Everyday, I'm posting a message on Twitter. That message will serve as the first (in bold) sentence for short written posts I have below.
Before we begin our journey towards our dreams, we must develop a mindset of never giving up. We need that mindset as soon as we take our first step.
We all know the journey leading to our dreams is a lengthy one. Oftentimes, we don’t develop the proper mindset where we expect failures from the beginning and choose to never give up regardless how tough the journey becomes. Lacking such a mindset, we are destined to abandon our dream in the early stages of the journey.
The bigger our dream is, the longer the journey will become. There are no shortcuts that will cut the journey shorter. If anything, what appear as shortcuts often result in a dead end or a longer detour. For many people, the biggest challenge in the early stages of the journey is how much distance we have to cover. It almost seems like we take a thousand steps and we’re still no closer to the destination.
When we seem to be no closer to our destination, we are tempted to give up. We believe that, if investing a lot of time doesn’t yield anything, we must be wasting our time as stated by all of our critics. However, we must remember that the start is the most difficult. For example, we might want to roll a boulder uphill. Initially, we’d struggle to make it move, let alone cover any distance.
From experience, most people know that moving a stationary object takes more effort than a moving object. The same is with our journey where we must get the ball rolling. We cannot expect to start with any momentum from the very beginning but, with the mindset to never give up and keep pushing, we’ll eventually get a tiny bit of momentum and we can go from there.
_____
We shouldn’t measure our progress of our journey to our dreams by the time and effort we invested but instead focus on our impact on other people’s lives.
We generally measure our contributions by the amount of time and effort we invest into a certain task or goal. There are many jobs that have wages paying us a certain amount for each hour of work we do. These jobs tend to be on the lower end in terms of pay as most of us are striving for jobs that pay us a monthly or yearly salary.
When we are paid a salary, we no longer have set hours because we are expected to achieve certain goals. That might mean we work overtime with no extra pay because we must get the job done and we are expected to work the extra hours each day. As opposed to standard wages, we are paid for the value we can deliver and not the time and effort we invest.
As in work with salaries, we must do the same when it comes to our dreams. We expect ourselves to invest a lot more time and effort than any other task because we know the payoff at the end is well worth it. After all, who doesn’t want to do the things they love and get paid for it? If we are willing to go all the way, we will be rewarded with what we desire.
To reach our dreams, our only measurement is how much of an impact we can have on other people’s lives. Whether we want to be a professional singer or a Nobel prize winning scientist, we will touch people’s lives with what we do. The greater our impact, the closer we are to making our dreams come true. Simply putting more time and effort doesn’t make our actions more impactful.
_____
We shouldn’t hope to start tomorrow since it’s a new day. It’s never too late to start pursuing our dream now and build a little momentum to get us going tomorrow.
We will start tomorrow. That’s what most of us tell ourselves when it comes to hard and difficult tasks. We get the easy stuff or pleasurable things done as soon as we have the opportunity. Our procrastination makes it nearly impossible for us to get anything meaningful done unless we have no more choices to delay it.
A deadline is what gets us going most of the time. We have a paper due in a month and we might start a few days before the due date. We finally start on a project when we realize the prospect that we can get fired from not finishing it. We always need some sort of push to do the things despite them being good for us.
When it comes to dreams, we don’t have a solid deadline like the ones we have for our schoolwork and job. As a result, we believe that there’s always a tomorrow for us to finally begin. What ends up happening is that we keep pushing our starting date to tomorrow until we lie on our deathbed and our tomorrow becomes very limited.
Whenever we have something we want to do and know that it will benefit us greatly in the future, we shouldn’t wait and instead start today. Even if we have an hour before bed, we can use that hour to lay down the foundation. It’s amazing how much we can accomplish in a short time and maybe our small accomplishments will motivate us to build upon it tomorrow.
_____
When we procrastinate, we are missing out on opportunities because we wait until the last minute to get started. Sadly, those opportunities aren’t coming back once they’re gone.
Many of us are so accustomed to procrastination that we see it as a way of life. We know it’s a terrible habit to have but we don’t always find the reason to change it. Some of us are doing just fine procrastinating since we aren’t being punished for it. We still get our homework and project done by the deadline with our marks remaining above acceptable levels.
