Your problems are very rude. They call relentlessly at the most unholy hours.
It’s another 3am phone call for you. No, you are not the President of the United States, but your problems and challenges are keeping you awake till the wee hours of the morning. Again. You have been tossing and turning in bed, your restless mind giving you no respite. Finally, in exhaustion, you give up and sit up in bed. What’s the use, you think? You might as well get up and try, once again, to find the solution that has so long eluded you. You go to your desk, and turn on the lamp. Its brilliance disturbs your eyes and makes you squint. It’s as if your mind too has been squinting lately, unable to open up and clearly see the way forward out of this morass that you find yourself. Your log into your computer, and time blinks back at you: 2:57 am. It might as well have been shouting three minutes to failure, three minutes to being fired, three minutes to going out of business…
You open the dreaded sales reports. The numbers seem to be mocking, jeering at you. It’s obvious that you will not make your sales target for this month. The past two quarters have been equally disappointing. You know something must change, or you will have to change jobs. Maybe your small business would have to shut its doors for good, if something doesn’t change, and change fast.
You have conducted brainstorming sessions, ideation conferences, until you are blue in the face. No breakthroughs, No usable ideas have come of it. You sense that there is something that you can do, and that you’re capable of figuring it out, but it’s like a detective following a strong lead on a case, whose trail suddenly runs cold. You simply can’t seem to reach into the unknown and draw out the answer that you know exists, and which you desperately need. And this is the bigger frustration, knowing that your solution is available, but you can’t connect with it. At least not yet.
Still, you have the consolation that a solution exists, and that you will eventually find it. That has been your life’s philosophy. You believe in possibilities, that every problem can be solved, or at least mitigated. That there is a serum for every virus or pestilence that plagues your business, career, or life. Like this author is wont to say: “There is a way. Go find it!” You already know that the problem is solvable, all that’s left now is the search. You are determined to pour your heart, soul, strength, mind, and body into finding the elusive but not illusory solution. You are giving all that you are, to get all that you want. I call this FOCUS! “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”, like the renowned poet Alfred Tennyson writes in his famous poem, “Ulysses”.
Focus is the concentration of one’s mental, physical, even spiritual forces towards the achievement of a particular outcome. Focus is the delineation of priorities, of identifying the one thing that one is willing to stake everything on, and to pursue it to completion.
Focus eliminates distraction. It is the erasure of mental noise, caused by the overload of our mental faculties with information and everything else that competes for our attention. Noise is the distraction that impedes the easy flow of information. Thus, focus is the elimination or reduction of this noise, in order to assist in the unobstructed flow of direly needed information and ideas from our inner man to flow to our physical man, from the subconscious mind to the conscious mind where decisions are made and action taken. Our subconscious mind holds the insight and rare wisdom that we need to tackle our problems, be they professional or personal, and it is imperative that we clear the path for such valuable information to flow through with ease and reach us, so we can profit from it. In information technology, this will be described as throughput, ensuring the clear and maximum delivery of information in a network. The human mind is a network of sorts, and sometimes the mental clutter and distractions of daily life can seriously impede the seamless flow of ideas and information from the subconscious to the conscious mind.
When the mental noise is high, one’s ability to hear, let alone hear clearly from their subconscious mind, is severely curtailed.
Unfortunately, this is how we miss out on great, life-changing ideas and solutions, and instead go marching round and round the mountain of confusion, and being tormented by our own 3am phone calls. Focus is the answer.
Imagine the motorcade of a dignitary passing through a busy thoroughfare. The traffic is cleared to make way for him or her to pass without delay. It is in a similar fashion that we must pave the way for vital information to travel from our subconscious mind and reach our conscious mind. Some information is just too important to get caught up in the traffic, be delayed, or not make it through at all. Remove, or at least reduce the traffic so that eminent ideas and hunches that you have been expecting will find safe and timely passage from your inner, wiser man, to your physical man. Now you can go to work implementing the ideas received. That is why meditation and other such techniques are helpful. And that is why focus is indispensable to the person who is determined to succeed in any worthwhile endeavor, especially if the project entails doing something inventive, or something that they have never done before as an individual. And the more we want to accomplish, the more we must tap into the strange and infallible abilities of our inner man. And we can hardly do so, unless we focus. You’re not bereft of good ideas, you’re just distracted, and your mind too busy and cluttered, to hear the timeless wisdom emanating from your more enlightened inner man. Hush! Be still and succeed!
