The last few days I was able to cry again and, while starting to play music around half an hour ago or so, I started to feel better again. And it had to do with allowing my negative emotions to be there, to accept that I’m in deep shit and that my life didn’t turn out how it was supposed to be. And that I have no clue how to get out of this shit. As I have been basically alone last week and next week I won’t have any money to even buy food for myself and the people around me.

And yesterday I got kind of annoyed with an e-mail from Scott Dinsmore, the person in charge of Live Your Legend. And it started with his article The 35 Secrets I Wish You Didn’t Know About Me. And don’t get me wrong, I’m quite sure the article is very honest and a very well mentioned intention to help people. But what annoyed me was that it’s all written from the perspective of someone who is already successfull.

And the same basically applies to Think and Grow Rich, the book that inspired me to start this website and the project Inspiration for Success. It is all written from the perspective of successful people and from the perspective that anybody could achieve that type of success.

And I’m starting to doubt that. And again, don’t get me wrong, I’m quite sure that if you’re willing to give, or give up, something like anything, you could indeed achieve anything. But in my case for example I don’t want to give up my family life, being together with my partner and the dogs and I prefer not to give up my house, my home. Which means that my locations, the place from where I want to do things, is kind of limiting.

But the main thing that made me feel doubting a lot of the success stuff I am and have been reading is that it doesn’t take into account things like personality and moods and world economy. And that it presumes everybody can just have the self control that is needed to achieve things.

And yes, all those books, all this stuff is written very carefully. And in the end it just puts the responsibility to you. And the ‘blame’ if you don’t achieve the success you are looking for. But I think it’s too easy to just point to ‘excuses’ and things like that as it all appears too easy.

And what made me start this article is actually the research I found about happiness and success, where research indicates that 30% to 40% depends on genetics. And that 30% to 40% depends on circumstances like world economy or maybe the place where you grew up or live. So only about 40% of your happiness and/or success are within your control. And that’s less than half!

And also, looking at myself. I am a graduate in Mechanical Engineering with a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering. And I have worked with KPMG, one of the top consultancy firms in the world. So I’m not just the average Joe (no offense meant). But if I can’t even make decent living, just even buy the food I need, then there is something more going on than just ‘do all the things that is needed to achieve success or happiness’.

So no, I’m starting to believe it’s not all that simple as described in all the books (written by successful people, otherwise it wouldn’t have been published).

To be continued…

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Well, just found this:

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives. – Theodore Roosevelt

And looking at my own style I guess until now I’m more of a boss than a leader. And I promised myself to become a more inspiring leader and actually I also don’t want to be a boss. But then, if you’re a stubborn type of person who thinks he is often right and has his own way and who is kind of perfectionist and who indeed believes in delivering quality stuff, how would he achieve that?

Like now, the site, the project Inspiration for Success is not really moving and I think I did like 90% or more of the work. What could I do different to inspire the team, to make them move a bit faster? And yes, I read a lot about leadership and I guess most leaders are more of a ‘people person’ than I am. But still, I believe in things and I want to make them happen. And I often don’t understand why they are not happening as I think they could and should happen.

And yes, I see more of my part, of me not inspiring the team, inspiring people. But still, like in the case of Inspiration for Success I don’t fully understand while some of the team members signed up and then in the end hardly make time for the project.

And the biggest issue to solve is how to keep myself motivated if I have the feeling I have to do all or most of it alone. And I don’t really mind doing a lot of things, doing more than the average team member. But I see so much more opportunity for progress than is actually happening now and somehow I seem not to be able to pass that on to the team members.

But maybe indeed this is the whole thing about achieving success in the end. That successful people in the end somehow manage to get things done, to push through no matter what. And then finally somehow succeed. And that that would mean indeed that in the end, if I did a lot of work, persisted in doing things, persisted in continuing no matter how demotivated I was, that that indeed is the road to success. And that in the end that would somehow pay off in some kind of praise or people saying, yes, he did it, he is successful.

One of my biggest samples as of the moment is Tony Fernandes. And what I see now he did better, different than me is indeed finding a good leader to follow in his earlier career. And somehow he appears to have been successful in his career contrary to me. And he seems to be much more a people person than me. But what kind of bothers me is that I have kind of the same values. Like for my company I also wanted to provide good jobs for my employees. I wanted to do something for The Philippines, for the Filipino people by bringing relatively high quality jobs here with my web development company.