What should motivate us to abandon this terrible habit? If things are going our way, we believe that there’s no reason for change. However, we must realize that there are so many opportunities out there we are missing as a result of procrastination. Those opportunities might appear once and will never happen again.
Let’s say we have a large project due in three months. As procrastinators, we might start doing work two weeks before the deadline. Since we compressed three months worth of work into two weeks, we will be working nonstop until we get the job done. This leaves very little room to explore interesting things we dig up during our research that can change our lives.
For someone who starts early, the person can maybe setup an interview with an expert of a certain topic. This leads to new opportunities that can uncover a treasure trove of knowledge and wisdom. While the knowledge and wisdom might not be applicable to the project itself, it can certainly help the person get further in life by providing him or her with more tools to tackle the challenges the world throws at us.
_____
Procrastination is a sign that we don’t enjoy the task. When have we ever procrastinated on the things we really enjoy in life?
A lot of us procrastinate often in our lives whether if it’s at school or at work. In a way, procrastination is a nasty habit we need to get rid of before it ruins our lives by making us miss deadlines and forcing us to do substandard work. Yet, we should also look into our past experiences to see why we are procrastinating.
When we are young, we might procrastinate when it comes to homework and projects. We aren’t very eager in doing those so we put it off while we can. What do we do instead? We might enjoy gaming, sports or any other activity that we find a lot more exciting than simply sit down and figure out problems that we probably won’t ever revisit once we graduate.
When we procrastinate, we are really delaying ourselves from doing the things we don’t enjoy. We find the tasks boring and dull. We have no motivation to do it until we have to. If there’s no deadline involved, we might just keep delaying it much into the future. If we still procrastinate when we are working, then we likely have a bigger issue in life.
There’s no point in doing a job we don’t enjoy. Working takes up so much of our time so, if we spend most of our days hating our job, then there’s no possible way for us to be happy. If we are procrastinating at work, it means we got ourselves in a career that we aren’t meant to be in. That’s a terrifying thought because we have put ourselves in a scenario where, the longer we stay, the more trapped we are.
_____
While a deadline can be stressful, we must have them if we want to get something done. Otherwise, there’s no reason for us to do anything now rather than later.
We have all had deadlines at school or at work and it can be stressful trying to meet them. We like to believe that, if the deadlines weren’t there, our work can be of better quality and we’ll be healthier overall. While it’s true that some deadlines are horribly unrealistic, a lot of deadlines are and they ensure that we get things done as opposed to procrastinating indefinitely.
In our lives, most of us need deadlines to help counter our procrastination. Otherwise, our mind will keep telling us to start tomorrow and we never even get started. That’s the case for many dreams where the person has this great idea but procrastinates until someone else executed the idea and made a fortune as a result.
Of course, we don’t need other people to set deadlines for us. We all get that negative attitude when our boss, manager or teacher give us a deadline for a certain task which gives deadline such a negative connotation. For ourselves, we can set goals instead of deadlines. However, our goals must be specific or they wouldn’t be very helpful.
Instead of just stating what we want to achieve for our goal, we need to specify when exactly we need to accomplish it. We have to set dates so we can push ourselves to accomplish some task in a reasonable time. If we keep delaying, we won’t have the necessary preparations for the opportunities that could show up at any moment in our lives.
_____
When should we start pursuing our dreams? The best time is now since there’s no way of telling how long it’ll take for us to turn our dreams into reality.
Everyone’s dreams are different so we cannot expect to follow someone else’s formula and find success as well. It’s true that there are certain wisdom the successful people can share with us to help make our journey smoother. Yet, nothing teaches us better than actual experience as these situations normally imprint the lesson into our memory.
One of the questions we have regarding our dreams is how long our dream will take. That is usually the first question for those who are impatient and want their dream realized overnight. If we ask people who have achieved similar dreams, we’ll get a range of different answers as they are different people with different backgrounds.
When we are unsure how long something will take, we’d want to start early so we can figure it out. This is no different from starting a project early rather than procrastinating until the deadline is literally around the corner. We can always start small if the dream seems way too overwhelming to tackle because that’s always a good place to start.
The small things matter far more in dreams because we are using those small things to build a solid foundation. Imagine wanting to build a highrise but being too lazy and cheap to build a foundation that can support the highrise. Once we built up a solid foundation for our dreams now, then we are more invested in pursuing it and less likely to abandon it altogether.
