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.
When we are young, we shouldn’t be dreaming about the ways we can get wealth and fame overnight. We should develop ourselves so our successes last indefinitely.
Many of us like to daydream about scenarios where we get rich and/or famous overnight. We like to see ourselves winning the lottery, get scouted by professionals who see great potential within us or anything that can get us further in life. While these daydreams seem great, we shouldn’t be wasting time on something so reliant on luck alone.
We should look to develop ourselves by learning new skills and master new abilities. We want to improve our value so either companies see us as valuable assets or we can start our own startup pursuing some dream we had since we were young. We have far more options when we are better developed than if we spend too much time daydreaming.
The reason why we want to develop ourselves is that we don’t want a taste of success only to lose it shortly after. The worst scenario is us getting an once in a lifetime opportunity only to lose it shortly afterwards because we weren’t ready to take full advantage of it. Those opportunities won’t return so, if we miss out on it, somebody else will take advantage of it.
When we possess a lot of skills and knowledge, we can not only take advantage of certain opportunities but we can also make something great out of it. Imagine a scenario where a person gets a position in a top notch company and gets promoted through the ranks faster than other people simply by applying all that he or she learned leading up to the opportunity.
_____
Are we sacrificing too much for fame? Nowadays, people are willing to do all sort of things to become famous even if their experience for the limelight is brief.
Many people want to become famous because being known nationwide, if not worldwide, has its benefits. We feel wanted and important as opposed to feeling mediocre and just another face in the crowd. Often, fame also brings us a lot of wealth which we can use to live a lifestyle that was only reserved to the upper echelon of society.
Fame also has a number of cons and one such con is the price some people are paying to acquire it. Nowadays, technology makes it so easy for us to share various moments in our life. We simply need to record the moment and upload it online to a social platform where it can explode in popularity within a single day.
What gets people’s attention the most? As more and more videos go online, the mundane no longer satisfies people’s curiosity. Therefore, those pursuing fame must do crazier and crazier things to get the same sort of fame as some of the more ordinary things several years ago. We have arrived at a time where people are willing to risk their lives to get fame.
Whether if it’s something like the Tide challenge or daredevil stunts performed by amateurs, those wanting fame overnight are willing to do anything that can potentially end their lives. Is fame really worth the lives that are lost? Why are these people willing to lose their lives for a brief experience of limelight? Maybe, there’s a bigger issue in our society.
_____
If our reasons for getting famous are getting fortune and recognition in life, then we are fighting for the wrong things and miss out on what truly matters.
There are people who pursue fame because they equate it to fortune. Nobody likes a life where they are broke or struggle to purchase even the basic necessities of life. Even for those in a better situation, some still desire to become much wealthier so they can be considered a millionaire or even a billionaire.
Meanwhile, there’s another group of people who pursue fame to gain recognition. Maybe at school or at work, they are considered by others as a nobody and a nobody is usually a loner who is bitter about life. When you have fame, you become somebody and that can literally turn your life around overnight as it gives you access to things you never had before.
The issues lies in the fact that people are pursuing fame for only fortune and/or recognition in life. When would people feel they have enough of either? There’s no limit to how much wealth one can accumulate so nothing is stopping a person from wanting more and better things in his or her life. Does the desire for more wealth eventually blind the person from things that matter?
Getting recognition makes us feel good but we are basically seeking the approval of other people. What sort of life are we living if we need other people’s approval to dictate whether or not we have a good life? The moment we only seek approval from others is the moment we stop living our own lives and start living the sort of lives others want to see in us.
_____
Seeking approval from others will not make us happy because we’ll be reaching for highly unrealistic expectations that couldn’t be more different from who we are.
What do we get when we get the approval of others? Since we were young, we’ve been trying to meet other people’s expectations to get praise or rewards. We get this nice feeling whenever we get commended for our efforts and, like all good feeling, we desire more of it. As we desire more, we also have to do more to get the same sort of praise.
As we grow older, the sorts of feats we must accomplish grow more difficult. We might impress our first grade teacher with reasonable math skills in addition and subtraction but even mastery of calculus in university won’t be impressing anyone as it’s seen as a norm. Expectations rises quickly as we become adults and, whenever we reach new heights, people expect us to go even higher.
