HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW YOURSELF?

"Know yourself your own if you want to succeed",is a popular motivational quote that we often hear from successful people who have realized their dreams. Today many people idolize other people. Not infrequently they do anything to be like their idol, I think this is foolish. I do not mean to say that to be like your idol is wrong, it does not mean that you must be that person.

 If you are ignorant, or deluding yourself, about what you are really like, you will be held back in your development as a human being because, in effect, you're working blind. You can't really get somewhere unless you have a good idea where you are at the moment.

Many people think more easily solve problems if we become someone else who may have nothing to do with the problems we face. Fame, wealth, position and even all the others have to be something that often makes us want to live like them. Therefore we try to be that person.

 Do not forget the achievement of a person is directly proportional to their hard work to realize the dream into reality. Today we see our idol success that they dream, that in accordance with their hard work to achieve their dreams.

Sometimes we are often unable to distinguish between dreams and reality. So far, we have a dream to succeed and realize that dream into reality. However, never try to start making those dreams come true. Dream is something abstract when we are not able to realize it, not even someone who rarely has a dream too high to make him look stupid.

Know yourself more than just understanding your character. I'd say that honest self understanding is both necessary and hugely valuable if individuals, communities and perhaps even the whole human race are to develop further in a fruitful and positive way.

Think about this. Do you ever perplex yourself or find yourself asking 'Why on earth did I do that?' Have you ever noticed how people seem to have very different perceptions of themselves compared to how others view them? Low self esteem is so often a lack of genuine self understanding.

Why is it important for us to not be too self deluded? Well, for one thing, research shows us that people whose 'conscious' and 'unconscious' motivations are aligned - i.e. what they say matches up with what they do - are happier and healthier than their less self knowledgeable peers. Having a more balanced and objective take on yourself can make you happier and more effective in pursuing your goals.

Truthfully, much of our behavior is driven by unconscious processes. It's been estimated that every second our five senses take in eleven million pieces of information. We know this because scientists have counted the number of receptor cells on each sense organ and the nerves that go from these cells to the brain. However,we can only consciously process about forty bits of information a second. So large parts of our experience are unavoidably unknowable to us as far as conscious awareness is concerned.

We don't need to be conscious of every subliminal causal factor behind our behavior. But sometimes it really does matter to know that what's influencing you is not what you think it is.

People often completely misattribute their own actions and behavior. A friend of mine was once about to give a speech. Normally, he would have been very relaxed about this. I was there at the time, and he told me he felt rather sick and his heart was racing and so he concluded that he must be really nervous. Later, he discovered he had food poisoning, but he'd attributed what was really the effects of a bad meal to anxiety about his speech.

One way to know ourselves better is to get better at tolerating our own uncertainty about what lies behind our behavior. For example, if I blush when I'm talking to someone, this response may take me by surprise as much as the person I'm talking with.

I didn't know I was going to blush, but it happened. Maybe below my conscious awareness this person reminded me of someone I was attracted to at school. However, if, as is likely, I'm unaware of this, I might rationalize and come up with a reason to explain my red face. I might tell myself I blushed because I felt they were being a little rude in how they were speaking to me. Now I've made up a theory that takes me away from true self knowledge. But if I relax with not knowing, and don't immediately look for an 'explanation', I give my unconscious mind a chance to produce its own reason - which, generally, will be more accurate.

It might go like this. After the blushing incident I might say to myself: "Hmm, that was interesting! I wonder why I blushed? I don't usually! There must be some reason!" Perhaps later in the day, when I'm not consciously thinking about it, my unconscious mind will produce an image of that girl I was attracted to in high school all those years ago, and I see the match between the woman I'd been talking to today and the girl I was too shy to speak to at fifteen.

So hold back. Don't jump to conclusions or theories about your own responses too quickly, especially when they strike you as unusual.

It's often said that to really understand someone's motivations you need to watch what they do and not just listen to what they say. If someone repeatedly tells you they love you, but also regularly treats you badly, then what should you believe - their words or their actions? If someone lectures others about the importance of punctuality but is always late themselves... well, it's that repeated tardiness that unlocks the real knowledge as to what they are like.

Get into the habit of watching your own behavior as objectively as possible - almost as if you were another person. Forget about the image you try to present to others or what you like to think about yourself, even if those things are negative.

