quotes
"Opportunities don't happen. You create them," and other quotes to propel you forward.
What's In It For Me?
Is it a good thing or a bad thing to be selfish in life? Selfishness is certainly a characteristic that most of us fail to master, that's for sure. In answering that question though, we absolutely need to be selfish in regards to many aspects of our life, but we also need to understand that part of our purpose in life is to help, uplift, and support others, therefore we also need to be selfless. So that begs another question, how do we get the balance right? Let's firstly look in what areas of life we have every right to be selfish in. The easiest way to distinguish where it's acceptable to be selfish is to firstly be clear on what our main priorities are in life, which should always be our happiness, our health, our goals, and our family. Family is a given, because we naturally want the best for them, and we will always do for them what we believe is in their best interest. We are always wanting to ensure that we are providing them with food, shelter, love, care, support, and the best life they can possibly have. As strange as it may sound though, family shouldn't be our number one priority in life though, nor even number two or three. They are indeed a very high priority, but there are another three priorities that we should actually place above them, and it's in these three aspects of life where we need to be more selfish. I'll explain why. Firstly, those three priorities are our happiness, our health, and our goals. Now, of course we would love to ensure our family is happy, but at the end of the day, we are all granted just the one life to live, and I think we all know just exactly how much effort and hard work it takes just to make ourselves happy, let alone other people. The truth is, everyone is personally responsible for their own happiness, but too many people make the mistake of placing their own happiness in the hands of others. They hope that by entering into a relationship with someone, or marrying someone, that their partner will be responsible for bringing them happiness in life, but much to what many people believe, that's not the true role of a partner. A partner is there to love, to care, to support, to encourage, to be loyal, and to be faithful to us, not to make us happy. Happiness comes from within ourselves and our mindset. When it comes to a relationship, effective and honest communication, compromise, and commitment will ultimately help contribute to our happiness, but it won't make it. Happiness is our own responsibility! So many relationships break down because too many people place their happiness in the hands of their partner, and when they don't get that happiness, they want out. That's not love! In fact, that is selfishness in a bad light, blended with a lack of commitment to enhancing the relationship. Create your happiness, and go after your goals, then if your partner is true to you, they will support you in your decisions, but it's never their job to make you happy. Hopefully you both have a vision in which you both want to work towards, and that's when love works at its finest. If you are placing your faith in a partner to bring happiness in your life, be prepared for disappointment and heartbreak, because most people will look after themselves first and foremost, and they likely won't sacrifice their own happiness just so you can have yours!
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
Just One Believer
In nearly four years of journeying towards my goals now, I have seriously lost count of both, the number of people that have tried to bully and harass me into following their advice instead of my own heart, and the number of times they have done so. It's sad that these very people have been my very own family, friends, and loved ones, people who I always believed would be there to support me, yet many of whom I have since distanced myself from now, as a result of their lack of support and encouragement toward me. It's unfortunate that the majority of people worldwide have the misconception that failure, especially continual failure, is a sure sign that one should give up on their conquest. Bar a miniscule percentage of people, anyone who has ever achieved success will tell you how many times over they failed, they were rejected, and/or they faced adversities, before they finally reached their goal. Failure is a natural part of the journey to success, stepping stones along the pathway basically, as too is patience. Life transforming goals normally take years to achieve, that's just the way life goes. Life seems to delight in testing and challenging us, but it does so to help us learn, grow, develop, and mature. We all know that failure, rejection, and adversity is never enjoyable or pleasant to encounter, deal with, or overcome. There's a natural feeling of disappointment, sadness, and incapability. It's easy to beat ourselves up about it, and feel completely discouraged, even to the point we feel like giving up, but we will never achieve anything great, the moment we adopt a defeatist attitude. That's where we need to stand firm in our self-belief, because in order to achieve, you first must believe. Once that belief is lost, so becomes the goal! The problem that we have is that most other people don't truly give a stuff about our goals, because they are too focused on creating happiness and satisfaction in their own life. Either that, or they just want us to do what is convenient to them, or what suits their agenda. Now it's fair enough that we are each personally responsible for creating our destiny, but wouldn't it be nice to have some sort of support, encouragement, and upliftment along the journey towards achieving what we desire, just to keep us in the right headspace?