The question isn’t how high we can reach but whether or not this is the sort of achievement we want to have. When we are too busy meeting other people’s expectations, we are rushing to do whatever they see in us. We never stop and analyze whether we are doing things we love. It’s when we can no longer meet the expectations that we start to question the road we take.
There are times when we look back and realize too late our biggest mistake in life. All this time, we’ve been living a life that never belonged to us. We were living a life that was thought up by those who have high expectations for us. Because we veered so far from our actual path, we suffer pain and suffering as we tried in our last desperation to right our future.
_____
We must chart out our own path because, instinctively, we know what’s best for us. There will be others who claim they know better but it’s best we ignore them.
In our lives, we’ll encounter people telling us what we should do with our lives. While some have good intentions like our parents and relatives, there are also critics who hate to see us succeed in life. Regardless of who it is, they are using their own experiences to dictate what sort of future we should pursue and that’s often very misleading.
We all live very different lives. Even identical twins find their path diverging at times since they cannot be at the same place at the same time. Our unique experiences give us a different perspective on life and these perspectives help shape our values. As we move towards adulthood, we’ll have gone through many ups and downs through life.
The world we see differ greatly from our parents’. Our parents belong to a different generation that didn’t have access to many of the technology we take for granted. A smartphone was unthinkable even two decades ago but it has become a norm nowadays. With such enormous changes in society, it’s only natural that new paths are available to the newer generation.
While the older generation see life through more traditional lens, we find ourselves struggling to adapt to changes. Just as new opportunities are arising, we are also seeing new challenges. The traditional ways of life are less applicable because it was never designed to accommodate the technology advances. Therefore, it’s up to us to decide what future we want for ourselves.
_____
While others are too busy criticizing us, we should be investing our time and energy in building the seemingly impossible future and redefine success.
Throughout our entire lives, we’ll encounter critics who tell us what we can and cannot do. The only way to avoid having critics in life is to do absolutely nothing special and follow the most ordinary path possible. Yet, we all desire something greater than mediocrity so it’s unavoidable that we meet critics along our long journey towards success.
We see the number of critics equated to how big our dream is. The bigger we dare to dream, the more critics we’ll meet. We mustn’t let these critics stop us from pursuing our dream because they have reached a point where they have given up on their own dreams and most of them don’t want to see us succeed either. They would do everything in their ability to sabotage other’s dream.
The fact that they have given up on their dreams means that, mentally, they see limits of human beings. While human beings do have limits, most of us likely won’t ever reach them in our lifetime. We can see it when we look at athletes in the Olympics who are breaking world records. If the limits we believed existed, there would have been no more new records a long time ago.
Instead of letting critics or limits stop us, we must keep pushing forward towards the seemingly impossible future. We can create incredible things if we don’t let others stop or slow us down and, when we succeed, we’ll redefine success. We heard the stories of success stories where a person overcome all adversity to become a celebrity today. They couldn’t have done so if they hadn’t ignored all their critics.
_____
People once said going into space is impossible. How many other things in life do we convince ourselves to be impossible when it’s definitely not the case?
We say a lot of things are impossible and, oftentimes, we say so without even giving it a try. We don’t think it’s possible for us so we don’t want to waste time attempting it. So many dreams fail to come true because people convince themselves that it’s foolish to pursue such an ambitious goal. It’s only later in life that they wonder how life might be different if they did attempt it.
Yet, how do we justify something is impossible? Because something isn’t accomplished doesn’t mean it cannot happen. For much of human history, the idea of going into space seems so crazy that few even give it a thought. Nowadays, we don’t even give it a second thought because it’s not such a crazy notion as we’ve seen it done numerous times.
The same can be said about our hopes and dreams. Unless someone has a working crystal ball, nobody call tell us if our dreams will come true or not. When others say we have an impossible dream, they have no facts or data to back it up. Even if the odds of success is low, they couldn’t possibly predict whether we’ll eventually belong to small group of people who do succeed.
We are often our biggest obstacle to tackling our dreams, let alone making it a reality. If we keep telling us we cannot do something, we’ll eventually convince ourselves and make this belief into a fact. No dreams can become a reality if we never take the first step and that first step cannot happen without having faith in ourselves.
