Author Archives: Guus

Fun things

So I learned how to plan and how to be (more) disciplined. But what I probably have to learn is to plan fun things, things that make me happy, things that I enjoy. As I see more and more that I just seem to see life as a list of things I have to do. And yes, I have learned to see that everything a human being does is a choice, so I know I choose to do those things, to put so much obligations onto myself.

And again I think of my mother, like yesterday or so. As she also always or mostly seems to focus on others, on helping and supporting others. Meaning she feels like she has nothing for herself and indeed also doesn’t have anything for herself.

So what happened to me, as I did have my part of fun things. But the last few years, when the money was gone, I didn’t feel like doing fun things anymore, as I just can’t afford. And the stupid thing is that I basically gave everything to my partner, gave in to all the demands and wishes of my partner. And yes, of course I enjoy the TV and the new refrigerator. But I would have never bought those myself, I would have spent my money differently, spending less on a TV and less on a refrigerator, and more on, yes, on what? Yes, travel I guess. And maybe renovating the house. And a new motorcycle.

And yes, when you have given everything away you feel drained and indeed are no fun to be with anymore. But I also still don’t see why I wouldn’t give my partner everything he wants. As that is also what I would like to happen. And they say something like you reap what you sow, so somehow I sowed something else than I thought.

So what did I sow? And how can I sow better? And what did you sow? And are you happy with what you are reaping?

IFS Tools Milestone

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Wow, I think I just finished the biggest upgrade to this site until now. And the kind of funny thing is that you don’t even see it right now. At least I hope you won’t see it, because that means I did something wrong. And looking back the changes are not even that big. But it took me a while to get here, as I wanted my own development for the future expansion of the site as I believe that is much more efficient towards the future. So today I was finally able to finalize and install the basic version of the IFS development framework, that is based on the software development methods of Active Discovery Designs.

So I guess it’s time to celebrate, as this is a major milestone in the website stuff of the project Inspiration for Success. As this means that from this point on I will be able to create some tools that will help you implement the methods that I described in this site and that I am using on my way to success, like the creation of a desire document based on the six steps Napoleon Hill describes. And something like keeping track of your score on the different principles of success, as I did quite a long time ago on the sample page for that. So you can measure your progress on each of the principles and check which principle of success you might want to work on a bit more.

And no, while writing this, I don’t think this site, these tools would be or should be a replacement for the book Think and Grow Rich or other books I used to get where I am now on my way to success. So please buy the book and work from it, read from it, open it every day. As every time you read it or parts of it or even one sentence out of it, you will find something new. As that is and was recommended by Napoleon Hill and is also my recommendation and experience.

So I hope soon you will be back on this site and register and get access to those tools. As of course it is my goal to help you to achieve your success, preferably faster and easier than I am doing it right now.

Facebook

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I was just using Facebook and thinking what it means to me and what it means to others. And why it was Facebook that survived and not Hyves or Friendster or some other similar site. And while wanting to put the right links I see they are all gone, except Facebook. And I have still mixed thoughts about e.g. the success of Facebook. And of many other mass products and services. And there are many, as the more I think about it, the success of Ford or Maggi or Microsoft, or whatever product or service we use in our daily life, are all the same and it goes back much further than we think. And they all start with some idea and all make some people very rich as Napoleon Hill describes in Think and Grow Rich.

And all seem to go back to make a product or service available to the masses. And indeed, then the money would flow in faster than you would have ever imagined. But, no matter what Napoleon Hill states, you would need the masses to make someone, or a group of people, ‘filthy rich’. So in the end that type of success cannot be for everybody. As you can only have one Facebook or Google or Microsoft, even though the monopoly of Microsoft in operating systems is starting to fade. And you can have only so many car brands or soft drink brands.

And no, with my own experience and what I now know about achieving that type of success, I don’t believe all those brands became large by ‘accident’. There must have been some deliberate action, or maybe better stated in the words of Abraham Hicks, deliberate creation. There must have been some sort of planning and persistence.

But yes, there must have also been some kind of ‘break’ for the person or people who wanted something. As I am starting to apply many of the Principles of Success, but I’m not there yet. And I think I am doing more than my share, even though sometimes, or even often, I’m just stuck and not moving, not working.

Well, time will tell if the Principles of Success really work, or the way I apply them, try to live them. And that reminds me that one of the goals of this site is to be a real life, real time story of someone on the way to success using the Principles of Success as described by Napoleon Hill.

So this is still the struggle you see as also described in the book. Although while writing this right now I am also starting to see the opportunities. And I’m trying to use them right now, where before I would not even have recognized them.

So yes, especially the last few weeks I am really starting to believe that success is possible, if you are willing to go the road, also for me.

What about you?

