There is no shortcut to success

If you need to take a thousand steps to achieve your goal, you first have to start with your first step. For taking this one step, you need motivation. You definitely needs power to start something. How to get yourself motivated and have power to start. Someone might inspire you through what he has done. You might have known or even met many inspiring figures and you were so inspired and motivated. But why you don’t see yourself as successful as those who inspired you?

If you want to reach your goal, then motivation is not enough. Motivation is what gets you started. It is what makes you take your first step toward your goal.  You still need to take another 999 steps. It is not easy. It takes time. It might also take your sweat and tears. It takes so much patience. What you need to do is to keep taking steps and not giving up.

There is no shortcut to success.

You might need to take a completely different way or probably you need to develop a new habit and stop your old habit of doing. You may get yourself motivated by others, but when you have to develop a new habit, you have to do it alone. In this, that many fail. There is no shortcut to success.

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.

Live like you are broke

We have come to the end of January and we are going to leave it very soon. I feel new year was just yesterday. Time flies so fast. Do you think so?

I am going to write about a resolution. A new year resolution. New year has passed, but I think it is still valid to talk about it. If I don’t have made one on the 1st January, I would not feel bad about it. I free myself to make it anytime during the year. I also free myself to make some revision on what I have made. Anyway it is all for me and what I am going to do with me and my life.

Do you have any fear in life? What is your biggest fear? If someone asks me this question, I can give my honest answer very quickly. My biggest fear is to become broke. I am afraid of having no money and I can’t afford buying anything I need. I think being broke really sucks. Sometimes I feel embarrased when I am sharing this to people. But I think to feel embarrased also means to have another fear. So I decided to just share it.

One of my last year resolutions was to live like I was broke. Let me live like I am broke before I really become broke. I remembered one of the Buddhist teachings that relates to this. It says ‘Die before you die. When you die, you don’t die’.  It is very enlightening, isn’t it? So I set myself to become like I was broke in spending. I tried my best to be less spending. I know some people are having no spending challenge. I think this is a cool idea. No spending week or no spending month or even no spending year.

When I just made this resolution I shared it to a friend, she looked shocked hearing this from me. I still remember her expression on her face, but it was not the first time for me to make her shocked.

Mindful Spending

I learned one thing from having this resolution last year, I became more aware of the value of money. I became more mindful in spending.

An Incognito Gift

Wherever you are, you are vibrating energy. This is the energy of thoughts. Thoughts that you have in your mind create vibration. It is energy. Mental or spiritual energy. You keep generating this energy within you consciously or subconsciously. You are contributing energy to the atmosphere all the time. You can feel the energy of people who always have vision very clearly in life, they are very optimistic, they always have hope and never lose hope. Those people always think positively n matter what happen. They always focus on solution when the are facing a problem. They never lose their faith. Without say anything, when you meet such people you can feel their energy, very powerful. In the same way, when you meet people who are problem-focused, not having a clear vision for the future, not having enough faith, they lose hope, without them telling you, you can feel their energy. It is vibration. Energy creates vibration.

Whatever energy you have in you, you are contributing the energy to the atmosphere. If you want to change the atmosphere, change your thoughts. Create only good thoughts. Thoughts that elevate. Thoughts that uplift. The stronger the thought, the stronger the vibration is created in the atmosphere. People will pick up those vibration automatically. This will become an incognito gift for everyone. The best gift. If you give this gift, everyone will accept this gift. No one will reject your gift.

You always have a gift to give.

If your energy level is low or you are weak, you are picking up the energy, but if it is high, you are contributing. Which one do you prefer?

Ignore what people say about you

How much do you pay attention to what people think about you? For what you are wearing, for what you are eating or not eating, for what you have or what you don’t have, for what you are doing and also for what you are not doing?

