Success is more than economic gains, titles, and degrees. Planning for success is about mapping out all the aspects of your life. Similar to a map, you need to define the following details: origin, destination, vehicle, backpack, landmarks, and route.
Origin: Who you are
A map has a starting point. Your origin is who you are right now. Most people when asked to introduce themselves would say, “Hi, I’m Jean and I am a 17-year old, senior highschool student.” It does not tell you about who Jean is; it only tells you her present preoccupation.
To gain insights about yourself, you need to look closely at your beliefs, values, and principles aside from your economic, professional, cultural, and civil status. Moreover, you can also reflect on your experiences to give you insights on your good and not-so-good traits, skills, knowledge, strengths, and weaknesses.
Upon introspection, Jean realized that she was highly motivated, generous, service-oriented, but impatient. Her inclination was in the biological-medical field. Furthermore, she believed that life must serve a purpose, and that wars were destructive to human dignity.
Destination: A vision of who you want to be
“Who do you want to be?” this is your vision. Now it is important that you know yourself so that you would have a clearer idea of who you want to be; and the things you want to change whether they are attitudes, habits, or points of view. If you hardly know yourself, then your vision and targets for the future would also be unclear.
Your destination should cover all the aspects of your being: the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Continuing Jean’s story, after she defined her beliefs, values, and principles in life, she decided that she wanted to have a life dedicated in serving her fellowmen.
Vehicle: Your Mission
A vehicle is the means by which you can reach your destination. It can be analogized to your mission or vocation in life. To a great extent, your mission would depend on what you know about yourself. Bases on Jean’s self-assessment, she decided that she was suited to become a doctor, and that she wanted to become one.
Her chosen vocation was a medical doctor. Describing her vision-mission fully: it was to live a life dedicated to serving her fellowmen as a doctor in conflict-areas.
Travel Bag: Your knowledge, skills, and attitude
Food, drinks, medicines, and other travelling necessities are contained in a bag. Applying this concept to your life map, you also bring with you certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes. These determine your competence and help you in attaining your vision. Given such, there is a need for you to assess what knowledge, skills, and attitudes you have at present and what you need to gain along the way.
This two-fold assessment will give you insights on your landmarks or measures of success. Jean realized that she needed to gain professional knowledge and skills on medicine so that she could become a doctor. She knew that she was a bit impatient with people so she realized that this was something she wanted to change.
Landmarks and Route: S.M.A.R.T. objectives
Landmarks confirm if you are on the right track while the route determines the travel time. Thus, in planning out your life, you also need to have landmarks and a route. These landmarks are your measures of success.
These measures must be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. Thus you cannot set two major landmarks such as earning a master’s degree and a doctorate degree within a period of three years, since the minimum number of years to complete a master’s degree is two years.
Going back to Jean as an example, she identified the following landmarks in her life map: completing a bachelor’s degree in biology by the age of 21; completing medicine by the age of 27; earning her specialization in infectious diseases by the age of 30; getting deployed in local public hospitals of their town by the age of 32; and serving as doctor in war-torn areas by the age of 35.
Anticipate Turns, Detours, and Potholes
The purpose of your life map is to minimize hasty and spur-of-the-moment decisions that can make you lose your way. But oftentimes our plans are modified along the way due to some inconveniences, delays, and other situations beyond our control. Like in any path, there are turns, detours, and potholes thus; we must anticipate them and adjust accordingly.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Acquire Power Through Self Development
It is the natural right of every human being to be happy to escape all the miseries of life. Happiness is the normal condition, as natural as the landscapes and the seasons. It is unnatural to suffer and it is only because of our ignorance that we do suffer.
Happiness is the product of wisdom. To attain perfect wisdom, to comprehend fully the purpose of life, to realize completely the relationship of human beings to each other, is to put an end to all suffering, to escape every ill and evil that afflicts us. Perfect wisdom is unshadowed joy.
