Get Back on Track!

This today’s discourse I wrote immediately after suffering a concussion, because I felt like sharing an experience with you that I, to this extend, have not felt in a long time: unforeseen adjustments.

All of a sudden I was in a position in which I could not pursuit and accomplish my day’s plans, an unexpected action had put me on hold, this unforeseen event looked me dead in the eye saying: stop, sit down, relax, you will continue your deeds tomorrow. I did not like it at all, I thought about the plans I had for that day and how I was simply powerless and unable to work things off my to-do list. What does that mean for and to me? Does my momentum stop here and I have to start all over again? Is that a sign of failure, for I was not able to keep up the momentum, was I not perseverant enough? Is this the end of ambition, of my plans, is that what Langston Hughes referred to as a dream deferred? Well, it took me a while to figure out what has happened, and the answer to all these questions is simple: NO!

I was merely confronted with a new challenge: getting back on track. And I was excited to take on this challenge, because the U.S. American professor and author Maya Angelou stated quite truly that "nothing will work unless you do." I have to do, I have to get back up on it, and despite this little delay get back on track, and do...and then things will work again; and I will regain my momentum. This is where heart comes into play (and this is exactly why I consider it, among perseverance, one of the main pillars of success): if your heart is strong, you do not let days of unforeseen events get in your way. You depreciate them, call 'em a day, and continue with the same amount of heart, believe, and dedication as before. And these days do have a great side effect: they reveal, how much you have already accomplished on your relentless way to success—use this retrospect as fuel for the next and further steps in life.

Why is this not as easy as it reads? Because once we lose our momentum we immediately tend to trigger a bunch of 'what if' questions, leading us sometimes even as far as questioning our lives and deeds. If you want to continue after this unforeseen day of deferral, look back and take stock—and see this day of pause, on hold, as an intermediate stage on your long road to success...and furthermore be grateful and happy about the things you have already accomplished up to this day. Follow the words of legendary baseball icon George Herman "Babe" Ruth Jr., who said: "Don’t let the fear of striking out hold you back." Continue to do what you do, do not let anything slow you down. Former U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed the freedom of fear in 1941 (as part of his famour Four Freedoms speech); and we shall be free from fear and continue our drive, keep going and doing, get back on our perseverance and back on our track. Fear to fail, fear to drop out, fear to screw up, fear to lose grip? No, I do not understand these definitions. Let’s be free from fear, and get back on track, because we are of great heart.

...and you know what’s really impressive after a day on hold? When we get back to work immediately after like nothing ever happened—and this is how we do it!

Never Stop!

Dearly beloved, enthusiastic, perseverant, and motivated dudes and dudettes, I suggest it is time for one step further, which is why I decided to clarify perseverance in this discourse in order to see life as a steady, never ending process; like a tv show in which you were born on the pilot and die in its last episode. Sometimes we drown in the rush of life – I personally like those time lapse infomercials because they reveal how fast this world is spinning –  sometimes this quick motion world makes us feel like a small spare part, a tiny cog wheel in the big clockwork of life...and all we want to do is sit down and have this process ended, complete, to just see the end of all our hard work. But once you get to that point, is there not anything missing? Don’t you want to go on somehow?

Look at yourself and how things are going in your life: when you got out of kindergarten, you went to highschool, when you graduated highschool, you went to college, when you graduated college, you started working, when you were done working, you retired, when you retired, you...

Life is a steady process, and there is never an end to our deeds, once we accomplish something, there is always another thing to accomplish, because process and new endeavors are the things to keep our world spinning. Former U.S. president Richard Nixon once said: "You must never be satisfied with success and you should never be discouraged by failure." Once we are successful, we should use that success and that fulfillment and excitement of our accomplishment to seek new tasks and quests, keep on moving, because if we have success, call it success, and stop going further, we stop. We stop in a world that is spinning at 99% the speed of light (merely using it as an allusion to our fast and speedy world). We should keep going, and keep pushing ourselves, because that is what the successful do: never being satisfied, because there is always another, higher mountain to climb. And if we have the enthusiasm I spoke of so enthusiastically, we love going further, and we are ready for new and more challenges. The successful people in this world never stopped once they achieved their goals, they kept going – the same thing regarding failure: you must NEVER be discouraged by failure. Learn, get up, and keep going, go on, rock on, never quit! It is quite interesting how close success and failure are together; both, the successful and the failing started off at the same point, maybe even with the same or, at least, similar motivation and enthusiasm, but while one kept going, the other one quitted. And wether you quit or not is up to you, the only thing that limits you from achieving something big is: you! Keep going and be successful, or quit. The successful are the ones that did what my old football coach told me all the time: finish strong! And they never stop, they keep going.

