Tag Archives: Principles of Success

Bread and circuses

One of my biggest questions is still what people really want, especially what younger people want, what youth wants. And as I have visited quite some internet cafes recently it seems that young people, students just want to play games, computer games, internet games, as most of the people around me in this internet cafe seem to play computer games or internet games.

And I have thought about that quite a lot recenlty, as I remember that when I was a student there was I time that I was also addicted to a computer game. And that in later periods in my life I also played games quite a lot, although in the end, mostly after months, I will get bored with it, so right now, recently, I didn’t really play that much.

But looking at my goals, my desires, in the end I also just want to ‘play’, want to relax. And recently also realized that many things people do business wise is to entertain people, serve people in their spare time. And that indeed virtually anything that is being produced or sold is mainly focused on entertainment, of course next to things for daily needs like food and household items.

And this brought me back to the old Roman quote “Bread and circuses” (or “bread and games”). And I just read in Wikipedia that that is mainly related to politics, like keep the people happy in a simple way.

But going back to the subject of what people want I am indeed really wondering what people really want. And maybe I should just see if I can find some statistics about that as for now I basically have my own reference and some feedback I got from some of my friends. But that feedback is often very limited and confirms what Napoleon Hill states, that most people don’t have a definite purpose or a goal in life. Mostly I hear people say if I ask them what they want, what they want in life very simple common things like ‘a family’ or ‘enough money to support me and my family’ or ‘a happy life’. So indeed hardly any of the people I asked have clear definite goals they want to achieve, let alone dates and plans related to them.

And also looking at myself I am slowly starting to realize why most people are where they are. They are where they are because they are not very specific about what they want, where they want to be. So they are indeed where they intend to be: nowhere.

And that makes me often think about the quote from Alice in Wonderland who is at a crossroad and asks someone whether she should go left or right. And the other person or creature asks where she wants to go. And she says something like “I don’t know” and then (of course) the answer is “then it doesn’t matter whether you go, left or right”. And the more I think about it, this is so true. And this is where most of us I guess end up, including me at the moment, although I think I am a little bit further than the majority of people.

But all that I know about goals and timing and plans makes life much easier for me, as right now I don’t have any clear short term timescale or plans. So often I don’t really move so much, don’t take much action. And before I would mostly kind of blame myself for not doing anything. But right now, when I am in a place where I think I don’t want to be, I often realize how I got there. Just by doing the things I did, making the choices I made. And indeed, I am starting to believe that uninspired action, action without a specific goal, is quite useless, maybe indeed harmful to get us where we want to go, where we want to be. As uninspired action may indeed just get us further away from our goals than we think.

so yes, be happy where you are right now. Because you are where you are because of the things you did and the choices you made. And you may have quite some hidden desires that stop you from reaching goals that you think you have. Like in my case one of my implicit goals is to stay in The Malasag House in Cagayan de Oro City. And that limits my options and defines my choices. But it’s a very important, even though quite hidden and unspecified goal. As The Malasag House is my home and I don’t want to leave my home anymore as I did before, and realized I lost my home only afterwards.

So what are your goals? And what are your hidden goals? You may be closer to where you want to be or may just be where you want to be if you look at all of this closely.

So be happy where you are and start from there if you want more or something else.

Persistence again

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Happy Sun Well, today was about persistence again as it seemed that everything that could go wrong did go wrong, even until fifteen minutes ago.

And I am still wondering if this is what all successful people seem to say, that you just need to go on until you’re there, no matter what.

So right now I am kind of asking myself if I’m successful. And somehow I am, as I am writing this post which is something I wanted to do today. And I just worked a little on the tools page, the part of the site that is going to give value to the site in the form of some kind of service. And I did do some work today, also something I planned. And in the mean time my biggest desire, my greatest dream, the impossible thing that I wanted to happen seems to start happening. So yes, somehow I am successful.

But some part of the success is still missing and I have no clue how to get there. And that is still the financial success I am looking for. And that type of success has different stages, where as of the moment somehow my biggest issue is that I have debts that don’t suit me and that I never expected to have. And somehow I just had some kind of discussion about abundance with someone in Facebook where she was pointing out that abundance comes from cost cutting. But to me abundance is about things coming to you and that is quite the opposite to cutting, cutting anything.

And yes, thinking from reason and what everybody believes you would get richer financially by living within your means and indeed cost cutting if you are living beyond your means or want to save for the future. But thinking from the ideas of Abraham Hicks and the Law of Attraction cost cutting wouldn’t bring you anywhere, except from, indeed, cost cutting, not using stuff. And yes, also Napoleon Hill states that living beyond your means will get you in trouble, will be an issue on the road to success, on the way to financial success.