Why do we suffer in life? Because in the scheme of nature we are being forced forward in evolution and we lack the spiritual illumination that alone can light the way and enable us to move safely among the obstacles that lie before us.
Usually we do not even see or suspect the presence of trouble until it suddenly leaps upon us like a concealed tiger. One day our family circle is complete and happy. A week later death has come and gone and joy is replaced with agony.
Today we have a friend. Tomorrow he will be an enemy and we do not know why. A little while ago we had wealth and all material luxuries. There was a sudden change and now we have only poverty and misery and yet we seek in vain for a reason why this should be.
There was a time when we had health and strength; but they have both departed and no trace of a reason appears. Aside from these greater tragedies of life innumerable things of lesser consequence continually bring to us little miseries and minor heartaches.
We most earnestly desire to avoid them but we never see them until they strike us, until in the darkness of our ignorance we blunder upon them. The thing we lack is the spiritual illumination that will enable us to look far and wide, finding the hidden causes of human suffering and revealing the method by which they may be avoided; and if we can but reach illumination the evolutionary journey can be made both comfortably and swiftly.
It is as though we must pass through a long, dark room filled with furniture promiscuously scattered about. In the darkness our progress would be slow and painful and our bruises many. But if we could press a button that would turn on the electric light we could then make the same journey quickly and with perfect safety and comfort.
The old method of education was to store the mind with as many facts, or supposed facts, as could be accumulated and to give a certain exterior polish to the personality. The theory was that when a man was born he was a completed human being and that all that could be done for him was to load him up with information that would be used with more or less skill, according to the native ability he happened to be born with.
The theosophical idea is that the physical man, and all that constitutes his life in the physical world, is but a very partial expression of the self; that in the ego of each there is practically unlimited power and wisdom; that these may be brought through into expression in the physical world as the physical body and its invisible counterparts, which together constitute the complex vehicle of the ego's manifestation, are evolved and adapted to the purpose; and that in exact proportion that conscious effort is given to such self-development will spiritual illumination be achieved and wisdom attained.
Thus the light that leads to happiness is kindled from within and the evolutionary journey that all are making may be robbed of its suffering.
Why does death bring misery? Chiefly because it separates us from those we love. The only other reason why death brings grief or fear is because we do not understand it and comprehend the part it plays in human evolution. But the moment our ignorance gives way to comprehension such fear vanishes and a serene happiness takes its place.
Why do we have enemies from whose words or acts we suffer?
Because in our limited physical consciousness we do not perceive the unity of all life and realize that our wrong thinking and doing must react upon us through other people a situation from which there is no possible escape except through ceasing to think evil and then patiently awaiting the time when the causes we have already generated are fully exhausted.
When spiritual illumination comes, and we no longer stumble in the night of ignorance, the last enemy will disappear and we shall make no more forever.
Why do people suffer from poverty and disease? Only because of our blundering ignorance that makes their existence possible for us, and because we do not comprehend their meaning and their lessons, nor know the attitude to assume toward them.
Had we but the wisdom to understand why they come to people, why they are necessary factors in their evolution, they would trouble us no longer. When nature's lesson is fully learned these mute teachers will vanish.
And so it is with all forms of suffering we experience. They are at once reactions from our ignorant blunderings and instructors that point out the better way. When we have comprehended the lessons they teach they are no longer necessary and disappear.
It is not by the outward acquirement of facts that men become wise and great. It is by developing the soul from within until it illuminates the brain with that flood of light called genius.
Happiness is the product of wisdom. To attain perfect wisdom, to comprehend fully the purpose of life, to realize completely the relationship of human beings to each other, is to put an end to all suffering, to escape every ill and evil that afflicts us. Perfect wisdom is unshadowed joy.
Why do we suffer in life? Because in the scheme of nature we are being forced forward in evolution and we lack the spiritual illumination that alone can light the way and enable us to move safely among the obstacles that lie before us.