We readily assume that we can judge and predict our own behaviors better than non-involved strangers can, but the research doesn't bear this out. In one study, college friends were much more likely to accurately predict the outcome of a romantic relationship than either partner in the couple itself. Even people who didn't know the couple at all could do this just by watching the two partners interact. And two researchers called Nisbett and Wilson found that complete strangers can often make more accurate predictions as to how we'll react to something than we can ourselves.

So in summary, we can come to understand ourselves better by:
•understanding that we don't have immediate conscious access to all our motivations.

•Realizing that it's easy to make up reasons that flatter us or fit a preconceived pattern of low or high self esteem but that don't actually match up with the truth.

•Accepting that we might be responding automatically to a new person or situation simply because of a superficial resemblance to a previous person or time.

•Refraining from jumping to conclusions about our own actions, motivations and responses.

•Watching ourselves as calmly and objectively as possible, focusing on what we do, not just on what we tell ourselves and other.

       THE END.

THE IMPORTANCE OF HUMILITY

 
            "If thou desire the love of God and man, be humble; for
             the proud heart, as it loves none but itself, so it is believed
             for none but by itself; the voice of humility is God's music,
             and the silence of humility is God's rhetoric. Humility enforces
              where neither virtue nor strength can prevail nor reason."

              "He who sacrifices a whole offering shall be rewarded for a
              whole offering; he who offers a burnt-offering shall have the
               reward of a burnt-offering; but he who offers humility to God
                and man shall be rewarded with a reward as if he had offered
                 all the sacrifices in the world."

Misfortune humiliates some people, while others learn humility. When trouble happens, you can react either way. You might believe that life has abused you, made you a victim and that you have been humiliated. Or you might understand — from the same experience — that you have learned something. Being prepared to set aside old notions and be taught by life is learning humility. The choice you make depends on your attitude.

Some people fail forward. Others fail and quickly spiral downward. These two types of people are very different, but how?

 “The difference is on the inside. It’s the spirit of the individual. Those who profit from adversity possess a spirit of humility and are therefore inclined to make the necessary changes needed to learn from their mistakes, failures, and losses. They stand in stark contrast to prideful people who are unwilling to allow adversity to be their teacher and as a result fail to learn.”1

 But failure to learn isn’t the only way pride impacts a leader. Prideful people blame others, deny the obvious truth, and are closed-minded, rigid, insecure, and isolated from others. All of these can be detrimental to a leader, especially one who is interested in growing.

 However, if leaders can move past arrogance and work toward humility, they can become the very best. Great talent is good, but great talent with a spirit of learning is better. As leaders, we need more than just talent to be successful. In fact, humble leaders must not boast in their talent, but instead, must be confident in the ways they can build others and build organizations regardless of failure.

Romans 11:18 (International Standard translation)
"Do not boast about being better than the other branches. If you boast, remember that you do not support the root, but the root supports you"

In other words, no matter what you do, no matter how successful you are, no matter how lucky you are, never boast about being better than others. Because in the end, you are really just a branch. Whatever you do is just part of that branch, connected to other branches and a tree that is way larger than you.
 
Humility is an asset for self-improvement. By remaining humble, you are receptive to opportunities to improve. If I suggest a way you might triple your business, you have to accept the possibility that your current way of doing things is costing you 2/3′s of your potential revenue. Only with humility can you allow this incredible advice to sink in.

Humility is an underrated virtue. For every ten articles I see written about how to improve self-confidence, I only see one that suggests humility might be important at all.

 Beyond personal success, humility is also a virtue for inner well-being. Frustrations and losses don’t have the same impact if you don’t get your ego involved. If you combine humility with motivation, you have the ability to drive towards successes without letting the failures knock you out of balance.

IS FAILURE A LESSON OR THE OPPOSITE OF SUCCESS?

One common error we all make, which has serious consequences as we grow older, is the belief that failure is the opposite of success. Intellectually, we know better, but emotionally we often fail to act on what we know to be true when it comes to ourselves.

Failure is the highway to success. Tom Watson Sr. said, "If you want to succeed, double your failure rate." If you study history, you will find that all stories of success are also stories of great failures. But people don't see the failures. They only see one side of the picture and they say that person got lucky: "He must have been at the right place at the right time."