One of the popular questions in our culture is asking someone who their hero is. Who inspired you as a youngster? Who inspires you now? Sometimes it’s a “what”, not a “who”. But the point is that we all need something or someone to inspire us, to draw out our greatness from within. The question implies that we want to achieve great feats, and that certain individuals, causes, and circumstances help drive us towards accomplishing these lofty endeavors. But what if we’ve been looking in all the wrong places for our heroes? What if your primary hero is none other than yourself? After all, who knows better than you, what moves you and what you can achieve?
Be a hero in your own life. There’s no greater role model to look up to, than the better, nobler person that you desire to become. He, she, is your role model. You wish more than anything else, to become him, her. Not anyone or anything else, but him/her. YOU.
You hold a beautiful image of that person within you. It is a clear, sublime, unblemished image etched on your soul- an image of you!
Everyday you look at that image. Everyday you are called to live out that image. Everyday you must take steps to reflect the majesty that resides within, striving to be revealed. You have it in your power to be who your soul knows that you can be, must be, if your life is to be lived in truth.
Don’t forget the greatness that you see within. Don’t forget the nobility, the beauty, and excellence that you glimpsed from the deep, rich, unique well of your soul. When you do this, when you live this authentically, giving voice to the uncommon being within, and bringing to life the great vision imagined by your soul, then you’re truly living. Then you are a hero. A superhero- yours!
In a world where many try their hardest to copy others and to blend in, it is the greatest act of heroism to be true to oneself, to become in this world, what one already is, within. To bring eternity into time, to make immortality mortal, to be one with yourself, in spirit and in flesh. It isn’t creating anything new, it is simply the excavating and unveiling of who you truly were all along. Your soul knew this incontrovertible truth. That’s why it was restless and unfulfilled, until you revealed the real you.
To live authentically is to be a hero everyday, shinning your light to the fullest, everyday. To allow your soul to sing its song in the purest, most beautiful way. That’s life indeed!
Remember…
Remember you. Be true to you. Become you.
Come home.
Come to yourself today. You are the hero that you seek, the hero that you’ve always known that you could be.
One’s arms are never shorter than their imagination. Our arms can reach as far as our imagination can conjure, and bring its musings into reality.
The cliche is true: you can achieve whatever your mind can conceive. Your mind isn’t some wild, idiotic, impractical wasteland. At least not if you tend to it. Ignoring the grandeur kindled by your imagination is like a man who discovered a vast gold mine in his backyard, sealed it up, and never mined it. Yet he lives in squalor and indigence.
Your imagination is not just a dreamer of dreamers. It is an infallible indication of your potentialities and abilities, a harbinger of things to come. What the mind sees is an authentic blueprint for the feet to walk and the hands to build.
This indicates man’s dual nature- you are both spirit and body, non-physical and physical, visible and invisible, eternal and mortal. You can’t live an existence that is half of who you are. The mind and the body are one. The invisible world and the visible world are one. Your mind’s inventions and your hands creations are one and the same thing. The two- mind and hands- are a team. They collaborate to produce the same outcome.
So what you imagined is what you are absolutely capable of achieving. There is nothing like a pipe dream. The dream is real. Your dreams are real! They are real in your sacred, inner man, and that is proof positive that the external, physical man can achieve it. What you see within you can be fully, exactly replicated in your physical life. Your dreams are merely a foreshadowing of what is to come in your physical life, if you work at it, if you permit it to come alive.
The only obstacles are fear and lack of faith.
Never let anyone, not even yourself, tell you that your dreams are unattainable, or that they are a “shitty pipe dream”, like Ellis Redding told Andy Dufresne in the Shawshank Redemption, one of the greatest works of cinema.
Climbing the last hill can feel like climbing ten Everests. The last mile is always the hardest, for the journey has been long and tasking. We’re weighed down not just by today’s troubles, but by the aftershocks of yesterday’s avalanche.
