Alex Alexander's Blog - Posts Tagged "change"
Time for change
This started on two fronts. One as notes for a lesson I was teaching. Let's just say I don't work in the most pro-social of environments. Since I work for a state agency the religious connotations were not used in the lesson. However everyone who has read this has had positive things to say. The second, this is rough time of year for me for a few reasons. I was trying to be positive and change my state of mind, as I tell people in class to do everyday.
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What is it that sets us apart from all other creatures on the planet? Is it language, is it art, culture? Close. It’s the ability to dream. We have the innate ability to see ourselves in the future. To see life before it happens. Five years, ten years, twenty years down the road. We can think it and we can do it. Like most strengths, this ability can also become our greatest weakness. The problem is that most of us struggle with living in the past and the future, while allowing us to miss the present. The trials of our past haunt us and slowly, they taint our vision of the future. The problem is you keep talking about the mistakes. About the missed opportunities. You keep talking about, and focusing on all the things that hold you back.
Stop for a minute and picture where you want to be in 5 years, ten years. Not where you think you’ll be or where you’ll probably be, but where you want to be. See yourself becoming the person you want to be. No one in the entire history of the human race has become great without trials. No one has succeeded without facing a barrier or obstacle which they needed to overcome. No one has succeeded without failing. No one has become great without pain. Learn to embrace your pain and let it become part of you rather than define you.
Look at Christ’s life for a moment. He faced numerous trials. He suffered greatly and probably thought about giving up more than once, but he held onto the vision of the future. Was it through knowledge? The scriptures say he lived as a man. Man is a finite creation and by definition cannot truly comprehend the infinite which is God. No it was through faith. Faith of what the future held. Faith so strong it took on a sense of knowledge. Faith that defined His life and forever changed the history of the world.
In the quiet times, which are often hard to come by, you need to see the future. You need the opportunity to see your dream. Take the time every day to close your eyes and visualize it. Let the vision take you beyond all the hardships, beyond the doubt, and more importantly beyond the pain of the past. Go into your future every single day. Not the probable future, but the future you want. Look at the details that surround you. Take in the subtle nuances of your surroundings and experience the feeling of living in your dream. As you think it, experience it, and feel it, you will become it. Slowly you will begin to create it. Throughout human history, many religions and prophets have told us, that we have all been destined for greatness. Unfortunately we let the small voices of doubt creep in and slowly over the years, chip by chip, our hope is eaten away. I look around every day and see people who are simply surviving. This doesn't mean they are not happy, it means they are merely satisfied. How many people look at the world and think, this is not how man was meant to live. The small feeling that something just isn't right in the world. If you embrace mediocrity then all you will ever accomplish is a mediocre life.
Believing in the unseen, faith. Embrace faith. Have faith in the things that you see when you look into the future. Without faith there is no hope. Without hope there is no dream and without dreams there is no future. There will only be the here and now and that is where you will remain. Stop seeing what you are not now. Stop looking at the failures and short comings but focus on what you will become. Not what you hope to become but what you are becoming. As you dream it, you will shape your future.
Now I know that sometimes you will look and success will be nowhere to be found. But again it comes down to faith. Faith that one day, it will be your day to shine. Faith that you can learn from the past. Faith that you can make things better despite the complete lack of evidence in your life. Notice I said that if YOU make things better. Not anyone else. Too often in life I see people who are waiting for someone else to change their circumstances. We look around and we do not see anything that resembles success or greatness and we lose hope. Embrace faith and know it, that you are changing your circumstances. Know that one day will be your day.
But, it will never be your day if you give up. If you stop fighting. If you stop striving. If you simply stop and accept the world as it is, it will never be your day. If you quit, for whatever reason, it will never be your day. How many of us are guilty of simply giving up because we believe that our dreams are too grandiose. We believe that we can never accomplish whatever it is, because we look at our past. Again if you live in the past you will miss the future.