On the way to leadership

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Napoleon Bonaparte Strange, I am getting more and more the feeling that I am on the way to leadership. And the main reason is that in the back of my mind I often hear Napoleon Hill say “a leader must plan the work and work his plan”. And that is what I have been doing lately, also today. As today was a very strange day, as part of the day there was no electricity, kind of unexpected and longer than I thought. But I also knew I was going to finish the things on my to do list, the things I planned, and I was going to write my posts, no matter what. Although of course if the electricity wouldn’t have come back I might have decided not to finish my list, my plan.

And no, I’m not happy. As my dream, the thing I stated as my definite purpose, has not become reality yet. It somehow even feels further away than the last year or so. But I feel much stronger, much more self confident, self confidence I never felt before like this. And yes, knowing what I want, having decided what I want in life and having written that down makes life easier. As I don’t have to think anymore about what I want. As it won’t change. And somehow, no matter whether I feel closer to it or further away, that makes life much easier.

And of course I have doubts, of course I doubt. I’m still human. But whenever I doubt, I ask myself something like what else I would want. Or whether I am still willing to give what I stated in my desire document. And until now the answer has always been, no, I don’t want anything else. This is what I want. And yes, I am still willing to give what I stated I wanted to give.

And no, it’s not easy. As my desire, the thing that I want, is very, very big. And still kind of impossible. But those questions, and the answers, the answers written in my desire document, still keep me going, give me peace, give me strength.

And I started this post with something like becoming a leader. And recently I really feel like becoming a leader. As e.g. I notice how few leaders there really are. And how much leadership is needed, how many people need a leader. And I feel humble, scared sometimes. As I never had a good leader to follow, except maybe Napoleon Hill. So I guess I follow him, his ideas, the ideas he wrote down, the ideas that he states are the combination of the ideas of many leaders, many successful people.

So yes, maybe I am becoming a good follower also, meaning I may also become a good leader.

Thank you Lord!

Patience?

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Actually I wanted to write about this yesterday, but somehow the other idea took charge, so what happened to me last Saturday or so needed to wait.

And it wasn’t that special what happened last Saturday, but somehow it also was. And it’s worth thinking about I guess, it’s worth contemplating.

And you may or not know, but for quite a while I have been trying to start with the tools section in this website. Tools like helping you create a desire document or helping you get more clarity on your goals and how to reach them. And me being me I want to build that part of the site in my own way, according to the standards of Active Discovery Designs. As I believe building it in WordPress, according to the WordPress standards, will be too complicated and too time consuming. And next to that I don’t want to depend on the way WordPress is going as I don’t have good experience with Open Source systems when you have to support them, want to maintain them, want to expand them. And don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Open Source systems as e.g. most of the web servers on the internet are even running on Open Source systems like LInux, PHP and mySQL. And until now this whole site has been built with WordPress according to the WordPress standards.

Anyhow, I didn’t want to talk about Open Source systems and such, but about my experience with something that had been bothering me for weeks already, maybe even months. As I was looking for a way to create a simple signup procedure where you only have to enter your e-mail address and a password to either sign in to this site or to register. And yes, at the same time go to my own, much simpler, way of programming a website, a web application. But I got stuck.

And getting stuck when writing software is quite a common thing, at least for me. Sometimes you ‘just don’t see it’ and you get stuck in some very weird process where you just can’t find the bug, can’t find the error, can’t find why something doesn’t work. And it can keep you busy for days, where in the end the solution is often just one or two lines of code or some very stupid simple programming error. So I got stuck in the problem of automatically logging the user in after signing up, after entering a new e-mail address. And no, this website is not a full time job or something, especially the programming part, but I did spend quite some hours spent over a few weeks to solve this problem. And I couldn’t find it, I just couldn’t find why it didn’t work. And last Saturday I did one small search in Google and suddenly I found the solution as also other people had experienced the same thing. And indeed, also this time the solution took like fifteen minutes or less to implement. And it will take me probably hours to take out all the ‘debugging code’ that I have added to find the problem. But again, I don’t want to talk about software development.

No, I wanted to talk about that sometimes, or even mostly, solutions just ‘come to you’. And that is maybe also what the teachings of Abraham Hicks are trying to tell us. That all the pushing and shoving and hammering that we often do when things don’t work, when we want to put something into place, are not needed or even can have a negative impact. As when I would have just searched in a relaxed way in Google instead of trying and trying and trying to solve this problem I would have saved a lot of time, effort, energy and annoyance. So yes, often stopping and thinking works better than just ‘work, work, work’.

And I remember another sample of a similar situation. As I was on the way to the wake of a friend of mine who had died. And I didn’t know exactly where it was, but the name of the funeral home made me think it was somewhere near a subdivision with the same name. And that subdivision is something like six kilometers away from the city center, the city center where I started my search. And it took me I think even hours to find out I was in the wrong place. While if I would have just asked someone in the city center, where I was, close to the funeral home, I would have saved a lot of time and effort and even money. But no, I just had a wrong perception and was too, well, maybe preoccupied, with what I thought was right, to consider asking.

So better think and ask first, before doing a lot of effort.