Author Archives: Guus

Pause and think and plan

Well, Inspiration for Success is still in kind of stand still mode and so seems to be the rest of my business life, but maybe this is the time to pause and think and plan. And as far as I know a proper plan is one of the major things missing at the moment. And maybe some more realistic goals for the team as I think I lost them with my one million dollar goal. And I can understand they can’t follow me and it may be a crazy goal, but for now, and probably for the rest of (the start of) the project I’ll stick with it. Because the more I follow the Principles of Success as described by Napoleon Hill also the more I understand why it is important to stick to decisions and to write things down. Because indeed, that’s how they can be analyzed, even after failure, or especially after failure. As I know I didn’t make my first goal of one million dollar this month. But at least I know and I can exactly see when I planned it and what was the goal and what actions I did or didn’t do. Or what principles of success I didn’t follow or apply.

So I may be defeated and my goals may seem crazy, but as I understand Napoleon Hill, and many other successful people, well, this is exactly what it’s all about. Stick to the goal and indeed, set sail once more until you reach the goal.

And I started reading again in several books, especially Think and Grow Rich and amazingly I found new things. On all kinds of place the book suggests to re-read chapters later and indeed, it makes sense as I’m starting to see all kinds of details I missed at first (or second or third) time reading. Like yesterday I re-read the chapter on specialized knowledge and it was the first time I understood more the meaning of the word specialized in specialized knowledge. So the principle of applying specialized knowledge is not just applying knowledge. There appears to be a whole world behind this principle that you will only understand after studying and re-reading the book again and again.

And the same thing I experienced with the principle of the Master Mind and now also with organized planning.

All the same

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Recently I have worked a bit from the “Your Best Life Now” journal from Joel Osteen and the more I read all this ‘self help’ stuff the more I realize it’s all the same. Today I encountered day 1 from Step Three (Discover the Power of Your Thoughts and Words), which basically is nothing else than the message of Napoleon Hill in his book Think and Grow Rich that was a main part of the foundation of this site and the project Inspiration for Success. I presume it even comes from the ideas of Napoleon Hill as the key truth for today he states is:

“When you think positive, excellent thoughts, you will be propelled toward greatness.”

And reading the chapter many ideas are similar to what Napoleon Hill states, even though they are stated in a Christian way.

And yes, reading all this stuff and signing up for ‘self help’ type websites, partially for research for this project and applying all these principles and listening to audio’s and applying all kinds of principles is starting to make me feel uncomfortable. Because nothing really changed in my life, actually recently it kind of got worse somehow, especially business wise, even though as a person I feel that I still grow. And apparently I’m not the only one who is in need or hooked up to all this self help stuff, otherwise this ‘self help industry’ wouldn’t exist.

And I want this site, and the project Inspiration for Success, to be different. I don’t want Inspiration for Success be just another self help site. And until now it isn’t, as there are no advertisements and you don’t have to enter your e-mail address when entering the site.

And don’t get me wrong. There is nothing really wrong with how ‘self help sites’ work, first ‘being found’ in a specific way, then asking for an e-mail address and then sending daily or weekly message. Although I am starting to be turned off with all the implicit selling that’s being done. So yes, that’s how the industry works. And it means its industry. And I’m starting to get more and more convinced something needs to change in the way we have organized our world as you also may have read in other posts and pages of me. As I think humanity can do better than ‘industry’. And ‘industry’ is everywhere, it’s how the world works, it’s how we get our daily food, it’s how we are entertained, it’s how our cars and refrigerators and all our other stuff is being provided to us.

But it doesn’t work like that for everybody. It works most for the people who ‘fit’ the system, but it doesn’t work for large groups of people, at the moment even including me. As the whole system is based on money in some kind of greedy type of way. And there is nothing wrong with that. As that is the way how the system came into being, how we all, literally all, benefit from food being available and medicines, yes, also for many poor people I guess. And for being able to move around with cars or motorcycles or public transportation.

But somehow I think we can do better. And I don’t know how, as money indeed is a convenient means for the exchange of services and goods. But somehow money has become a goal in itself, and it has been already for a long time I guess as also the bible states things like money should not be treated as a God or something. And the recent financial crisis, that has been going on for years now, is some kind of signal that we may want to move forward to a better system. And I don’t know how, but I’m quite sure humanity can find a better way to provide humans with their daily and not so daily needs and wants.

But maybe start with the self help industry, with this site. As I consider this site a part of the self help industry, even though I don’t fully like it, being part of an industry, especially ‘self help’, especially if it’s about improving the deepest parts of people, of people’s lives, of their soul and well being.

So I’m looking for ways to let you really benefit from this site, this project. So you would really get and achieve what you want. As somehow these sites and books and courses and, and, and don’t seem to work. Otherwise it wouldn’t be an industry. Or would it?

Stand still

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Well, it seems that I, and everything around me, has come to a complete stand still.

So what’s next?

What would the leaders do whom I admire?

What can I learn from it?

I like to go and work hard, but somehow it seems others can’t follow me for whatever reason. Time to figure that out now?

Everybody is normal

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I just found on the internet someone telling about being bipolar. And I read about him having been confined in some kind of institution. And while reading the Wikipedia article on bipolar disorder I recognize things of myself. E.g. I guess most people might think my ideas about this website and my goals with it are out of the ordinary. And I guess they are. And knowing me and reading my posts you may read about me being desperate sometimes. Also people have considered me having Asperger Syndrome or something. And yes, as far as I know many people consider me as being introvert, another box being put in. And yes, I am gay, another thing people may like or not like, but again, yes, it puts me in a box.

But what is this, that ‘we’ put each other in boxes. What is this that ‘we’ try to ‘cure’ everybody who has treats that are out of the ordinary. Or at least somehow ‘mark’ people with certain treats and have some positive or negative opinion related to it, e.g. if someone is gay.

And I don’t have all the answers, as someone killing people because he has some ‘disorder’ I wouldn’t know what to do with except indeed probably locking him or her up in a place where he or she can do no harm to other people. And one of the major treats someone can have I don’t have any clue of how to deal with is someone being pedophile. As I guess for most people the sexual urge is one of the biggest drivers in life, one of the highest needs to fulfill. And being gay I know that sexual orientation is just something you ‘have’, at least for me it’s just a feeling, it’s just something that’s part of me and that feels like being unchangeable, feels like just ‘being part of me’, feels like it belongs to me.

So somehow I have thought a lot about being a pedophile. I presume when you are a pedophile you just also have their sexual orientation, just like me or you. So of course you would want, need to express that as I presume it’s the same type of urge most people have and if not met it would cause a lot of problems, at least it does for me. But yes, I agree, having sex with children in a way a pedophile would need does not fit my ideas of what is appropriate, what ‘should be’ as I indeed believe children should not experience sex in that way. But where does that put a pedophile? In my opinion in quite an impossible situation as he or she cannot express his or her sexual feelings in an appropriate way, although as far as I know there are also situations or cultures that would allow the behavior, the grown ups having sex with children.

Anyhow, that’s not really what I wanted to write about, about pedophiles, but for a long time already I have in mind to raise some understanding, sympathy, empathy for people being pedophile. Because their situation must be awful, making it virtually impossible to live a proper life.

So what did I want to write about? Well, I’m not a psychologist or something, but it seems that we try to put more and more ‘marks’ on people, like how they differ from the average Joe. And if it has some kind of inconvenience for society or other people we often want to ‘treat them’, cure them. But why? And who decides what’s normal and what’s abnormal. And why would we want to treat them or mark them as ‘abnormal’. As one of the first things I learned in biology class, as far as I remember our biology teacher even started the whole subject with it: everybody is abnormal, as everybody is different. That’s how we are built. That’s how the world was built.

So let’s be careful putting each other in boxes, in trying to change each other. Let’s first see what’s really there and appreciate it, in the other, the other person. And also constantly monitor the line between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’, where in the last case I mean when to decide when to ‘treat’ people or in the worst case lock them up. As in the end everybody is normal, as being different is part of being normal, being human.

Alone

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So somehow today, and maybe some more time than I thought before, was an alone day. So I was searching for alone quotes and sent one. And I found another one for this post:

“if you wanted to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.” – Richard Yates.

So for example with this website, with the project Inspiration for Success, it still feels I’m alone, no matter there is a team. And somehow I’m not good with teams, with people, at least not in relation to projects, to achieving something (together).

And indeed, going back to Inspiration for Success, I have big ideas and big plans for this project and this website. But somehow, until now, I was not able to convey that, the whole idea to the team. And I know somehow I’m trying to do something virtually impossible, something weird, and it even changed and changes over time. And often it feels like I’m not the right person to do this, to make my ideas, my dreams come true, e.g. with this website, this project. As somehow I’m still not able to inspire or motivate people to do the work, to really actually do some more things.

And yes, maybe I’m the wrong person, maybe it’s the wrong team, maybe it’s the wrong time, maybe…

But still, something deep inside me says I should push through with this, try to get my message to the world. And I’m not even sure why or how, even though of course I also have all those voices in my head telling me what to do or not do like everybody seems to have.

So where to go from here? I have no clue actually. But maybe indeed I should use the ideas from the Law of Attraction and focus more on what I have in mind, what the end result should be. And not so much on how to get there.

And maybe this is still also the right post to tell my little story about a project I have been working on for a few days, a few weeks, and check that project against the Principles of Success. Or no, maybe indeed make that a page: sample application of the principles of success. But here I have a problem, as I don’t want to offend our Editor in Chief, who made a stand for delivering quality pages. So the link I have put may not work yet as a page has to be approved by our Editor in Chief.

So yes, somehow I’m trying to do something honest and true with Inspiration for Success. And it seems indeed that it is something I may have to do alone, somehow. As I can’t do it alone and don’t want to do it alone. But maybe indeed being the leader somehow means you are alone and you have to do it alone, even if there is a team supporting you.