Tag: motivation

What It Means to Be A Sheep In The Midst of Wolves

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The corporate world is toxic, especially for people who aren’t built for it.

The pressure on employees around the word has been rapidly increasing and it gets tremendously insane especially for those juggling family time and work time:

-deadlines to meet, 

-expectations to exceed 

-goals to achieve

-projects to deliver  

Surely, the corporate environment will bring out either the best or the worst in people, including me and you.

All of us are vulnerable to other people’s judgment, opinion, and criticism. Handling and overcoming these things is never easy but the first step is knowing that we can.

There are colleagues who see us as enemies, a competition, or a threat to the status quo, so much so that they are driven by a strong compulsion to push us down.

Power is relative. One can wear it to impose terror, humiliate someone, maliciously discredit peers, or in subtle ways, demotivate a person regarded as an “obstacle” or “liability”. 

On one hand, the so-called “victims” posses an inner power too. 

The power to remain kind and compassionate,

The power to focus on “what now” instead of “why me?”,

The power to go the extra mile and say, “How can I help?” instead of “What’s in it for me?”.  

This is what taking the higher road means, much like “being a sheep in the midst of wolves”. Instead of fighting back, you take it in, not because you’re weak, but because you chose to be the bigger person.

A friend of mine had a very mean boss for years and I asked her how she’s handling such situation, and she said,“Well, it’s never easy, but, I sort of kill him with kindness everyday”.  

Behind every “impossible”, “difficult” man or woman, is just a little kid desperately wanting to be loved, to be recognized, or at the very least, to be seen.

It doesn’t justify all the rudeness we experience every day but it does give us a glimpse of what happens in the person’s inner world. 

People are inherently good. You have to believe that. How and why some turn into “monsters” or “dementors” perhaps is caused by a lot of negativity in the world. However, I believe a bigger part is in how they chose to respond to it.

We have so much power in the things we can control. Oftentimes we tend to forget that we too can initiate and influence, can re-learn love and tenderness, and can choose to be a victor or a conqueror.

Being a sheep in the midst of wolves is not easy, it’s not for the faint-hearted, or for anybody who forgot that he’s capable of something good. It takes courage, perseverance, humility and strength.  

In life, you can do it either the easy or the hard way.  If you can’t think or decide about what seeds you want to plant today, just think of what you want to harvest tomorrow.  When you grow old, I bet you want to feel proud of the younger you. Proud of how good a human being you’ve been, how positive an energy you were, how kind and gracious you showed up to the people you’ve met.

You have so much capacity for goodness. Use it.

Forward

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“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward”.  

– Martin Luther King

Inch by inch we need to pull ourselves forward. 

Perfection is never the aim, it’s progress.

You say, your progress is nothing compared to that of others.

That’s the thing. You can’t and should never compare. 

Focus on your pace, your own run. 

If you look at your life, you’ll see you’re not the same man or woman as you were twenty years ago.

We’re capable of changing, growing and evolving.

Don’t ever underestimate that.

If you stumble, there may be nobody there to pick you up.

But there will always be YOU.

So dust yourself off, and get back up.

Help that’s available will come. Be grateful if it does.

But always, and I say always, count on you!

YOU are the one who can HELP yourself the MOST.

Change and Humanity

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Change  

We cringe about this word most of the time. But the thing is, the more we resist it, the more life becomes difficult. So embracing change seems to be a logical thing to do if we want to survive.

As a kid, I loved my sunny afternoons. I still recall sitting on a wooden bench under a tree, at 2 p.m. on a Saturday just listening to the sound of the birds with the wind rustling through my hair.

Back then, I wondered what’s out there in the universe. At that time, I only knew of “my world” that little space in a decent-size house my father had worked so hard to build. I have always been fascinated by the skies, the stars, how people live in some parts of the planet. I know for sure they don’t look like me or speak like me. I felt an ache to reach out and communicate.

Fast forward 30 years, I have met a lot of people from different nationalities and worked with them, not to mention people from my own country who spoke a language different from my own. I’m halfway through life and realize that regardless of speech, color, race, profession or, status, people go through the same things – – love, loss, triumph, defeat, and yes, change.

Yet change scares us.