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
Family Is Not Always Blood Relative
I am a massive advocate for spending quality time with one's family, and relishing in every moment with them, as family is undoubtedly one of the most precious blessings to have in life. One thing I have really learned in life though, over the past 12 months, is that family is not always blood relative. We can look in the dictionary to see that family is defined as being "all the descendants of a common ancestor", but in reality, to most people worldwide, family isn't defined by definition, it is defined by love. Although I wasn't personally raised as an adopted child, I'm sure many individuals who were indeed adopted, can agree with the fact that the parents who raised them, are considered to be true family, even though they are not blood related. Why? Because it was these certain people who took on board those adopted individuals born into a broken family, or who were given up, or who were abandoned, or whose birth mother was unfortunately incapable of providing a quality life desired for their child, and they accepted the responsibility to love, care, support, raise, educate, and nurture these children into their adult years. Irrespective of color, race, or religion, it took the act of love to bring in an unknown child into their household, raising them as their own, and accepting the responsibility of caring for them, to help them grow, develop, thrive, and succeed in life. That's love as it finest! When we think about family not always being blood relative, we naturally think of adoption as that classic example, but it extends further than this. As I mentioned above, I wasn't raised by adopted parents, but I have begun to see that being blood related doesn't guarantee you the love, support, care, and encouragement that we come to expect from our family. Don't get me wrong, I couldn't have asked for better parents, as they were fantastic in the way they raised me, and I will forever be grateful for everything they ever did for me, and provided me with. I miss them both dearly, and no words can express how much I wish they were both still alive. What I am talking about includes extended family, or anyone else to whom which we are blood related.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
Monday Quote Of The Day (Be Fearful Of Mediocrity)
Every single day presents an opportunity for us to start working on designing the life we desire for ourselves, an opportunity for us to start working towards our goals, an opportunity to start working towards creating success for ourselves, an opportunity for us to begin engaging in work we are truly passionate about, an opportunity to begin creating wealth, and an opportunity to start creating a life enriched with happiness. What wonderful rewards and blessings these are to obtain, and yet for most of us, we turn these amazing opportunities down. Happiness, success, lifestyle, work satisfaction, prosperity, and goals accomplishment; six things that we so desperately would love to delight in, yet the majority of us are starved of. What doesn't make sense is that we would love to relish in these rewards, but we actually choose not to. That is correct, WE make the choice not to accept these rewards on offer to us. As much as so many of us love to pass the blame on other people, circumstances, and external reasons, for not being able to receive these rewards into our life, there genuinely is nothing that prevents us from obtaining them, apart from one factor.....ourselves. How does this even make sense, that we could desire these wonderful blessings and rewards so desperately, and yet we choose not to strive for them? We know that the choices and decisions we make in life are determined by the mind. Our thoughts, beliefs, feelings, opinions, and emotions are all generated within our mind, and they are always influenced by what we have heard, what we have seen, what we have experienced, or perhaps what we assume. It's right here where the problem lies for so many of us, as to why we turn away from the amazing opportunities to create such a wonderful and rewarding life for ourselves, that are right in front of us every single day!
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
3 Lessons from Traveling That Lead to Everyday Happiness
After college I went to explore Europe for four months with one of my best friends. We took it back to fourteen different countries and learned things about the world and ourselves that we did not expect. We used to joke that we learned more about life ourselves by traveling abroad for four months than we did at school for four years in college.
By Samyog kandel5 years ago in Motivation
Thursday Quote Of The Day (Be Of Service)
Many people often get confused, when one minute I am encouraging everyone to prioritize helping, supporting, uplifting, encouraging, and giving generously, to others, yet in the next sentence I am stating that people should never go about pleasing others in life. Sounds a little contradictory, right? Surely when we go about helping others, or giving generously to others, we are in fact pleasing them, yeah? Well, there is actually a massive difference between pleasing others and helping others. Let's firstly determine what pleasing others looks like. Many people don't even have the awareness they are actually living their life pleasing others. The truth is, when we are not going about pleasing others, we would be instead going about pleasing ourselves. When pleasing ourselves, our decisions and our actions are based around what is best for us in life, what would be beneficial, advantageous, and perhaps profitable, to us. Our beliefs and opinions would be what we truly believe in our own heart, rather than from what others have told us, or what we have read. We would basically be living our life to our own design, and not to how others advise us to live, or not be influenced or manipulated into living life in any way but how we desire. We would not be following society, or the crowd. It may sound selfish, but it's vital that we are living our life to our own design, because we only get one shot at life, and we want to be living every single one of the days in happiness, success, and satisfaction. When we are happy, satisfied, and successful, we are more likely to become the best version of ourselves that we can be. When we are pleasing others though, that's when we start following what most other people are doing in life, such as finding a job just for income's sake, rather than finding work that we are truly passionate about, or we believe what the majority of other people believe, or we behave in a manner how most other people behave. We do this in order to fit in with society, to avoid being criticized, and labelled as being different and abnormal. We do this in order to avoid confrontation and being made to look foolish. We want to be admired, liked, respected, and accepted, therefore we follow what most others do, and believe what most others believe. The result in doing so though is that we deny ourselves the opportunity to follow our goals, to live life how we desire, and to live life in happiness.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
Monday Quote Of The Day (The Risk In Not Trying)
We all want assurance and guarantees in life, especially when it comes to our own safety, finances, family, and lifestyle. There's just one problem though, there aren't any real guarantees and assurances in life. Even when we hear about these "money back guarantees" on various products we purchase, or services we accept, there is nothing to suggest that the retailer or seller won't find a loophole in their terms and conditions to decline the guarantee, or they could perhaps go into liquidation, out of the blue. When we head off to work in the morning, we don't even think, for one minute, that we are placing our life at risk, the moment we step out the door. We may be involved in a tragic car accident, we may become a victim of a terrorist attack, we may suffer a heart attack, or we may be the unfortunate one whose life is lost due to an unexpected event. This isn't aimed at filling you with immense fear, to the point you are the frightened to even step out of your house, but the message is that none of us know what the day ahead will deliver. We simply assume that nothing will happen, we feel pretty comfortable that nothing will happen, and we feel pretty positive that nothing will happen, but do we actually have complete assurance and guarantee that nothing will? Of course we don't. No matter what we do in life, we are always at the mercy of something unforeseen and tragic happening to us, even if the potential is extremely unlikely. We don't think of something like this happening to us on any given day because, not only is it highly unlikely, but we haven't experienced or witnessed anything in the past. With this in mind, we step out of house, head off to work, and go about our day as always, without giving as much as a thought to the potential risk we are placing our life in. Why can't we have this same mindset and attitude when it comes to taking risks to enhance our life, and progress towards our goals though?
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
9 Rare and Powerful Quotes About the Importance of Self Awareness
“Look outside and you will see yourself. Look inside and you will find yourself.” — Drew Gerald This simple quote explains the importance of self-introspection. Finding yourself is the basis for any improvement. You need to know where you are. Who you are. What you are. How you are. And most importantly, Why you are.
By Mathias Barra5 years ago in Motivation