You’ve been on a journey for while now. You’ve fought hard and hung in tough. But it seems your efforts always fell short. You’re beginning to lose heart. Maybe you dreamed far higher and bigger than you have the ability to execute? Too big for your britches, eh?
Maybe your critics were right. Maybe you aren’t cut out for this “big” stuff after all. Maybe you should cut your losses and quit now. Right?
No way! Press on! The dream you had is real. The goal is attainable. One’s arms are never shorted than their imagination. Our arms can reach as far as our imagination can conjure.
We lose by not finishing, than we do from stumbling. Failure isn’t that you fell or made a mistake, or that things didn’t pan out like you expected. True failure is leaving the job half done. Quitting. Throwing in the towel before the goal is achieved. Your vision wasn’t to test and see, to “try” it out. It was to accomplish a particular goal, and for as long as the goal is not yet reached, the mission remains incomplete.
Finish it. You’ll get no respect, not from yourself or from others, if you don’t finish. Not finishing is the curse of people who live with regrets; don’t let it be yours. If there’s one thing that I hate, it’s regrets! I loathe it!
Finish what you start, and you’ll have the wherewithal to do even greater things in the future. Today’s success lays the tracks for tomorrow’s conquest. But you must finish!
Don’t let your doubts and fears become greater than your dreams. Here’s an equation that I like to use to help me clarify things: the mathematical sign of “greater than” (>).
I ask myself this question: Dreams or fears, which of them will I allow to come in front of the “greater than” sign?
Scenario #1: Dreams/goals > fears. OR
Scenario #2: Fears > Dreams/goals.
Obviously, scenario #1 is preferable. It helps us focus on pushing ahead even when we are afraid, when fear and its troublesome cousins of doubt and anxiety come calling. That you’re afraid isn’t new, nor is it strange, and it isn’t the problem. Letting the fear stop you is the problem. Fear will always knock on the doors of our hearts. It’s a human condition. But if we’re wise, we won’t open the door. Of course, we will certainly hear the incessant, rapping at the door. But courage helps us silence the noise. The greater one’s courage, the easier it is to successful drown out the boisterous, impetuous fear.
Yes, you can never completely eliminate fear and doubt, but make sure you have the right perspective, and keep those trouble makers exactly where they belong: under your feet and in the dust.
Don’t give them the time of day, and don’t permit them to steal your joy and dreams. It’s time to charge ahead with even more determination and verve.
You’ve seen the future. Be bold and determined to live it. Fully.
Sometimes, some situations can’t be salvaged. Best to just walk away.
After hours, days, weeks, even years, we’re still stumped. We ask ourselves, “How do I best to respond to this? How can I safely, effectively, and wisely respond to this situation without making it worse? Is there a way to put out this fire without personally getting engulfed by the flames?”
Can this situation be effectively addressed in a manner that allows me to maintain my sanity, composure and integrity? Is there a possibility that I might get ensnared by the same clutches that I am trying to rescue someone from? Can I salvage the situation, or do I just need to humbly walk away?
Sometimes we might find that when faced with a difficult situation, the answers to the questions above are a resounding “NO. There’s nothing you can do”. So what to do next? My suggestion? Stop doing. Simply refuse to engage. Stay away. Don’t take the bait. Walk away.
This is especially important if this is a chronic problem that you have in your personal life, say like in a relationship or business. Sometimes there simply is no way to tackle a problem without getting sucked in. You know this because you’ve tried it many times before.
You went in with good intentions and suggestions that you thought were reasonable solutions to the problem. Instead of support and understanding, you received severe push back, defensiveness, and may be even anger.
Eventually you realize that you can’t fix this problem, and that every attempt that you have made in the past has not only failed, but they have left you drained and increasingly disillusioned.
It’s time to disengage. Tune out. Abandon the ‘rescue mission’. It isn’t going to work. If anything, you could end up both causing irreparable damage to your relationship and getting yourself dragged down in the mire.
Some situations are simply too complex and ingrained in people’s character and behavior patterns for us to resolve, no matter how well-meaning we are. This is way above your pay grade. Give it up, or go down with it. A dead man can save no one.
You know what they say about saving a drowning man- as you try to rescue him, be careful that he doesn’t pull you down into the water with him and you both drown.