Usually we do not even see or suspect the presence of trouble until it suddenly leaps upon us like a concealed tiger. One day our family circle is complete and happy. A week later death has come and gone and joy is replaced with agony.
Today we have a friend. Tomorrow he will be an enemy and we do not know why. A little while ago we had wealth and all material luxuries. There was a sudden change and now we have only poverty and misery and yet we seek in vain for a reason why this should be.
There was a time when we had health and strength; but they have both departed and no trace of a reason appears. Aside from these greater tragedies of life innumerable things of lesser consequence continually bring to us little miseries and minor heartaches.
We most earnestly desire to avoid them but we never see them until they strike us, until in the darkness of our ignorance we blunder upon them. The thing we lack is the spiritual illumination that will enable us to look far and wide, finding the hidden causes of human suffering and revealing the method by which they may be avoided; and if we can but reach illumination the evolutionary journey can be made both comfortably and swiftly.
It is as though we must pass through a long, dark room filled with furniture promiscuously scattered about. In the darkness our progress would be slow and painful and our bruises many. But if we could press a button that would turn on the electric light we could then make the same journey quickly and with perfect safety and comfort.
The old method of education was to store the mind with as many facts, or supposed facts, as could be accumulated and to give a certain exterior polish to the personality. The theory was that when a man was born he was a completed human being and that all that could be done for him was to load him up with information that would be used with more or less skill, according to the native ability he happened to be born with.
The theosophical idea is that the physical man, and all that constitutes his life in the physical world, is but a very partial expression of the self; that in the ego of each there is practically unlimited power and wisdom; that these may be brought through into expression in the physical world as the physical body and its invisible counterparts, which together constitute the complex vehicle of the ego's manifestation, are evolved and adapted to the purpose; and that in exact proportion that conscious effort is given to such self-development will spiritual illumination be achieved and wisdom attained.
Thus the light that leads to happiness is kindled from within and the evolutionary journey that all are making may be robbed of its suffering.
Why does death bring misery? Chiefly because it separates us from those we love. The only other reason why death brings grief or fear is because we do not understand it and comprehend the part it plays in human evolution. But the moment our ignorance gives way to comprehension such fear vanishes and a serene happiness takes its place.
Why do we have enemies from whose words or acts we suffer?
Because in our limited physical consciousness we do not perceive the unity of all life and realize that our wrong thinking and doing must react upon us through other people a situation from which there is no possible escape except through ceasing to think evil and then patiently awaiting the time when the causes we have already generated are fully exhausted.
When spiritual illumination comes, and we no longer stumble in the night of ignorance, the last enemy will disappear and we shall make no more forever.
Why do people suffer from poverty and disease? Only because of our blundering ignorance that makes their existence possible for us, and because we do not comprehend their meaning and their lessons, nor know the attitude to assume toward them.
Had we but the wisdom to understand why they come to people, why they are necessary factors in their evolution, they would trouble us no longer. When nature's lesson is fully learned these mute teachers will vanish.
And so it is with all forms of suffering we experience. They are at once reactions from our ignorant blunderings and instructors that point out the better way. When we have comprehended the lessons they teach they are no longer necessary and disappear.
It is not by the outward acquirement of facts that men become wise and great. It is by developing the soul from within until it illuminates the brain with that flood of light called genius.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Self Improvement and Success
Everything that happens to us happens in purpose. And sometimes, one thing leads to another. Instead of locking yourself up in your cage of fears and crying over past heartaches, embarrassment and failures, treat them as your teachers and they will become your tools in both self improvement and success.
I remember watching Patch Adams. Its my favorite movie, actually. Its one great film that will help you improve yourself. Hunter Patch Adams is a medical student who failed to make it through the board exams. After months of suffering in melancholy, depression and suicidal attempts, he decided to seek for medical attention and voluntarily admitted himself in a psychiatric ward.