But somehow I didn’t succeed. Somehow I felt left alone by the people, mostly graduates who, after a short period of time, were looking for greener pasture in other companies and/or abroad. And this meant I couldn’t serve the customers properly as I couldn’t meet the quality requirements. And I could have spent some more time and effort on that and as of the moment I’m doing that. But I can’t do it all alone. So what does Tony Fernandes and what do other leaders different from me? As of the moment I still didn’t figure that out. Or is it indeed partly or for a great part about personality and character and (people) skills? But skills can be learned they say. And I think I tried, I did. But it just didn’t seem to stick.

Well, I see I’m complaining again or something. And I don’t mean to. But I  think my intentions are and mostly have been good. And my belief is, or rather was, that intention is the most important thing, that ‘doing good’, ‘being a good person’ is the most important thing. But somehow it isn’t. Somehow attitude seems to be more important than intention or something. So well, yes, I guess I still have to learn more. As somehow I still intend to achieve success, the success I want.

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I’m not sure but I’m starting to believe that I experience more emotional pain than most other people. And I guess that would explain some of my complaints and how I look at life and such. But of course I’m not sure, who knows these things.

And yes, the last few days I’m also starting to believe that all this self help stuff, these books, these sites, even the stuff from Napoleon Hill I strongly believe in and at the moment even, yes, this site, Inspiration for Success, may leave some things like personality and ‘luck’ too much out of the equation.

And no, I don’t believe in plain ‘luck’. I think virtually anybody can create something like ‘breaks’. But I know e.g. for myself that I have trouble with something like will power. And that I am quite emotional and impulsive. And yes, that everybody is different.

And if everybody is ‘different’, than also somehow the rules, the principles of success would be different. So achieving success might be easier or more difficult for different people.

Anyhow, in the end I believe that there is only one consciousness and that we are all one. So that would mean we’re not that different at all, that we’re even the same. And that’s the inspirational thing I wanted to share today. A link about our suffering as human beings, as separate consciousness(es): Enlightenment and the Pain of Existence.

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I was thinking a bit more about my employment history and it hit me that my experience and perception is that you have to fight, to compete for a job. And somehow it hit me that somehow that is strange. Something like ‘I like to work, I like to do something for you, I like to do something for some company’ AND I HAVE TO FIGHT, TÖ COMPETE FOR IT. So I want to offer my services and I have to compete to do something for someone. Weird, as it just means that somehow there is overcapacity in work, in labor. And isn’t that what humanity always kind of striven for? Not having to work anymore? Or work less?

And yes, I know that it’s more than just capacity. But it’s still weird that most people around me are too busy to do something for me and that I, and with me so many others have nothing to do, at least not business wise. And don’t get me wrong, in my case it may have to do with my personality or something. And in many other cases it might be something else. But somehow it is stupid to me that half of humanity seems to be too busy and is dying for a break or something and that the rest is craving for a job, to do something. And on the supply side it’s the same, as I see an awful lot of stock of virtually anything one can imagine to want to have and not so many people seem to be able to buy the stuff.

So to me there is really something to be improved in the world. On both the supply in working capacity and the supply in goods and services. It is 2013 and forty years after flying to the moon and more than hundred years after the invention of the plane and the automobile and something like twenty years after computer and cellphone became popular and somehow we can’t find a way to let humanity or at least the majority of humanity benefit from all the (technical) progress we have made. And we are not even able to feed everybody on this planet.

Weird and the more I think about it the weirder it gets. And yes, somehow it’s all about money, the greedy part of it.

Let’s stop this, let’s do something about this. This is inhumane.

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The longer I work on this site, the more I see everything is there already. At least the self help stuff, the quotes, the stuff that makes people move, the stuff that makes me move. And I don’t want Inspiration for Success ‘just another self help site’. Or maybe I do, but as of now I don’t see much value in that, except in the way how to provide ‘self help’ in the form of inspiration. And the main issue I’m struggling with is ‘earning’, ‘money’, and ‘success’. And another thing is ‘personality’.

