RE: 10 Life Lessons From A Navy Seal

 Here is a very good article that got me thinking..

such an experienced guy had shared his extreme training with the rest of the world...and what a blessing it is to be able to learn and pick up something from this

Here is the article for everyone's benefit
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Naval Admiral William H. McRaven returned to his alma mater last week and spoke to the graduates with lessons he learned from his basic SEAL training. 

Here’s his amazing Commencement Address at University of Texas at Austin 2014 from Business Insider.


AP Photo/The University of Texas at Austin, Marsha Miller


The University’s slogan is,

“What starts here changes the world.”

I have to admit—I kinda like it.

“What starts here changes the world.”

Tonight there are almost 8,000 students graduating from UT.

That great paragon of analytical rigor, Ask.Com says that the average American will meet 10,000 people in their lifetime.

That’s a lot of folks.

But, if every one of you changed the lives of just ten people—and each one of those folks changed the lives of another ten people—just ten—then in five generations—125 years—the class of 2014 will have changed the lives of 800 million people.

800 million people—think of it—over twice the population of the United States. Go one more generation and you can change the entire population of the world—8 billion people.

If you think it’s hard to change the lives of ten people—change their lives forever—you’re wrong.

I saw it happen every day in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A young Army officer makes a decision to go left instead of right down a road in Baghdad and the ten soldiers in his squad are saved from close-in ambush.

In Kandahar province, Afghanistan, a non-commissioned officer from the Female Engagement Team senses something isn’t right and directs the infantry platoon away from a 500 pound IED, saving the lives of a dozen soldiers.

But, if you think about it, not only were these soldiers saved by the decisions of one person, but their children yet unborn—were also saved. And their children’s children—were saved.

Generations were saved by one decision—by one person.

But changing the world can happen anywhere and anyone can do it.

So, what starts here can indeed change the world, but the question is… what will the world look like after you change it?

Well, I am confident that it will look much, much better, but if you will humor this old sailor for just a moment, I have a few suggestions that may help you on your way to a better a world.

And while these lessons were learned during my time in the military, I can assure you that it matters not whether you ever served a day in uniform.

It matters not your gender, your ethnic or religious background, your orientation, or your social status.

Our struggles in this world are similar and the lessons to overcome those struggles and to move forward—changing ourselves and the world around us—will apply equally to all.

I have been a Navy SEAL for 36 years. But it all began when I left UT for Basic SEAL training in Coronado, California.

Basic SEAL training is six months of long torturous runs in the soft sand, midnight swims in the cold water off San Diego, obstacles courses, unending calisthenics, days without sleep and always being cold, wet and miserable.

It is six months of being constantly harassed by professionally trained warriors who seek to find the weak of mind and body and eliminate them from ever becoming a Navy SEAL.

But, the training also seeks to find those students who can lead in an environment of constant stress, chaos, failure and hardships.

To me basic SEAL training was a life time of challenges crammed into six months.

So, here are the ten lessons I learned from basic SEAL training that hopefully will be of value to you as you move forward in life.

Every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Vietnam veterans, would show up in my barracks room and the first thing they would inspect was your bed.

If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack—rack—that’s Navy talk for bed.

It was a simple task—mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle hardened SEALs—but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over.

If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another.

By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter.

If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.

And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made—that you made—and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

#1. If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.
During SEAL training the students are broken down into boat crews. Each crew is seven students—three on each side of a small rubber boat and one coxswain to help guide the dingy.

Every day your boat crew forms up on the beach and is instructed to get through the surf zone and paddle several miles down the coast.

In the winter, the surf off San Diego can get to be 8 to 10 feet high and it is exceedingly difficult to paddle through the plunging surf unless everyone digs in.

Every paddle must be synchronized to the stroke count of the coxswain. Everyone must exert equal effort or the boat will turn against the wave and be unceremoniously tossed back on the beach.

For the boat to make it to its destination, everyone must paddle.

You can’t change the world alone—you will need some help— and to truly get from your starting point to your destination takes friends, colleagues, the good will of strangers and a strong coxswain to guide them.

#2. If you want to change the world, find someone to help you paddle.
Over a few weeks of difficult training my SEAL class which started with 150 men was down to just 35. There were now six boat crews of seven men each.

I was in the boat with the tall guys, but the best boat crew we had was made up of the the little guys—the munchkin crew we called them—no one was over about 5-foot five.

The munchkin boat crew had one American Indian, one African American, one Polish American, one Greek American, one Italian American, and two tough kids from the mid-west.

They out paddled, out-ran, and out swam all the other boat crews.

The big men in the other boat crews would always make good natured fun of the tiny little flippers the munchkins put on their tiny little feet prior to every swim.

