Tag Archives: Persistence

How to write an inspiring post

Yes, it is still in my mind how to write an inspiring post. And I still don’t know how to do that, as it is quite late and I don’t feel like writing. But of course that is none of your business as an inspiring post should inspire you, and knowing about my current feeling or status is probably not that inspiring. Or is it?

As I just finished installing Caesar IV on the PC of a friend of mine. And over the day that started to worry me, as it was one of the few things on my planning list for today. And it was supposed to be a pretty straightforward thing as I had done it before on one of our own PC’s here. So I knew a bit what to expect, except the PC of my friend runs Windows 8 where our own PC I installed Caesar IV on runs Windows 7. But as the game, a pretty old game not made for newer versions of Windows, ran on Windows 7 without too many problems, I expected the installation a bit similar to the one before, not really straightforward, but doable within a few hours and without too much effort. How wrong I was, as the installation of .NET 3.X is quite different on Windows 8 compared to Windows 7. And it needed to download something, which didn’t work and that didn’t make much sense to me.

Anyhow, I did manage to install the game, and that is kind of the inspiring part of this post. As I used quite some of the Principles of Success to get this task done today. At first I used the principle of decision, as I decided quite a while ago that I will finish my daily to do list, no matter what. And I have become pretty good at that, as it is very rare that I fail to finish all the items on the list that I have marked as ‘definite’. So with this list I have developed the habit of planning things and finishing them at the time specified. And keep in mind that this is not particularly difficult, as when I started with this habit I started with just one little thing per day. So I was 99% sure I could finish that thing. And I did that for quite a while, weeks, if not months, to get started with this.

And still, recently I didn’t feel like doing a lot of things. And I have been on a short holiday. So for the last weeks, months, my daily planning has been pretty empty, like many days where I planned nothing. And over time I learned to specify things more specific, like adding the word ‘maybe’ or ‘probably’ or stating something like ‘if pushes through’. As I noticed that for some things you depend on other people and as I don’t think it is healthy to force other people to follow your planning I am very careful making statements about that (thanks Mike, for pointing out to me how this works).

So also today I thought I had a pretty simple list that could easily be finished. How wrong I was, as somewhere during the evening I really started to believe that this game installation might not work out today. However, for those things the principle of persistence comes in handy, together with the earlier mentioned decision. As those two things just made me push through where other people, or I myself before I learned all this, would stop, would declare defeat or failure. But I didn’t, as somehow I have developed to just go further, a lot further, than I used to before. And finally it did work out, although in this case it might not have worked out today. But it did.

And most important what I learned, what I can confirm also from what Napoleon Hill and many other famous ‘self help’ writers state, is that it doesn’t really take a lot of effort or energy. As it is just a habit I developed. It is just ‘something I do’.

So well, even though it is later than I wanted, expected, and even though I feel a bit tired and didn’t really feel to write a post, I think I managed to write something useful which even might be inspiring. So maybe I am also slowly developing the habit of writing, writing inspiring posts. How successful is that?

And what about you? Do you finish things? Have you developed habits that help you finish things? And yes, looking back it is all worth the effort. As with all these things I have changed, where the major change has been that I have an awful lot more self confidence, which I think is a big thing.

Earning as a blogger

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Today I got an e-mail from Alden Tan as I get many. Often even e-mails with the same text with a different title, ‘as that works’ according to him. And his e-mail was about the commercial side of his blogging, the commercial side of blogging in general. That most bloggers earn from advertisements and people clicking on links. And ‘that works’. And I don’t mind, as I also earn from some of my sites, our sites (as most are earned by the company of me and my partner). And the last year the income from these sites were very welcome, looking at the financial status I am still in.

And his e-mail made me think, again, about this site. And yes, I know it has become some kind of personal diary, often of my problems and stuff, maybe even a site with my complaints, with me sometimes or often feeling a victim. So maybe my writing is not always that good, maybe it doesn’t really help people, maybe it isn’t all useful. But especially in the beginning I did my very best to also put more useful content, especially in the form of pages related to stuff I learned from the Principles of Success as described in Think and Grow Rich. And I started the IFS Tools, on my own in the end, as I couldn’t find any programmer to help me with it. And yes, I know they are kind of a draft, far from perfect and I guess for them being really useful they would need to be extended a bit. But when is good good enough?

Ah, and yes, I send a daily quote, now to around 150 e-mail addresses, partially from my initially entering e-mail addresses I had and found, but more recently from people signing up, as it is supposed to be.