You see, what I see with e.g. many ‘self help’ or ‘inspiration’ type sites I signed up for, in the end the people behind always want to sell me something, want to sell me more. And of course having started this site, owning this site, I understand how it works. The first thing you need is the e-mail address of the person looking for your stuff, of course including the permission to send them e-mails. As that’s the way how you can reach them actively after they visited your site, your stuff, your product. And then you start e-mailing them with nice stories that appeal to them. But, what I noticed with all or most of those sites is that in each e-mail, no matter how nice the story, how valuable the information, they’re trying to sell you something, or at least visit the site to ‘read more’.

A good sample to me is e.g. the site of Marc and Angel: http://www.marcandangel.com/, although I’m not fully sure if they ‘force’ you to sign up on first visit. And don’t get me wrong, I really like what they are doing, including the daily e-mails they’re sending. I think their content and the related e-mails are really good and their e-mails often inspire me, so I think they’re doing a really good job.

However, somehow I have a very bad feeling with their ‘book sales’ advertisement in the e-mails. As in the end that reminds me that what they’re doing in the end is running a business, selling stuff. And of course that’s how the world works at the moment. And has worked for a long, long time already. And maybe that’s OK. But maybe not also, at least for me. And thinking today about all those people without work, without a job, I think we can do better. Better than just ‘paying’ someone to do jobs we cannot do or don’t like to do.

And I can’t really imagine someone liking or loving a job like cleaning toilets. But maybe I’m also wrong there, as I remember also an employee in a company long time ago who’s normal job it was to put sealing tape on connectors. And when we were trying to improve working conditions by rotating jobs so people would have more variety in their work she was very unhappy, even offended. As the taping job was her job and no one else’s. And I guess I would become crazy within a few days, maybe even within a few hours with that type of job, just repeating a task of less than a minute all day long, but she was happy with it and even offended when we tried to take it away from her. So yes, there may be people who would enjoy cleaning toilets or other dirty work or work most people can’t imagine someone would like it.

So I have been thinking a lot lately about how we have organized the world, organized it business wise. And basically I’m starting to get the feeling there is something really wrong with that as I may be an extreme example of being terrified of losing my job or losing customers or not having a job or not having customers, but as far as I know many people fear losing their job because they would lose their income, their livelihood. So I guess many or even most people just get a job or stick with a job because they need to eat. Or because they want to do things in their spare time they couldn’t do without the money from the job. So many or most people I guess work because they ‘have to’, not because they ‘like to’. And as for most people work fills the majority of their time, for most of the time many or most people do something they don’t like.

And as the consequences in our current society, or at least in most societies, of not having a job or losing your job are quite bit they stick with it. And fear losing their job, where I’m starting to learn that fear is destroying an awful lot of things, is destroying life. And I think I’m a very good (or bad) sample of that, as losing my first job, which I enjoyed and loved, kind of defined my life in a very bad way. And yes, that event has been a very good example of how the Law of Attraction works. As somehow losing that job in that way somehow instilled a lot of fear in me. And of course that fear ‘attracted’ more loss of job, as I was scared losing my job, scared not to speak up to my boss when I should have. Meaning I kind of lost myself and indeed, resulting in not doing my job good enough.

And yes, of course I should ‘get over it’, or should have gotten over it long time ago. Or I should have forgiven myself or forgive the people involved. But somehow it is still with me and somehow it still influenced my life and repeats itself. And of course this has everything to do with me, not with you. And it goes further back than losing that job, which was just the ‘major event’ that stuck with me (and that I’m ‘blaming’ for everything that’s wrong in my life).

Anyhow, my point is that I want Inspiration for Success to be better than all this psychologists stuff and all those self help books I read and all those workshops and training I did. Because until now it didn’t work, at least not for me. And there wouldn’t be such a big demand for all that stuff (and there must be, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many sites and books), if I were the only one struggling with ‘something’.

And yes, maybe it’s all just the tragedy of life. Maybe it’s just the joke life is. But somehow I think there is more, somehow I think we all can live a happy and successful and fulfilling life. And not just the ‘happy few’. And that’s why I keep thinking and writing, and maybe suffering. As there must be more, for me, but also for you.

And I’m not sure yet how, but somehow everything is already there and I just need to connect the dots.

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