Motivation Spirit

by Craig Harper

Ever feel like you’re backstroking with the multitudes in a sea of mediocrity?
Ever feel like you’re meant to be doing something a bit bigger, more stimulating, more noble, more significant, more challenging, more creative, more fun or more financially rewarding!!?
Does your life wreak of Blaaah? Do you feel like you’re the Captain of the SS Direction less?
Welcome to the Average club.
That’s where most people live but don’t wanna be. The problem is, we do everything we can to stay a member.
About seventeen years ago I had an idea.
Apparently it was a stupid idea and I would never be able to pull it off.
Too young, too innexperienced, no business skills, no management experience, no administrative skills and no idea how to create, or grow, a business.
What would a dumb twenty four year-old bodybuilder know?
Besides, there was no market or demand for my idea in Australia.
Fortunately for me, my stupid idea has helped me become everything I wasn’t, travel the world, work in television and radio, write books, write for magazines, lecture to thousands, help countless people reach their own dreams, have mountains of fun, work in a great environment with great people evey day and also make a few bucks.
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by Tim Connor

W. Clement Stone, one of the great success stories of this century had a number of wonderful philosophies. The one that has stood out the most in my life is his famous words: DO IT NOW.
Procrastination is a thief. It steals from many areas in our life such as:
-our relationships
-our careers
-our businesses
-our financial lives
-our happiness
-our success
-our lifestyle
We are all on God’s calendar. No one knows when they get up in the morning whether this will be their last day. And yet, many people put off: calling a friend, telling a loved one that they care, growing, learning and a host of other activities, behaviors and actions.
There is no benefit to waiting in most cases. Yes, there is a necessity for patience, faith and trust but the Quakers have a great saying: “Pray and while you pray, move your feet.”
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by Ibn Manjur

From very early childhood of mine I have known that knowledge is power. I have read about many scholars’ life where their knowledge acquiring process was quite different, in fact knowledge was the priority and nothing else. Today there is a trend of gaining knowledge by not attending school physically. In simple thinking this is good when attending school is difficult due to some reason. But the situation we face in countries like Bangladesh indicates the opposite. The following story will clarify all, I believe, –
It is a story of a boy living in Bangladesh. He was a good student from a middle class family. He studied till the completion of his graduate degree with the support from his family. In Bangladesh there is not much scope to work parallel to the studies. Still he worked hard to earn some money for his family during his education. In fact he was very caring for his family, especially the parents. He sacrificed many of the opportunities for education and earning because they would compel him to go away from home that would leave his parents alone and helpless.
He had a very keen interest for earning good quality knowledge through education. But in Bangladesh education is rather certificate oriented. Plus if one wants to study in some professional trend after the graduate level, he must engage himself fully with education leaving any earning scope behind. Though there are some students here who work parallel to postgraduate education, they leave their family behind and still do not earn knowledge adequately; even the examinations for certificate gaining, the main motto for many here, are also postponed day after day.
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by Nellie Gadson

Are you the secretarial type? Do you love typing, shorthand, filing? Have you found that since you were a child you just loved office machines and office buildings? Have you envisioned yourself working in those buildings? This could be your calling. You are called to do something even if you don’t know what it is, you do have a call on your life to be someone special. In my case, I know in my knower that I was meant to be a secretary.
To be a secretary takes much patience, and much hard work. It has been the most rewarding experience of my life. When I was a child in elementary school, we had a school secretary named Mrs. Hankins. I had never seen her before but I knew she was there.
Early one morning on my first recess I went outside to the only adventurous equipment on the playground which was the dreaded sliding board. I stood there in front of the sliding board looking up at this monster of a thing. I want you to imagine an almost 4 foot overweight child looking up at an almost 10 foot sliding board. I could not conceive of myself standing at the top of that sliding board, but so that I would not be ostracized by my friends or picked on for being afraid, I decided that I would take that sliding board on. It is hard for me to believe at the age now of 46 that peer pressure at such an early age was so strong that it could make me do something that I would not normally do? At that time, I was horribly afraid of heights. There was a line of kids what looked like as far as the eye could see and I wouldn’t dare break out of that line. They were pushing and shoving to get to that first ladder rung of the sliding board before the bell rang. I saw all of my friends in front of me unafraid with the biggest smile on their face that I had ever seen. Secretly, I was trembling with fear inside. I realize now the reason they were pushing me. I was frozen with fear. Every step I took towards that board made it bigger and taller than anything I had ever seen before. It actually looked as though it were growling at me and taunting me to COME ON UP HERE NELLIE, I AM GOING TO EAT YOU ALIVE.
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by Theresa Williams

The act of procrastinating is putting off or delaying or deferring an action to a later time.
A leading psychologist estimated that 90% of college students procrastinate. Of these students, 25% are chronic procrastinators and they are usually the ones who end up dropping out of college. Procrastination is the avoidance of doing a task which needs to be done. This leads to feeling guilty, feeling depressed and doubting yourself.
There are a number of reasons that causes procrastination. Reasons such as poor time management, difficulty in concentration, being afraid of failure or success, being negative, problems in your personal life, aiming too high too soon, and so on can hold you back from succeeding.
It’s agonizing. You have heard the cliché like, you are one idea away from a fortune. But you know for a fact it’s not a cliché, because of all the people who have become rich virtually overnight. Just because of one idea.
And there you are, working hard or simply wondering what to do, or what you need to learn to make your life more successful. Everything seems to take too long or is just too complicated. If only there was a solution in sight.
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by Hans Bool

Like in the movies — When Polly Came — you have to choose between taking and avoiding risk. In the first scene of this movie, we see how Philip Seymour (I forgot his name in the film — as all other names of this film…) nearly breaks his leg.
Did you ever break something? They say that most accidents happen at home, I do not know the statistics, but besides these home accidents there are the accidents because of sport and those because of taking (too) much risk. But if you have never broken a leg or nose, than you have probably not taken enough risk. At least you are sure to have been on the save side (or just been lucky).
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by Tim Connor

What does determination mean to you?
Is it sticking it out in tough times? Never quitting no matter what? Believing in yourself and your personal mission? Hanging in there regardless of the odds? Leaving the back door unlocked just in case?
I am always fascinated with textbook definitions. They so often only tell part of the story. Mr. Webster says determination is: “the quality of being resolute, firmness of purpose, the act of coming to a conclusion or resolving something, the settlement of a dispute,” there is more but the more I read the more confused I get.
But you can see that one word can have different meanings or interpretations. Just pick the one you want.
I believe there is much more to words than their definitions. This is why I started a new column in my popular newsletter, Life Balance, ‘It’s just a word.’ In the column I delve deeper into the hidden meaning or subtlety of the word. I look at the word more as a concept than a string of several letters blended together.
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