So no, until now I didn’t earn anything with this site. And that bothers me. As either it is useless, except maybe for myself, or people just don’t care about the people behind many things like this blog, as ‘everything internet’ is ‘free’. And yes, I am also guilty of that, of using all kinds of stuff for free. As that is how the market works, first giving things for free, and in a later stage charge. Or just charge for additional stuff.

Well, the above makes me think again. As I still don’t understand how Facebook e.g. works. How can so many people use a system so much for free, presumably hardly clicking on advertisements, and Facebook still making a profit? Yes, maybe I still don’t fully understand what is real ‘mass production’ or ‘mass use’, the benefits of millions or billions of people using something. And even so, are we still willing to use services by paying for it indirectly, to especially the large companies paying for their advertisements to be put? Is this really the way how we want it? Should I really start putting advertisements here ‘because that is how the market works’? I don’t think so, but sometimes it is frustrating seeing ‘successful people’ and ‘successful companies’ earn so much, where I also do my best to put some value, even if it were just by sharing my thoughts.

P.S. I guess my request for a camera is still some kind of begging and maybe I should rephrase or just buy one, but is there really no one out there having some few years old decent camera he or she doesn’t use anymore and willing to send it to me?

Suddenly I believed

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This morning I had quite an interesting experience. As I suddenly believed that I will really have my black Pajero. And it was a very strange feeling, as until now I just tried to imagine it by surrounding myself with photo’s and such and yes, also writing to Mitsubishi about my wish, my dream. And yes, sometimes while going up to Malasag on a habal-habal or at other times on or in a vehicle I try to imagine myself at the steering wheel of my black Pajero. So yes, I am following the instructions of e.g. the ideas about repetition of thoughts from Think and Grow Rich. But until today it never really felt like it worked, I never really believed. But somehow today it was different, somehow I really saw my black Pajero coming to the house, being brought to me, through the gate. And it had all to do with the progress I am making with my project, my projects about improving internet in The Philippines and improving life in Cagayan de Oro City.

And some other things became very clear to me, as e.g. while working on my presentation for the Mayor of Cagayan de Oro City I realized that statements like ‘poverty alleviation’ are fully missing the point. As what do they emphasize? Yes, poverty! So I thought that it would be better to use something like ‘riches awareness’ or ‘wealth awareness’ than ‘poverty alleviation’. And all of this is related that especially for the last months I am constantly evaluating my thoughts. And I found that many, many of my thoughts are negative, or maybe better stated limiting. And looking back also this process took me a long while of, well also some kind of repetition, checking my thoughts on whether they help or or just push me down.

So yes, I can certainly recommend again to buy Think and Grow Rich. But don’t only buy it, read it, keep reading it, and work from it, do the things that are suggested, even though they don’t always may make sense to you. And don’t give up, as I realize more and more that virtually nothing can beat persistence, not by reading it, but by experiencing it, especially with my ‘impossible projects’. As somehow my project, my projects are starting to come alive. And indeed, as per ideas of Abraham Hicks, you can’t force things into place, you need to come from a place of no resistance. Or as Napoleon Hill mentions Infinite Intelligence as some greater force, which is basically the same idea. And that is also what I am starting to feel, that if I do my part, the Universe and all people around are starting to cooperate. And yes, I believe action is needed, but that is not the only thing. It indeed needs to be inspired action, which is sometimes difficult to explain.

So yes, just start, somewhere, and don’t give up!

Who am I writing to or for

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I am still subsribed to zenhabits.net and today I found an interesting post about blogging, about writing onine, as I do here, in this site, today, now. And it made me think that I am not really writing to someone, except that my writing is still focused on people who are looking for success, like I still do. And going back to the history of my writing, of the history of this site and why I am writing every day maybe it is useful to analyze a bit more, as I have already been planning, how to continue with this site, with my writing every day.

Anyhow, the first thing that came up while thinking who am I writing for is that my original idea was that all my writing would start making sense if and when I have achieved the success I am looking for. As from that position you could read all my complaints and defeats and maybe failures and whatever I wrote, to see that no matter what, no matter how you feel, no matter where you stand, you can still get where you want to be, you can still achieve the success you are looking for.