His months of stay in the hospital led him to meeting different kinds of people. Sick people in that matter. He met a catatonic, a mentally retarded, a schizophrenic and so on. Patch found ways of treating his own ailment and finally realized he has to get back on track.
He woke up one morning realizing that after all the failure and pains he has gone through, he still want to become a doctor. He carries with himself a positive attitude that brought him self improvement and success. He didn't only improved himself, but also the life of the people around him and the quality of life. Did he succeed? Needless to say, he became the best damn doctor his country has ever known.
So, when does self improvement become synonymous with success? Where do we start? Take these tips, friends?
*Stop thinking and feeling as if you're a failure, because you're not. How can others accept you if YOU can't accept YOU?
*When you see hunks and models on TV, think more on self improvement, not self pitying. Self acceptance is not just about having nice slender legs, or great abs. Concentrate on inner beauty.
*When people feel so down and low about themselves, help them move up. Don't go down with them. They'll pull you down further and both of you will end up feeling inferior.
*The world is a large room for lessons, not mistakes. Don't feel stupid and doomed forever just because you failed on a science quiz. There's always a next time. Make rooms for self improvement.
*Take things one at a time. You don't expect black sheep's to be goody-two-shoes in just a snap of a finger. Self improvement is a one day at a time process.
*Self improvement results to inner stability, personality development and dig this, SUCCESS. It comes from self confidence, self appreciation and self esteem.
* Set meaningful and achievable goals. Self improvement doesn't turn you to be the exact replica of Cameron Diaz or Ralph Fiennes. It hopes and aims to result to an improved and better YOU.
*Little things mean BIG to other people. Sometimes, we don't realize that the little things that we do like a pat on the back, saying hi or hello greeting someone good day or telling Mr. Smith something like Hey, I love your tie!, are simple things that mean so much to other people. When we're being appreciative about beautiful things around us and other people, we also become beautiful to them.
*When you're willing to accept change and go through the process of self improvement, it doesn't mean that everyone else is. The world is a place where people of different values and attitude hang out. Sometimes, even if you think you and your best friend always like to do the same thing together at the same time, she would most likely decline an invitation for self improvement.
We should always remember that there's no such thing as over night success. Its always a wonderful feeling to hold on to the things that you already have now, realizing that those are just one of the things you once wished for.
A very nice quote says that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. We are all here to learn our lessons. Our parents, school teachers, friends, colleagues, officemates, neighbors, they are our teachers. When we open our doors for self improvement, we increase our chances to head to the road of success.
I remember watching Patch Adams. Its my favorite movie, actually. Its one great film that will help you improve yourself. Hunter Patch Adams is a medical student who failed to make it through the board exams. After months of suffering in melancholy, depression and suicidal attempts, he decided to seek for medical attention and voluntarily admitted himself in a psychiatric ward.
His months of stay in the hospital led him to meeting different kinds of people. Sick people in that matter. He met a catatonic, a mentally retarded, a schizophrenic and so on. Patch found ways of treating his own ailment and finally realized he has to get back on track.
He woke up one morning realizing that after all the failure and pains he has gone through, he still want to become a doctor. He carries with himself a positive attitude that brought him self improvement and success. He didn't only improved himself, but also the life of the people around him and the quality of life. Did he succeed? Needless to say, he became the best damn doctor his country has ever known.
So, when does self improvement become synonymous with success? Where do we start? Take these tips, friends?
*Stop thinking and feeling as if you're a failure, because you're not. How can others accept you if YOU can't accept YOU?
*When you see hunks and models on TV, think more on self improvement, not self pitying. Self acceptance is not just about having nice slender legs, or great abs. Concentrate on inner beauty.
*When people feel so down and low about themselves, help them move up. Don't go down with them. They'll pull you down further and both of you will end up feeling inferior.
*The world is a large room for lessons, not mistakes. Don't feel stupid and doomed forever just because you failed on a science quiz. There's always a next time. Make rooms for self improvement.
