Author Archives: Guus

The tenth ball

The last few days I have been thinking a lot about a story in one of the book Life Is What You Make It. The story is about a boy who did not feel inspired by his dad. And I recognize so much in that story. The boy tells that he and his dad played ‘play catch’ with each other, but that his dad never let him catch the tenth ball. It’s a similar feeling I have as I had the feeling I could never win from my dad, not with anything, even though one day I was able to win from him with chess, but it was only once.

It is so easy for a dad to ‘always win’, to never let his son catch the tenth ball. But the effect can be dramatic.

The boy from the story and also I know that our dads of course meant well, had their reasons to be so hard on their sons. I guess they wanted to harden their sons, prepare them for life or so.

But same like the boy in the story, I still have the feeling i can never win, although I am working hard now to get over that. And that’s also the story of my life, that I ‘never won’.

So yes, time for me to get over that, but please dads, be careful. Maybe better inspire in a positive way, like ‘You can do it!’ and let your son catch the ball, maybe a difficult ball, but make sure he catches it.

Goals

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Well, still thinking of goals for this website. It kind of started as a spin off of http://op-weg.inspiration-for-success.com/ with the idea of inspiring other people who are on the way of achieving success. Then, with my knowledge of and interest in internet, together with my business that does not do so well at the moment, I was thinking of somehow monetizing this site.

Some other thing on the background was that I want to boost my self confidence with something like to check if people are willing to pay for the work in this website, see if this website has value, see if the work I am putting has value. That is also the background of my donate page.

There is some more background to the donate page, as I would preferred being paid directly and not by putting advertisements in the site or through affiliate programs and such. And that goes back to that I don’t like advertisements in sites in general and the strong commercial push I find in many websites. But it seems that’s how the world works, how the internet business model works: you pay indirectly through those programs. And I know newspapers and t.v. works the same way.

I know one exception though and that is Wikipedia. They insist in being a non commercial site, but the begging type messages I often see in the site also don’t appeal to me.

So the big question is if newspapers, t.v. and this type of sites on the internet can only exist through all kinds of indirect payments? Or through pushing products?

I guess for some people who have visited this site the worth of what they read was more than two dollars. And I guess some of those people might have ended up in my donate page. And looking at the number of hours I have put in the site until now the site is probably worth more a thousand dollars. However, until now, nobody donated one dollar to me yet, or actually paid me one dollar yet for the use of the site.

So of course something to think about for me, like what to do if I want to earn a living with this site or other sites.

But maybe also something to think about for you, do you really want everything for ‘free’?

I’m different

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I woke up early this morning which amazed me and it made me very happy. Something seemed to have changed. Maybe it has, as someone once told me my 49^th year would be special, I would achieve success that year. Well, did I? I guess I did as I had an enormous personal development in my 49^th year, although I had expected success in the form of material things. So I guess I was successful last year.

So I was very happy waking up at seven am and decided to enjoy my time a bit and still lie down for a while in bed.

And then suddenly I found all those negative thinking patterns coming back. Then suddenly I thought again about all the plans I made last year, all the decisions I made last year, all the plans I had last year. And it seems nothing has really worked out yet.

So I started reading again in the two books that inspire me most at the moment. And yes, I do believe many of the things written there. But they don’t seem to apply to me at the moment: I don’t feel desire at the moment, I lost the belief at the moment. I have no clue about how plans should look like. I have no clue on how to create my Master Mind group. I have the feeling I’m giving a lot, but it seems nothing is coming back. So am I just taking and not realize it? Or am I just different?

And how can I inspire you right now?

Mental inertia

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I am starting to believe more and more there is guidance from some higher power as recently all kinds of things came to me, just like now. I feel completely blocked, kind of paralyzed, not knowing what to do, and just read right now “How to snap out of mental inertia“. That may just be what I need. It’s in the chapter persistence of Think and Grow Rich.

And maybe what I needed to hear right now was just ‘You may find it necessary to snap out of your mental inertia through a similar procedure, moving slowly at first, the increasing your speed, until you gain complete control over your will“.

A friend of mine also suggested that a few weeks ago, start with little things. And I did, but it seems sometimes or even often I’m going too fast, want too much, and then everything seems to stop as it’s just too much.

I already realized something like that an hour ago or so and indeed already said to myself something like ‘take little steps first again’, ‘one thing at the time’. That was also the starting point of starting to move, write here again, and indeed, more answers seem to come.

So when you feel paralyzed mentally, this may also work for you:

Just slow down, think of smaller steps, take smaller steps and be happy with each step you make, no matter how small.

Think and …

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This morning i was lying in bed, thinking. And i felt guilty, because I shouldn’t be lying in bed. Then a whole process started and I started to realize how negative my thinking pattern is, all based on guilt and ‘should’ and ‘should do’ and ‘take action’ and … And i was just lying in bed, thinking, making big discoveries. And I just felt guilt about the lying in bed. i did not feel successful because of the big discoveries I made. Weird, isn’t it? And while thinking about this I feel guilty again as I ‘should’ feel happy because I just made this big discovery and I’m not.

Even right now, while writing this, I feel guilty. Should’ I share this? Shouldn’t I be doing something ‘useful’?

Then my partner started saying things like what I should do. And I felt guilty again.

And the guilt started me making think of excuses, why I was doing this, or why I was still in bed while I ‘shouldn’t’.

So yes, it seems my whole thinking pattern is completely destructive, just based on what others think and want me to do, not on what I think is right, not on just being me.

And again, I’m feeling guilty now, as I’m not sure what to write, how to convey this message, how to inspire you to get out of your negative thinking.

So yes, maybe I just made a big discovery. Maybe this is why the book is called ‘Think and Grow Rich’, not ‘Do and Grow Rich’. And maybe I should(?) just be me and you should just be you.