Daily motivation - April 29, 2010

What you spent most of your time will shape you entire life.

People spend most of the time for working and sleeping, right? But we are not going to talk about that. We're going to talk about how we spend most of our time. You already know that if you want to be successful, you have to spend your time mostly on something that can lead to success. The easy and simple way is modeling the people who have already got what you want. Simply ask yourself, how they spend their time? Are they doing something productive or doing something useless?

What I particularly want to talk about is not how much time you spend to do something, but rather what are you going to do with the time you have. There are only two choice you can make. Successful people take one choice and others take another choice.

Let's say you have leisure time or free time where you have nothing to do. As I said before, you have two choices to shape your life in the future.

Your free time can be spent in two ways:

1. You can do things that are bad for you. It means that you do things that lead you away from success.

2. You can do things that are good for you. It means that you do things that lead you closer to success.

You can spend your time in unproductive activities such as daydreaming, sleeping, watching TV too much, playing around, talking about gossip etc. This type of activity is worthless for you. Even though playing or refreshing is recommended, sometimes people are doing it too much, too much playing, to much watching, to much playing. If you spend too much time for it, when do you have the time to do things that are positive?

You can spend your time in productive activities that expand yourself better and better. It is called self improvement. You can read motivational or inspirational books, attending seminars or workshops, doing activities that are both enjoyable and uplifting, doing a part-time job or business and on and on. When you spend some of your free time to improve yourself, you will one day improve you life.

Successful people sacrifice their leisure time to do things that other people won't. What sacrifice will you be willing to make?

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Daily motivation - March 18, 2010

Keeping your motivation is an important factor to achieve your dreams, goals and the life that you want. As you know, Motivation can lead you to success and make you feel good. However, sometimes we experience the feeling of low motivation and lack of hope. So What are the keys to keep your motivation in high level? Here are 5 tips for you.

1. Aiming for most inspiring goals
Sometimes people set goals that are too low, that they think they deserve. But setting low goals doesn't make them motivated enough to take certain action. Review you goals and see can you get inspired again? If not, it might be time to change your goals with the inspiring ones.

2. Monitoring your goals
Sometimes you need to monitor your goals regularly because of change. Maybe you or situation changes. So monitoring your goals can keep you on the right track.

3. Knowing how to achieve your goals
Once you set what your goals are, you must know how to go there. It is the art of making plan. Find out some possible plans, so that you are clear what to do everyday. Make sure your goals are specific unless you will end up nowhere. YOur specific goals act as a map of a place or a destination.

4. Imagine the feeling of already achieving your goals
Take some time to imagine as if you have achieved your inspiring goals. What will you see? What will you say to yourself? What will you do then? Feel it now.

5. Creating the habit of being motivated
Habit is shaped by doing something consistently on a regular basis. It is quite hard to create a new habit. Once it becomes a habit, it becomes part of your life

Keeping your motivation in high level is not as terrible thing as you've ever imagined. If you can keep your motivation in high level, you will achieve almost anything easily.

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Daily Motivation - February 10, 2010

So how do you stay calm, composed and maintain self esteem in a tough environment? Here are some tips you may to consider as a starter guide to self improvement.

Imagine yourself as a Dart Board. Everything and everyone else around you may become Dart Pins, at one point or another. These dart pins will destroy your self esteem and pull you down in ways you won’t even remember. Don’t let them destroy you, or get the best of you. So which dart pins should you avoid?

Dart Pin #1 : Negative Work Environment
Beware of “dog eat dog” theory where everyone else is fighting just to get ahead. This is where non-appreciative people usually thrive. No one will appreciate your contributions even if you miss lunch and dinner, and stay up late. Most of the time you get to work too much without getting help from people concerned. Stay out of this, it will ruin your self esteem. Competition is at stake anywhere. Be healthy enough to compete, but in a healthy competition that is.

Dart Pin #2: Other People’s Behavior
Bulldozers, brown nosers, gossipmongers, whiners, backstabbers, snipers, people walking wounded, controllers, naggers, complainers, exploders, patronizers, sluffers… all these kinds of people will pose bad vibes for your self esteem, as well as to your self improvement scheme.

Dart Pin #3: Changing Environment
You can’t be a green bug on a brown field. Changes challenge our paradigms. It tests our flexibility, adaptability and alters the way we think. Changes will make life difficult for awhile, it may cause stress but it will help us find ways to improve our selves. Change will be there forever, we must be susceptible to it.

Dart Pin #4: Past Experience
It’s okay to cry and say “ouch!” when we experience pain. But don’t let pain transform itself into fear. It might grab you by the tail and swing you around. Treat each failure and mistake as a lesson.

Dart Pin #5: Negative World View
Look at what you’re looking at. Don’t wrap yourself up with all the negativities of the world. In building self esteem, we must learn how to make the best out of worst situations.

