A Little Story and a BIG Quality

"Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air."
John Quincy Adams

What is perseverance?  Well, we’ve all heard all these great stories of people overcoming great obstacles and emerging super famous or wealthy.  Some may even say they got lucky, but I believe people make their own luck, and the fact of the matter is that more often than not, these people have worked their asses off to get where they are.  So what does this have to do with perseverance?  It’s simple; perseverance goes hand in hand with discipline.  Perseverance is quite possibly the most important quality to display when working towards a goal.

                Let’s start with a little story.  A few years ago, after I left my first job, I began to wonder what I wanted to do with my life.  I’ve experience firsthand what it feels like to be an employee at what seemed like an easy job.  Human beings aren’t meant to be caged up in such a vicious, repetitive cycle.  No matter how fun or great the job is at first, over time, working a 9-5 will begin to eat away at you slowly, it will sap the vigor out of your mind and stomp a hole right through your lively hood and creativity.  So naturally, I felt sick to my stomach and knew that this wasn’t the life for me.  Of course I had other passions and desires, but they were “out of reach” or not “practical” enough for me to pursue.  So I looked at the school system for help and asked a lot of my neighbors for advice.  Most neighbors just gave me the same old crappy advice that school did.  To “find a career path that interests me”   I didn’t want to be an accountant or a lawyer, I wanted to be James Bond or Batman, but unfortunately, those weren’t available career paths in school.  So long story short, I came to the conclusion that I must work for myself, to be an entrepreneur. 

At the time I was majoring in graphic design at school and was thinking about starting something on the web.  I didn’t care what it was; I just needed to make some money.  A like-minded friend of mine and I began to discuss websites and the whole process of starting an eCommerce store and maintaining it for optimal income.  Unfortunately this is where my first harsh lesson hit me like a sack of bricks.  I chose to start a jewelry website and began to get in contact with wholesalers, work on the design of my site, etc.  Everything seemed like it was going well.  Then something very depressing began to happen.  I started to lose interest in working on my site and began to leave it alone for weeks while I spent my time reading and working on other extracurricular activities.  Soon enough, all the site was doing was giving me unnecessary bills to pay and a big burden. 

Did I have the will power and perseverance to continue?  Yes I did.  So what was the problem?  Why wasn’t my little dream of glory coming true?  The answer is always simple….I didn’t like jewelry.  This wasn’t something I loved or was interested in deeply.  I would work on my site here and there, but I really just wanted to do something else.  I was really into boxing and I wasn’t getting any younger, so I was trying to get in shape and focus on a career in that.  My jewelry website became very tedious to work on and about two weeks ago, after a long hard year, I abandoned it.  It wasn’t something I really wanted.  Just like a job, all I wanted was to maintain my website and make money from it.  That sounded simple on paper, but the reality was much different.  Now, for the first time in my life I feel complete (well, almost).  I love to write and discuss new ideas with friends, family, and fellow people around me.  So my next project was this blog.  As I actively pursue my boxing career, I am planning on sharing more experiences and developing action driving motivation with everyone.  So, what does this have to do with perseverance you say?  Maybe I did get carried away a little with the story and it did look like I quit.  Letting go isn’t at all a lack of discipline or a character flaw.  It’s the strength and courage to start from scratch, to have confidence in you, to pick up the axe and shovel and build yourself a new foundation.  I am starting this blog as a new foundation and I took with me a good lesson about doing what I love, not what I think I should do by society’s standards. 

     Fear is a terrible thing and can keep us from taking action.  The worst fears are the ones that we don’t even think about.  Like procrastination and settling.  Face it, we’re afraid of hard work, the fear to sweat a little, the fear to grind and see what we come up with.  That fear of feeling uncomfortable is the common denominator in why people don’t take action or pursue a dream.  This is why I made this blog.  To encourage family, friends, fellow internet users, and myself to get out in the world and do all you can to feel uncomfortable.  Face it, embrace it and come out of it a new person, more confident than ever.  To “persevere” means to never give in to anyone, to go with your guts and have the will to never give up.  Even if the task is hard, as long as we keep the goal, what we really want in sight and keep going, there’s really nothing that can stop us.  That is the power of an individual.  Take pride in what you do, drop whatever is holding you back, but never give up on your goals and dreams.  Use what works, lose what doesn’t, and stay simple and effective.

Don't think positive, be positive.

