Tag Archives: Inspiration

The world knocks it out of you

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 manual

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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.

Goals, Master Mind and belief

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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.

Don’t compare yourself to others, or to the world

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Today I (still) found myself in a very negative thinking pattern. And the reasons behind this negativity and sadness seem to be something like comparing yourself to others and (high) expectations.

I was hit yesterday with what a friend said, that I was beautiful, that if I would look inside, behind all the negativity, all the mud, all the dirt, I would see myself as I really am, I would see a diamond or diamonds. And I’m still not sure what hit me, as I know it’s true, but somehow I don’t feel it, can’t accept it, can’t deal with it. And I guess this is true for most people, so probably also for you.

How weird most human beings are, mostly seeing themselves as negative, telling themselves how bad they are, mostly telling themselves they’re not OK. And it seems it’s all about uprising, about culture, all about how often we have heard not to do something because it’s bad. But how can we be bad? We didn’t make ourselves, create ourselves, or maybe we did. We just ‘are’. And are baby’s bad? Are we bad when we are born?

So what is all this. Christian culture? Being born in sin? Or even Buddhism, having karma, being born with karma?

And why I am writing this? Well, I am still inspired by the words of Lynn Grabhorn that we have the right to be happy, that we have the right to wish for things, want things, where most cultures would consider ‘wanting’ something bad, or having a lot, especially money being bad. But why would it be bad to want something, or have a lot of money. In the end there is enough or even a lot of everything, including money. And does it hurt anybody to want things, have things, except maybe that others might be jealous? And even it it would hurt someone else, then still, what would be wrong with wanting something? We just are who we are.

And I want to finish with some paragraphs from the book of Lynn Grabhorn, as I think they are very, very true and not applying this stands in the way of a lot of happiness and success:

Now here’s the big news: you don’t have to be worthy of a blasted thing to have your desires.

You don’t have to prove, or witness, or demonstrate, or pass a moral test.

You don’t have to explain your reasons, or make excuses to your family, to yourself or to God.

You don’t have to be any more worthy or deserving, or trustworthy, or upstanding than you are now.

You only have to make one decision…, just one…, and that is to be happy.

But you will never start down that road until you allow your Wants – your dreams, your desires, your hankerings – to come out of the closet, not just peek around the corner of a cracked-open door, but come all the way out!

Like any hidden talent that you’ve either consciously or unconsciously known was there but didn’t feel comfortable bringing out, once you accept the fact that wanting is part of you, and that doing it sis really okay, it becomes fun. Joy starts to flow. You begin to vibrate differently, for when you are in joy with Life you cannot vibrate negatively and you cannot attract negatively, only positively.

When you are in joy with Life, you cannot feel insecure, ashamed, unworthy, unsafe, guilty, or inferior in any manner, because you aren’t vibrating there. You cannot feel lack of any kind. Nor can you attract it.

The only thing you will do as you begin to unlock your Wants is vibrate more joy, more abundance, and more freedom in your experience. Small price to pay for dreaming, wouldn’t you say?

And it makes no difference what you choose to dream! Choose your dream because it makes you happy, and you’ll vibrate it into your life. Dream the dream of joy, dream the dream of fulfillment, dream the dream of frivolity, but DREAM!

Having desires – wanting – is no more a sin than breathing. Never again think you have to justify your Wants. Just don’t! You cannot be justifying, defending or rationalizing – which is all negative flowing – and remain to your core energy.

You need to make no excuses to anything, anybody or any higher or lower authority for your desires. Certainly not to God. To do so is to turn your back on your own higher energy, thus denying your very existence, your divine right to Life. Contrary to common teachings, gaining happiness is your hallowed right of birth.

So let yourself go, and dream. You are already creating your life every moment of every day by how you think and vibrate; you might as well create it the way you’d like it to be.

So what are your dreams? Maybe long forgotten? Your own dreams, not the dreams of others?

Wow, an inspiring day

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Wow, I had an inspiring day, even though it started with a night I hardly slept. And I had to wake up quite early as a friend of mine had invited me to attend a Buddhist meeting of SGI, representative organization of Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism at 9.30am, so it was not really easy for me to get going, especially as waking up is not my strongest characteristic.

I still don’t fully get this Buddhist thing, including the chanting of Nam-Myo-Ho-Renge-Kyo, but as my friend seems to be very positive and happy I have decided I’ll give it a try. The philosophy of Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism is a bit weird though at first, as it seems on many questions I have the simple answer is ‘just chant’. Being quite a complicated person as I think I am that’s not an easy answer to deal with, but maybe it is exactly the answer I and I guess many other people need: just keep it simple, don’t think, just do and everything will be ok. Of course there is more to it, but then better check out any SGI member or the SGI website for more information as I’m not a member and they are very serious about the right teaching.

About today during the chanting in the meeting I had many experiences. At first I just started to cry, which felt very embarrassing, as I was just new and I guess the only one crying. It was the first time in a long time though that I realized that I am a very sensitive person and that this crying is part of it. It’s not really sadness or so, just very deep emotion. And I realized that I had suppressed that emotion or maybe expressing that emotion for too long, like completely harnessing it inside, locking it up. And I am starting to realize that doing things like that, locking myself up, would of course result in an awful lot of stress and complete isolation from other people. Because how can other people see me as I really am, how can I see myself as I really am if I completely hide, well, completely hide myself, hide my true feelings, my true self. How can people love me, how can I love myself if I deny my very self, my very own being.

The second thing that happened was that i noticed that it took a while for the chanting to be in unison, or at least for like 80% in unison. It was my first experience with chanting in quite a large group and I never noticed the differences and the importance of a leader. And the difference of the leader chanting or not. And realizing that probably everybody has or had a similar experience as I had, And for me the experience was something like my emotions making it hard for me to chant, mainly because of my emotional crying. But sometimes also just feeling blocked. And it felt that the whole group was just trying to get ‘in tune’ trying to get rid of all negativity by chanting. And it took a while before there was some kind of unison in the chanting, so it seemed like quite an effort, but it felt good as the chanting got more and more, well, smooth, in unison. So there was change in energy, there was turning negative into positive, and it was kind of massive.

What I also noticed was that everybody chants differently, indeed, trying to get in tune, but different. It told me that people are different, but everybody is trying to get to ‘the good’. It made me realize that in real life people are also different, something I don’t fully get or maybe often just forget, not realize. So quite an experience for me, the ‘large group chant’.

And then the song Sleeping Child of Michael Learns to Rock was played, played on a guitar. And the guitar sounded cheap at first. And then I realized I like this type of guitar. And that I really like and love this song. And that the player, although he did not play it perfect, had done his effort, had done his exercise. And suddenly I realized that i had forgotten this type of guitar sound, that I had forgotten to listen to music for a long time. That i had forgotten how beautiful music can be, life can be. And I still don’t know what happened to me in life, i still don’t know why I ended up here, in misery, with everything fallen apart. But this song, this guitar player, this guitar sound brought back some of my long forgotten dreams, some of my long forgotten ‘enjoy life’ things, no matter how imperfect the guitar sound, no matter how imperfect the guitar player. It was one of the most beautiful things I ever experienced, so thank you friend who brought me here, thank you guitar player, for giving me this today.