jwhite
Whenever you hint of improving yourself, reaching your potential, and so on, the common theme I notice is time scarcity.
You can never get more time. With time, you can do anything. Time is the currency of life.
I've been able to meet and talk to some very successful people. What is interesting is that they say similiar things.
One common thing is that they all LOVE what they do. Also, because they LOVE it, they work at it. It doesn't feel like work to them.
Also, they seemed to have invested their time rather than spend their time earlier on.
How do most people live? Throughout high school, they get in the habit of spending their time. They go through the drudgery of the school day and can't wait for when school is over or the weekend. They live for the summer vacation. And there is nothing wrong with this.
The problem is that this habit persists. In college, I've seen too many people try to 'wing it' like they did in high school only to drop out. Then, when you are outside the educational walls, time becomes more important.
Too many people, in college for example, think their lives are 'getting ahead' solely because they are 'inching' their way up academically. All time outside of class gets spent.
In their careers, they seek the latest promotion as they go up the career ladder. Unforuntately, the more successful they are, the more taxes they pay, the more things they buy (thus go further into debt), and the less time they have.
Then they become shocked that they could get laid off at a minute's notice. The more life unfolds for these people, the
less time they have. They have been crushed into conformity, racked by the system. They will be working the rest of their lives.
Now what have I noticed successful people do? Every successful person I've known (meaning, they are millionaires or famous or considered the very best in what they do) invested their time rather than spend it.
They found out what they loved at an early age and kept working at it. It was their passion in life.
Others felt people wanted them to fail, expected them to fail, so they wanted show the world who they really were.
These people invest a lot of their time on their passion earlier on. Later, the seeds they planted in their youth sprout, and a large oak grows. A decade or two later, the tree takes care of itself and they can relax in the shade.
In sports, people are amazed at those few people who seem to transcend all challenges, who are so marvelous that it looks so easy. Well, that all has a price tag attached to it. They spent a lot of time practicing and pushing themselves.
Do you think each of us, as you say, "can unite our dream and day" by working on ourselves? Should we all chase our dreams until its our reality? Are all SUCCESSFUL people successful because they don't waste TIME?
That's not what I mean by uniting dream and day. I have too many posts on that theme coming up so I won't address that here.
Here's something I think conflicts with "investing" in your time wisely. My roommate is majoring in Mechanical Engineering and Philosophy. He never studies for his tests(writes his papers the night before), yet he can pull of straight A's all the time! He can get schlorships with ease.
School itself is a bit artificial. It ought to demonstrate to you the absurdity of it all. Keep your eye on the REAL WORLD, not the academic mirages.
Just look at any biography of a famous successful person in any era of history including the present. Look at their childhood. Look at what they did when they were young adults. See a pattern?
Thomas Jefferson used to love going to parties and dancing with the girls. But he realized that time was flying by. If he wanted to be something, he would have to invest his time (which was in books and thinking). So it was then that he decided to place his priorities not on his academic studies, but the studies of his own passion.
If you loved football, for example, you would be investing your time into playing football. You would push yourself and break every standard people would put on you.
This path isn't for everyone. But it is this path that makes the extroardinary from the ordinary.
Consistency is the most important thing to success... in whatever you do.
When I was 13, I was sick of having my life controlled by everyone else, by parents, by school, etc. Finally having access to a computer (that my Dad would smuggle from work), I decided to create my own world. I could make my characters, could kill them off, I would blow up the world. It was MY WORLD. I told people I would write a novel and they just kinda chuckled or laughed. Within a year, I had a manuscript of about 500 single spaced pages.
Of course, a lot of it read like cr@p. Remember, I was only 13. What did I know of anything? It got a lot better structure and writing wise as it went on.
The point was that I finished it. I forged in myself the self-discipline to make that happen. AFter that, I could do anything. I would write more books, and do many totally unrelated things (which resulted in one time pissing off a major company). [I don't want to give the impression that it was writing. Rather, it was finding out what I wanted to do and
doing it, seeing the project to completion.]
The reason why I'm saying this is that I became friends with an English professor of mine. One night, late in his office, I was there and we were talking about literature and stuff. He told me he was working on a novel. But, alas, for some reason he said, "I just cannot seem to
finish it."
I lost total respect in him after he said that and never visited him again.
How could I respect someone who cannot do at age 50 what a 13 year old could?
Take the gym. Lots of people sign up to go to the gym. Many will drop out after a while. Others will go merely for the 'feelings' they get from the gym ("I
worked out today" they will say with smug confidence, forgetting that their body still looks the same as it did months ago). Then there are those who go to the gyms with their friends and turn it into a social event.
The gym example reveals many things why most people never succeed. Some buy all the books about gym training. Some hire a trainer. Yet, there is no difference.
Unsuccessful depends on others to get them going (such as depending on a trainer, going to the gym with friends thinking they will then go to the gym more (which is true, but they won't work out as well).
Successful depends solely on yourself, that
you have the inner discipline to go the gym three days a week, and when you are in the gym, you
push yourself. If you are consistent in doing this, you WILL see results.
This applies to everything else:
Unsuccessful don juans wait for something to get them started, a GREEN LIGHT from the women or a new technique.
Successful don juans go and do it.
Unsuccessful people go to work solely to not hear, "You're fired!" and work hard only to hear, "You're promoted!"
Successful people go to work because they love what they do and can't wait to go at it again.
It's your life. Are you going to let others define it, of how it *ought* to be including your college professors, your parents, or your friends? But if you want to define your life, you have GOT to be a self starter. Only then does the investing time work, as your time will be invested in yourself (where you'll always have it) unlike when you work for someone else (where the business owner gets the fruits of your time).
I admit, I was an odd kid. In high school, many of my peers worked several jobs just so they could have that new car. I was content with my junk mobile (it got me from point a to point b) because I had something my peers didn't, TIME. And I could use that time for anything. If I just sat there, watching tv, I'd be wasting it (my time would have been better spent working). But by investing my time in my talents, interests, and passions, I become... unique. People find me interesting and follow me around, talking to me, curious how I can switch to topic to topic easily and keep saying fascinating things. There is nothing funnier to watch than one english professor's face when I turned in a paper in iambic pentameter. "How can you do this!?" they will ask. I reply: "How can you not?"
It's amazing... these english professors. They talk and analyze but they never put pen to paper. I see that trend a lot throughout the academies. Business professors who never built a business or did anything similiar. Finance professors who have no real investments. Art professors discussing the 'philosophy' of art where they themselves cannot sell a single art piece. It is like a 300 lb gigantic woman as a gym trainer.
Life can be simple. Two choices.
A) Live your dreams. (few people do. Most absorb other people's dreams and claim it is their own)
B) Live other people's dreams.
If you are working for someone, you are fulfilling THEIR dreams. If you are bending your life to match your woman's, you are fulfilling HER dream. Many people go to school in a particular field to please their parents, to fulfill THEIR dream. Others hang out with friends and don't realize that you are who your friends are. On and on this goes.
Many people fall into the B category because they mistake other people's dreams for their own. They've never sat down and thought about what they wanted. They never asked, "What is happiness to you?"
Whose dream are you following? Your employers? Your parents? Your girlfriend?
Rather than live in other people's dreams, lets make our own. THEN the world knows who you really are.
