It is not a failure!

Reading my previous post on ’21 day abundance’  someone expressed to me her interest in experimenting it with herself. She was inspired. I called it a project and she called it an experiment. 😊

To give her a more clear picture, I shared to her a list of my daily reflection and also some reflection journals I wrote. This was how I broke down one idea into 100 smaller ideas and how I went deeply into it – my understanding, my experience and also my feeling.

She asked me if I failed along the way, while doing the project, what did I do then? What would be my approach? Did I start from the beginning or did I just continue it?

Actually I always have in my mind that to change a mindset is never an overnight project. It means it is not easy. It also means we may fail. We may do it imperfectly. This is why I made it into 100 days. Enough space for practice. Hopefully the whole belief system inside will get used to it. It is like installing a ‘new program’, the old belief system will react. We need to be ready for an anticipation.

So I don’t consider it as a failure, but much more as a practice. If I consider it as a failure, it would give me a heavy feeling, a pressure. I would easily feel bad about myself. I don’t like this feeling. It doesn’t do any good for my self progress. I am very much aware of this.

I learned how to be consistent and committed to what I wanted to do. I learn how to reflect honestly, how to accept myself, how encourage myself and uplift myself. This is a solo project.

Even after the project was completed, It didn’t make me perfect and that’s fine. I re-run it. I started from tye beginning. I reflected the same points, I wrote it again. I feel the understanding becomes deeper, the feeling becomes stronger. My perspective slowly changed. This made me realize how much patience I should have for myself, for my self change. A change doesn’t happen instantly, it takes time…..hopefuly permanently.

Begin with why

I have noticed that for the last few years I have been hearing from friends that I should publish a book. After reading articles I wrote, a friend said to me ‘I want to see how far you will take this’. Another friend never stops encouraging me to write a book and publish it. I have been asking myself this question. Why do I have to write a book and publish it? for an approval? for a recognition? or for what? for myself? or for whom? So far, I haven’t got the answer and I don’t feel any urgency to do that till this moment. Before working on something, begin with why. I remember this advice. When the why is clear, you will carry it on more easily, and happily. I think I have been believing this.

Why do I have to write and publish a book?

A friend called me from far away last week, on Friday evening. He brought me a good news. He said that he just published his first book. I was happy for him. He also said to me that I was the one who inspired him finishing and publishing his book. He joined my journaling workshop a few years ago. So he called me to encourage me back to start thinking of publishing a book. I was not feeling any jealousy nor feeling less than him. I do not compare myself to anyone. I know myself quite well. So I congratulated him for what he has done.

Every time I think of publishing a book, I think of the long process of it, I might not be free to express my own idea in preparing a book for a publication but I need to consider what the readers want to read. I am not ready for this. I know I have a lot of ideas in my head to put in writing. Many of them are personal. Let me just process them. At the moment I think blogging accomodate my needs a lot. I don’t experience any pressure. I thank to myself for being consistent with this and I also thank to you, the readers.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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.

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.

Faith and Success

We need to have faith in leading our daily life. Faith is not given. We need to develop and nurture faith. Faith has something to do with the intellect. Intellect is one of the faculty in the soul, the other faculties are mind and heart. Soul is subtle and spiritual. It is inside our heads. So developing and nurturing faith is another internal work that each one of us need to do.

Faith brings clarity in the intellect. Intellect is called the eye of the soul. It can see what is right and wrong very clearly. Faith makes you free from having doubt and confusion. A faithful intellect develops decision power. A decision can be made very quickly and accurately. When a decision is accurate, you are free from regret. You also have the power to execute the decision.

There are three kinds of faith that you might need to develop – faith in the self, faith in God and faith in life. Make time and do something to nurture your faith inside daily. It is said that faith leads to success in everything you do.

An Angel

Do you believe that angel does exist on earth? Some people think that angels have wings. They can fly. Everyone love angels, because angels have very kind hearts. They have benevolent feelings for everyone. Those are some ideas of qualities that people have about angels.

Angels are in fact the qualities of human beings. No human beings will have wings to fly. To fly means to be light, to remain unaffected by the pull of the gravity down below. An angel always nurtures her mind with elevated and powerful awareness. It is called soul consciousness. So the gravity of the awarness of the body doesn’t pull the angel’s mind. It is the qualities of the enlightened souls. You can make effort to enlighten your soul and have those qualities and you become a living angel on earth.