What stops us from achieving?

What stops us from achieving?

Why do some people achieve great things when others struggle? Why do some people manage to get what they want in life and others don’t? There can be many different reasons, but what shapes us the most as adults is what happened to us as children. In the early years of our lives we see the world around us, we see how people treat us and how they treat one another and we make decisions which we might later forget but which stay with us for most of our lives. Just imagine a child being told that he or she is useless and stupid over and over again, what do you think will happen in this child’s adulthood? The chances are the child will grow into a not confident person and will have all sorts of emotional issues like struggling with their self-esteem and confidence but that’s not to say that this person will not be successful in life. The person might have decided as a child that he or she is not stupid and will spend the rest of they lives proving to the world that that’s the case and achieving great things in life without ever finding happiness or understanding the reason behind their drive.

     A question that comes to mind is: what is achievement, and how do we measure it? Again it would be different for everyone. My idea of achievement is doing something we think we can not do, or we think it would be too hard. Achievement could be overcoming our fears, being able to stand up for ourselves or going away on holiday, moving to a new house, new city or even a new country.

    What we tend to do in life is create a place where we feel safe and comfortable, even if it is not a comfortable place to be and we feel bad about where we are.  If we take for example moving to a new city, we might fear being away from our family or not being able to meet new friends or not being able to find a new job. There are all the different factors which might stop us for moving. In this instance we would have to overcome our fears and make a decision that we are moving. The decision making part is the most important one! We should concentrate on moving and not put our energy into the worries we have. We will then move, find new friends, find work and maybe even be closer to the family we had few blocks away but never saw them because we never had the time. We might now make the effort to go and see them because they are living in a different city. 

The biggest factors which play a big role in stopping us from achieving our goals are;

-          Getting out of our comfort zone,

-          Lack of decision – you might have heard the story about two people one of them says “One day I will travel the world” and the other says “ Tomorrow I am starting a walk around the world” who do you think is more likely to achieve their goal?

-          Fear of failure (which makes us stay in our comfort zone)

In order to achieve what we want in life we need to make a decision as to what we want, take the risk in getting out of our comfort zone (don’t be scared to be afraid), and don’t be afraid of failure.

Sometimes in life we have to make a right decision when there is time to make a decision but later we might have to reconsider it and make the decision right if the decision we made is no longer working for us.

Wealth and happiness.

  Time is going so fast. I have been doing quite a bit of research on all the different ways of making money and creating wealth.  And there are many different ways to become rich and wealthy. What I already know from the past, and I am just reaffirming now, is that you cannot get rich from working in a job and saving.  Like someone told me a long time ago, a successful small business is much better than a lot of work for a boss.  

   Most of us go to school study hard and get a job. Then we get stuck making money to pay our taxes and making money for other people. Unfortunately I have been involved in some work for the government and I have seen what happens to our tax money. I am very sad to say that if any of us had to run our households the way the government runs the budget we would be very very broke. If I could only have 5% of all the tax payers money which is wasted just in Australia alone in only one year I would be a very rich man.  What makes me sad is that most people who make a decision to waste this money don’t really care – it’s not their money. We have a budget and if that doesn’t work let’s bring on more taxes, raise the mortgage rates and let’s charge people more for food and petrol. Let’s make sure we have more money to throw away!

   Unfortunately there is nothing much we can do about the system, but we can do something to get out of the rat race. We can legally reduce our taxes. And instead of working for our money we can make our money work for us. How we can do this?  There are many different ways of doing this; some of them are investments, shares, inventions, and business. 

  What is the best way to make money, I cannot tell you because there are lots of people who do make lots of money. Most people who do make good money do so by doing what they love most. 

  We know already that getting rich from working for others and saving is very hard. So how is it possible to get rich and what does it take to get there? I guess first we should establish what is the meaning of Being Rich? Again it will be different for everyone. For the poorest of the poor in the third world countries like Somalia or Ethiopia everyone in first world countries is already rich. So in a way anyone who is reading this is rich. Then we can look at the richest people in this world who are worth billions of dollars, they do have billions of dollars but it doesn’t necessary mean that they are rich or happy. They just have a lot of money. I think there is a lot of wrong understanding of what it means to be rich. Richness or wealth is not just how much money you have, it is so much more.

    I have seen great examples of wealth, happiness and money and the lack if it when I was living in Johannesburg, South Africa.  It was quite amazing to see the rich and the poor and their approach to money and their level of happiness.  I feel very privileged to have been able to have friends on both sides of the fence. Quite often the people who do have a lot of money are not always happy. They worry about being car-jacked or robbed or even killed in their own multimillion dollar homes and their happiness is somewhat limited. On the other hand I know people who don’t have much at all. They live in small steel sheds without electricity or running water. They don’t have much money at all; some of them work for a very small wage just to get them by but a lot of them are just the happiest souls you will ever meet! Ready to share with you their last slice of bread with a smile on their face. They find happiness in the simple things that most of us take for granted.

  Wealth and happiness are not necessarily measured by how much money you have, therefore before we decide to get rich we should first look at where we are and decide if we are already rich. How much more do we want and how much is it going to cost us in time and effort and if we are we prepared to do it?

Cherish what makes you happy!

Cherish what makes you happy!

What is happiness?  What do you need to do to be happy and how do you keep happiness?

I am sure there is no one specific answer and everyone will have their own opinion on this subject.      In today’s world there is so much suffering around us, natural disasters, wars, poverty and hard financial times among other things, and for most people life is getting harder every year. In such challenging times it is very hard to find constant happiness.  So how is it possible to keep happy?

When we are teenagers we all have something we really enjoy doing, we all have our own problems and challenges but there is always something we really like doing. Whatever it is, it takes our mind off things, we forget about the rest of the world and we just are in the moment. For me it was and still is sport, but it could be other things as well.  

When we get older our priorities change, we now have to pay bills, provide for ourselves and look after our families. Lots of us get stuck in jobs we don’t really enjoy, but someone has to pay the bills and often we lose our zest for life. Our days become monotonous and boring, we forget about the things which used to make us happy.  We now have less time for ourselves because of the busy lifestyle most of us have.  

One of the ways to bring back and sustain happiness is to determine what it is that makes us happy and cherish it. From many years of involvement in different sports, and research of association between sport and general wellbeing, I can confidently say that doing some sort of sport in ones life will bring happiness and balance. Sport or physical exercise might not bring instant happiness but it will definitely take your mind off whatever it is that bothers you.  Most exercises will raise your heart rate and get more oxygen to your body, what this does is gives you a “clear mind” and better mindset to deal with everyday life.

At one of the openings of the Olympic games the president of the Olympic committee said;”Sport is friendship, sport is health, sport is everything”

Make a point to do more psychical exercise and I can assure you your life will be much happier one!

To achieve your goals you need happiness, sad people hardly achieve much.