And if you decide to keep going, to seek a challenge, and once you are successful seek another one and keep your world spinning, then you have the perseverant heart of a champion. Then you have truly understood what the words tenacity, perseverance, and momentum mean, and thou will be rewarded. Keep going – and you will be unstoppable. Considered and done? Then you for sure know what Carrol Wrackley meant by saying: "Self-confidence is the key to the universe." Keep on going, baby! 

Energy and Enthusiasm: E² = m(omentum) · c(onfidence)

After getting over a bad day, after compensating failure we are now back to our 2012 momentum, as the saga continues. This discourse is on another significant component of success: enthusiasm!

I for my part have spent a long 25 years on doing all kinds of different things; that is probably the only thing to distinguish me from my fellow friends. I talked to one this past week and he was utterly astonished about all the kinds of different things I have already done in life. There is some truth to it that I have done and still do a lot of things because it fulfills me, and I will tell you how I am able to do all that: with heart!

An enthusiastic heart can be the greatest catalyst for a human being. Get involved, get engaged, get ambitious, be patient, persevere, dream...but do it with enthusiasm. There are always people trying to set the world on fire, but there are little who do it with enthusiasm. These few enthusiastic ones, in fact, are those who really have the capacity to do something big, those who have the capability of changing things.  When you ever worked with an enthusiastic person before, you know how much more fun and much less of a hassle it is than working with a dull person focussed on vague goals. The sublime thing about enthusiasm is that it radiates as steady as the fuel rods of Three Mile Island. And that is, where you as a formerly innocent by-stander get infected very easily. Enthusiasm will flood you in no time, because it comes from the heart, it is true and it is great.

The American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." Being successful is as simple as that, do not merely think about it, go out there and try it, do it! School, job, internship, housework, repairs, hobbies – do it with enthusiasm, love what you do, have fun doing it, go out there and go for it, because you obviously decided to do that activity for a reason, right? Is it stressing, time consuming? Once you do it with an enthusiastic heart you will not even realize how time flies by, only because enthusiasm is flowing through you. In a little bit you will see how much fun you can have in school, in your job, your internship, your housework, repairs at your property, your hobbies – because let us be honest: We live at free will, whatever it is you do, you do it by choice, you intended to accomplish something, and in order to do that you decided to go down a certain road in life. Have fun going down your alley of life, love what you do, be all about it, for it is your life, it is what you came to do. What about the success? It will come by itself, because if you are enthusiastic, you do your deeds full time with all your heart, and that’s the only way to succeed. And guess what will be a nice side effect – your colleagues, your friends, your fellow students will start wondering soon: wow, what is going on with him or her, look at him or her, what (s)he is doing looks so easy, so released, how can you have so much fun doing this crap?

Well, dearly beloved, there is only one answer to it: enthusiasm...so go out there, and do what you do with heart!

Tomorrow is Another Day!

How was your day so far? Did you seize it, did you enjoy it...or was it not a good day at all? Although I intend to give you all momentum and a tonic so you can live your life to the fullest, so you can master every day, so you can be cluttered with ambition, heart, and perseverance, I devote and dedicate this discourse to people who had a rough day, a bad day, maybe a day perceived as the "worst day ever."