There is never a right moment to simply be great. Greatness is not a single event where everything lined up for a single, solitary moment. Greatness is the collection of many small victories. It has been said that reaching greatness requires 100,000 small accomplishments, but 1 million failures. If you’re waiting for that perfect moment, the time to seize greatness, it will never happen. The only way it will happen is if you create that perfect moment. This leads to a lot of people becoming complacent. They simply survive. They trudge through life working jobs they hate and buying things they don’t need looking for ways to fill that void of missed opportunity. In the end they are simply satisfied and stop wanting anything more. They stop striving for greatness. Now I know it can be lonely when no one believes in you, but it’s in that desperation you need to hold onto this faith. When everyone else doubts, you need to believe. Ordinary people are not simply great, it takes greatness to attract greatness.
Do you know what the saddest place on earth is? The graveyard, but not for the reasons you may be thinking. Inside any and every grave yard are a plethora of inventions never made. Businesses never started, ideas never expressed, stories never told and books never written. Inside the graveyard may be that one experience which had you known about it, it could have changed your life. When we stop reaching for greatness we are committing a type of spiritual suicide, albeit slowly. Unless you leave your comfort zone you will never uncover what talents you have been blessed with. Without knowing those talents you will always fall short of your ultimate potential.
If you do any research on becoming great at something, there is what is known as the 10,000 hour rule. It simply states that if you take any task, even one you have never done before and commit 10,000 hours to it, you will become great at it. This can be 3 hours a day for 9 years or 9 hours a day for 3 years, or any other combination. I’m a writer, or at least I pretend to be and hope to be. I’ve met many people over the years who started to write a novel but never finished. For a long time I was one of those people. Now if you do some digging into your favorite author you find so many pieces of work you never knew existed. There are authors I grew up reading and thought I had read every word they ever penned. Thanks to the internet I have uncovered so many works by some of my favorite writers. Very few people succeed on their first book. In fact most of my favorite writers have numerous books which were never published. What did they do? They started a new book.
Now think about those things that you looked at and said I can’t do that. What are those things you wanted to accomplish but in the end, talked yourself out of doing? There’s two saying I want to close with. The first is that if there is no enemy within, then no enemy outside can harm us. Too often we let that voice of doubt alter the course of our life and change our destiny. The second is, when you get knocked down, make sure you land on your back. That way you can still look up. Too often we look down and see no other way. If you can look up, the future lays before you. Now what kind of future do you want to create?
*****
What is it that sets us apart from all other creatures on the planet? Is it language, is it art, culture? Close. It’s the ability to dream. We have the innate ability to see ourselves in the future. To see life before it happens. Five years, ten years, twenty years down the road. We can think it and we can do it. Like most strengths, this ability can also become our greatest weakness. The problem is that most of us struggle with living in the past and the future, while allowing us to miss the present. The trials of our past haunt us and slowly, they taint our vision of the future. The problem is you keep talking about the mistakes. About the missed opportunities. You keep talking about, and focusing on all the things that hold you back.
Stop for a minute and picture where you want to be in 5 years, ten years. Not where you think you’ll be or where you’ll probably be, but where you want to be. See yourself becoming the person you want to be. No one in the entire history of the human race has become great without trials. No one has succeeded without facing a barrier or obstacle which they needed to overcome. No one has succeeded without failing. No one has become great without pain. Learn to embrace your pain and let it become part of you rather than define you.
Look at Christ’s life for a moment. He faced numerous trials. He suffered greatly and probably thought about giving up more than once, but he held onto the vision of the future. Was it through knowledge? The scriptures say he lived as a man. Man is a finite creation and by definition cannot truly comprehend the infinite which is God. No it was through faith. Faith of what the future held. Faith so strong it took on a sense of knowledge. Faith that defined His life and forever changed the history of the world.
In the quiet times, which are often hard to come by, you need to see the future. You need the opportunity to see your dream. Take the time every day to close your eyes and visualize it. Let the vision take you beyond all the hardships, beyond the doubt, and more importantly beyond the pain of the past. Go into your future every single day. Not the probable future, but the future you want. Look at the details that surround you. Take in the subtle nuances of your surroundings and experience the feeling of living in your dream. As you think it, experience it, and feel it, you will become it. Slowly you will begin to create it. Throughout human history, many religions and prophets have told us, that we have all been destined for greatness. Unfortunately we let the small voices of doubt creep in and slowly over the years, chip by chip, our hope is eaten away. I look around every day and see people who are simply surviving. This doesn't mean they are not happy, it means they are merely satisfied. How many people look at the world and think, this is not how man was meant to live. The small feeling that something just isn't right in the world. If you embrace mediocrity then all you will ever accomplish is a mediocre life.
