Sabina Got The Key

Dear lovely people,

When Sabina talked to me that morning, her voice carried all the imprints of pain and frustration. She explained to me how lost she was and went through the previous day reflecting, finding herself frustrated with the lack of results she’s been getting in her business. She told me she reached the conclusion that she’s either working too hard and not getting enough results or she’s just not sure if she’s doing the right thing.

The first thing I told her as I often say is that it happens to everybody from time to time. Whether you're doing the right thing with no result, or you're doing the wrong thing with no result, the end result is the same: nothing. You achieve success when you meet a stretch goal overcoming problems, failures, and difficulties by conscious effort and by application of your capabilities, resources and methods. To be precise, succeeding requires a strong intention to succeed. "How to" is secondary. You must get inspired first and if you really want something so bad, you’ll invent incredible ways to achieve it.

Sabina was looking at me disbelievingly and so I told her many people get to me with the same complain and feeling. At the bottom-line, there is no standardized formula for success, there are rather tools you can use to fashion out your path to success that might be unique to you. There, Sabina started smiling, I was now touching what when wanted to hear and so I was motivated even more.

I must tell you, success is like a painting. While different artists might use the same set of tools and paint on canvas, the finished product will never be the same even if they were all doing the same portrait. The stroke of their brush on the canvas will never be the same, some will apply double pressure while others do it lightly. They will hardly apply the same lighting effects neither will they all highlight the same features.

You may equally look at success as a pot of soup. Different cooks might use the same ingredients but when served, the soup tastes differently. God made us all unique in our different ways always remember that.

As a unique person, you have to give a unique touch to your journey to success because you are different and only you can do it your way. If you focus on knowing the right tools and develop the right frame of mind to take along on your journey, then you will get to the same destination as many other people but using a different path unique to you.

Sabina went home that day all smiles. She got her answers and this is Living Lectures, doing what we do best.

Rain Drops On My Skin

Dear lovely people,

Since childhood, I love moving in the rain and I know many people do. I would just stand in the rain and feel its glorious drops on my skin, how interesting to note that it’s a unique experience and no one else can feel it for me. John Updike coined it perfectly when he said “rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life. I still do think that if a year passes without me moving in the rain, I would be missing such a great inspirational feeling.

The legendary Bob Marley said “Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet” I think he was encouraging his millions of fans to be in the moment and welcome whatever it brings. He must have been talking about the difference between consciously living your life and simply being swept along by what happens to you. Ultimately, it's about feeling empowerment and gratitude for whatever is happening right now, which leads to a deep sense of connection, fulfillment and happiness. Would you differentiate this from the feeling of success? So I am correct to say that success feels like some graceful raindrops falling on your skin with your eyes closed.

Most of the times, when people picture someone successful, they picture someone who has it all together. It means therefore that successful people exude an aura of confidence and competency, which is intimidating. There’s a certain, unexplainable feeling that comes with succeeding. The feeling for sure is different for everyone, whether it’s a kind of euphoric feeling of butterflies in your stomach, smiling and not being able to express any other emotion than happiness or the feel of raindrops on your skin. Everyone, at some point in their lives, has experienced success.

Even though the feeling of success is great and all, why is it that people strive for success in the long-run? Sure, people want money for whatever material pleasure they want. Sure, people want fame so that they are recognized and looked up to by others who want to be just as famous. Sure, people want to be remembered after they die by their success in life, but people who have lots of money, or are famous, or remembered usually sacrificed something important to them in their past.

An example is my success in writing captivating articles on Living Lectures. The only way I get better at writing articles is to read extensively and write many articles every blessed day especially when I don’t feel like writing additional to waking up late at night when I should be enjoying sweet sleep in the arms of my lovely wife’s just to write. This helps me get prolific and better so that I can make new personal records, but at the same time I don’t attend parties or watch my favorite movies as much as I would have loved to.

“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.” says David Brinkley.

Let the raindrops fall on your skin today and for ever after.

I Could Not

Dear lovely people,

 

So often I hear people blushingly conclude “I could Not” do this and that. The truth is, it the only part that gets hard right before success.  Everyone who stops at the point where you say "I Could Not" is called a failure, and those who move beyond it are people who succeed.

The option is just one: choose something, keep trying, and commit to success.  Analyze what made you fail, and be determined to succeed. There is no other way out. No matter what you decide to do, you just have to learn how to proceed when things get really difficult.

“I Could Not” is a feeling deep within your heart, one you try to ignore, of heaviness, of dread and discouragement, of sadness and guilt and collapse. I feel this heaviness in my chest when I fail. All because I could not pushed the frontiers, I hastily concluded “I Could Not.”

It can make you feel like crying. You feel lonely and you want to give up. You want to fall on a bed and shut out the world. But that doesn’t work, because the feeling follows you into bed, and actually intensifies until finally you have to get out of bed to try to escape it. I know, Failure can hurt.

There is just one solution to it all; ACTION. That’s not always easy I know, because when you have the heavy feeling, you don’t feel like taking action at all. You take the action anyway. You take it because you know if you don’t, you feel worse, and eventually your life degrades to the point where you don’t respect yourself anymore. You take the action anyway.

Pope John XXIII inspiringly said “Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.”