_____
When we are young, we shouldn’t be dreaming about the ways we can get wealth and fame overnight. We should develop ourselves so our successes last indefinitely.
Many of us like to daydream about scenarios where we get rich and/or famous overnight. We like to see ourselves winning the lottery, get scouted by professionals who see great potential within us or anything that can get us further in life. While these daydreams seem great, we shouldn’t be wasting time on something so reliant on luck alone.
We should look to develop ourselves by learning new skills and master new abilities. We want to improve our value so either companies see us as valuable assets or we can start our own startup pursuing some dream we had since we were young. We have far more options when we are better developed than if we spend too much time daydreaming.
The reason why we want to develop ourselves is that we don’t want a taste of success only to lose it shortly after. The worst scenario is us getting an once in a lifetime opportunity only to lose it shortly afterwards because we weren’t ready to take full advantage of it. Those opportunities won’t return so, if we miss out on it, somebody else will take advantage of it.
When we possess a lot of skills and knowledge, we can not only take advantage of certain opportunities but we can also make something great out of it. Imagine a scenario where a person gets a position in a top notch company and gets promoted through the ranks faster than other people simply by applying all that he or she learned leading up to the opportunity.
_____
Are we sacrificing too much for fame? Nowadays, people are willing to do all sort of things to become famous even if their experience for the limelight is brief.
Many people want to become famous because being known nationwide, if not worldwide, has its benefits. We feel wanted and important as opposed to feeling mediocre and just another face in the crowd. Often, fame also brings us a lot of wealth which we can use to live a lifestyle that was only reserved to the upper echelon of society.
Fame also has a number of cons and one such con is the price some people are paying to acquire it. Nowadays, technology makes it so easy for us to share various moments in our life. We simply need to record the moment and upload it online to a social platform where it can explode in popularity within a single day.
What gets people’s attention the most? As more and more videos go online, the mundane no longer satisfies people’s curiosity. Therefore, those pursuing fame must do crazier and crazier things to get the same sort of fame as some of the more ordinary things several years ago. We have arrived at a time where people are willing to risk their lives to get fame.
Whether if it’s something like the Tide challenge or daredevil stunts performed by amateurs, those wanting fame overnight are willing to do anything that can potentially end their lives. Is fame really worth the lives that are lost? Why are these people willing to lose their lives for a brief experience of limelight? Maybe, there’s a bigger issue in our society.
_____
If our reasons for getting famous are getting fortune and recognition in life, then we are fighting for the wrong things and miss out on what truly matters.
There are people who pursue fame because they equate it to fortune. Nobody likes a life where they are broke or struggle to purchase even the basic necessities of life. Even for those in a better situation, some still desire to become much wealthier so they can be considered a millionaire or even a billionaire.
Meanwhile, there’s another group of people who pursue fame to gain recognition. Maybe at school or at work, they are considered by others as a nobody and a nobody is usually a loner who is bitter about life. When you have fame, you become somebody and that can literally turn your life around overnight as it gives you access to things you never had before.
The issues lies in the fact that people are pursuing fame for only fortune and/or recognition in life. When would people feel they have enough of either? There’s no limit to how much wealth one can accumulate so nothing is stopping a person from wanting more and better things in his or her life. Does the desire for more wealth eventually blind the person from things that matter?
Getting recognition makes us feel good but we are basically seeking the approval of other people. What sort of life are we living if we need other people’s approval to dictate whether or not we have a good life? The moment we only seek approval from others is the moment we stop living our own lives and start living the sort of lives others want to see in us.
_____
Seeking approval from others will not make us happy because we’ll be reaching for highly unrealistic expectations that couldn’t be more different from who we are.
What do we get when we get the approval of others? Since we were young, we’ve been trying to meet other people’s expectations to get praise or rewards. We get this nice feeling whenever we get commended for our efforts and, like all good feeling, we desire more of it. As we desire more, we also have to do more to get the same sort of praise.
As we grow older, the sorts of feats we must accomplish grow more difficult. We might impress our first grade teacher with reasonable math skills in addition and subtraction but even mastery of calculus in university won’t be impressing anyone as it’s seen as a norm. Expectations rises quickly as we become adults and, whenever we reach new heights, people expect us to go even higher.