But what is success anyhow, as somehow I still put myself down that I didn’t achieve success yet. But that is only by my own measurement, by relating everything to what I have defined as success and everything that I have defined as failure or defeat to where I stand, to what I have achieved. And yes, looking at my desire document I am not successful by measuring to the ultimate goals I have written in there. But somehow I am living my desire document and somehow I achieved major milestones in relation to my ultimate goals. As you may or may not know, when I wrote my desire document, virtually everything in there was impossible, literally impossible. But looking back, soon after I wrote it, my one and only major goal turned into something like very likely or very probable, And slowly, over the last two years, my desire document became my life, as everything in there now somehow is at least possible, where I can even say that everything that is happening in my life right now is somehow related to the desires and goals that are written down there.

And I can’t really explain how that exactly works, but it is somehow logical looking back, and all gets back to the six steps as written down by Napoleon Hill. And somehow I made large progress on where I want to be and who I want to be and how I want to live, because at least I have turned my life around in a way that related to e.g. the financial debts I have, I at least stopped borrowing extra money and started paying some things again, even though my debt still is going up because of unpaid interest and such. But I did make a turn, and I guess you could call that a success.

Some other successes that are worth mentioning is that since I started making my bed, our bed every day, I literally never skipped one day doing that, although there were some circumstances like sleeping elsewhere or not sleeping at all or having some weird schedule. Basically the only thing is that I sometimes have done it late at night, just before going to bed, but I still did it. Another thing I did was putting one peso every day in a box, no matter how little money I had. And again, I started that habit when I had no money at all and didn’t even know how to buy food or feed the dogs one week from the day I started. And the weird thing with that habit is that one day I decided to put five peso in that box instead of one, as at that time I was not that tight on money anymore. And one or two months ago I decided to increase the daily amount to twenty peso and also with this habit I never failed. And there are more things I improved, turned around, like making a daily planning and executing that planning every day, even though the last few weeks I didn’t really make a planning on paper. But I still did it, even when not written down. And not to forget my daily sending of an inspirational quote, my daily writing of a post in this site, my daily update of my online gratitude diary and my almost daily writing of a post in my Dutch blog. As I hardly ever skipped any of those things, except my daily writing in my Dutch blog, but that is also something I gave myself some leeway like ‘only when it feels good’, so also here I have been pretty successful, I guess I could even say very successful..

So looking at the above I guess I can just say that I have become much more successful in many things after starting with reading Think and Grow Rich and working from it. And I think the most important thing here is that I have programmed myself for success, or at least have programmed myself to be more successful than before. And another major thing is that my outlook in life, my outlook towards the future fully changed. As right now I am much, much more determined to achieve the things that I have decided to achieve, no matter what. And again, also here the Principle of Success ‘decision‘, comes in handy, As I basically don’t change any decisions anymore, even though I have no clue where that goes, as over time things change, so also somehow goals needs to change, e.g. when you reach a goal. But somehow I didn’t encounter that ‘problem’ yet, so there doesn’t seem to be a problem.

So have I become successful, have I achieved success? Well, not really to my own standards, to the goals that I have set, as I didn’t achieve any of them fully. But looking at the above I guess I can consider myself pretty successful. So I guess I have some right now to write about success, to write about how to achieve things, as I am certainly on the right way.

So going back to the original question of who I am writing for, or maybe who I have been writing for, I have the feeling I have been writing to myself mostly until now. But in the background I have also been writing to people who are in a similar situation as I was when writing a particular post. And yes, today I have certainly been writing to myself, as in between the lines I read a lot of perfectionism, meaning that I am way too hard on myself.

So looking at the above I guess I can change my outlook on my blogging here now, as I can consider myself much more successful than I was before, and I guess even more successful than most people. So next thing is what to write about from now, or how to write, and maybe most important, for or to whom, as I think the suggestion of Leo Babauta of keeping your audience in mind is a very good suggestion.

Going to the moon

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Today I discussed my draft presentation for the internet city project with someone, and yes, I compare my project with something like flying to the moon. As when John F. Kennedy set the goal of going to the moon there was no budget, no technical capability, not enough knowledge, no experience and not enough time (target ‘this decade’). But that didn’t stop us from going to the moon, on schedule. So the idea that grew slowly in my mind over the last two years or so may be similar to something like flying to the moon, read ‘impossible’, but with the right mindset I believe it can certainly be done.

And maybe I should study a bit more how he did it, how it was prepared, like similar to my project, it would probably be announced by the Mayor of Cagayan de Oro City and not by me, and it would probably be attached to him, not to me. So let’s try to figure out what was all behind that simple statement of intending to go to the moon by John F. Kennedy.

Well, found some background on the moon program on Wikipedia.