Dart Pin #6: Determination Theory
The way you are and your behavioral traits is said to be a mixed end product of your inherited traits (genetics), your upbringing (psychic), and your environmental surroundings such as your spouse, the company, the economy or your circle of friends. You have your own identity. If your father is a failure, it doesn’t mean you have to be a failure too. Learn from other people’s experience, so you’ll never have to encounter the same mistakes.

Sometimes, you may want to wonder if some people are born leaders or positive thinkers. NO. Being positive, and staying positive is a choice. Building self esteem and drawing lines for self improvement is a choice, not a rule or a talent. God wouldn’t come down from heaven and tell you – “George, you may now have the permission to build self esteem and improve your self.”

In life, its hard to stay tough specially when things and people around you keep pulling you down. When we get to the battle field, we should choose the right luggage to bring and armors to use, and pick those that are bullet proof. Life’s options give us arrays of more options. Along the battle, we will get hit and bruised. And wearing a bullet proof armor ideally means ‘self change’. The kind of change which comes from within. Voluntarily. Armor or Self Change changes 3 things: our attitude, our behavior and our way of thinking.

Building self esteem will eventually lead to self improvement if we start to become responsible for who we are, what we have and what we do. Its like a flame that should gradually spread like a brush fire from inside and out. When we develop self esteem, we take control of our mission, values and discipline. Self esteem brings about self improvement, true assessment, and determination. So how do you start putting up the building blocks of self esteem? Be positive. Be contented and happy. Be appreciative. Never miss an opportunity to compliment. A positive way of living will help you build self esteem, your starter guide to self improvement.

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Daily motivation - January 04, 2010

Life isn’t the sweetest candy. Sometimes, when I feel like the world is just too heavy, I look around and find people who continued to live fascinating and wonderful lives. And then thoughts come popping into my mind like bubbles from nowhere – “How did their life become so adorably sweet? How come they still can manage to laugh and play around despite a busy stressful life?” Then I pause and observed for awhile… I figured out that maybe, they start to work on a place called ‘self’.

So, how does one become genuinely happy? Step 1 is to love yourself.

A theology professor once said that “loving means accepting.” To love oneself means to accept that you are not a perfect being, but behind the imperfections must lie a great ounce of courage to be able to discover ways on how to improve your repertoire to recover from our mistakes.

Genuine happiness also pertains to contentment. When you are contented with the job you have, the way you look, with your family, your friends, the place you live in, your car, and all the things you now have – truly, you know the answer to the question “how to be genuinely happy.”

When we discover a small start somewhere from within, that small start will eventually lead to something else, and to something else. But if you keep questioning life lit it has never done you any good, you will never be able to find genuine happiness.

I believe that life is about finding out about right and wrong, trying and failing, wining and losing. These are things that happen as often as you inhale and exhale. Failure, in a person’s life has become as abundant and necessary as air. But this should not hinder us from becoming happy.

How to be genuinely happy in spite all these? I tell you… every time you exert effort to improve the quality of life and your being, whether it is cleaning up your room, helping a friend, taking care of your sick dog, fail on board exams and trying again, life gives you equivalent points for that.

Imagine life as a big score board like those which are used in the NFLs. Every time you take a step forward, you make scoring points. Wouldn’t it be nice to look at that board at the end of each game and think to yourself “Whew! I got a point today. I’m glad I gave it a shot.”, instead of looking at it all blank and murmur “Geez, I didn’t even hit a score today. I wish I had the guts to try out. We could have won!” and then walk away.

Genuine happiness isn’t about driving the hottest Formula 1 car, nor getting the employee of the year award, earning the highest 13th month pay, or beating the sales quota. Sometimes, the most sought after prizes in life doesn’t always go to the fastest, the strongest, the bravest or not even the best. So, how do you become genuinely happy? Every one has his own definition of ‘happiness’. Happiness for a writer may mean launching as much best selling books as possible. Happiness for a basketball rookie may mean getting the rookie of the year award. Happiness for a beggar may mean a lot of money. Happiness for a business man may mean success. So, really now, how do we become genuinely happy? Simple. You don’t have to have the best things in this world. Its about doing and making the best out of every single thing. When you find yourself smiling at your own mistake and telling your self “Oh, I’ll do better next time”, you carry with you a flame of strong will power to persevere that may spread out like a brush fire. You possess a willingness to stand up again and try – that will make you a genuinely happy person.

When you learn to accept yourself and your own faults. You pass step 1 in the project “how to become genuinely happy”.For as long as you know how to accept others, you will also be accepted. For as long as you love and know how to love, you will receive love ten folds back.

Again, throw me that same question “how to achieve happiness from within?”. I’ll refer you to a friend of mine who strongly quoted- “Most of us know that laughter is the best medicine to life’s aches and pain. But most of us don’t know that the best kind of laughter is laughter over self. Coz then you don’t just become happy… you become free.”

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