Why nothing good happens to me? I've already worked my butt off!

"He has a rich dad!", "He is the boss’s friend," " He is just lucky," " He has a degree from Harvard!" What's working for him doesn't mean will work for me too!" It must involve some dirty tricks in order to achieve that!" Well, he earns more than me but so what? Money couldn't buy happiness!" Well, so the reason that you stay in the nasty job when your boss looked like a monkey when he scold you is because that got you interested?

I believe you heard this from somebody when they saw or heard someone achieve something huge. Perhaps you are one of those somebody!

There will always be people jealously judging greatness of someone else. It is so easy to work by using just the mouth compared with putting the time, effort and persistently build your path bit by bit. How I wish money could just fall from the sky when I complain about how unfair is this world to me.

You might respond that you too, are working very hard toward something, but nothing good seems to happen to you. You stay in the office while everyone left, work your butt off but you just don't understand why you are not the one that got promoted. You wrote a very meaningful article and started to blog yet nobody seems like enjoying the content or leave a comment or two.

When it comes to this point, the most-comfortable choice is to give up and rationalize that this is just not for you. So whenever you come across someone that performs well on that, you can't help but blame on everything else but yourself.

Who am I to tell you all this? I am just an ordinary person that you might have seen in Starbucks who has experience greatness by learn to train my mind. As per what I've just said, I was that somebody that blame on circumstance, parents, the world, the grass, the flowers, the dogs, the office, the boss, whatever it could be but myself.  It became my worst habit and formed my mindset into victim mode.

Years later, I found myself achieve nothing, being totally clueless about life as if a ship without knowing the direction. I just smile and give an official answer when somebody ask me that what does success looks like to me. It's crippling to think that deep question and hey, I was trying to figure out why a big chunk of my salary has gone.

Little did I know that I’m the one that allowing this to happen. Even if I know, my ego will scream out loud that this is not true. It takes me years to understand that our mind need to be trained and it takes time and effort which most likely goes against what we pursue, the shortest cut to succeed.

You might think that I'm going to share with you some secret weapon to success, or some dirty tricks to make the path way easier. Well, you will be drown in disappointment if this is the case.

Everything starts with being responsible in life. You might get furious as you don't need someone to tell you something that your parents told you when you were three. But hey, how many of us has actually practice that.

If you are responsible, why aren't you leave the job that you hate? You are in charge of being happy in every single day. If you are responsible, why aren't you put a full stop to an unloving relationship? You are in charge to find the one that suitable. If you are responsible, why leaving your dream unchased? Your life is melting and you are in charge to optimize every single day to its fullest.

When you learn to be responsible, you are as well learning to be a leader in life. Other than being responsible in taking action, it is even important to be emotionally responsible. There are certainly circumstances that give you many reasons to feel a certain way, but at the end of the day you are powerful unless you surrender that power to another person or circumstance.

You choose how you act. You might be in a frustrated circumstance but you can choose to be angry or strongly believe in yourself that you have the ability to get this done. You are not a feeling, you can choose how you feel; you are not a product or victim of the circumstance, you’re 100% in charge of how you respond to it.

There's a lot of people telling you what you should do. However, the fundamentals, in any given career, there are basic level of things and then there's the advanced stuff. We get so distracted by the advanced tips. The big leap come as a result of simply focusing on the basics. When you really start to focus on that and be good at it, should be great at it, the other stuff starts to happen.

Any rule that someone tells you, there is someone successful who is doing that. You have to give yourself an honest self-assessment about what you want to do and what you can do. Then, find out the bottom line of your company if you're an employee (for most company, it is where the money is made), while for entrepreneur, find out how can you help other people for their life to be better. Then optimize your strength, focus on just the fundamental and do it really great. And here comes the powerful question that you should have it bear in mind. How can I add value to make things better? How can I help? Through this process, those other results will start to appear.

Why Positive Influences will not work?

Alarm ring, you snooze it off and continue to sleep until the very last minute. You have no choice but to wake up, barely walk like a vampire to the bathroom. Your heart sink when all the soon to deadline tasks that you been dragging occupied your mind. You gobble up breakfast within ten minutes and rush off to work. After an eight hours work, home is where you look forward to. After dinner and a relaxing hot shower, nothing could get you away from the couch to catch up your favourite drama. It indeed the best hours in the day before you get on the bed.