Let me share the life history of Abraham Lincoln with you. This was a man who failed in business at the age of 21 ; was defeated in a legislative race at age 22; failed again in business at age 24; overcame the death of his sweetheart at age 26; had a nervous breakdown at age 27; lost a congressional race at age 34; lost a senatorial race at age 45; failed in an effort to become vice-president at age 47; lost a senatorial race at age 49; and was elected president of the United States at age 52.

In 1913, Lee De Forest, inventor of the triodes tube, was charged by the district attorney for using fraudulent means to mislead the public into buying stocks of his company by claiming that he could transmit the human voice across the Atlantic. He was publicly humiliated. Can you imagine where we would be without his invention?

A New York Times editorial on December 10, 1903, questioned the wisdom of the Wright Brothers who were trying to invent a machine, heavier than air, that would fly. One week later, at Kitty Hawk, the Wright Brothers took their famous flight.

Colonel Sanders, at age 65, with a beat-up car and a $100 check from Social Security, realized he had to do something. He remembered his mother's recipe and went out selling. How many doors did he have to knock on before he got his first order? It is estimated that he had knocked on more than a thousand doors before he got his first order. How many of us quit after three tries, ten tries, a hundred tries, and then we say we tried as hard as we could?

As a young cartoonist, Walt Disney faced many rejections  newspaper editors, who said he had no talent. One day a minister at a church hired him to draw some cartoons. Disney was working out of a small mouse infested shed near the church. After seeing a small mouse, he was inspired. That was the start of Mickey Mouse.

Successful people don't do great things, they only do small things in a great way.

One day a partially deaf four year old kid came home with a note in his pocket from his teacher, "Your Tommy is too stupid to learn, get him out of the school." His mother read the note and answered, "My Tommy is not stupid to learn, I will teach him myself." And that Tommy grew up to be the great Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison had only three months of formal schooling and he was partially deaf.

Henry Ford forgot to put the reverse gear in the first car he made.

Do you consider these people failures? They succeeded in spite of problems, not in the absence of them. But to the outside world, it appears as though they just got lucky.

Success stories are stories of great failures. The only difference is that every time they failed, they bounced back. This is called failing forward, rather than backward. You learn and move forward. Learn from your failure and keep moving.

Watch a parent introduce a child to any new activity from drawing, to hitting a ball with a bat, to working out a mathematical equation for school. Commonly, the child fails at first, often becoming frustrated, angry, even tearful. Common responses from the parent include, "Don't worry, you'll get better with practice", "Nobody does it right the first time", "Anything really important takes time and effort", and so forth. Clearly, the parent is saying " Failure is just a step on the road to success. You can't succeed without first failing. Don't lose that perspective or you'll always give up before you should and you won't make any progress."

Modern science is based on this principle. Scientists know that an experiment is never truly a "failure", it's a lesson. It teaches us what not to do and pushes us to look for another approach until we find one that works.

But what happens to many adults when they begin a new activity themselves and it doesn't work out successfully? Too often, they give up. They tell themselves that they are too old, too out-of-date, or too incompetent. Instead of seeing the failure as a lesson, they see it as a mistake. You don't repeat a mistake, you stop. In my observations, this failure to apply a principle we know to be true to our own activity is one of the greatest barriers to growth and change in middle age, perhaps the greatest.

Success Always Starts With Failure. This may be true, but we certainly don’t act like it. When our mistakes stare us in the face, we often find it so upsetting that we miss out on the primary benefit of failing (yes, benefit): the chance to get over our egos and come back with a stronger, smarter approach.


If you’re like most people, you probably have a bad relationship with failure. You see it as an ending, as proof that your plan didn’t succeed or your ideas weren’t good enough. The truth is, failure happens to everyone. The only thing that separates people who succeed from those who don’t is a proper understanding of the power of failure. Success requires that you learn from mistakes and missteps along the way rather than falling into despair and giving up. Here are 3 reasons why failure is important to success

1. Failure is a Function of Trying

The best way to measure your progress at something is the number of setbacks and “failures” you’ve had. If you haven’t failed yet, chances are you aren’t trying very hard. Failure is the blacksmith’s hammer that tempers the sword of success. If you want to get really good at something, you have to fail at least a few times.

If you look at all the great men and women throughout history, you’ll notice that they had one main thing in common. They failed, and they failed often. Think of Thomas Edison. How many times did he fail to find the right filament for his light bulb? There are various estimates, but they all range in the ballpark of a whole heck of a lot. Henry Ford knew of failure intimately. So much so that he is quoted for saying the following: “Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently.”

