Tag Archives: Discipline

Need inspiration

It feels like I need some inspiration myself and I guess writing here won’t do that job. Sorry, I’ll be back tomorrow.

Find and give inspiration

I am still thinking how to add more value to this site by writing more inspirational posts. And that often makes me hesitant to start writing, like today, when I went to the other computer to write my daily post on this site.

And I was thinking where I mostly get my inspiration from. And yes, that is indeed from the e-mails I get from various sites I signed up for. Or at least some of them.

And yes, I am also considering to send e-mails like many blogs and inspirational sites do. But until now I decided not to, as I think my posts and pages and changes to pages are not yet good enough to share. And yes, also because I don’t want Inspiration for Success to be a blog, And I don’t want to write my posts like a blogger.

So that brings me of course to the question what I do want. And it always brings me back to the fact that I believe I had no one inspiring me, supporting me when I was a child. And later. And that I want this site to inspire you, support you, on your way to success in life. But not through myself. Or not through myself only. And while writing this I realize that I think I’m not inspiring. Or not inspiring enough. So I want other people to do the inspiration. But also while writing I realize there is no one else, at least not now. And I do have some things I am proud of, so I do have some reason to inspire you or talk about success.

As e.g. today I wrote in my Dutch blog that I made the WordPress plugin with which I am sending the daily inspirational quote myself. And I forgot about that, which is kind of weird, as it’s just working, I’m just using it every day. And as far as I know other people are also using it. But making it and having it approved by the WordPress team was not easy. As far as I remember it took me months as somehow I got stuck or didn’t have the time for it or something. So there was quite some persistence involved to finish it. And I did finish it, really finished it, as I’m using it every day (except Sunday) and it’s just working and I would not know anything that I would like to change, improve. And I know at least one person is using it as I got a request to add import functionality for e-mails. Or actually I think there were at least two persons involved in that request. So also other people are using it and apparently it is working fine for them also otherwise I guess I would get complaints.

And that plugin was not the only thing I was successful with related to Inspiration for Success. As I guess my biggest success is to write here and in my Dutch blog every day, yes, again, except Sunday. And mentioning the last every time of course doesn’t really make sense. Somehow I add that because otherwise I believe I wouldn’t be honest. As if that would make my achievement of doing several things every day less successful.

So this is often I guess how we pull ourselves down. As somehow we believe ‘the world’ considers writing every day not valid if we give ourselves a well needed break on Sunday. And I still don’t get where those ideas come from and I am quite sure I am not the only one pulling myself down like “I’m not good enough”. And of course that is complete nonsense as believe me, doing those things like writing every day is quite something. So I should be proud of myself instead of pulling myself down.

So what about you? When and how and where are you pulling yourself down when you should just be proud of yourself (I often avoid the word ‘should’ as no one ‘should’ do anything, but I think it’s appropriate here).

And yes, if you think you ‘should’ do more, be more disciplined, remember that I started much simpler than writing blog items every day. I started by just making the bed every day. And I made sure I didn’t miss one day, which I didn’t. But even if you do, just know you can start again every day. And do better if you want, if it feels good, if it makes you feel good.

Updating my desire document

I just made a major update to my desire document. And I was scared doing that, as some dates had passed and I had not achieved the goals that were written by those dates, far from it.

But I had planned it for today, so I had no option but to do it. As I have decided to finish my daily planned items, no matter what. And yes, of course sometimes there are circumstances that I can’t finish it. Like when I am traveling (and as I also have decided not to have a tablet, not to have continuous internet access). And sometimes I forget to write things down correctly, like if things depend on other people and I didn’t write ‘if it pushes through’ or ‘if the other person agrees’. But in general it is very rare that I don’t finish my daily list. And yes, sometimes the list is empty, like when I know I am traveling or something.

But I don’t want to talk about my daily planning today, I wanted to talk about my experience with updating my desire document, an experience I was scared of.

And as usual I was wrong, being scared of something. As my desire document is there to help me and not to scare me. And it did, in an unimaginable way, for more than two years now. And I just checked the date of the original document that became the basis of my desire document, which is October 22,2 014. And the first ‘readable’ version must have been written November 11, 2014, so a little more than two years ago. And of course the major things are just there, nothing really changed, except that I kind of made it more specific, made it even much ‘tighter’ than the original document.