 Happiness... it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
-Vincent Van Gogh

     In my opinion, being happy puts all the little pieces in our lives together. If being positive will more often than not push us towards happiness, then I will promote a place that always generates a positive aura to myself and the people around me. I believe that always being positive is motivating and there is no reason not to be.  Logically speaking, there is little to no risk in being positive all the time.  For example, you wake up late one morning and feel that you're going to get to work late.  You become upset and eventually angry.  You automatically fall into a negative mindset, lose motivation and the dreadful cycle begins.  So you get there an hour and a half late, your boss screams at you, you rush to get some coffee, but everyone in the office already hogged it all.  Your whole day ends up feeling terrible, often times running into problem after problem throughout your miserable day.  People will begin to stay away from you, because you're angry/in a bad mood (they can smell it a mile away).  You will being to notice how the line is moving slow at the next door coffee shop, work will take unusually longer to end or you'll just end up dwelling on negative thoughts and beating your self-conscience to a pulp, forcing yourself  out of straight-thinking and end up making more mistakes then ever in that one day.  It's a dangerous cycle that is really unnecessary to bring upon yourself, but it's so easy to fall into.

     Now lets rewind the clock and replay that scenario using a positive mindset..  Lets say you get up late and tell yourself  "I can make it on time!" even though it takes an hour to get there on average, you have to be there at nine and you woke up twenty minutes before nine.  You know this, but you're a positive person by nature and can't help but try anyway.  Now you get dressed, jump in the car, of course without subconsciously losing motivation and courage like you did the first time around.  Then you get to work thirty minutes late, the boss gives you a quick warning, there's still enough coffee in the pot for one more cup, you quickly forget about the morning woes an start talking about your weekend with work buddies.  You'll feel proud of yourself (or at least proud you tried) and your day will move on normally.  Even if it ends horribly, you still ended up at least having the motivation to try harder.  Positive thoughts usually yields motivational actions, it's a win-win situation.  It takes time to develop the practice of being actively positive.  Soon after, it will become like second nature and you'll begin to think positive instinctively. Surround yourself by positive people, thoughts, words and you will get there much faster yourself.  The biggest mistake you will encounter is trying to hard to think positively.  Thinking positive alone will help, but won't do the trick.  You have to think and FEEL positive to really make an impact on your life and the people around you.  A good man once told me:

1. You act the way you feel.
2. You feel the way you are treated.
3. You are treated the way you act.

Positivity, just like negativity, is contagious. One positive person can encourage and motivate entire groups of friends and family  Theoretically, If being positive can promote happiness and happiness can promote confidence and confidence promotes positive thoughts, then we have put ourselves in a cycle of on going growth and harmony.  We must actively pursue it or we will fall victim to the bullying of society!

I will be putting up challenges every Monday.  Stay tuned friends!

Introduction

     To start off in my introductory posting, I'll go over some of my goals with this site and what it's all about.  I basically want to encourage my friends, family, and readers to go out there and take action.  Unlike the other blogs out there, I want to give you a little more than a few encouraging words.  I want to stay interactive with my readers and peers.  I don't want you to "feel" motivated, I want you to BE motivated and take action.  Often times people will read or hear something and get all excited and hyped about it, but a few days or a week later, they'll have either completely forgot about the idea or put it at the bottom of "things I should eventually do" list.  Now we're all guilty of this, of course.  Why?  We know what we have to do is important, but what's stopping us?

For one, we don't know where to start.  Another important reason is fear.  We don't know what to expect and are afraid of the unknown, afraid of feeling uncomfortable.  The last, but certainly not least is that while it is important to us and we want to do it, it really isn't urgent.  To break old habits, form new ones and really understand ourselves, we need to move out of our comfort zone.  I will be putting up some comfort challenges for all my readers every week to help you get over fear, step out of your comfort zone, reduce procrastination, and to encourage action and rational thinking.  There is no deadline or anything, but try to at least complete each challenge within a week.  You can always skip or come back to, or post your experience with a challenge later, I don't like setting any "rules" so you're on your own here.  Explore yourself, your life, and have fun!!

 

     One of my favorite quotes comes from "The 4-Hour Work Week" - by Timothy Ferriss.  I highly recommend the book to anyone that hasn't already read it.

"A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have."  - Timothy Ferriss

    The idea of comfort challenges isn't new.  Tim has a few in his book which I found very exciting and encouraged me to look into and further pursue beyond the book.

 For my debut challenge, I'll start with something simple and amusing.

THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE:  Start a conversation with a random stranger and try to make them laugh. 

Comment at the end of the week to this entry and share how it went with you!