More than loss or failure, I think what we fear more is what we’ll find or who will we find in the aftermath of change. The version of us who’s more capable, free, and courageous. A person who can rebuild, recreate, rediscover, and navigate his or her way through this journey we call LIFE.

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We might have heard people say, “But I’ve built my life around this. I can’t let it crumble down”.

If it’s no longer serving you or the people you’ve built it for or with, change is imminent.

Humanity

Past our conceived limitations is a world of possibilities. It is a world where we find people like you and me who do their best every single day. When we realize that, we will find comfort in knowing that we all share this journey regardless of where we are at this moment in time.

We can choose to either figure things out on our own or ask for help from those who have gone before us. That is the beauty of being human. We can be there for each other, and be a beacon of light. Believe that there is more than enough goodness in the world.

Thoughts

If you are keen to find out how other people made it through or let them know how you did, communicate. That always bridges the gap between the two worlds.

I have not been to every country around the globe and have not met a person in every race, but I have been and met enough to tell you that you are not alone.

There’s one race we all share, the human race. There’s one language we all need to learn for us to communicate, and we call it love.

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So take heart. Be hopeful and be courageous because you and I, we can do this!

Drifting

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I don’t want to wander aimlessly through life, not knowing where I wanna go, not doing what I need to do. I don’t want to waste a lot of years trying to get by an ordinary existence.

This, is my ideal stance. Reality however was a bit different.

I enjoyed myself too much in the past. Most days were spent reacting to things instead of taking charge. This went on and on through my late twenties. I thought I would grow old just like that- a byproduct of luck. Then circumstances changed – –

loved ones lost,

career took place,

people moved on and chased their own big dreams,

while I got stuck in my own little world trying to hold it together.

I loved the idea of things being constant, unchanging and predictable. I resisted everything that atttempted to disturb my familiar state. I guess we all did at one point in time. We built our own walls and thought it will never crumble only to realize we’re actually disrupting our own growth.

When you stay too long in what’s comfortable, you start to feel just like that, comfortable-

too afraid to see the outside world,

too afraid to try anything new,

too afraid to start again,

to afraid to rebuild something from scratch.

Is this really all? Aren’t we made for something more?

Divine discontent is experienced by most of us. It’s that subtle sense of unrest that’s aching for something true and real to a person and his very existence. When it hits you, don’t ignore. Know what it wants to communicate and act on it. Ultimately, it will connect you to a divine purpose. And that purpose can only be served by no one else, but you!

Today, don’t be afraid to say yes!

Don’t be afraid to fail.

Don’t be afraid to open yourself to the countless possibilities around you.

Don’t be afraid to tread on unfamiliar waters.

Don’t be afraid to discover what you’re really made of!

Live life and fulfill your dreams with the intensity of a visionary,

the passion of an artist,

the joyfulness of a kid,

the gentleness of a child,

and the love of your Maker.

You have been set apart.

Fulfill your destiny.

Make yourself proud.

Make your creator proud!

Rescue Me…

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Do you need a rescue? I’m sure we all do. Some may need it once in a while, some very often.

Not all rescues are healthy. Doing it every time to the same people creates a dependency. It cripples the growth of the person being rescued. It can be exhausting to the one rescuing.  A wise man once said, ”When you’re helping, keep in mind that you’re teaching them how to fish, not training them to be beggars.

To The One Being Rescued

You see, everyone has a load to carry and if everyone helps himself, we  become less of a burden to somebody else.  Of course, we have our down moments, bouts of loneliness, the taste of failures, and it’s a relief to have a shoulder to lean on, a hand to hold, a reassuring look from somebody we love to say, “Don’t worry, I got your back”.  

Our support system can only do so much for us. The answers that we are looking for and the ability to make it happen lies with us.

It all starts with YOU.

Our joy, peace, freedom, success, however that translates to us, is not up to anyone. We are on the driving seat here, playing  the main role in the story of our life. The challenge is, we like watching other people run their life including our own.  Life slips through our hands simply because we choose to let it go. 

If things are within our control, taking action is the key, nothing else.

On to the Rescuer

You don’t always have to be the solution to everyone’s problems.  If you’re stretching yourself too thin, you’re not giving 100% to everything that comes up, rather a percentage of you to everything that comes up.