Clearly, failure represents opportunity and growth, not deficit and loss.

2. Success Lies in Seeing Failure as a Tool

Just as all the greats have something in common, so too do the true “failures” of life: their inability to use failure as a tool. When you feel that sinking, desperate sensation known as failure and you take it to heart, you diminish yourself. You give your power away to an external event. Success is about learning how to recognize why you failed, and how you’re going to compensate for it.

I find it helpful to ask myself the following questions upon failures, big and small.
What brought about the failure?
How much of it is in my realm of influence?
How can I use my influence to turn failure into success?
What steps do I need to go through to try again?
What can I do every day to ensure that my next try is done more intelligently?

You may want to get out a piece of paper and go through that list. Be completely open and honest as you ask yourself each question. Analyze your answers carefully and implement them – don’t procrastinate! Remember, failure is an opportunity, not a burden. Be grateful for a chance to grow.

3. Failure Builds Character

If you look at the events leading up to any significant victory, you’ll often discover failure as the biggest motivator. Just as the Colorado River created the Grand Canyon over a period of millions of years, success can also come in small chunks, and they’re part of any winning strategy. On the other hand, waiting years upon years for something to happen isn’t effective when you can take action now.

So what do you need to consistently test yourself and learn from failed attempts? Character.

Success occurs in leaps and bounds for people who are ready for it. To genuinely create value, day in and day out, requires determination, purpose, and most of all, that subtle yet all-important trait known as character. Failure is a far better character builder than any affirmation or fleeting goal. While each success will propel you by a small amount, failure will forge your career – and your personality – like nothing else will. It’s the difference between a natural lake being formed over thousands of years and a man-made lake coming into fruition in under a year.

Success takes willpower, intelligence, determination, and grit. But more than anything else, it requires failure. Use this is an opportunity to reassess your relationship to the true key to success that so many people fear.


   THE END

STRUGGLE

                 
                "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who
                 profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation,
                 are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
                 They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want
                 the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This
                 struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one;
                 or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle"
                                                                                          --  Deepak Chopra
         
                 
                 "Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of
                  ease left a name worth remembering"
                                                                                          -- Albert Camus
A biology teacher was teaching his students how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. He told the students that in the next couple of hours, the butterfly would struggle to come out of the cocoon. But no one should help the butterfly. Then he left.

 The students were waiting and it happened. The butterfly struggled to get out of the cocoon, and one of the students took pity on it and decided to help the butterfly out of the cocoon against the advice of his teacher. He broke the cocoon to help the butterfly so it didn't have to struggle anymore. But shortly afterwards the butterfly died.

 When the teacher returned, he was told what happened. He explained to this student that by helping the butterfly, he had actually killed it because it is a law of nature that the struggle to come out of the cocoon actually helps develop and strengthen its wings. The boy had deprived the butterfly of its struggle and the butterfly died.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If nature allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been.

Apply this same principle to our lives. Nothing worthwhile in life comes without a struggle. Parents tend to hurt the ones they love most because we don't allow them to struggle to gain strength.

As a culture we spend a lot of energy trying to make life easier, daydreaming of the times when we won’t have to go to work, yearning for all of life to fall into fairytale ease.

Yet life doesn’t work like that. And for good reason. We need conflict. We need difficulty in our lives. We need to go through challenges.

We don’t change when life is easy. We change through conflict.

A man who work in wilderness therapy with young adults has this to say."Many of the adults are drug addicts. Many of the kids come from privileged backgrounds and have had far too much ease in life. By that I mean not having to work, having daddy’s credit card, lots of toys, etc. When these kids show up in the high deserts of Southern Utah, they hate it. They’ve traded in their comfy beds for a half inch foam pad, a sleeping bag, and a tarp for a shelter.

Life is hard. Instead of being discouraged when we face obstacles, we can embrace them. Because obstacles have a way of making us better if we allow them the space.

If we change how we view struggle, hardship, and challenges in life, we can endure, and through the difficulties, we can grow.

We can approach life in a way that better equips us to live more meaningful lives.



      THANKS FOR READING

THE IMPORTANCE OF GOAL SETTING

                        “The trouble with not having a goal is that you
                          can spend your life running up and down the
                           field and never score.” – Bill Copeland

                          "You need a plan to build a house. To build a
                           life, it is even more important to have a plan
                            or goal.” – Zig Ziglar    

On the best sunny day, the most powerful magnifying glass will not light paper if you keep moving the glass. But if you focus and hold it, the paper will light up. That is the power of concentration.

