to your own life. Whether it is the right decision, only time will reveal but do not regret it whatever the outcome. Instead, learn from it and remember that you always have the chance to make better decisions in the future.

To succeed at anything you only have to be right 51% of the time!

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