*Take things one at a time. You don't expect black sheep's to be goody-two-shoes in just a snap of a finger. Self improvement is a one day at a time process.
*Self improvement results to inner stability, personality development and dig this, SUCCESS. It comes from self confidence, self appreciation and self esteem.
* Set meaningful and achievable goals. Self improvement doesn't turn you to be the exact replica of Cameron Diaz or Ralph Fiennes. It hopes and aims to result to an improved and better YOU.
*Little things mean BIG to other people. Sometimes, we don't realize that the little things that we do like a pat on the back, saying hi or hello greeting someone good day or telling Mr. Smith something like Hey, I love your tie!, are simple things that mean so much to other people. When we're being appreciative about beautiful things around us and other people, we also become beautiful to them.
*When you're willing to accept change and go through the process of self improvement, it doesn't mean that everyone else is. The world is a place where people of different values and attitude hang out. Sometimes, even if you think you and your best friend always like to do the same thing together at the same time, she would most likely decline an invitation for self improvement.
We should always remember that there's no such thing as over night success. Its always a wonderful feeling to hold on to the things that you already have now, realizing that those are just one of the things you once wished for.
A very nice quote says that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. We are all here to learn our lessons. Our parents, school teachers, friends, colleagues, officemates, neighbors, they are our teachers. When we open our doors for self improvement, we increase our chances to head to the road of success.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Dealing With Others.
In all application of magnetism to persons, you are urged to remember that your very first goal, always and preeminently, is an agreeable feeling within their minds. You should never try to induce a person to act your way until you have thoroughly established in him a good feeling toward yourself. This is the prime initial step. When such a condition has been secured, you are then ready for the magnetic assault and then only.
When you are dealing with other people, endeavoring magnetically to win them to your wish, you should summon the general magnetic feeling within yourself, will them to do as you desire, and at the same time think of them as already consenting and acting.
Your inner condition should be perfectly calm, buoyant, hopeful, whatever the external means employed, your mind should be concentrated upon the thing desired, and its accomplishment should be thought of as now secured.
The response of the person may be delayed, but this should not discourage you, for some minds do not take suggestions (those of your unspoken will are referred to) quickly, and they do not act instantly upon their own thought.
It is invariably best to induce people to believe that they are acting on their personal impulse or judgment; they should be made to feel perfectly free, not at all coerced, and that they are doing their own will rather than yours simply because they wish so to do.
We may summarize all these suggestions in the words of a distinguished scientific writer:
"Life is not a bully who swaggers out into the open universe, upsetting the laws of energy in all directions, but rather a consummate strategist, who, sitting in his secret chamber over his wires, directs the movements of a great army." This is a good description of magnetism.
The success-magnetism assumption: We are now ready for the great assumption-principle of magnetism in applied life.
Think of every goal as already reached, of every undertaking as already achieved.
When you are dealing with other people, endeavoring magnetically to win them to your wish, you should summon the general magnetic feeling within yourself, will them to do as you desire, and at the same time think of them as already consenting and acting.
Your inner condition should be perfectly calm, buoyant, hopeful, whatever the external means employed, your mind should be concentrated upon the thing desired, and its accomplishment should be thought of as now secured.
The response of the person may be delayed, but this should not discourage you, for some minds do not take suggestions (those of your unspoken will are referred to) quickly, and they do not act instantly upon their own thought.
It is invariably best to induce people to believe that they are acting on their personal impulse or judgment; they should be made to feel perfectly free, not at all coerced, and that they are doing their own will rather than yours simply because they wish so to do.
We may summarize all these suggestions in the words of a distinguished scientific writer:
"Life is not a bully who swaggers out into the open universe, upsetting the laws of energy in all directions, but rather a consummate strategist, who, sitting in his secret chamber over his wires, directs the movements of a great army." This is a good description of magnetism.
The success-magnetism assumption: We are now ready for the great assumption-principle of magnetism in applied life.
Think of every goal as already reached, of every undertaking as already achieved.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)