A man was traveling and stopped at an intersection. He asked an elderly man, "Where does this road take me?" The elderly person asked, "Where do you want to go?" The man replied, "I don't know." The elderly person said, "Then take any road. What difference does it make?"

How true. When we don't know where we are going, any road will take us there.

Goal setting is the first step toward successful goal achievement. It marks your first point toward success. It is what put your life into real action mode. Without this step, the other steps of goal achievement cannot take place.

Have you ever encountered people who have a passive approach toward life? They don’t set any goals and they just live life on a meandering, day-to-day basis. You see them 1 year, 3 years, 5 years from now, and their lives are largely the same.

Do you set goals for yourself? What are your goals for the next 12 months? How about 3 years from now? 5 years? 10 years? What are your aspirations that you look toward coming true?

Suppose you have all the football eleven players, enthusiastically ready to play the game, all charged up, and then someone took the goal post away. What would happen to the game? There is nothing left. How do you keep score? How do you know you have arrived?

Enthusiasm without direction is like wildfire and leads to frustration. Goals give a sense of direction. Would you sit in a train or a plane without knowing where it was going? The obvious answer is no. Then why do people go through life without having any goals?

Goal definition can be important to your quality of life. This fact has been proven repeatedly through sound empirical research in psychology and social science as well as business and economics.

Below are 6 reasons why goal setiing is important

1. Gives Clarity On Your End Vision

How are you supposed to manifest what you want if you don’t even set concrete goals? How do you supposed to achieve your dreams and visions if you don’t clearly spell out the end output you desire?

Setting your goals gives you clarity on what you ultimately want. It makes you crystallize and articulate the desires floating in your mind. It ensures that you are channeling your time, energy and efforts into things that really matter to you. It makes you live more consciously.

Everything in this world is created twice: First – creation in your mind, followed by the manifestation in reality. Without the mental creation, there will be no physical creation. When you set a goal, you already accomplish the first creation. You have set into motion a decree for yourself and the forces of your universe to materialize the goal in the physical reality.

2. Drives You Forward

Your goals are a representation of your inner desires; desires which motivate you in life. The point when you set goals marks one the points when you are most connected with your source of motivation. It is when your motivation is at its peak. Having goals at your side serve as constant reminders of your motivational sources. They are the fuel which drive you forward and keep you going when the going gets tough.

If I ever experience moments where I lose motivation, I get into meditation mode and focus on some of my most important goals in life, including the goal to turn my personal development business into a full-time career. I will visualize the scenario with full mental clarity, as if it is happening in the now. When I do that, it’s like a clear connection is formed with my inner desires. The motivational energy suddenly surges through very readily and I channel this energy into my daily life and actions.

3. Gives You Laser Focus

Goals give you a single focal point to place your attention in. Whereas your purpose gives you a broad, directional focus to move your life in, goals gives you laser focus on what exactly to spend your time and energy on. Think of your time, energy and efforts as input, and results as the output. A goal acts as your funnel which guides and channels those inputs effectively into your desired output.

When you don’t have goals, you are floating around every day. Your energy is randomly dispersed in ad-hoc activities which you engage on whimsical basis. These are activities that play no role in your larger scope of life, but you are not aware of because you are just living life as it is. You end up mislabeling a lot of ‘nice-to-do’ activities as important. You might also be engaging in these ‘nice-to-do’ activities because you can’t think of a better way to spend your time. Do you find yourself surfing and chatting excessively? Busy running errands? Play a lot of games? Spend the bulk of your time being a workaholic? Spend the remaining time lazing and/or partying away? What’s your objective for doing them? What end output does it lead to? Is that the top priority in your life?

You may have a broad idea of what you want to do. But until you clearly articulate it out as specific goals, you are not channeling your efforts properly. You will often find yourself getting sidetracked because you don’t have goals to rein you in. It’s really quite easy to get swept away by the currents of everyday life, simply because there are so many stimulus out there in our environment. You may get the general overall impression that you are moving in the direction, but it is just an illusion that you are having. With no goals, you have no focus. Without this focus, your input is strewn around randomly to give you garbage output. That is, if you even get any semblance of an output at all.

