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Begin!



Begin. That really is the simple solution towards many of our problems.


We ruminate, we overthink, procrastinate; we second guess ourselves and doubt. We give latitude to the negative self-talk committee in our heads and before we know it, the negative self-talk committee has secured another victory at our expense, as life continues to glide on by.


To have an idea, to begin and start implementing immediately - decisively creating something tangible - leaves no room in your mind for doubt; because you're too focused on making it successful. It's always easier not to, and to succumb to the lure of your comfort zone. By now though, you have started your thing and it's underway, so there's no going back - you have committed! And this is the template for every human advancement ever achieved.


Begin, but more than that, expect to succeed. No hurdler has ever started a race expecting to fall at the hurdles; they expect to hurdle the hurdles and invariably do so. Prepare for the best, have a contingency provision, and treat every mistake and failure en route as a stepping stone. Success is not necessarily permanent and failure is by no means fatal. Thomas Edison famously "found 10,000 ways it wouldn't work", before successfully inventing the electric light bulb. What if Edison had given up at the sixteenth failure, or the hundredth? No doubt someone would have eventually invented the light bulb, but the triumphs would not have been Edison's. Through trial, error and persistence, you embrace the possibility of discovery, whilst expecting success, always in a cycle of learning.


Life is a learning cycle. How much you learn in your personal lifetime is up to you. Many people will choose to spend 20+ hours a week merely being entertained (by TV, gaming and socialising etc), whilst others will spend 20+ hours a week reading and enhancing their (personal) development; each to their own. We all have the opportunity to acknowledge our daily life lessons, great and small, or we can let them pass us by unheeded. We have a choice about how much to take away from this buffet called life.


You can go to the ocean with a teaspoon or a bucket, the ocean doesn't care!

How much do you want from life? How much are you asking for your life, because for every minute you spend doing a thing, you are exchanging a whole minute of your life to do it? Are you sleepwalking through your life, or are you on a mission? Are you taking a spoon or a bucket to the water's edge?


I bargained with life for a penny

And life would pay me no more

Though I begged at every tide

When I counted my scanty store

For life is just an employer

And will pay whatever you ask

But when you have set the wages

Then you must bear the task

I worked for a menial's hire

Only to find dismayed

Whatever I had asked of life

Life would have gladly paid


Jessie B Rittenhouse (1869 - 1948)


The more you expect from life, the more it will gladly yield to you. If you expect so little as to spend 20+ hours a week watching TV, as opposed to i.e.: reading, fitness or family pursuits, how will you find - or even recognise - the richer experiences of life? Results are not in the habit of randomly falling into the laps of the unsuspecting, they must be pursued and accomplished, having first been begun.


Procrastination is the disease of the poor, we know this to be true, so I urge you to begin whatever it is you are mulling over - do it, do it now; mistakes and missteps and all. Embrace the "Edison Error Equation" when things go wrong, or you fall at a hurdle; shake it off and consider it one of your 10,000 ways it didn't work. Don't focus on the reasons a thing won't work, because that's assuming a negative stance and you'll attract more of the same. Focus instead on all the reasons why it will work, operate in the positive, and attract more of that!


BEGIN - EXPECT - PERSEVERE - SUCCEED

 



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