Sometimes we wake up, everything seems to be fine, and then all of a sudden: boom; things start going wrong, and before you can turn around the downward spiral has already begun. How frustrating, you start your day—ambitious from head to toe—but for some reason nothing is working out the way it is supposed to. No matter what you do, one concept, one term is overshadowing all your actions, all your deeds, all your ambitions: failure. In a particular situation like that we just want to give up on everything, we lose grip, and all of a sudden all our hard work seems in vain, our goals, our dreams seem out of our grasp, all of a sudden we feel like our entire world comes tumbling down, our dreams collapse...system overload, our life that day...withering.

On a day like that it is vastly hard, of tremendous difficulty, maybe even nearly impossible to keep one’s head up, to hold fast to the ambitious drive one had the days prior to this d-day. It may also be a poor consolation, cold comfort to merely classify this day as "just not my day." But there is something we should always keep in mind, even though it is hard to in a day like this: noone made it to the top without failure, failure is, so to speak, part of our lives, and further part of success. Name one happy and successful person who made it to the top without failure, who achieved formidable things, who has done incredible things without bad days on the road to success? There is none, failure needs to be part of our path, failure paves the way to success. Obstacles, bumps on the road, deferral, decay, destruction, desolation—they will always be there, they will always have to be overcome; and let me tell you one thing: successful is not the one to reach a high achievement, successful is the one to withstand all of hell, the one to fight against the odds, the one to not give up and as a result of this perseverance achieves his or her goal. If everyone could accomplish high objectives without failing on its way, everyone would be successful.

Charles Franklin Kettering, a great innovator back in the nineteenth century said wisely: "Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement";—failures are part of the accomplishment of objectives, so do not let a bad day filled straight to the top with failure drag you down that you decline everything, learn from it, be happy that it was only a day (or two), but do one thing after being struck down: get back up and continue what you came to do, because one bad day does not mean that your entire world is collapsing, it merely means that external (for some it may also be internal ones) forces are shaking it...and it furthermore is a challenge wether we have the heart and the tenacity to regardlessly execute, no questions asked...because that is what successful people among us have done, and that is the only feature to distinguish the failing from the successful...GETTING BACK UP!

*If you intend to let the music speak to you, have a little less Daniel Powter and a little more T.I.*

...so if your day was whacky, frustrating, coined by failure, just "not your day," there is no need to despair, get back up and keep going, because it is on the dice: tomorrow is another day.

Success Begins with a Dream

Good morning, day, and evening folks, on this one I intend to conduct an inductive approach having this discourse sucking you in:

Even I, sometimes, have my days, days to make me feel lost in time, especially when I look at fellow people, their accomplishments, their lives. And sometimes I wonder what it would have been like having a normal life – like everyone else. But whenever I wonder, there is one thing that never changes: I always come to the same conclusion – these lives ain’t my life, these accomplishments are not my accomplishments. And as here I stand, why would I desire other people’s accomplishments? I do not look forward to have accomplishments of others, to living lives of others, because there is one mere and genuine truth about me, and yes, I am going to share it with you all: I am me, I got my own life to live, my own accomplishments. And if I do not have all the accomplishments to present as my fellow people do, there is definitely one thing I have they lack, one thing I still have they already gave up on, something that is so powerful that it can make the incredible happen, something that can change the world, that can change lives, steer them, something that is always understated, and not least something that I consider the one and only foundation of success: dreams.

Do you (still) have your dreams? Do you still hold fast to your dreams like Langston Hughes told us all to a long time ago? Do you still jam on that old guitar of yours believing in becoming the big rockstar you always wanted to be? Do you still scribble notes on the big novel you intend to write?

The only words of wisdom regarding that are the ones by former athlete Gail Devers: "Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe."

I talked to a woman yesterday and she told me about her dream. I asked her, why she was not 100% sure about chasing it in order to make it become reality. She said she did not know really. I told her there were three things to keep her from making these dreams come true: other people being in the way, oneself being in the way, and the lack of true will. Making dreams come true is dedicated to those who are willing to. If you buried your dreams already, dig deep and rediscover them. What was it, that gave us the car as a medium of transportation? What made the human being being able to fly? I tell you: a dream! What has put a man on the moon? A dream – and the everlasting faith and belief in making it happen.