Believing in the unseen, faith. Embrace faith. Have faith in the things that you see when you look into the future. Without faith there is no hope. Without hope there is no dream and without dreams there is no future. There will only be the here and now and that is where you will remain. Stop seeing what you are not now. Stop looking at the failures and short comings but focus on what you will become. Not what you hope to become but what you are becoming. As you dream it, you will shape your future.
Now I know that sometimes you will look and success will be nowhere to be found. But again it comes down to faith. Faith that one day, it will be your day to shine. Faith that you can learn from the past. Faith that you can make things better despite the complete lack of evidence in your life. Notice I said that if YOU make things better. Not anyone else. Too often in life I see people who are waiting for someone else to change their circumstances. We look around and we do not see anything that resembles success or greatness and we lose hope. Embrace faith and know it, that you are changing your circumstances. Know that one day will be your day.
But, it will never be your day if you give up. If you stop fighting. If you stop striving. If you simply stop and accept the world as it is, it will never be your day. If you quit, for whatever reason, it will never be your day. How many of us are guilty of simply giving up because we believe that our dreams are too grandiose. We believe that we can never accomplish whatever it is, because we look at our past. Again if you live in the past you will miss the future.
There is never a right moment to simply be great. Greatness is not a single event where everything lined up for a single, solitary moment. Greatness is the collection of many small victories. It has been said that reaching greatness requires 100,000 small accomplishments, but 1 million failures. If you’re waiting for that perfect moment, the time to seize greatness, it will never happen. The only way it will happen is if you create that perfect moment. This leads to a lot of people becoming complacent. They simply survive. They trudge through life working jobs they hate and buying things they don’t need looking for ways to fill that void of missed opportunity. In the end they are simply satisfied and stop wanting anything more. They stop striving for greatness. Now I know it can be lonely when no one believes in you, but it’s in that desperation you need to hold onto this faith. When everyone else doubts, you need to believe. Ordinary people are not simply great, it takes greatness to attract greatness.
Do you know what the saddest place on earth is? The graveyard, but not for the reasons you may be thinking. Inside any and every grave yard are a plethora of inventions never made. Businesses never started, ideas never expressed, stories never told and books never written. Inside the graveyard may be that one experience which had you known about it, it could have changed your life. When we stop reaching for greatness we are committing a type of spiritual suicide, albeit slowly. Unless you leave your comfort zone you will never uncover what talents you have been blessed with. Without knowing those talents you will always fall short of your ultimate potential.
If you do any research on becoming great at something, there is what is known as the 10,000 hour rule. It simply states that if you take any task, even one you have never done before and commit 10,000 hours to it, you will become great at it. This can be 3 hours a day for 9 years or 9 hours a day for 3 years, or any other combination. I’m a writer, or at least I pretend to be and hope to be. I’ve met many people over the years who started to write a novel but never finished. For a long time I was one of those people. Now if you do some digging into your favorite author you find so many pieces of work you never knew existed. There are authors I grew up reading and thought I had read every word they ever penned. Thanks to the internet I have uncovered so many works by some of my favorite writers. Very few people succeed on their first book. In fact most of my favorite writers have numerous books which were never published. What did they do? They started a new book.
Now think about those things that you looked at and said I can’t do that. What are those things you wanted to accomplish but in the end, talked yourself out of doing? There’s two saying I want to close with. The first is that if there is no enemy within, then no enemy outside can harm us. Too often we let that voice of doubt alter the course of our life and change our destiny. The second is, when you get knocked down, make sure you land on your back. That way you can still look up. Too often we look down and see no other way. If you can look up, the future lays before you. Now what kind of future do you want to create?
