#10 continue to grow & evolve
I don’t need to give a reason why you should keep growing and evolve. They say if you don’t keep up, you might get left behind by everyone because the world is constantly evolving, ever-changing, never satisfied with the status quo. If you stay somewhere for too long, you might rot away just like that. If you don’t want to improve yourself, you may never survive this world. You might die if you are not as ruthless or heartless or if you don’t become what they are. It’s true to some point but do not conform to the world, I say!
Do not change because the world demands you to. Change for yourself.
It feels so much real and so much authentic when you do something for the right reason. You change because for some reason, someone or something says you’re not good enough, or that you just don’t fit in. So they force-feed you with all these so-called ‘rules’ that one has to follow to fit into the society. You got to be skinny to be beautiful, flawless skin to be loved, a certain height and weight to be adored. You look at those magazines and billboards of men and women flaunting themselves, selling their products when they are unconsciously selling the idea that skinny are the only way to go. Because of this misconceived messages banging in your mind, you change. You want to become skinny. You want to be better-looking. You want to be this or that and I applaud your enthusiasm but you are doing it for the wrong reason. Don’t get me wrong, change is good but change for the wrong reason is not real change. It’s more like putting on layers and layers of clothes and thinking you’re still naked. Clothes don’t stay on forever. At one point of time, you’re going to take it off and what happens then? You become who you were from the start!
Change yourself but do it for you. You lose weight because you want to be healthy and gain confidence in yourself. Not because the people say you’re fat or you’re disgusting. That could be your drive and your motivation but it must never take its place as your reason for losing weight. Note that there is a difference. Only then, change will be real to you. It’s not a cover-up but a complete makeover. Analyse and finalize the reason on why you wish to do anything.
We do a lot of things in our lives, but only a few are right. It is essential to change constantly but the reason must be right before you move forward.
#9 be congruent, be authentic, be your true self
One of the most common advice people give is that you just have to be yourself in this world. I’m sure you heard that from someone or somewhere before but do you know why it’s better to be yourself than to be someone you’re not? Do you know why it feels better to be in your skin than try to settle into other’s people’s thinking of what you should be?
As we all think we know it, this world is turning into, or has already turned into a dog-eat-dog world where it is survival to the fittest. The one who is willing to do just about anything to climb the top of the food chain wins everything. Like Hunger Games or Battle Royale, a group of people are forced to fight for their survival whether they like it or not. You see friends turning against one another, back-stabs (literally) and white(?) lies become essential to staying alive. That’s what the real world is, whether you like it or not. Or at least that’s what the majority of the world’s population think it is. We tune into their frequency and get stuck in that channel for so long that we get used to the same song playing over and over again.
You look around and you see tired looks and sad souls just wandering around, slaving for money and comfort that we neglect to feed the soul. You see, if you look around, we basically look the same. We got eyes and ears, a mouth and nose. a set of arms and legs to guide us in our everyday lives. But there is that one thing that makes you authentic, one of a kind, an exception to the rest. That is your soul. You must never neglect your soul. It is not just some spirit that resides in your body and keeps you alive and when the time is right, it leaves your body and goes into the afterlife. Your soul is not a passive soul. It is an active soul and we must not cage it for long.
Sadly in the pursuit of happiness, we starve our soul to the point that we become so skinny inside that it just clings onto your bones, making it apparent for all to see how hollow you have become inside. You’re alive but you’re not living.
What makes you different is that you are a person that people can emulate or imitate, but they can never be you. Understand this, they can be LIKE you, but they can never BE you. So listen to your heart because only a few hearts will sing the same tune as you. Feed your soul as not many people has the same hunger as yours. That is what makes you different. That is what makes you stand out from the rest because if you do what the corporate zombies never was brave enough to do, you will naturally be looked upon as someone who is different. there will be consequences but I assure you you look back in your past and you’re going to say that you’re glad that you did it. Be fearless, be courageous. To put it simply, just be yourself.
#8 see the good in everyone & help them
There is this story in the Bible where an adulteress was dragged in front of Jesus for judgement. The wise men and the Pharisees, you can call them the government officials of their time, asked Jesus what was to happen to this lady who have sinned and have broken the law of Moses, which states that being an adulteress is a sin. You would agree too that the sinned must be punished, by logic or by law. Therefore, the adulteress should be stoned to death for her indecency. Screams and shouts for the imminent stoning rose to the sky as Jesus stayed silent throughout.
Jesus, however, did something quite interesting.
He just stood up from where he was sitting and said this, “Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone onto her.” Upon hearing it, one by one, they left. In the end, the adulteress was left unpunished. Instead, she was forgiven for her sins.
Some of you might not be believers but this story still can teach you a lesson, I believe. The adulteress was seen as a sinner, a person who has done bad and must be judged for her actions but the thing is, aren’t we all sinners? We fear judgement from our peers yet we sparingly give it to others. If we could just focus our attention to the good of people instead of the bad, it seemingly becomes easier to help one another. Smoking is bad, but does that make the smoker a bad person? Fighting is bad, but does a fighter defines him a bad person? Think about it.
It is rather difficult at times to truly see the good in people, but everyone is a good person. The fact is, everyone cannot always be good, but YOU can always choose to see the good.
#7 persist
I have yet to see or hear of a story where one attains success without tasting defeat or despair. Throughout the course of this earth’s history and all its inhabitants, everyone has fallen more than once. You don’t need to do a survey or find statistics to back this up. It is the truth, as long as you are human, you will fail.
Too many acknowledge this fact and retreat to their own comfort zones, never looking to see if any chance will pop by once again. You just admit that you are a failure and will do so again in the near future. You are right but many fail to see their immense ability to stand up when they have fallen.
So many greats in history have fallen, but they became who they were because they did what so many are either too lazy or too stubborn to do; persist. Winston Churchill, the man who lead England in times of the second World War, was a man of persistence. He had a terrible stutter and a lisp, a type of speech impediment earlier in his life but he persisted on and overcame his weaknesses and became one of the greatest speakers, his words as hope not only to his country but to the entire world during the time of need.
Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, tasted defeat 9,999 times before succeeding. Seriously, if I was in his place, I would have quit a hundred times after I failed, perhaps. Yet, Thomas Edison persisted and carried on with his experiments, day to night, night to day. After the successful invention of the light bulb, he commented that he actually did not fail. He just found 9,999 ways that didn’t work. What an attitude!
We can fail easily, that’s truth. Whether or not we can accept our failure and move on is another matter. I tell you the truth, there will be turmoil in your life, there will be ambiguity in which path is the right one for you, there will be times where your knees will hurt from all the falling. The way I see it, you can stop fighting and drop everything and just leave. Or you could seek the life that God wants you to have, no matter the cost, no matter the difficulty, no matter the sacrifice. I can assure you that the road is costly but the treasures at the finish line are abundant.
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” - Thomas Edison
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