Perfect

What if it does not work?

What exactly do you want work? Do you mean that you want it to work at your every first attempt? Do you in other words mean that you want your life to be perfect?

Everybody wants their life to be perfect. But what exactly is perfect? Your definition of perfect can be very different from mine. We are all individuals and we have our own perception of everything in this world. Each incident has two sides of the story, just like each individual having two faces.

You did not read wrongly, each individual has two faces. Perhaps you do not want to admit it but it is a fact. One is the highly motivated positive face, and the other is the downside normal skeptical face. Westerners call it the angel and the devil. Taoist call it yin and yang. Whatever names we choose to call it, each of us do have two faces.

Success only presents itself to those who are in balance.

Being motivated is good. You have the energy to take anything to its highest levels. You have the courage to drive yourself uphill. However, being overly motivated can sometimes pose a threat. Because you are so confident in yourself you can become ignorant to the signs that the universe is trying to communicate to you. You are too busy scrambling your way through the jungle, you ignored all the important pleasures of life. You forgot to just stop once in a while to observe your surroundings. You forgot to stop once in a while to simply breathe and belong. You will reach the top faster than everyone else but there is a sense of emptiness within you that is hard to recover.

You can be wealthy of money but poor in relationship.
You can be healthy of relationship but weak in self-love.
You need to be present. You need to be here now.

Being skeptical is good. You can find the problem before everyone else. But being overly skeptical is a problem altogether. It is because you scrutinize everything that comes your way, you tend to lose opportunities. Way too many chances are just gone because of your doubt. Those questions that you keep asking yourself. What if you fail? What if people laugh at me? What if people hate me? What if it does not work? What if … what if … These endless “what if’s” are not going to get you anywhere. After a decade or two, you should already realize that you need to change but somehow, you are still where you were. By the time you are ready to finally make the first move, it could already be too late for some.

“What if” is the first two words of a question we can ask ourselves differently:
What if I can make the difference?
What if I regret for not taking action?
A question can be good or bad depending on how we choose to phrase it.
A question can make a huge variance to which path we choose to take.
When you ask a question, ask wisely.

What makes a successful person?

Anyone can be a successful person. We only need to learn to balance ourselves in all situations. This is a skill that people learn over time. Even if the person is born with the life of an emperor, he has to decide to take the path moving towards becoming a good emperor. Otherwise, his empire will be very short-lived. Throughout his entire journey to becoming an emperor, he has to face many challenges. While he is an emperor, he has to try to turn enemies into allies. Before he steps down from this throne, he has to train his successor to become the person fit to rule the entire civilization. All the choices he make, he has to balance between good and bad, educated and spontaneous, love and war.

There is not a single decision by anyone in the world that is good for everyone. It is always positive for some and negative for others. It only matters that the decision made is for the good of the majority and less painful for the rest.

Life is not perfect. Accept this for a fact and you will feel better.

 

Nobody’s perfect. We’re all just one step up from the beasts and one step down from the angels.

Jeannette Walls, American author and journalist, 1960-present

Create

Why now? Perhaps the question one should be asking is why not now, instead of why now.

Now is a good time. Considering the situation around the world right now, it is a good time to start anything that we have been dreaming of doing. This is a calling. A calling for something to change.

All along, we are just living the life we thought was the life that is. Day in day out doing the same routine over and over. Life is just as is because it is just as is. There seems to be no way out of the situation at all. Life seems to be fixed, whatever life we are living.

A farmer seems to be just living the life of a farmer. Wake up, head out to the farm, sow seeds, water the crops or harvest the crops. Send the reaps of hard work to dealers and get some money in return. During the lockdown, people are just not allowed to move around too much. Though categorized under essential services, because of the lockdown, a large number of harvested crops are left to rot. Farmers have no choice but to take another route. They go online. Now, consumers can directly purchase from them at a cheaper price, while they are making higher profits without the need to go through middle men. It is a win-win situation.

As for the middle man. Life was great prior to the lockdown. They source for good stuff, then they resell to the end user at a marked up price. There is no need to produce anything to sell, they only need to know where to find something to sell and where to market it to the right audience. However, during the lockdown, many things cannot be done. Perhaps it seems like efforts lost in translation. If they do not change the way they run their business, there will be no business to run after this ordeal. When people can no longer move around like before, it is a good time to bring the business online.