The fairy tales and legends of old were right. Our lives are determined by fate. We are indeed fated to do or act in a certain way. The old fables tell of the hero who is destined to carry out a certain act, or meet a certain end. And it happens exactly as the seer, witch, goddess or prophet had foretold. The hero meets the same prescribed end. And so, for millennia, men believed in fate, in the irreversible, non-negotiable power of the gods. Shakespeare tells us in his famous play, King Lear, that “as flies to wanton boys, so are we to the gods. They kill us for sport.”
But!
What is fate? Who is fate? Who are the “gods” that manipulate our lives and warp our free will like a computer hacker would take over their victim’s computer, corrupt the files and the entire system and network, making them behave like the hacker wants? Who are these supposedly supernatural forces that predestine our lives? Who direct our steps and cause us to unwittingly move in the manner and direction that they chose?
Brief answer: YOU. You are the gods that fated you to act in a certain way. The god is the man, woman, boy, girl, that you see when you look in the mirror. You are it! You are the god that foretold your future, and carried out your own prophesy with exactitude!
So how come the characters in our plays and fables end up the same way that the gods foretold?
Because of believe.
It is clear that the prophecies only came to pass because these characters believed it, started thinking like the gods, and took action that confirmed what the gods had supposedly said. But all along, they weren’t aware that they were simply obeying their own thoughts and beliefs. Their free will was always theirs. No magical, supernatural god moved their hands and feet and compelled them to go and act in ways that resulted in the prescribed outcomes.
The gods were their own thinking.
The action was spurred by their own thoughts. They were obeying their own minds, heeding their own counsel, and being true to themselves, all the while convinced that they were hapless participants who were simply fulfilling the inexorable wishes of the gods .
Man makes his world.
Since we are fate, then it stands to reason that we also make our own environment. The average person is molded by their environment. But the superior people are different. They may be impacted by their environments, but they are not altogether overwhelmed by it. They still retain a part of themselves that is untouched, and remains apart from their environment. These are the people who will change their world. They can reach into the unspoiled parts of themselves, to the inner man that hasn’t succumbed to the challenges around them, and from there, draw forth fresh material to remake their environment and create the world that they want. These are the greats, these are the people who remake themselves, and consequently their world, and oftentimes, ours, too.
They demonstrate that we are fate. That que sera sera isn’t true, because we make it so. We make our world.
There are certain things that I would call “appendages”, that become almost a part of one’s life, as a result of the challenges that they face, and the trials that they have been through. These accessories, as I term them, have now become a part of the person’s life, a permanent fixture. The appendages are the tools that they acquired over time, to help them deal with their problems. Unfortunately, the tools have become crutches, because they no longer assist in solving the problem, but in perpetuating them. Now, the tools help the person bear the problem, and suffer through it, instead of seeking a permanent solution. These appendages are survival techniques and tools that last too long, and might even become another problem, in and of themselves. They are the crutches that once carried you, now you carry them.
Our crutches help us limp along through life, but they never address the underlying problem. The crutches excuse, and even encourage our infirmity and feebleness. They provide alibis for us, and give us a false sense of security and wellness. We are sick, well into our bones, but the crutches placate us and dull our senses, deceiving us into believing that all is well, that this is the best that we can do, all while keeping us stagnated.
And so, years go by, opportunities slip by us, but the problems and the attendant crutches remain. The limp gets worse, and we rely on the crutches some more, naively believing how helpful they are. A vicious cycle develops.
If only we could see that the crutches just rationalize our frailty, especially of the mind, which is the worst possible place for a person to be infirm. So we never seek real solutions, real healing, real care. Infirmity has become a quasi-permanent state. And we accept it, and feel grateful. Why would we seek better, genuine, full healing, when we believe that we have all we need in the crutches?
Thus, we continue limping along through life with the crutches that have now become a part of us, a life companion, even part of our identity. Wherever we are seen, the crutches are seen, too. Wherever we go, there go the crutches. People define and describe us by our crutches. If they extend an invitation to us, they might as well invite the omnipresent and regressive crutches. Sometimes they see our crutches even before they see us, because the crutches have subsumed our identity, hopes, and dreams.