4. Makes You Accountable

Having goals makes you accountable. Rather than just talking about what you want all the time and not do anything concrete about them, you are now obligated to take action. Setting a specific goal gives you clarity on whether you are living up against what you committed yourself to do when you first set your goal.

This accountability is accountability to yourself, not anyone else. This accountability is what you hold up to when you choose the healthy salad over that piece of fried chicken. It is what you answer to when you spent that hour working on your report rather than random web surfing. When you stay accountable toward your goals, you are in fact staying true to your desires

5. Be The Best You Can Be

Goals help you achieve your highest potential. Without goals, you subject yourself to the natural, default set of actions that keep you feel safe and comfortable every day. But this familiarity is the nemesis of growth. It prevents you from growing. It does not enable you to become the best person you can be. It denies you from tapping into all that potential inside of you.

By setting goals, you set targets to strive against. These targets make you venture into new places, new contexts, new situations which puts you into growth mode. They make you stretch beyond your normal self and reach new heights. For example, setting a time limit for your run lets you know if you should be running faster. Setting a weight loss target makes you aware if your actions have been effective in losing weight. Setting a career goal ensures you are not settling for anything less than what you desire.

Without those goals, you would be taking the path of least resistance, just doing things within their natural constraints. Goals will make you face and overcome countless barriers to get to what’s on the other side. It will make you  much more self aware and learn a lot more things about both yourself and life, compared to if you did not have those goals.

6. Live Your Best Life

Goals ensure you get the best out of life, for two reasons.

Firstly, by becoming a better person, your new found knowledge and abilities let you experience more out of the same life events compared to the previous you. Think about how your worldview is different now vs the you 10 years ago. Do you see life with much more clarity, depth and perspective today than you were in the past? What may be a simple daily occurrence in the past holds a lot more meaning to the more highly evolved you today.

Secondly, time passes in our life, whether we want to or not. Goals with specific measures and deadlines ensure we are maximizing our output and experiences during our time here. If you have already discovered your life purpose, your goals will ensure you get the best out of your purpose.

Imagine you are driving a car. When you identify your purpose, you get clarity on the direction to travel in. However, without specifying an exact destination and time frame, there is no yardstick to benchmark your progress against.

Ask yourself this – What are my goals for the upcoming 1 year, 3 years, 5, 10 years?

If you are to take some time out to set your goals now, I can guarantee you that you will definitely experience more growth as a person. By just spending a few minutes to articulate some aspirations that have been in your mind, you will experience more progress in your life a year from now than compared to if you don’t.

                THE END.

WE PICTURE OUR WORLD THE WAY WE ARE

There is a legend about a wise man who was sitting outside his village. A traveler came up and asked him, "What kind of people live in this village, because I am looking to move from my present one?" The wise man asked, "What kind of people live where you want to move from?" The man said, "They are mean, cruel, rude." The wise man replied, "The same kind of people live in this village too." After some time another traveler came by and asked the same question and the wise man asked him, "What kind of people live where you want to move from?" And the traveler replied, "The people are very kind, courteous, polite and good." The wise man said, "You will find the same kind of people here too."

People tend to think of perception as a passive process. We see, hear, smell, taste or feel stimuli that impinge upon our senses. We think that if we are at all objective, we record what is actually there. Yet perception is demonstrably an active rather than a passive process; it constructs rather than records "reality.” You construct how you choose to see the world.
 
Think for a moment about a bee. A bee settling on a flower has stung a boy. And the boy dreads bees and says the object of the bee is to sting people. A philosopher admires the bee, sipping honey from the cup of the flower, and says the object of the bee is to sip the nectar of the flower. A beekeeper says the object of the bee is to gather honey. Another beekeeper, who has studied bees more closely, says the object of the bee is to gather honey to feed the young ones, and to rear a queen, and to perpetuate the race. The botanist believes the object of the bee is to fertilize the pistil of the flower. Another sees the hybridization of plants and believes the object of the bee is to contribute to that end.


As you can see, the perception of the observer depends upon the observer’s own assumptions and perceptions. That is not to say we experience totally different things but different aspects of things. The Hindu’s view of a cow in no way corresponds to that of a canning factory meat packer, and in Istanbul they keep their pigs in the zoo instead of making them into sausage.

We build our own reality. Even colors are products of our mind. Vincent Van Gogh told his brother he could see twenty-seven different shades of grey. Who knows if my red is the same as your red? Even if the two most distinguished color experts in the world were asked to dress up Santa Claus, and one were asked to pick the coat and the other the trousers you can be sure the top will not exactly match the bottom.  