Prioritize. Even the richest, wisest people in the world cannot save the world. It’s not up to one mortal man. 

“Our job is not to fix people, but to love them, as best we could.”

Bo Sanchez

Loving can sometimes be tough.  It’s allowing the person you care about, make their own mistakes because some things are just meant to be learned the hard way. Mistakes help us do that.  We fail, we learn, we know better, we do better.

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

St Paul.

I believe we’re not here to be each other’s burden or even so, to be somebody’s crutch, at least not permanently.  Thinking otherwise will only disempower us and discourage us.

When you see an old man collecting garbage for a fee just to feed his disabled wife, your heart breaks and you want to help.  Seeing a fit, healthy 40-year-old man sitting all day watching television and getting drunk while waiting for his son to feed him, I think there’s something wrong about that. I pity the son.

Last Words

Every situation is different and it’s not my place to judge. 

I just believe that we can do better by helping ourselves.

I believe we can be each other’s partner, encourager, cheerleader.

I believe we can empower and inspire one another.

You don’t have to be a teacher, an author, or an actor to do that.

You can be someone who lives his life, not merely surviving, but thriving in it.

Supercharged or Regular?

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Some days I get so pumped up like I’m in my best element and can achieve almost anything. So I do and do and do. You know, strike while the iron is hot.

Other days I slump and feel uninspired. I want to be lazy and just not care too much about what’s going on in the world.

Maybe it’s just me, but I wonder, do I really need to pursue things and work nonstop, or just do things I love, without the feeling of being obligated or even having to meet any deadline?

We fill our days with plenty of to-do lists that life becomes a project instead of an experience. 

Society dictates who we should be. It defines what success looks like and we succumb to this definition. All along we know, that at the end of it all, what would matter is ours and our loved ones opinion of us, not the whole world. The world can go by without remembering how much we’ve made for ourselves, or how famous we’ve become but perhaps how we’ve made an impact to the lives of the people around us.

And yet, how do we accomplish such a thing?

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”

Viktor Frankl

A freely chosen task. That’s what struck me the most.

Maybe it’s not the same for everyone. It doesn’t have to be. It can even change at any point in time.  So I guess the question is, “What is it for you?”. “What is your freely chosen task?”. Right now I’m starting to think.

I don’t need to get too hung up with outputs and outcomes. This is my life, my time, and I can freely choose what to do with it.

To Squander or To Make It Count.

More than time being our responsibility, it’s first and foremost an accountability.  It’s a limited resource that reduces in number every second of the day until it finally runs out.  Now what we do with it is indeed our call. It doesn’t have to feel like an obligation, rather, something cherished simply because we’re not gonna get any more of it.

“Our greatest fear should not be of failure… but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”

Francis Chan

In the end, when somebody asks you, “How was your life?”. It’s either, “Well you know, It happened” or “Yeah, I lived it and t’was hell of a ride!”.

Supercharged or regular? I cannot care about your choice any more than I should care about mine. But tell you what. When those white hairs start to stick out , wrinkles and all, come by and see me. Let’s talk about it with a couple of beers. And maybe bring along some pizza! 

How To Breeze Through Your Day Weightlessly

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Admit it.  If you’re living in the city or working in a fast-paced environment, it’s normal to end the day feeling exhausted.  Yet when you reach home, there are household chores to finish, priorities that need to be invested in like relationships, personal growth, and side hustles. You need to have ounces of energy left to do these things before you hit the sack.

Truth is, in this day and age, when computers and electronic advances were meant to make things easier and faster, people are feeling more overwhelmed.  We get too much information and too many distractions so we get comfortable with getting things done in an instant-  instant messages, instant food, instant report, etc.  While these are all good, we often times overlook the essential, the basics, the natural, the simple and the quiet.

 

I am living in this environment too and through time I have learned the value of slowing down. And by that I mean slowing down:

*the pace–  focusing on what’s important

*the heartbeat– letting go of temper outbursts

*the talk– taking more time to listen and get into real, meaningful conversations

*the automatic defenses– to proact and not react

In the process, I have learned and practiced four maneuvers which allowed me to breeze through the day with ease and with a subdued feeling of being weightless. You can try them and see how it’ll give you more freedom- in mind, body, and soul.