But somehow these little guys, from every corner of the Nation and the world, always had the last laugh— swimming faster than everyone and reaching the shore long before the rest of us.

SEAL training was a great equalizer. Nothing mattered but your will to succeed. Not your color, not your ethnic background, not your education and not your social status.

#3. If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of their flippers.

Several times a week, the instructors would line up the class and do a uniform inspection. It was exceptionally thorough.

Your hat had to be perfectly starched, your uniform immaculately pressed and your belt buckle shiny and void of any smudges.

But it seemed that no matter how much effort you put into starching your hat, or pressing your uniform or polishing your belt buckle—- it just wasn’t good enough.

The instructors would find “something” wrong.

For failing the uniform inspection, the student had to run, fully clothed into the surfzone and then, wet from head to toe, roll around on the beach until every part of your body was covered with sand.

The effect was known as a “sugar cookie.” You stayed in that uniform the rest of the day—cold, wet and sandy.

There were many a student who just couldn’t accept the fact that all their effort was in vain. That no matter how hard they tried to get the uniform right—it was unappreciated.

Those students didn’t make it through training.

Those students didn’t understand the purpose of the drill. You were never going to succeed. You were never going to have a perfect uniform.

Sometimes no matter how well you prepare or how well you perform you still end up as a sugar cookie.

It’s just the way life is sometimes.

#4. If you want to change the world get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward.
Every day during training you were challenged with multiple physical events—long runs, long swims, obstacle courses, hours of calisthenics—something designed to test your mettle.

Every event had standards—times you had to meet. If you failed to meet those standards your name was posted on a list and at the end of the day those on the list were invited to—a “circus.”

A circus was two hours of additional calisthenics—designed to wear you down, to break your spirit, to force you to quit.

No one wanted a circus.

A circus meant that for that day you didn’t measure up. A circus meant more fatigue—and more fatigue meant that the following day would be more difficult—and more circuses were likely.

But at some time during SEAL training, everyone—everyone—made the circus list.

But an interesting thing happened to those who were constantly on the list. Over time those students-—who did two hours of extra calisthenics—got stronger and stronger.

The pain of the circuses built inner strength-built physical resiliency.

Life is filled with circuses.

You will fail. You will likely fail often. It will be painful. It will be discouraging. At times it will test you to your very core.

#5. But if you want to change the world, don’t be afraid of the circuses.
At least twice a week, the trainees were required to run the obstacle course. The obstacle course contained 25 obstacles including a 10-foot high wall, a 30-foot cargo net, and a barbed wire crawl to name a few.

But the most challenging obstacle was the slide for life. It had a three level 30 foot tower at one end and a one level tower at the other. In between was a 200-foot long rope.

You had to climb the three tiered tower and once at the top, you grabbed the rope, swung underneath the rope and pulled yourself hand over hand until you got to the other end.

The record for the obstacle course had stood for years when my class began training in 1977.

The record seemed unbeatable, until one day, a student decided to go down the slide for life—head first.

Instead of swinging his body underneath the rope and inching his way down, he bravely mounted the TOP of the rope and thrust himself forward.

It was a dangerous move—seemingly foolish, and fraught with risk. Failure could mean injury and being dropped from the training.

Without hesitation—the student slid down the rope—perilously fast, instead of several minutes, it only took him half that time and by the end of the course he had broken the record.

#6. If you want to change the world sometimes you have to slide down the obstacle head first.

During the land warfare phase of training, the students are flown out to San Clemente Island which lies off the coast of San Diego.

The waters off San Clemente are a breeding ground for the great white sharks. To pass SEAL training there are a series of long swims that must be completed. One—is the night swim.

Before the swim the instructors joyfully brief the trainees on all the species of sharks that inhabit the waters off San Clemente.

They assure you, however, that no student has ever been eaten by a shark—at least not recently.

But, you are also taught that if a shark begins to circle your position—stand your ground. Do not swim away. Do not act afraid.

And if the shark, hungry for a midnight snack, darts towards you—then summons up all your strength and punch him in the snout and he will turn and swim away.

There are a lot of sharks in the world. If you hope to complete the swim you will have to deal with them.

#7. So, if you want to change the world, don’t back down from the sharks.

As Navy SEALs one of our jobs is to conduct underwater attacks against enemy shipping. We practiced this technique extensively during basic training.

The ship attack mission is where a pair of SEAL divers is dropped off outside an enemy harbor and then swims well over two miles—underwater—using nothing but a depth gauge and a compass to get to their target.

During the entire swim, even well below the surface there is some light that comes through. It is comforting to know that there is open water above you.