What we fail to see is that we are carrying the crutches, more than they are carrying us. We are expending valuable energy- both mental and physical- to carry the crutches, when we could have just used the same energy to move ourselves, to travel faster and further. A crutch-less, unencumbered spirit can scale heights that a spirit weighed down by crutches can’t even begin to envisage.
You think you need that thing or person to serve as a ladder for you, to stabilize your life, or help you climb higher. Truth is, the ladder is leaning on you, more than you’re leaning on it, and it is adding more to your burdens, rather than alleviating them.
So what to do?
First, identify your crutches, recognize them for the dead weights that they are. This can be difficult, because as we have already established, many people think that they need their crutches, and they erroneously rely on these self-limiting albatrosses. Others will argue that their crutches are actually useful and indispensable, so recognizing a crutch is a challenge of its own.
Implement a clear-eyed, honest assessment of all the mental accessories and aids in your life, and note the things that subtract rather than add joy and light to your life. Anything that has consistently encumbered your progress must quickly be jettisoned with the promptness that a sinking ship ditches its cargo, in order to save itself.
Travel through life light and free. A burdened being rarely ascends to great heights.
You must first cast off the mental chains and crutches, before you can take hold of a brighter, beautiful, liberated future. Let the crutches go. Set them free so you too can be free. You are both the inmate and the jailer here. Set both of you free, and you will be free indeed.
To be success minded is to be action-minded. Any plan or vision, no matter how lofty it is, doesn’t see the light of day without action. Lack of execution is the abortion of dreams and visions. The conception of the idea or vision took place in mind, but it never saw the light of day, because at the point of birth and delivery, there wasn’t the requisite puissant action to push the idea out from the realm of the unseen to the seen, from the internal world of the mind, to the external world of humans, where it can be useful to someone.
The beauty of anything can only be seen in the doing. You could never have admired the brilliance of the Mona Lisa if it’d remained in the beautiful mind of Leonardo da Vinci.
Action is the unleashing of vision, faith, courage, discipline, patience, even love, towards the attainment of a desired goal. Sometimes it takes all of the above and more, to bring an idea to life. If a person possessed all the knowledge in all the world, and were as talented as a record-holding Olympic athlete, and as intelligent as ten thousand Einsteins put together, and more disciplined than a monk, or more courageous than a soldier on a fearsome battlefield, if they won’t act, if they don’t execute on their ideas, it means nothing.
Nothing can save a man who will not be moved by his own vision to take action to see it come to pass. He esteems himself too little, to believe that his work will add anything of note to the world. He is who he accepts that he is.
The confidence we have in our ideas is seen in the action that we take to manifest them.
When we act, we allow the world to peek into our minds, to catch a glimpse of our brilliance. We pull back the curtains of our intellect and grant the world a sacred permission to see our neurons at work. We fling open the doors of our hearts and show them the faith we possess that moves mountains.
Action is noble. It gives all your virtues room to thrive and prosper.
This is what we should emphasize to young people: to take action, to take it early, often, and decisively. Action chases away fear. And if young people were to learn this early, it would help eliminate some of the doubts, confusion, and self-immolating behaviors that seem to besiege the younger generation.
Students of the Bible are well acquainted with the story of creation. We are told that in the beginning, God created the Heavens and the earth. When the scene opens, we see the earth empty, chaotic, formless, and dark, with water everywhere. God is also on the scene. All His power and wisdom and infinite beauty were with Him, yet darkness and emptiness persisted. Change only occurred when God did something, when He took action and commanded, “Let there be light.” And there was light.
All of our abilities and grand visions mean nothing, if not backed by action.
Action is the only definite proof of their existence, that we ever conceived such noble thoughts or beheld such sublime, stupendous beauty in our minds. Potential energy can not move horses, light a factory, or fly planes. But potential energy transformed into kinetic energy can move and change the world. And it indeed has.
This, I believe, is how we are godly, to employ our creative imagination to develop and create something that adds good value to the world, and by extension, to ourselves. When we create, we do things that we love, for love of our fellowman, in service to them. This is godlike.
Action is creation at its best, creation perfected.
Action is the hallmark of a wise man; fools are full of empty words.