A biochemistry student, Obi James once said "what we do ,is what we think others do".An oft-quoted story about Pablo Picasso is about the time he was hanging around an exhibition of his paintings in Paris. He was approached by a man who asked Picasso why he didn’t paint people the way they look. Well, how do they look? asked Picasso. The man took a photograph of his wife from his wallet and handed it over. Picasso looked at the picture; then handing it back, said, “She is awfully small isn’t she. And flat too.” We have to accept the fact that much of what seems real to us is governed by our own perceptions.

 WE SEE NO MORE THAN WE EXPECT TO SEE. Our stereotyped notions block clear vision and crowd out imagination. This happens without any alarms sounding, so we never realize it is occurring.

You can always change the way you see things. What made psychologist Sigmund Freud famous was not the discovery of a new science about the subconscious, but in fact, was his way of representing the subject in a new way. Sigmund Freud would “reframe” something to transform its meaning by putting it into a different framework or context than it has previously been perceived. For example, by reframing the “unconscious” as a part of him that was “infantile,” Freud began to help his patients prime the way they thought and reacted to their own behavior.

Psychologists Ap Dijksterhuis and Ad van Knippenberg at the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, asked half a group of volunteers to carry out a simple mental exercise that involved imagining the mindset of a typical university professor. The other half imagined a football hooligan. All then had to answer some general- knowledge questions.

Remarkably, you can even lessen pain by changing the way you look at it. Researchers at Oxford University discovered a way using inverted binoculars to reduce pain and swelling in wounds. Remarkably, when you look at a wound through the wrong end of binoculars, your perception of the wound makes it seem much smaller. It’s this perception that acts like a painkiller and diminishes pain. According to the researchers, this demonstrates that even basic bodily sensations are modulated by your perception.

THE EASIER WAY MAY TURN OUT TO BE THE HARDER WAY

   
               I will like to start this article with a story of a farmer and a lark. Once there was a lark singing in the forest. The lark stopped the farmer  and asked, "What do you have in the box and where are you going?" The farmer replied that he had worms and that he was going to the market to trade them for some feathers. The lark said, "I have many feathers. I will pluck one and give it to you and that will save me looking for worms." The farmer gave the worms to the lark and the lark plucked a feather and gave it in return. The next day the same thing happened and the day after and on and on until a day came that the lark had no more feathers. Now it couldn't fly and hunt for worms. It started looking ugly and stopped singing and very soon it died.

            Am going to talk to you about the morale of the story at the end of this  awesome article.So happy reading.

           Lets face it! Life is not easy. But life is not even suppose to be easy,afterall that is why it is called life "living in frustration or enjoyment". The choice is up to you.

        There is no shortcut to anywhere worth going.  There is no substitute for doing the work.  Meditate on this every day: “I will do the work.”  As Einstein once said, “Genius is 1% talent and 99% effort.”  You must run to be a runner.  You must write to be a writer.  You must actively attend to your relationships if you want them to flourish.

By all means, find ways to be more efficient.  But make no mistake that it takes diligent effort to build something worthwhile.  There are certainly some success stories out there about people who excelled rather quickly, but you will usually find they had put in years of related work long before anyone was paying attention to their seemingly rapid success.  In other words, their current state of achievement is simply all those years of work coming together flawlessly in the present.

The most effective way to handle what must be done is to do it.  Put in the required labor.

                        BE CAUTIOUS OF SHORTCUT LIKE THIS

1.  Taking the easiest way possible:  Every struggle arises for a reason – for experience or a lesson.  A great journey is never easy, and no dose of adversity along the way is ever a waste of time if you learn and grow from it.

         Remember, an arrow can only be shot by pulling it backwards, and such is life.  When life is pulling you back with difficulties, it means it’s going to eventually launch you forward in a positive direction.  So keep focusing, and keep aiming!

2.   Settling for the way things are by default: The decision to settle for mediocrity is a real killer.  If you settle for just anything, you’ll never know what you’re truly worthy of.  There is ample time for you to be who you want to be.  Despite the struggles that you might be facing, never give up on yourself.  Don’t just take the easy way out and settle for less than what you know you are capable of.
           