Day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year. This process repeat itself.

You aware that there is such a random person named John who live without alarm. He wakes up vitality and the world is await him to join. After freshen up, he meet his friends up for breakfast for as long as he loves. Then, he might spend a ten minutes time to shoot an email to his virtual assistant who lives in India to assign tasks. Job of the day, done! He now could live the rest of his day like there is no tomorrow.

I believe I’m not the first one that tell you about this. These are some natural defensive reactions from most people.

"He has a rich dad!", " He is just lucky," " He has a degree from Harvard!" What's working for him doesn't mean will work for me too!" It must involve some dirty tricks in order to achieve that!" Well, he earns more than me but so what? Money couldn't buy happiness!"

Follow by some invisible scripts that you generate subconsciously.

" I’ll do that when I have  …….(extra money/time/resources) as now I just don’t have what it takes.”, “ I just don’t know how to get start!”, “ I tried before and this is just not for me.” You come out with dozen excuses, trying to rationalize your current situation to make yourself feel better. Faults are all blamed on circumstance, parents, the world, the grass, the flowers, the dogs, the office, the boss, whatever it could be but yourself.

This story has literally no contribution to your life. Even worse, it drags you down and belittle yourself.

In contrary, you heard someone resigned from his day job, work his butt off to start his new path, live with a tight budget that might feed him a bread in a day and ended up getting to nowhere. This is not the end yet. He might be in debt, struggling through a hard time to look for a new job.  

I believe you come across to these stories too.

“What a poor little guy that believe in dream will come true if you work hard!”,  “ Thanks god that I’m mature enough to hold myself back from being such impulsive.”, “ Well, not everyone is ‘destined’ to be an entrepreneur.” , “ If and only if this is that easy.” , “ I won’t let myself to trap in this shit for sure.”

Your mind then linked this pathway to dangerous and insecure. Whenever there is the moment that your adventure spirit is calling, it comes out and put a leash on you. You surrender and take a step back to the comfort zone. The distance between you and John’s life became farer and it takes at least twice of the effort to step out again.

This story either has no value added to your future.

We have been told to avoid negative and only stick to the positive. There will not be so many commit suicide cases if this advice is worked. Negative can’t be avoided and it comes across to you in every single day for as long as you connect with the world.

Here’s the thing. Your life will still come to plateau if the processor, your brain is outdated. The information itself, no matter it associates with negative or positive influences, will not going to add any value in your life without an updated software. Like the two cases above, an “ old brain” literally makes no differences in your life regardless of the type of informations that enter to it.

Whenever a message prompt us to take action, our mind naturally biased to the safe path, a path that it knows the outcome for, by tricking us to feel comfortable in this zone. This is what makes success so precious and rare as it takes perpetual actions of intentionally thinking in the opposite way and forms the new brain.

This is a state that urges you to live intentionally, consciously prioritize your time to take massive action that you already knew you should have done in order to reach the next level in life.

It is not about getting rid of negative feelings. It arouses anyway. It is about learning to go against the flow. Take a step back when your feelings prompt you to take a certain action as usual and ask why. Has this action makes any differences in your life? Or you do this because you just feel comfortable?

For instance, you feel envy, insignificant about yourself and being so defensive when you meet someone successful than you. As usual, you self console that in someday, you will be even successful than him but just not now as you don’t have what it takes for now. You then continue with your life and wait for the someday to come by. What if you pause for a moment, pull yourself back from follow the motion of the old thinking would bring you to, and intentionally focus on what actions step that you can take for now? Internet browsing to search for relevant topic? Ask your close friends? Whatever it could be for as long as it’s not the same old path.

The Mayonnaise Jar and The Coffee

When things in your life seems almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember 'The Mayonnaise Jar and The Coffee'...

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was. The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shock the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous "yes". The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed. "Now", said the professor as the laughter subsided, 'I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life".

"The golf balls are the important things. God, family, children, your health, your friends and your favourite passion ~ things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car. The sand is everything else ~ the small stuff". "If you put the sand into the jar first",he continued, "then there is no room for the pebbles or the gold balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children, take time to get medical check ups, take your partner out to dinner. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matters.Set your priorities. The next is just sand".

One of the students raised her hand and inquire what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked. It just to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend".