Author Archives: Guus

The world knocks it out of you

Leave a reply
Be careful to create self esteem.

I just got an e-mail including this text at the end:

The reason I told you you’d be surprised at your own brand of superhero’ness is that your greatness constantly hides from you. The world knocks it out of you over the years. But it’s there waiting. Like a diamond ready to be shined up again and rediscovered.

And the subject like ‘rediscover yourself’ or something like that seems to come back in many books about, well, self development or something. Even Think and Grow Rich has something like that in between the lines, like don’t consider other peoples opinions, just be yourself. I also often encounter phrases like ‘keep your own council‘ (if you want to be successful). And the story of the diamond behind the mud is also very familiar.

So what is this, that ‘the world’ knocks ‘life’ out of us. Why are we ‘just ourselves’ after being born, being a baby and then somehow lose ourselves growing up and being an adult. Why do we need to ‘rediscover’ ourselves. Why don’t we just stay ourselves without this ‘intermission’? Has this always been the case, all since the beginning of human history? Or is this just our journey on earth being a human being?

And I’m a bit in doubt now, how to continue this post. One thing in my mind is that recently I had quite some spiritual experiences, like past and ‘now’ mixing together, like there is no time, like I can just relive memories as if they were real. The weird thing is that I can’t really look into the future in a similar way. I can plan, decide, but I can’t really see or feel the future. Or can I, I am thinking while writing this now. I did visualize some things recently. Some big things. And it felt indeed as if I was there, as if it was really happening. But it didn’t happen yet. Or did it? The mind is a weird garden.

Life is strange, that’s a sentence that comes into my mind more and more lately. Napoleon Hill also states somewhere something like ‘the strangeness of life’. And yes, yesterday or today I really also felt ‘that we had met’, as he ends Think and Grow Rich with. And just realize the title of the book contains the word ‘grow’, a word I can’t remember reading anywhere in the text of the book itself, but I may be mistaken or have missed it. Or is that maybe what it’s all about? Growing?

But still, I’m looking for success, I’m looking for something better than what I have today, where I am today. And I know it’s there, as I used to have things I don’t have at the moment. So my success at the moment is still about ‘missing something’, not about achieving something, not about feeling passionate about something. And I know it’s important to turn that around, as it means my focus is on the negative, on the lacking, not on the positive, the having or ‘coming’. So in my case I guess most important thing is to find the passion, or the desire as Napoleon Hill calls it. I felt it a bit yesterday, today, but right now it’s gone again, gone in fear and insecurity, even though I am starting to feel the fear mixed with excitement recently. Very good I think, progress I think.

So how to make this post inspiring to you? How to end this post? Maybe add a (Dutch) quote that my dad often used: “‘Be yourself!’ I said to someone; but he couldn’t: he was nobody.” – De Genestet. So something like:

BE SOMEBODY!

?

Or just point you to the Principles of Success and check where you are with that like in the related exercise?

Or just leave it like this and hope you enjoy my pondering in this post?

Looking forward to your comment!

No inspiration, or actually a lot

Leave a reply

Yeah, a blank page. And I feel no inspiration. Or actually a lot. But don’t know where to start.

I know where I want to go. And I know how to get there. In theory. And weird, I feel calm now, serene.

So what’s next.

I have no clue actually.

I just feel happy now, just feel like ‘being’.

No manual

1 Reply
Rebuilding your life

While searching for the daily quote I found also this one:

“Hard is trying to rebuild yourself, piece by piece, with no instruction book, and no clue as to where all the important bits are supposed to go.” – Nick Hornby

It appealed to me, as this is where I stand at the moment I guess. And I guess in the end most people would recognize this rebuilding from pieces, somewhere in their life. You would probably recognize this. Although in the end I think life is not about rebuilding, but about something like discovering, or maybe even building.

So how to make something inspiring about this, to myself, to you, as the quote has some negativity in it, things like loss, sadness, feeling lost.

But of course in the end rebuilding is very positive, something like not giving up. And the result is probably even more positive than building I guess, as you know more, after having figured out where the pieces have to go. You bring with you the experiences from before, the experiences from loss, the experiences from life.

But yes, the process of rebuilding, while you’re trying to gather the pieces and are trying to fit them together again, may not always be easy. So when you’re in it, in rebuilding your life, try to remember that life is beautiful, beautiful with all its diversity and colors and positive and negative. That life is about contrast and that the contrast is what makes life beautiful.

Emotions are just emotions

Leave a reply

I was very surprised when I saw today’s quote in a website searching for a quote related to something like ‘inspiration and anger’::

We’re taught to be ashamed of confusion, anger, fear and sadness, and to me they’re of equal value to happiness, excitement and inspiration. – Alanis Morissette

It made me feel much more relaxed straight away as I realized that emotions are just emotions, they are not ‘good’ or ‘bad’, they just are, they just are expressions of what you are feeling, of what’s going on in you and/or around you.

And now I’m a bit lost on how to continue. Because this site is about Inspiration for Success and with what I know from the Principles of Success as stated by Napoleon Hill positive emotions lead to success, not negative emotions.

And I also prefer to experience positive emotions, not negative. And I guess most people do. But while writing this post I get more and more a weird feeling as you can only experience positive if you know the negative. So would it also be something like you can only experience a certain level of positive emotion if you also have experienced a same level of negative emotion? Is there some kind of balance there? And  how would you measure that? Or has there been research done on these things?

Weird. And looking at myself my experience in life has been mainly negative. But that’s just my experience, how I experience life, how I look at my life. Comparing myself to others I guess, others in my surroundings, not others like ‘everybody in the world’. Or comparing my life to what I wanted, comparing it to what I expected.

Wow, I opened some subject here. Maybe it’s indeed all about how you look at things, like if a glass is  half empty or half full. If you look at it objectively my life hasn’t been that bad. Yes, I had a lot of problems with work. And a lot of relationship issues. But thinking right now, these are exactly the things that are important to me. So if there is something wrong there I  guess it gets magnified, maybe magnified beyond proportions.

And yes, I am very stubborn, want things my way. And I won’t give up. And these things of course also seem to create the problems. And keep me in situations I don’t like. But in the end I believe in persistence. And yes, in the end I still believe that my persistence will pay off, will lead me to success, to the success I’m looking for and by now also really need, really feel I deserve.

So in the end it seems indeed all about choice, choice to persist, choice to stick with what you’re ‘willing to give’ (from the six steps in the chapter desire in Think and Grow  Rich). In expectation of success, in expectation to realize your dreams. And belief that you will get there.

Yes, life is weird, don’t you also think?

Goals, Master Mind and belief

1 Reply
The Power of the Master Mind

Today i had a discussion with one of the Master Mind group members for this site, for this project. Actually the discussion started a few days ago when he mentioned in an e-mail that my one million dollar goal is a personal goal. He suggested that each of the Master Mind Group members, or actually team members, should set his or her own goal in relation to the project as he didn’t feel connected with that goal. Or at least it seems it gives him a feeling like it’s too big, too ambitious in too short amount of time.

Actually I was a bit amazed, but also not really, that he came up with that issue now. I presumed he and his fellow team member fully understood what this site and related project is all about. But it seems he doesn’t or doesn’t yet or didn’t. And that he doesn’t know is of course also logical, as the whole project started for me around three quarters of a year ago, started with reading in and working from Think and Grow Rich, implementing and experiencing the principles of success from that book. And reading other books, and reading related sites and doing some exercises on related sites. And reading more books.

And then a few months ago I started this site, that basically started from another site a one or two months earlier. And then the sample goal evolved from all kinds of things, including the related plan.

So indeed, how can a team member that just joined a few weeks ago and didn’t find a lot of time yet  to understand the project. Understanding like reading and understanding the many posts and pages on the site.

Anyhow, as you may know leadership (or Master Mind) is not my natural strength, but I’m very happy to have two team members already who support me and I hope I can induce them in the correct way to achieve the goals I have in mind. And be able to give them their one million dollar, even though the sample goal is not the main objective of this project and the site. Or is it? I think in a way it is, because the money is kind of the desire, my desire, and the giving is kind of the site and the one million dollar to the team members. But after this already long process about “success” it becomes clearer and clearer that the whole road to success is a, well, weird mix of giving, taking, receiving, manipulating, power, inducing and many more things. Maybe just summarized as leadership.

And again, I deviated a bit from the title as the article was meant to be something like how to make the Master Mind group believe in the goals so they will really start moving, doing things, really helping to push forward towards achieving the goals. And indeed, when that happens, I’m quite sure I may be amazed how big the effect could be as what Napoleon Hill also describes in Think and Grow Rich.