            The decision to settle for mediocrity is a real killer.  If you settle for just anything, you’ll never know what you’re truly worthy of.  There is ample time for you to be who you want to be.  Despite the struggles that you might be facing, never give up on yourself.  Don’t just take the easy way out and settle for less than what you know you are capable of.

3.  Leaving everything to chance: It’s not what you do every once in a while, but what you dedicate yourself to on a daily basis that makes a difference in the end.  Having a plan, even a flawed one at first, is better than no plan at all.

           Figure out what you want.  When you get real about the true feelings you crave, you end up surprising yourself with an abundance of new opportunities and possibilities.
     
4.       Following the crowd: Figure out what you want.  When you get real about the true feelings you crave, you end up surprising yourself with an abundance of new opportunities.

            Never let what other people expect from you dictate what you expect from yourself.  Clarity about your true desires is so liberating because you get to stop proving yourself to everyone, including yourself.sibilities.

5.  Putting things off: Be frank with yourself.  The things you say you will deal with later rarely get done.  It’s time to get up and make an immediate difference in your life.  You know all those things you’ve been meaning to get done for the past month, year, etc.?  Pick one right now and start doing it.  Get your hands dirty, challenge your mind, and get sweaty if you have to.  Break out of your comforting lull and get involved.  If you feel crummy, it’ll make you feel better.  If you already feel good, it will make you feel great.

              Ultimately, you will not be judged by what you say; you will be judged by what you do.  Wake up each morning determined, so you can go to bed satisfied.  Have the courage and discipline today to do what is needed instead of simply what is convenient.  Or as Pablo Picasso once said, “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”

6.  Ignoring people instead of forgiving them: Forgetting people who hurt you is your gift to them; forgiving people who hurt you is your gift to yourself.  Always forgive others, not because they necessarily deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace of mind.  We are all one, so when we forgive others we forgive ourselves, which is the first step in the healing process.  Without forgiveness, the potential for true happiness in your life is limited.

7.  Cutting too many corners with your important relationships:It hurts to love someone and not be loved in return, but what hurts even more is to love someone and never find the time to let them know how you feel.  There is no greater sadness than holding on to the loving words and deeds you never delivered to those you love.

The people you take for granted today may turn out to be the only ones you need tomorrow.  So make plenty of time for those who truly matter.  The best gift you can give them is the purity of your full attention.  Just be present with them and pay attention to the little things, because when you really miss someone, you miss the little things the most, like just laughing together.

      What is the moral of our story?

The moral is quite clear what the lark thought was an easy way to get food turned out to be the tougher way after all. Isn't the same thing true in our lives?
       Many times we look for the easier way, which really ends up being the tougher way..  Don’t sell yourself short!  Make your journey worthwhile every single day.

         Getting where you want to go in life is not about finding a shortcut, it’s about putting in the required time and effort.  You have to set goals and fulfill your commitments, even when no one would notice but you, and know in your heart why doing so matters.


            THE END

THE POWER OF ENTHUSIASM

                               "Nothing great is ever achieved without enthusiasm."---Ralph Waldo Emerson


         Enthusiasm or passion means throwing ourselves into a relationship, goal, dream, or activity. It means casting aside worries or distractions and embracing instead, the delights of the moment or the hope of success. Enthusiasm makes us feel fully alive. It is one of the roots of joy.Enthusiasm is synonymous to passion.

          Enthusiasm and success go hand in hand, but enthusiasm comes first. Enthusiasm inspires confidence, raises morale, builds loyalty! and is priceless. Enthusiasm is contagious. You can feel enthusiasm by the way a person talks, walks or shakes hands. Enthusiasm is a habit that one can acquire and practice.
   
           Enthusiasm lets us engage deeply in things that matter deeply. When we are filled with enthusiasm , we have more energy for our pursuits. Enthusiasm heightens our awareness and mental acuity. We become more physically adept. Enthusiasm feels risky because it exposes us to possible ridicule, rejection, or failure, but it also fills us with excitement and hope. Enthusiasm often is contagious, which makes it a great leadership quality Our enthusiasm is echoed in the hope and energy we stir around us.

           Many decades ago, Charles Schwab, who was earning a salary of a million dollars a year, was asked if he was being paid such a high salary because of his exceptional ability to produce steel. Charles Schwab replied, "I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among the men the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement."


Live while you are alive. Don't die before you are dead.

Enthusiasm and desire are what change mediocrity to excellence.
               
                    Thanks for reading 

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