But looking at myself just working hard also doesn’t bring you anywhere in the end. I used to have some very good jobs and made quite some money, and yes, I saved a lot. And most of my life I have been very frugal and that also brought me to the point where I had quite some money in the bank. And in that period I also spent a lot, on holidays and all kinds of nice stuff.

But in the end it didn’t bring me anywhere. And looking back somehow I was going on ‘strength’, not on ‘feeling’. And from that feeling I went down. Yes, indeed, very slowly, but down I went. But recently I go more from feeling and with that it seems I am going up, no matter how frustrated I am with my financial situation. But up I went, at least emotionally and as a person.

So as of the moment I don’t know for sure what to believe, what to do, how to choose between abundance and cost cutting.

So looking forward to your thoughts.

Endless possibilities

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Endless possibilities

Jack Reacher

I was watching the movie Jack Reacher and quite from the start I was amazed that it is still possible to write new plots, new scripts for movies. As the story started like no other movie I ever saw before. And when adding the Wikipidia link I saw that the story was based on a book, so it was probably not the idea of a script writer or of someone wanting to create a new kind of movie. But still. And yes, it seems there are endless possibilities to write stories, to create lives, to create anything you want. And the story was interesting all the movie long and again, I was impressed, as also this movie had a message, a message to get to the truth, no matter what, similar to the movie Law Abiding Citizen, one of the best movies, best stories, best messages I ever saw on the law, on lawyers, on our justice system.

Intermezzo: persistence

And I guess I should have called this post something like persistence as I kind of wanted to write this post from the terrace near our bedroom on the laptop. However, that laptop is broken and one of the issues is that somehow the internal keyboard or the touch pad is interfering with the things I was typing making typing virtually impossible. And my own computer also has a problem which I don’t want to check right now as that computer is more related to work. So finally I decided to bring up another computer, but only after doing that I realized that that computer has no wireless internet and there is no network connection nearby. So then I needed to find a way to get a wire up here, which meant I got a long wire and moved one of my switches a bit so I could connect that computer to the network. And then I found out it was not running at all, meaning I either had to fix it, like take the additional video card out or get another computer, which is what I finally did, get another computer. And then I found out it wasn’t connected to the internet due to my/our problems with our Internet Service Providers. So then I decided to use that computer as a remote desktop for the laptop, which probably would work when using remote desktop, which it did and does, although the music I was playing from the laptop stopped.

More on persistence

So I’m not sure how to continue this post, writing about the movie and what I admired or on me getting this post written today, right now. And I think with the last, as when thinking about the whole thing what I did to be able to writes this here right now I did a lot of things to make it work. But when reading the above you may also note, or at least I noted, that I was putting quite some restrictions on what I wanted and not wanted. E.g. I could have just gone down to the office and use one of the computers there as there are three there and as far as I know they are all working. So I wouldn’t have needed to put this wire and use remote desktop as they are all connected to the internet or at least can be connected to the internet much easier. And I could have checked my own computer and probably make it work as I need that computer anyhow tomorrow for work. But somehow I didn’t.

So looking back my desire was to sit here and write my post or posts or whatever I want to do further today with a computer. So yes, desire seems to be the most important thing still, the most important driver of everything, the most important thing to make things happen and to continue until you got what you want.

But I’m still a bit amazed with myself as I didn’t consider the whole thing important. And logically the whole thing doesn’t make sense, although while writing maybe it does, as the last few days I was not really able to or at least didn’t manage to write my daily posts, here as well as in my personal site, my personal blog. And yes, somehow not mixing private, this site, and work seems to be very important to me as I went quite far to be able to sit here and not in the office.

Abundance

One more thing I forgot and that is abundance. As I still feel quite poor at the moment with my office in ruins and old equipment and stuff that is breaking down. But looking at today and some other days, events, I still have an awful lot of ‘stuff’ that when something doesn’t work I can still put to use to make things work and e.g. write this post.

Going back to normal

And while writing now, while wanting to finish this post I don’t even remember why I started this post about the movie. But maybe this post is indeed to talk a bit more about desire and persistence. And that if you just push through there is always a way to get there, as there were many ways to write this post and also many ways to get a working computer in this location, at the location I’m working, writing right now.

And the amazing thing still about all this that there is indeed something like Infinite Intelligence. And that to my amazement somehow part of my desire document, about the intentions and plans I made around one and a half year ago are coming true. And that indeed, somehow life is getting back to normal, something I really have been longing for for a long time now.

And no, not the normal from before, but an intentional normal, a normal by choice, not by accident.