1) Stop Complaining

Being a bystander won’t really accomplish you anything. You are not contributing and often disposed to either being critical or indifferent.  Why not become part of a solution or be a champion of change? What if instead of bashing or blaming, you choose to help or fix things?  We can all be more useful to the world by being more helpful and being more caring.

2) Focus and Let Go

You need to focus on things that you can actually do something about, and let go of those that you cannot control. At every point in our lives, we need not know or figure out all the answers before we act or do something. Else, you’d be stuck and end up seeing opportunities pass you by. Letting go also means you need to take calculated risks. Only the person who risks in life is truly free. (taken from a famous poem).

3) Forgive

It’s okay to fail if you do it “leaning” forward.  Take one step at a time. For each step, even if you fall to the ground, take the lesson with you. Important things are, you grow and you keep growing.  Don’t be too hard on yourself, so you don’t get too hard on other people too. When you are more accepting and forgiving of yourself, you become more accepting and forgiving towards others.

4) Restart

Each day is a new day. Don’t compete with anyone. Just be better than how you were yesterday.  The thing of the past, is actually what it is. Today is another chance, and privilege to write another page in the story of your life.  It’s a blank canvas. You can do anything. But fulfill something that you can really be proud of at the end of the day.

Life is short. We already know this but we keep living our lives as if our days are not numbered. So choose wisely and decide now how you want this journey to unfold. At the end of this race, you want to look back and feel glad about what you have accomplished.  Make sure that what you do today, will someday make you feel proud.

“Dear future self, wherever and whenever, I want you to be pleased and really delighted when you think of me”.

Question:

Are you practicing a habit that helps you go through life with ease and more peace? What are those occasions that these habits helped you? I’d love to hear your story. Comment here.

Motivation Check?

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What keeps you going every single day? You know, that thing that fires you up, tickles your toes, and pokes your heels to leap, or even run with a penguin-like pair of happy feet?  That one good thing that gives you a merry heart?

Dreams. They give me wings.  They make my heart flutter, and wildly take my imagination to a place, full of vivid colors and exciting possibilities.  It scares me sometimes, the great unknown. But it pays to set your sights on to what could possibly be good, rather than what could go wrong.

If you wake up to mornings dragging yourself to the shower with arc-shaped lips and folded eyebrows like you’re about to drop onto the floor and cry – – friend, you’re in danger zone and you’ve got to pull yourself out of it!

“Why me?”, you asked.  Well, of course. Because you are your own best friend. Let me break it to you. The people around you, they can only do so much. You have to accept that.  If you don’t see yourself worthy of a meaningful existence, a higher calling, or up for a bigger purpose, then right there, you’ve already lost the battle. Why? Because the last person who could ever have that faith in you has just given up. And that’s you. You have lost your faith, in you.

People will find it hard to fight for someone who won’t even fight for themselves. Even if they do, they can only get very far. If you’re that someone, please don’t neglect your own self. You’re too precious for that. The sooner you’ll realize this truth the sooner you’ll get out of the hollow you’re in.

We often forget that the life we have is not some sort of entitlement.  Rather, it’s a gift, an opportunity. No wonder we take it for granted many times. We complain a lot, we get frustrated and sad for too long that it shortens our breath and aches our bodies.  Oftentimes, we get too focused on our own hurts and forget about the rest of the world who’s hurting too.  We don’t look far and wide enough.  Our “own world” is too small just like a hole that we dig into. So what happens? We let our brilliance slip from memory.  We lose the spark.  We become immobile, useless according to our own terms.

Friend, can you come back to the land of the living?  We need you here. The years you’ve lived with all the battles you’ve fought hard and may have lost- is not everything. That is not all there is to it. You became more because of those struggles. And there is more to life, more good things yet to come. And you’ve got to focus on these.  You and I already know that we have a limited time. So let’s fill what we have with memories we can be proud of, and leave a legacy that we have lived our lives to the full and lived it well- well enough to touch others.

When you add life to life, it just gets better. When you add life to where there’s a lack of it, then you’re standing on higher ground.  With your scars and all, you can still help people.  If you’re that someone who needs help, receive it.  There may be times when you’d feel the need to ask for it, go ahead because that’s okay.  But remember, while you ask others for help, help yourself too.  Start with you.