And I am still looking for words to describe what has happened to me, what an enormous power a desire document summons. As when I wrote down my original desires they were completely impossible, or at least they appeared, they felt impossible. And quite soon after the most impossible thing became quite likely. And over the last two years I slowly found myself living the document, which was and is kind of strange. As the document still contains a lot of unrealized goals and, as indicated above, I passed some dates for some important goals without realizing them. But somehow I am just living the document, living my impossible goals from two years ago.

And it is hard to explain how it works, but it works indeed somehow like influencing your subconscious mind. And I noticed that when I realized that when I first started with phrase like ‘I desire to have 1 million dollar’ (no, that’s not in the actual document, as I consider that private), when reading the document over time this felt inadequate, as it felt like it should be ‘I have 1 million dollar’. So in general actual the opposite happened as what I was scared of: I made the document more specific and more in the now than in the future.

So today I made some major updates, basically because some dates had passed. And strangely enough, the new document is more specific, more in the ‘now’ than the original. And no, nothing really changed related to my desires, they are still the same. They just came closer with this new version of my desire document.

Home safe

It seems I still miss the passion or determination part of things as right now I just feel tired and want to stop, enjoy, go to bed and not write here, especially as Id don’t have or feel any inspiration about writing an inspiring post here.

And still, while thinking about the above, re-reading the above paragraph, this is not fully true. As somehow I still want to write inspiring stuff, still want Inspiration for Success the thing I had in mind when I started it. But somehow I don’t know how, somehow I don’t know how to get through this dip.

So what is the main issue here and, maybe more important, how to deal with it. I think the main issue here is something like running a marathon, at least that is the sample that comes in my mind. And I am in the middle and have long forgotten how it all started and why I wanted to run it and a finish line is nowhere in sight. And maybe more important, I seem to have lost the idea of where the finish line even is. And on the way I lost my team and also my supporters are nowhere to be seen or heard. So pretty lonely out here, even though somehow I feel the need to continue, even though I have lost all sight and all feeling about where this is going.

So is this what Seth Godin calls The Dip? And yes, I bought the book, read the book, but I can’t find it at the moment, even though it came in my mind quite a lot of times recently. And I know it says something about not quitting when you feel like quitting. But I don’t feel like quitting, I just feel like this is somehow going nowhere, even though I know deep down that it is going somewhere as e.g. the number of visits go up constantly a bit and the number of pages goes up constantly and, contrary to the Dutch site, seem to be all being indexed by Google. So I am making progress and it is going somewhere, except I’m not sure if it is going where I wanted it to go and how I wanted it to go.

And yes, maybe that is where the answer is, that I kind of lost contact with the original goal or goals of the site. Like inspiring people for success. Or more exactly, giving people a real life success coach, whether in person or in the form of (the content of) this site.

And next to these goals also giving some kind of real time report of my road to success, writing while I am not yet successful so people who are in a similar situation as I am at the time of writing an  item, would be given hope or inspiration to continue on their road to success. But the problem is that I didn’t really achieve the success or successes I am looking for, things like fame and money and things like that, the goals I intended to write about and the goals I still intend to achieve.

And yes, I achieved quite some successes, like writing every day, like making my bed every day, like sending a daily inspirational quote every day, like changing my attitude, my mindset into a more positive attitude and mindset. But the ‘I am there’, the ‘this is what it was all about’ is still not there and even nowhere to be seen. And one of my major concerns or weaknesses, I still do this all alone, still do this again alone. As I tried to create a team, a Master Mind group, as I considered that one of my biggest weaknesses, something like team building, being a team leader, being a team member, working in a team. And I still didn’t solve that, at least not in this site, with this project. and also not in my main business, my web development and internet marketing business.

And I still feel tired and some kind of lost, like most of my life, like during most of my career, even though I have learned a lot and even though I know many answers. But until now just living a joyful life has not become reality, the basic thing I think I have been looking for all my life. And I know it can be done as I see some people, or maybe even most people, do that. Just live their life, without the amount of suffering I feel.