When everyone goes online, this will mean the initial online businesses will be affected because the pie has been cut into way too many pieces. Perhaps this is a great time to think out of the box. What else can you do differently from all the other businesses out there? How can you differentiate yourself from the norm? How to find your perfect niche within an ocean full of sharks.

Some may say that it will be easy for things that people will definitely need to buy to do business. How about those things that are considered redundant?

Nothing ever is redundant. It is the perception of people that makes things useful or not. There are more than 7 billion people in the world. There bound to be people finding something that you are offering. You just need to know where to market and how to market. Knowing the where and how is of utmost importance for any business, regardless of whether or not you are in an industry that many say is dead now.

Take tourism for example. Many companies have ended their business because it is impossible for sustenance when nobody is allowed to travel around. Perhaps it really is the right time to think of something else. Perhaps tourism is not the right business for you. Perhaps this is a good opportunity to change your business model. Every business should be able to sustain even if they are running for at least 6 whole months without any income. If the business is running on a day to day basis, then there must be a weak point in the business model itself. If you are still holding on to it, you will just end up stressing yourself about it right till the end.

It does not matter what life throws at us. It only matters how we look at life. When you know that something is not working well, stiffen your heart, cut loss, and let go. There is no reason to keep hanging on to something that you know will end up nowhere.

The old you will have to first die to create the better you. You do not die literally, you just let go of everything that are pulling you down, and you start anew.

 

To create is to live twice.

Albert Camus, French-Algerian philosopher, 1913-1960

Spontaneous

The state of frustration is always spontaneous. How about the other states of mind?

Are you always spontaneous in whatever you do? Whether or not a person is spontaneous is dependent on individual and situation.

I am a perfectionist. Perfection do not gel with spontaneity. Being in that state, somehow life is slower and seem to be more convenient because there is no need for quick decisions at any one point of time. How does it affect the life of a person in this fast moving era when everyone is working at lightning speed? Do I need to follow what others do? Do I need to follow how others handle the situation?

Whether or not you want to go with the flow or stay where you are is entirely up to you. Nobody can force you to become another person or like the other person. It is all within your own reach. It is all within your own control. However, it does not take much effort to learn from others.

As human beings, we are given the gift of mind. Our mind is so powerful we are able to make dreams come true. Our mind is the one most important asset that we have throughout our life on this planet earth. Are you using your asset to the fullest? Or are you just keeping this asset in cold storage until the time is right to expose your potential?

Our mind works like a computer. It can store as much information as you want it to. It can analyze information if you let it to. It can also suggest actions for you. It is all up to you to decide whether or not you follow your thoughts or you let yourself continue sitting and waiting for the right timing. Have you ever asked yourself when the right time is? Or have you ever asked yourself what the right time is?

Everyone perceive things differently. That is the reason why everyone react to situations in their very own unique way. Sometimes people agree with each other that this solution is the best. However, the action towards that solution is more often different. It is the effect from being actioned by a different person or being done at a different time. This is normal. We cannot expect everything to be the same all the time because different people react differently to situations at a certain point of time in their life.

We have to understand one very important point, nothing is perfect.

Perhaps you understand it but you are still that same perfectionist. What can you do about it? How do you go around it?

The first step. You only need to take that first step. Get out there and just do it. Train yourself to understand that you can always perfect it throughout the journey, not at the start. You do not have to make it perfect before you start your journey.

There is the little voice in you telling you that you are not ready. And then you have even more voices asking you “what if …” Great!!!
Turn that around to ask yourself “What if I do not start today?” instead of “What if I fail tomorrow?”
Turn that around to ask yourself “What if I regret for not starting?” instead of “What if nobody like me?”
Turn that around to ask yourself “What if I succeed tomorrow?” instead of “What if people laugh at me?”

It is all in the mind. You only have one thing to do. Change your own perception. Ask your own questions. Be your own self. Being in this state of being is the best form one can ask. What else are you looking for?
Do what you dream. Dream what you do.
You are already as perfect as you can be.
You only need to be confident about yourself.
You only need to be confident to make mistakes.
You only need to be confident that you are going to bounce back higher.
You are the greatest.
You are unique.
Be yourself.
That is the one most important thing that you need to do now.

Stop your procrastination. Start being spontaneous.

 

Being spontaneous is being able to respond with confidence; calmly trusting that, whatever the outcome, you will have a positive if challenging experience that will lead to greater self-awareness and success.

Sylvia Clare, writer and mindfulness practitioner