Inspirational anger

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Quintus Horatius Flaccus I mostly or virtually always try to control my anger (or emotions in general) and my anger especially because I have a partner who gets very angry easily and being angry in return just makes things worse in my experience. So I’m trying to keep my anger inside.

But today was the second time in a few months time where my anger was received positively or at least achieved a desired effect, so never being angry or never showing anger doesn’t seem to be the right thing to do always.

And the weird thing was it happened just after I sent my quote of today.

“The one who cannot restrain their anger will wish undone, what their temper and irritation prompted them to do.” – Horace

As I had been irritated for a few days as our water system was not working properly. And my partner had not been able to arrange someone to repair it, where he had indicated before that he would find someone. And if he wouldn’t have indicated that, I might have fixed it myself, or not, but then it would have been my choice.

And one of my major important things to start the day is taking a warm shower. As I am normally affected quite a lot by a morning mood, which will normally go away after I have taken my coffee, maybe had breakfast and then shave myself and take a shower.

But for a few days that had not happened as the water pressure was very low, which by the way affected many people as we had quite some visitors celebrating Christmas here. So I got more and more irritated over the last few days and I’m quite sure it showed to people as of course people feel that. And it kind of ruined part of my Christmas celebration, part of being part of the group of people celebrating Christmas with us.

So today, finally, my partner had arranged someone to repair the water system. And around five thirty I found out the water system had still not been fixed and the person supposed to repair it was doing other work. So I was very irritated and somehow also angry and showed it, which is often not a wise thing to do in The Philippines. But after showing him the real problem and asking him if I should be the one fixing it or he, he indicated he still wanted to do it.

And to my amazement thirty minutes later the problem was fixed. And it had not even been the annoying problem I thought it was. It was just as small clogging near the water filter very close to the house. So apparently a small fix and looking back the person supposed to fix it was not aware of the real problem, namely the water pressure on the second floor, meaning there was water on the ground floor, but not on the second floor.

So what I learned in life, and from the Principles of Success, is that you need to control yourself, need to be able to control your emotions. Which I kind of did, as I did not let myself or my anger go out of control. But I was angry and I showed it. And apparently that was the right thing to do.

So controlling your emotions doesn’t mean to fully hide them, it indeed means to control them, have some kind of control, so it won’t get out of hand. But showing them certainly seems to work, at least in this case.

Achieving goals

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Tonight I told my sister in law about the six steps Napoleon Hill describes to achieve success, to achieve goals, or maybe just to achieve financial goals, although I believe the six steps basically apply to any goal, although the more I think about it, Think and Grow Rich is very much focused on reaching financial, capitalistic goals.

And one of my favorite ‘exercises’ to show to people how easy it is to achieve a goal is to put an object a few meters away from me, define that as the goal and then just walk slowly but determined towards it and just pick up the object, which indeed also makes me feel how easy it is to achieve a goal, any goal. But part of the exercise is also to start roaming around, looking at all kinds of other things and walking towards them, showing how NOT to achieve goals. Because if you let yourself distract from the goal by other things, which I guess we all do, it is much more difficult, even virtually impossible, to reach the goal. But if you just walk towards the goal it is very easy to achieve. You don’t even have to walk fast or do a lot of effort. And even if there are smaller or larger hurdles in between you and your goal the goal is still very easy to reach, by just walking around the obstacles or climbing over them or something like that. As long as you just walk slowly but determined to your goal it is very easy to reach, at least in this exercise, but I think the exercise represent real life goals very well.

And the above sounds very much like what Abraham HIcks says about NOT doing effort, at least NOT when you don’t feel like it, meaning something like NOT doing action if you’re not sure it’s the right action, if it’s the right direction. And indeed, behind that I feel something like how easy it is to achieve a goal, how easy it is to move, when you know what you want and just get it, similar to the story of buying something in the supermarket: you just go and get it and don’t worry about not getting it, as you know it is there and if you brought the money you just get it. And even the last may not be required, I am thinking while writing it. You just ‘go and get it’, indeed similar to breathing or your heart beating all your life.

And tonight, this conversation, this act made me realize how for I have left my goals behind, how little effort I recently do do achieve my goals, how they somehow seem to have disappeared in my daily worries. And how little effort and attention I have recently given to my desire document, the document I made a bit more than a year ago describing my definite purpose. And the same feeling I had yesterday related to the project, this project, the project Inspiration for Success. Similar to the team members I have just let it go, have just left it behind, basically doing what the team members have been doing and for which I kind of detested them.

So yes, this is a good time to review my goals and get back on track. No, not by ‘push and shove’, but just with some more determination and yes, finding inspiration again.