Action is man at his best, venturing to let his hands and feet travel the vast plains that his magnificent mind has already traversed.
Nike was right all along. Just do it, or there’s no “it”. Nothing. Let the “something”, the idea in your head, be a “something” in your hand, and in your life. Be the extraordinary person that your soul has informed you that you can be.
How will the world know the fine genius that you are, if you don’t take action that demonstrates your genius? If you don’t create the product or service, compose the song, write the book or poetry, paint the painting, teach the students, take the bold but albeit lonely step, then your big bright idea ends up like a mindless sigh that is soon forgotten.
People can’t see your lovely, potentially world-changing thoughts, but they surely can see them expressed through the works of your hands. Show them. Show them who you are! Who you really are!
What’s your mind cooking today? What did it cook yesterday, last month, last year?
Are we ever going to see it? When?
A person who dreams, yet fails to act is engaging in the worst kind of deception- self-deception. And self-erasure.
Don’t wait for your “song” before you dance. The DJ might not know it, or have it in his or her collection. Don’t miss out on today’s joy because what you liked yesterday isn’t available. Try something new! You just might find yourself a new favorite song, something that you like better!
Dance! Don’t wait for the drums to play before you dance, because if you do, you will merely be dancing to the drummer’s beat, adjusting your energies and moves to their rhythm. Start dancing. Let the drummer take his cue from you. Start dancing. Let the world follow. Let your vision and your passion lead, let the fervid spirit within you lead the way, not the world’s beat. Some people need the world to tell them what tune to dance to. Some listen to an external chime before they start tapping their feet. Not you. You bring yours. You drive yours. You sustain yours. And the world responds to the life in your rhythm.
You can twist your ankle, or even lose your vision, because you’re trying to dance to a beat that does not flow with your natural energy. Worse, you can become too reliant on their sound, and forget yours. In listening to them, you might slowly move away from yourself and forget how to hear the voice of your soul. Never dim your inner voice.
So dance! The true dancer doesn’t need a drummer to beat for him to dance, no. He brings his own music, in his heart. His soul is a skillful player who sublimely, expertly, plays on its instrument, whatever the dancer needs. He who dances always has music. He brings his own. He tells the world what he wants to dance to, and the cadence of his steps reveals the exact percussion flowing from his soul. Don’t wait. Listen to the music within, and dance!
You only need external music if you stop listening to the music within. Listen to your soul’s sound, and keep dancing, and the music will never stop. Your life’s melody is found in your soul. Listen, and your dance will always be beautiful, true, unique, dynamic, irreplaceable, all yours.
When you dance from within, you will never be lost. You will always know your way home, for you will be home.
Why is kryptonite dangerous to Superman? It weakens him and deprives him of his supernatural abilities. In other words, it makes him ordinary, like a “normal” guy, destructible, conquerable.
As long as he is Superman, and retains his special talents, he thrives and soars above all else. He dominates in his domain and is unstoppable. His demise can only come when he disrobes himself of his “specialness”, and becomes average.
His averageness is his waterloo.
What sets you apart as a person is what sets you apart in the world, and brings you to a place of success and honor.
Humans, as similar as we are in our DNA and other biological makeup, we are also very different. Our similarities are obvious, and are on the surface. One needn’t do anything to partake in the biological qualities, one need only breath, exist. On the other hand, the things that set us apart are hidden, and we must dig deep, and draw them forth. We must be well-acquainted with our inner, deeper, hidden self. We must intentionally bring forth these differentiating gifts. This takes work. It takes self study, self-knowledge, and self-possession.
A man who knows not himself can not know the vast riches that are housed within him. And so, he can not know what makes him different, special. He is thus undistinguished, and unsung.
Among his contemporaries, he remains a nobody, for he hasn’t found a way to demonstrate his genius, to announce himself to the world, and to stand out . No one goes to the marketplace to buy the things that they already possess. People purchase the things that they lack. People need you for the things that they can’t do for themselves, that is, they need you for the things that make you different. If all you have to offer is what they already have, then you add little or no value to them. This invariably renders you useless.
Become a superman in your area of endeavor. Retain your supernaturalness. Be special, and share your specialness with the world. This is how you win. This is how your soul is fulfilled.