_____
Before we begin our journey towards our dreams, we must develop a mindset of never giving up. We need that mindset as soon as we take our first step.
We all know the journey leading to our dreams is a lengthy one. Oftentimes, we don’t develop the proper mindset where we expect failures from the beginning and choose to never give up regardless how tough the journey becomes. Lacking such a mindset, we are destined to abandon our dream in the early stages of the journey.
The bigger our dream is, the longer the journey will become. There are no shortcuts that will cut the journey shorter. If anything, what appear as shortcuts often result in a dead end or a longer detour. For many people, the biggest challenge in the early stages of the journey is how much distance we have to cover. It almost seems like we take a thousand steps and we’re still no closer to the destination.
When we seem to be no closer to our destination, we are tempted to give up. We believe that, if investing a lot of time doesn’t yield anything, we must be wasting our time as stated by all of our critics. However, we must remember that the start is the most difficult. For example, we might want to roll a boulder uphill. Initially, we’d struggle to make it move, let alone cover any distance.
From experience, most people know that moving a stationary object takes more effort than a moving object. The same is with our journey where we must get the ball rolling. We cannot expect to start with any momentum from the very beginning but, with the mindset to never give up and keep pushing, we’ll eventually get a tiny bit of momentum and we can go from there.
_____
We shouldn’t measure our progress of our journey to our dreams by the time and effort we invested but instead focus on our impact on other people’s lives.
We generally measure our contributions by the amount of time and effort we invest into a certain task or goal. There are many jobs that have wages paying us a certain amount for each hour of work we do. These jobs tend to be on the lower end in terms of pay as most of us are striving for jobs that pay us a monthly or yearly salary.
When we are paid a salary, we no longer have set hours because we are expected to achieve certain goals. That might mean we work overtime with no extra pay because we must get the job done and we are expected to work the extra hours each day. As opposed to standard wages, we are paid for the value we can deliver and not the time and effort we invest.
As in work with salaries, we must do the same when it comes to our dreams. We expect ourselves to invest a lot more time and effort than any other task because we know the payoff at the end is well worth it. After all, who doesn’t want to do the things they love and get paid for it? If we are willing to go all the way, we will be rewarded with what we desire.
To reach our dreams, our only measurement is how much of an impact we can have on other people’s lives. Whether we want to be a professional singer or a Nobel prize winning scientist, we will touch people’s lives with what we do. The greater our impact, the closer we are to making our dreams come true. Simply putting more time and effort doesn’t make our actions more impactful.
_____
We shouldn’t hope to start tomorrow since it’s a new day. It’s never too late to start pursuing our dream now and build a little momentum to get us going tomorrow.
We will start tomorrow. That’s what most of us tell ourselves when it comes to hard and difficult tasks. We get the easy stuff or pleasurable things done as soon as we have the opportunity. Our procrastination makes it nearly impossible for us to get anything meaningful done unless we have no more choices to delay it.
A deadline is what gets us going most of the time. We have a paper due in a month and we might start a few days before the due date. We finally start on a project when we realize the prospect that we can get fired from not finishing it. We always need some sort of push to do the things despite them being good for us.
When it comes to dreams, we don’t have a solid deadline like the ones we have for our schoolwork and job. As a result, we believe that there’s always a tomorrow for us to finally begin. What ends up happening is that we keep pushing our starting date to tomorrow until we lie on our deathbed and our tomorrow becomes very limited.
Whenever we have something we want to do and know that it will benefit us greatly in the future, we shouldn’t wait and instead start today. Even if we have an hour before bed, we can use that hour to lay down the foundation. It’s amazing how much we can accomplish in a short time and maybe our small accomplishments will motivate us to build upon it tomorrow.
_____
When we procrastinate, we are missing out on opportunities because we wait until the last minute to get started. Sadly, those opportunities aren’t coming back once they’re gone.
Many of us are so accustomed to procrastination that we see it as a way of life. We know it’s a terrible habit to have but we don’t always find the reason to change it. Some of us are doing just fine procrastinating since we aren’t being punished for it. We still get our homework and project done by the deadline with our marks remaining above acceptable levels.
What should motivate us to abandon this terrible habit? If things are going our way, we believe that there’s no reason for change. However, we must realize that there are so many opportunities out there we are missing as a result of procrastination. Those opportunities might appear once and will never happen again.