How much do you free yourself from people’s opinion about you? Is people’s opinion about you bothering you? You can not stop what people think about you. It is not in your control. Why should you be bothered? You are responsible for what you are putting into your mind. You are not responsible for what they are creating in their mind about you. Don’t get bothered by what they are creating. Just be genuine to yourself.

It is very liberating when you can free yourself from people’s opinion about you. You will experience your inner peace very easily. Sometimes ignorance is a bliss.

Self-Love

I think everyone of us has a moment in life when we are down. We feel ourselves in a low state (mental state). You don’t want to let yourself in that low state forever, do you?

What do you do when you are down? How can you make yourself up again? How will you give yourself an encouragment or an energy booster? You can not always find someone to cheer you up, to uplift you. In that situation, you need to find a way to bring your state high.

It is not selfish. It is necessary!

Make time for yourself and being with yourself. Listen to your heart. Understand the thoughts you keep in your mind that make you feel what you are feeling (feeling low). Then speak to yourself genuinely. Encourage yourself. This is also called a self-affirmation. We need to do this.

Then a friend said “Is it not like sabotaging yourself by telling you are good when in fact you know you are not good?”

If you are now feeling low, check your thoughts. What kind of thoughts have you been keeping in your mind? Be honest in this. This is an internal check. Only you can do it. No one else can do it for you or help you. Not your spouse nor your “soul mate”. This is an individual inner work. To do an honest checking means you need to make time just to be with yourself. Can you do this?

If you are honest enough, you might realize that these are the noise that keep playing in your head.
“You are not good enough.
“You are weak.”
“You are unlovable.”
“No one likes you.”
These thoughts have sabotaged you and made you BELIEVE it. You feel what you believe. That low state doesn’t come suddenly. It takes time.

Now do the same.
Keep telling yourself that you are good enough.
You are worthed.
You are lovable.
You are special.
Make yourself believe what you are telling to yourself.
I know it also takes time. But if you understand that this is the way to bring yourself up again, will you not do this?

The Golden Time

A scoreboard is another tool you can use for your self-care. How to create an energy scoreboard? Make a list of your activities from the time you wake up till the time you go to bed, and then put a score on each activity. The score indicates the energy units you create or consume for each activity.

What is your morning routine like? What activities do you ussually do in the morning? You create energy through your morning routine, don’t you? We have been talking about this energy in the previous posts in this blog. The energy that we are talking here is renewable. So we create the energy for the body and for the soul to live . We renew it everyday. We recharge ourselves.

Which activities are physical (for body) and which activities are mental (for soul)? Start your day by filling yourself with energy, physically and mentally. During the day, you might be very busy with routines that consume your energy. So it is better to fill yourself in the morning with energy. Really make time for this. Don’t let yourself get distracted especially during your morning hours. For me, morning hours is my golden time for the whole 24 hours. Let me not miss this golden time for my own self-care. For this, I don’t check my phone for the first few hours in the morning. I do not want to let myself (my mind) get distracted at the first place.

Photo by Elly Fairytale on Pexels.com

My morning routines include meditation and journaling. I found these two activities generate energy the most – emotional, mental and spiritual energy. These activities are for the mind, intellect and heart. These three are the faculties of the soul. So meditation and journaling are exercises for the soul. They make your soul (spirit) very strong. When your mind is strong, you will not get easily influenced by people nor situation. When your intellect is strong and deep, you can extract wisdom from your thoughts. When your heart is strong, you create faith in yourself and with this faith you have courage and hope. This is what you need in your everyday life, right?

For the body, I include a workout or a walk in my morning routine. How about you?

21 Days Challenge

Have you ever joined any challenge? What challenge did you join?
When the challenge is for 21 days, then it takes commitment to complete. Usually many people drop themselves a long the way. It is like creating a new habit. It takes persistence to really make one. Once you made it, you can feel ‘a big success’. You appreciate yourselves more.