The question isn’t how high we can reach but whether or not this is the sort of achievement we want to have. When we are too busy meeting other people’s expectations, we are rushing to do whatever they see in us. We never stop and analyze whether we are doing things we love. It’s when we can no longer meet the expectations that we start to question the road we take.
There are times when we look back and realize too late our biggest mistake in life. All this time, we’ve been living a life that never belonged to us. We were living a life that was thought up by those who have high expectations for us. Because we veered so far from our actual path, we suffer pain and suffering as we tried in our last desperation to right our future.
_____
We must chart out our own path because, instinctively, we know what’s best for us. There will be others who claim they know better but it’s best we ignore them.
In our lives, we’ll encounter people telling us what we should do with our lives. While some have good intentions like our parents and relatives, there are also critics who hate to see us succeed in life. Regardless of who it is, they are using their own experiences to dictate what sort of future we should pursue and that’s often very misleading.
We all live very different lives. Even identical twins find their path diverging at times since they cannot be at the same place at the same time. Our unique experiences give us a different perspective on life and these perspectives help shape our values. As we move towards adulthood, we’ll have gone through many ups and downs through life.
The world we see differ greatly from our parents’. Our parents belong to a different generation that didn’t have access to many of the technology we take for granted. A smartphone was unthinkable even two decades ago but it has become a norm nowadays. With such enormous changes in society, it’s only natural that new paths are available to the newer generation.
While the older generation see life through more traditional lens, we find ourselves struggling to adapt to changes. Just as new opportunities are arising, we are also seeing new challenges. The traditional ways of life are less applicable because it was never designed to accommodate the technology advances. Therefore, it’s up to us to decide what future we want for ourselves.
_____
While others are too busy criticizing us, we should be investing our time and energy in building the seemingly impossible future and redefine success.
Throughout our entire lives, we’ll encounter critics who tell us what we can and cannot do. The only way to avoid having critics in life is to do absolutely nothing special and follow the most ordinary path possible. Yet, we all desire something greater than mediocrity so it’s unavoidable that we meet critics along our long journey towards success.
We see the number of critics equated to how big our dream is. The bigger we dare to dream, the more critics we’ll meet. We mustn’t let these critics stop us from pursuing our dream because they have reached a point where they have given up on their own dreams and most of them don’t want to see us succeed either. They would do everything in their ability to sabotage other’s dream.
The fact that they have given up on their dreams means that, mentally, they see limits of human beings. While human beings do have limits, most of us likely won’t ever reach them in our lifetime. We can see it when we look at athletes in the Olympics who are breaking world records. If the limits we believed existed, there would have been no more new records a long time ago.
Instead of letting critics or limits stop us, we must keep pushing forward towards the seemingly impossible future. We can create incredible things if we don’t let others stop or slow us down and, when we succeed, we’ll redefine success. We heard the stories of success stories where a person overcome all adversity to become a celebrity today. They couldn’t have done so if they hadn’t ignored all their critics.
_____
People once said going into space is impossible. How many other things in life do we convince ourselves to be impossible when it’s definitely not the case?
We say a lot of things are impossible and, oftentimes, we say so without even giving it a try. We don’t think it’s possible for us so we don’t want to waste time attempting it. So many dreams fail to come true because people convince themselves that it’s foolish to pursue such an ambitious goal. It’s only later in life that they wonder how life might be different if they did attempt it.
Yet, how do we justify something is impossible? Because something isn’t accomplished doesn’t mean it cannot happen. For much of human history, the idea of going into space seems so crazy that few even give it a thought. Nowadays, we don’t even give it a second thought because it’s not such a crazy notion as we’ve seen it done numerous times.
The same can be said about our hopes and dreams. Unless someone has a working crystal ball, nobody call tell us if our dreams will come true or not. When others say we have an impossible dream, they have no facts or data to back it up. Even if the odds of success is low, they couldn’t possibly predict whether we’ll eventually belong to small group of people who do succeed.
We are often our biggest obstacle to tackling our dreams, let alone making it a reality. If we keep telling us we cannot do something, we’ll eventually convince ourselves and make this belief into a fact. No dreams can become a reality if we never take the first step and that first step cannot happen without having faith in ourselves.
_____