If you are the dreaming kind of person, if you got that dreamer’s disease, let me tell you that you still got a little flame inside that can do tremendous things. Chase your dreams, do not give up on your dreams. Does it matter that your fellow people consider you obsolete, or your episteme surreal? Did it matter to Neil Alden Armstrong, what his fellow people, his friends said when he placed his footprint in the moon's dust? Did it matter to Christopher Columbus what others said when he sailed westwards (do not feel offended by this whiff of Eurocentrism) in the late fifteenth century? It were dreams that changed this world, that gave opportunities, that made things happen. The biggest things, the biggest accomplishments all started with a little spark of hope, with a little dream. It is merely up to us and our limited imagination wether we make that little thought, that little spark of hope, that little surreal dream develope into something of tremendous relevance, into something big...or if we do not hold fast to it and let life and rush extinguish our little flame inside. If you are a dreamer, you will not need to compare yourself to your fellow people and their accomplishments, because if you are a "true" dreamer, you know you are capable of much more than your fellows could ever achieve. Let that little dream develope, let it blossom, and create something big, make things happen, leave your marks, change this world...and people who tell you it’s not going anywhere? Ignore them, because they don’t know about heart and dedication – and furthermore they obviously never heard about this:

If you can dream it you can do it!

Rewards and Retrospect

One of my old football coaches once told us two things we have to do in oder to be successful: polish and shine! Ever since these two content words were said I started thinking about it. Is that really all we have to do – work hard and once we get rewarded look good, shine?

This one is on intrinsic motivation. In 1987 MIT professor Thomas Malone and Mark Lepper of Stanford University have defined intrinsic motivation as “what people will do without external inducement.” Most of us human beings, however, are extrinsically motivated and seek to be rewarded and credited by others, by friends, by their families, by colleagues, et cetera. Once these rewards and credits are absent, though, our motivational basis starts to collapse, we lose our momentum, and do not do our deeds with devotion, with love, with heart anymore. Would it not be great to keep that drive alive, though? Would it not be amazing to have an untouchable motivation that perseveres, regardless of other people’s impact on us; an independent motivational relentless momentum? It is amazing, and it is possible, and it is said to be the secret ingredient of infinite success: intrinsic motivation.

Our motivation has to come from within, not from our surroundings. The things we work on can be a long process, there is a briefing, competing, and after a long while of hard work there is a completion, but only, if we are devoted and dedicated to polish in order to shine. We have to stay motivated all the time, in good days, in bad days, relentlessly, we cannot let our vague motivation let us down. We have to polish steadily, we have to go hard, we have to be prepared, when opportunity is knocking at our door, and there is only one way to keep that motivation at a sublime sacrosanct level: it has to come from within.

If you remember the last thing you gave your everything for, was it not great once you achieved it, once you got rewarded for your hard work? It is great to be rewarded for your work, your deeds, your opus, but if you want to keep the train rolling, that also has to come from within. Reward yourself! Do not wait on being credited by others, credit yourself, reward yourself. Is it not incredibly satisfying to see the result of hard work? There is no reward by others that can come anywhere near the feeling of satisfaction you have once you see your work complete, no money, no award, no nothing can replace inner freedom, inner satisfaction – retrospect, and see. Let this internal enrichment be your motor, your engine, your motivation, motivate yourself! Soon you will be able to see how your life of calm changes to a life with tailwinds.

Don’t make your success, your motivation, and everything related to it a matter depending on others, be your own fountain of motivational drive, of relentless momentum. Credits and rewards by others? – They will come, but by the time they come you will not need them anymore, because you already got rewarded more intense than your fellows can ever reward you: in your heart! Once you are a person of intrinsic motivation, you do not need the rewards by others, but believe me, you will get them, because an inner motivation leads to an inner confidence and satisfaction, and that reverberates, and wether you want it or not, that radiates. If you know how to polish, if you’re willing to work and go hard, you know how to shine, and once you shine be true and happy shining, for it feels great...

...just one of those days!

Dearly beloved, have you been heros and heroines the past two weeks? I decided not to write a blog last week, so you get two weeks to unfold your heroism. I for my part can say I accomplished my mission, I hope you can say the same.