And strange, while writing this somehow I feel answers are coming closer, success is coming closer. As somehow I changed something, the last two years. As I know I gained an awful lot of self confidence for example. And this writing has given me an awful lot of analyzing power. As e.g. while writing this post I can somehow feel all the stuff I wrote before and somehow learn from it, learn from my experience in a better way than if I hadn’t written it down here, in public, in this site/blog.

So is this an inspiring post? I am not sure. But it does bring me closer to the thing or the things I have been looking for, searching for all my life. And yes, indeed, things like holidays without worries, things like feeling rich, being rich, yes, with money. Things like having an expensive car like the Pajero I have in mind, and being able to drive it without worry. And having parties in the house an being able to just invite guests without having to ask them to pay.

So maybe, going back to how I started this post, I just have to continue going, ‘running’, like a marathon. And looking to other parts of this post, maybe I should redefine or visualize better or again where I want to go, what would be the exact end goal, what would make me happy and make me feel like I reached what I wanted to reach.

And yes, going back to you, maybe you should ask yourself what marathon you are running. And if you are still on track, if you still know where you are going, what finish you were planning to reach.

As somehow I guess we all have some kind of finish in mind that would make us happy. And maybe that finish is just much closer by than we think, as we just had forgotten how that finish looked like and where it was.

Crime thoughts

We had quite an exciting night last night as the house of the friend where we stayed to be able to attend the funeral of the mother of another friend was robbed. And it was a very strange robbery where nothing seems to add up. As somehow there was too much coincidence like a large amount of money hidden in the quarters of the friend where we stayed. And another relatively large amount hidden in another place. And not too many places searched or disturbed so much except especially the room where the money was. As also some of our stuff was searched, but not really that thorough.

And of course now, my friend in panic, emotionally disturbed has all kinds of thoughts how this could have happened and who could have done it, of course including the four of us, who stayed at her house at the time.

So with my newly learned knowledge of looking at the positive side of things the first thing I tried was to calm my friend down, which of course didn’t work, as she was just robbed and was very upset. And as the hours passed I tried to search for something positive in this, for her or for any other person. And I couldn’t really find anything as there was quite a lot of money gone, some expensive and valuable equipment and worst of all of course a feeling of betrayal as it seemed the robbery had been done by someone who knew either our friend or the apartment.

What I did see over the day was that the negative thoughts of some of the people involved in this whole thing somehow seemed to make things worse, especially for themselves. And basically I was not really involved as nothing I did or didn’t do would have made any difference, so of course for me it was relatively easy to not involve myself in the whole negative thing I saw develop, although at a certain point I also got kind of angry at all those people blaming themselves and others for what had gone wrong, where to me in the end this was nothing more than some kind of burglary with or without inside knowledge, nothing more, nothing less.

And yes, interesting to somehow be more a spectator than someone participating in all the emotions and stuff going. And the most interesting thing for me was that basically everything was based on perceptions and hardly anything on ‘reality’ as until now nobody, of course except the people involved in the robbery itself, knows what had exactly happened and why and how. And despite me as indicated not being really involved, although of course I am a suspect as I was staying in the house when my friend was not there, I think with my recently learned skills of being more, well, disciplined, and more observant, more analysing what was going on and what I could learn from it, I think I did pretty well in handling this situation, where I saw almost everybody else somehow being drawn into this drama, a drama that was just created around perceptions around the actual event.

So I saw a lot of negative thoughts and feelings mainly backfiring to the people having them. Where to me in the end this was just a simple burglary where someone must have entered the house, took some stuff and then left the house. Nothing more, nothing less. But what was the worst around these feelings based on perceptions of the persons themselves or based on the perceptions of others were doing an awful lot of damage to some relationships, either developing or already existing for a long time.

So maybe the positive of all of this, at least for me, is to learn how dangerous perceptions are and how damaging actions based on those perceptions can be. And yes, I know I was not the person having been robbed and also not the person who might have made a mistake, so it is relatively easy for me to stay calm. But somehow I know that with my current knowledge and discipline and such I think I would have reacted much calmer and dealt with it much easier than the person involved.

So what stays in my thoughts related to the Principles of Success is to do things based on facts and not based on presumptions. So whatever happens, first analyse and figure out what is really going on, and then act.