A friend invited me to join a 21 days challenge of abundance. We completed this challenge last week. This is not a physical challenge. It is a challenge for reflecting on abundance everyday for 21 days, different aspects of abundance. we were given a daily task to complete and we had to share in the group when we completed the task before 9 am the next day. So you have 24 hours to work on your task. Abundance is an interesting topic to reflect on each one. Each one of us wants to live our life abundantly. So I found it was fun to complete the daily task. We had to reflect on different aspects of abundance in our day to day life through contemplating, writing and drawing.

There are two levels of an abundant life to work on, physical or material level and mental level. We had to work on our money, our bill, our debt and how we ‘see’ it and relate to it. We draw notes, checks, stocks, bonds etc. We had to work on our relationships with people in our life, some might not work well and we need to fix them by creating a specific daily action. We had also to ask ourselves of the highest intention in life.

21 Days is not enough for me to work on abundance and become abundant. So I need to rerun this challenge myself in the nearest future. I did not really put myself fully in the last 21 days.

This challenge was in fact created by Deepak Chopra, a very famous author. You might have read his books.

Being in Nature

What do you miss during this pandemic? Do you miss something after you had to stay in your place for a few months? I realized one thing. I missed being in nature. I like walking in a forest or a mountain very much. I love trees, birds, flowers and blue sky. It is so refreshing.

I was very excited when a friend told me that the botanical garden in our city has been opened for public. I thought, I would not miss visiting the garden soon. Well, you might think that it is not “really” nature. The garden has been created for more than 200 years, someone created. And it has been maintained. The trees have grown so big. I know, but at least it brings “nature” close to my heart. I visited the garden and enjoyed walking under the big trees last week. I enjoyed the shade and the breeze.

Deeply in my heart I felt so grateful to those who have maintained the garden really well.

What do you miss so far?

 

Immune system of the soul

During these days we are exposed with information on coronavirus so much. It has created so much fear in people. We are not only fighting the coronavirus but also the fear in each one of us. Coronavirus infects the body and fear infects the soul. We and the world are now fighting against the coronavirus, but each one of us is fighting against the internal virus in the soul. We are strongly requested to stay clean – to wash our hands often and to put on mask to protect ourself from this virus.

But how to protect the soul from the fear? The body has its immune system to fight any virus or bacteria in the body. We are suggested to eat healthy food and have enough good sleep for keeping the immune of the body. The soul also has its immune system to fight against the fear. Good thoughts are the best nutrition for the soul. Have enough good thoughts during the day. Nurture your mind with high quality thoughts. Don’t let any mundane and ordinary thoughts take space in your mind. The mind is the laboratory to invent the anti vaccine for the virus. Really make time to stay introverted and work in your inner laboratory. Invent your own vaccine. Don’t forget to keep your laboratory very clean.

How much do you have to do this during these days and many days ahead? The world needs this so much.

Developing faith in life

Why is it important to have faith in life? How to develop faith in life?
Life is what happens. Whatever happens, big or small, it happens to you or someone else, it has happened or it is still going to happen, all is called life. How do you see life of the past and how do you see life of the future? Do you always see it as a good one? Or do you sometimes think that it is unfair or that it should not happen the way it happened? How do you see the future? Does it always look bright? Or does sometimes worry creep into your heart that you are not so sure?

I remember an advice from one of my dear friends who kept saying to me ‘Everything is good’. Whatever happened was good, what is happening is good and what is going to happen will be good. Don’t carry any regret of the past. It passed. No need to think ‘why did it happen that way? It shouldn’t have happened etc etc’. This is how we usually develop regret. It belongs to the past. Leave it in the past. Don’t create fear of the future. Trust that life in the future will be good.

Whatever happens is what is meant to happen. There is no mistake in life. There is nothing to regret nor to be worried about. If you keep saying this to yourself or you keep reminding this to your self everyday, what would happen? You are developing faith in life. You will see everything with your new understanding. You will then accept everything that happen very easily. You will easily forgive and accept.

Have a wonderful weekend!