This blog I want to start with a hard hitting question: what is it that makes us satisfied in life?

There is probably more than one possible answer, but I guess a general satisfying foundation that unites us all is to be identified as “security,” don’t we just love security? A secured job, a secured future, a secured relationship, we love security and adore secured realms in all its facets, all and everything has to follow a certain pattern, a pattern we are used to that we feel safe – and furthermore that we are satisfied...but what, if that security of ours begins to sway, what, if our safe and satisfying status quo comes tumbling down? Not necessarily all our security facets, not the entire secured construction we erected needs to collaps, but let me tell you one thing: if only one facet shakes that may be enough to interfere and weaken our entire security. It is therefore more precise to speak of our security being of many smaller but interdependent facets that all complement our satisfactory construction. One caused to fall often causes a chain reaction – one little facet shaking can be enough to quake our entire security in life. What is our common reaction? We are overwhelmed with the situation and uncertainty surrounds us as we try to find explanations and then search for solutions; and not necessarily in that order. “It’s just one of those days” – a common statement we make to euphemize our insecurity, and it is our mere helplessness in these particular situations that forces us to state such phrases as an explicatio substitute, because we are just not able to explain the novel situation, our condition and state of mind being challenged – what was perfect and, furthermore, safe a moment ago is all of a sudden being approached differently accompanied  by a doubting tenor. What shall we do  to re-establish our security, how are we to deal with such a momentum shift?

The answer to those questions, for there is only one, is not far away, we simply have to turn on our iPod and listen to what singer William Bailey has to say: “All we need is just a little patience.” Taken out of context, however, depicts that phrase the most accurate answer to our decayed satisfaction. Our hamartia is not final, it is temporary, and we will overcome these obstacles, we may be weary, worn out, desperate, but Bailey tells us all what to do, because all we need is just a little patience.

Our problem as human beings is our vicious impatience, we want everything right here, right now, we don’t want it in two minutes, we want it now; and there is to be seen a main pillar of our dissatisfaction, we are simply not able to wait anymore. The rush of the twenty-first century? That is a weak justification, don’t you think – nearly as vague as “everybody’s doing it.” We, however, need to find a way back to patience. I remember back in 2002 writing letters back and forth with a really good friend from the midwest, a letter took about six days, and that was alright, whereas now we get impatient as soon as we do not get a reply within a couple of minutes. None of us has a flawless life, everyone has his or her burden, and not every day is perfect, but if we are facing “one of those days” a return to patience will help us to get over that hardship. We have to stand firm and remain on top of the situation, we have to brainstorm possible solutions, and confront our security threatening issues with a genuine overdose of rationality and patience.

What is hereby important is vision for the whole frame, for the entire image. What we lack is insight on particular situations, we look at the now, the now does not fully satisfy us, we are at rock bottom. But the one is of tremendous wisdom who sees the entire discourse. A problem consists of three parts, a beginning, let us call that the inciting incident (to allude to Aristotle’s dramatic structure), then a main part, and a solution. Once the incident strikes us we are occupied with the sudden strike only, not keeping in mind that there will be a time to work off the plague, and that there will be a solution. It is therefore helpful and relevent that we do not lose sight for what is to come regarding these struggles; and that one can achieve by being patient, remaining calm, and staying firm. Retrospect now, what was the last issue you had to overcome, you had to resolve? Was it not a vast relief to work on a (re)solution, and was it not even better once the day of solution was there? Did we not gain a gigantic amount of experience, did we not learn a whole lot?

Fact is, hardship and issues appear, bad things occur, but they are also there to learn and to be better prepared once they or similar ones happen again. Once you approach situational issues, threats to your security with sight for the whole frame, for the whole discourse, you will suddenly recognize, and further realize, the positive experience-achieving richness our hard times have to offer. Get a reward from it, look back once you resolve an issue, was it worth it, can you equate and scale positive versus negative? If we get to a point, where we can label ‘going through hard times in order to gaining a lot of experience’ a “necessary trade-off for ourselves”, we can consider ourselves lucky, never lose sight for the whole picture, and never forget:

All we need is just a little patience!