Let’s say we have a large project due in three months. As procrastinators, we might start doing work two weeks before the deadline. Since we compressed three months worth of work into two weeks, we will be working nonstop until we get the job done. This leaves very little room to explore interesting things we dig up during our research that can change our lives.
For someone who starts early, the person can maybe setup an interview with an expert of a certain topic. This leads to new opportunities that can uncover a treasure trove of knowledge and wisdom. While the knowledge and wisdom might not be applicable to the project itself, it can certainly help the person get further in life by providing him or her with more tools to tackle the challenges the world throws at us.
_____
Procrastination is a sign that we don’t enjoy the task. When have we ever procrastinated on the things we really enjoy in life?
A lot of us procrastinate often in our lives whether if it’s at school or at work. In a way, procrastination is a nasty habit we need to get rid of before it ruins our lives by making us miss deadlines and forcing us to do substandard work. Yet, we should also look into our past experiences to see why we are procrastinating.
When we are young, we might procrastinate when it comes to homework and projects. We aren’t very eager in doing those so we put it off while we can. What do we do instead? We might enjoy gaming, sports or any other activity that we find a lot more exciting than simply sit down and figure out problems that we probably won’t ever revisit once we graduate.
When we procrastinate, we are really delaying ourselves from doing the things we don’t enjoy. We find the tasks boring and dull. We have no motivation to do it until we have to. If there’s no deadline involved, we might just keep delaying it much into the future. If we still procrastinate when we are working, then we likely have a bigger issue in life.
There’s no point in doing a job we don’t enjoy. Working takes up so much of our time so, if we spend most of our days hating our job, then there’s no possible way for us to be happy. If we are procrastinating at work, it means we got ourselves in a career that we aren’t meant to be in. That’s a terrifying thought because we have put ourselves in a scenario where, the longer we stay, the more trapped we are.
_____
While a deadline can be stressful, we must have them if we want to get something done. Otherwise, there’s no reason for us to do anything now rather than later.
We have all had deadlines at school or at work and it can be stressful trying to meet them. We like to believe that, if the deadlines weren’t there, our work can be of better quality and we’ll be healthier overall. While it’s true that some deadlines are horribly unrealistic, a lot of deadlines are and they ensure that we get things done as opposed to procrastinating indefinitely.
In our lives, most of us need deadlines to help counter our procrastination. Otherwise, our mind will keep telling us to start tomorrow and we never even get started. That’s the case for many dreams where the person has this great idea but procrastinates until someone else executed the idea and made a fortune as a result.
Of course, we don’t need other people to set deadlines for us. We all get that negative attitude when our boss, manager or teacher give us a deadline for a certain task which gives deadline such a negative connotation. For ourselves, we can set goals instead of deadlines. However, our goals must be specific or they wouldn’t be very helpful.
Instead of just stating what we want to achieve for our goal, we need to specify when exactly we need to accomplish it. We have to set dates so we can push ourselves to accomplish some task in a reasonable time. If we keep delaying, we won’t have the necessary preparations for the opportunities that could show up at any moment in our lives.
_____
When should we start pursuing our dreams? The best time is now since there’s no way of telling how long it’ll take for us to turn our dreams into reality.
Everyone’s dreams are different so we cannot expect to follow someone else’s formula and find success as well. It’s true that there are certain wisdom the successful people can share with us to help make our journey smoother. Yet, nothing teaches us better than actual experience as these situations normally imprint the lesson into our memory.
One of the questions we have regarding our dreams is how long our dream will take. That is usually the first question for those who are impatient and want their dream realized overnight. If we ask people who have achieved similar dreams, we’ll get a range of different answers as they are different people with different backgrounds.
When we are unsure how long something will take, we’d want to start early so we can figure it out. This is no different from starting a project early rather than procrastinating until the deadline is literally around the corner. We can always start small if the dream seems way too overwhelming to tackle because that’s always a good place to start.
The small things matter far more in dreams because we are using those small things to build a solid foundation. Imagine wanting to build a highrise but being too lazy and cheap to build a foundation that can support the highrise. Once we built up a solid foundation for our dreams now, then we are more invested in pursuing it and less likely to abandon it altogether.
_____