But as you approach the ship, which is tied to a pier, the light begins to fade. The steel structure of the ship blocks the moonlight—it blocks the surrounding street lamps—it blocks all ambient light.

To be successful in your mission, you have to swim under the ship and find the keel—the center line and the deepest part of the ship.

This is your objective. But the keel is also the darkest part of the ship—where you cannot see your hand in front of your face, where the noise from the ship’s machinery is deafening and where it is easy to get disoriented and fail.

Every SEAL knows that under the keel, at the darkest moment of the mission—is the time when you must be calm, composed—when all your tactical skills, your physical power and all your inner strength must be brought to bear.

#8. If you want to change the world, you must be your very best in the darkest moment.
The ninth week of training is referred to as “Hell Week.” It is six days of no sleep, constant physical and mental harassment and—one special day at the Mud Flats—the Mud Flats are an area between San Diego and Tijuana where the water runs off and creates the Tijuana slue’s—a swampy patch of terrain where the mud will engulf you.

It is on Wednesday of Hell Week that you paddle down to the mud flats and spend the next 15 hours trying to survive the freezing cold mud, the howling wind and the incessant pressure to quit from the instructors.

As the sun began to set that Wednesday evening, my training class, having committed some “egregious infraction of the rules” was ordered into the mud.

The mud consumed each man till there was nothing visible but our heads. The instructors told us we could leave the mud if only five men would quit—just five men and we could get out of the oppressive cold.

Looking around the mud flat it was apparent that some students were about to give up. It was still over eight hours till the sun came up—eight more hours of bone chilling cold.

The chattering teeth and shivering moans of the trainees were so loud it was hard to hear anything and then, one voice began to echo through the night—one voice raised in song.

The song was terribly out of tune, but sung with great enthusiasm.

One voice became two and two became three and before long everyone in the class was singing.

We knew that if one man could rise above the misery then others could as well.

The instructors threatened us with more time in the mud if we kept up the singing—but the singing persisted.

And somehow—the mud seemed a little warmer, the wind a little tamer and the dawn not so far away.

If I have learned anything in my time traveling the world, it is the power of hope. The power of one person—Washington, Lincoln, King, Mandela and even a young girl from Pakistan—Malala—one person can change the world by giving people hope.

#9. So, if you want to change the world, start singing when you’re up to your neck in mud.
Finally, in SEAL training there is a bell. A brass bell that hangs in the center of the compound for all the students to see.

All you have to do to quit—is ring the bell. Ring the bell and you no longer have to wake up at 5 o’clock. Ring the bell and you no longer have to do the freezing cold swims.

Ring the bell and you no longer have to do the runs, the obstacle course, the PT—and you no longer have to endure the hardships of training.

Just ring the bell.

#10. If you want to change the world don’t ever, ever ring the bell.
To the graduating class of 2014, you are moments away from graduating. Moments away from beginning your journey through life. Moments away from starting to change the world—for the better.

It will not be easy.

But, YOU are the class of 2014—the class that can affect the lives of 800 million people in the next century.

Start each day with a task completed.

Find someone to help you through life.

Respect everyone.

Know that life is not fair and that you will fail often, but if you take take some risks, step up when the times are toughest, face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden and never, ever give up—if you do these things, then next generation and the generations that follow will live in a world far better than the one we have today and—what started here will indeed have changed the world—for the better.

Thank you very much. Hook ‘em horns.

source

RE: Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators

So well, I was almost immediately impressed when I saw the title of this article
and suddenly, almost like a revelation from God...I understood why I sometimes act the way I do and why certain things matter and yet don't matter much to me
Actually...this are the charastics of a writer 

Are you a writer? an artist? someone involved in arts? 

Can you sometimes not think of "ideas" or get brain blocked?

And also indicates that most people of this century are all "trophy" children...the "trophy" generation ,.
we were thought to believe everyone will get a trophy, all of us are "special" 

Are you special? Are you born with talent?
But my parents kept telling me how good I am! My friends keep telling me how good I am! I am a star!! 
Well..are you really?

Why do I keep procrastination? How to stop procrastination? How to advance and be better? 
Well...do know that, you need to know the physiology of it   

keep reading...
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Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators
The psychological origins of waiting (... and waiting, and waiting) to work

Megan McArdle Feb 12 2014, 11:48 AM ET

Like most writers, I am an inveterate procrastinator. In the course of writing this one article, I have checked my e-mail approximately 3,000 times, made and discarded multiple grocery lists, conducted a lengthy Twitter battle over whether the gold standard is actually the worst economic policy ever proposed, written Facebook messages to schoolmates I haven’t seen in at least a decade, invented a delicious new recipe for chocolate berry protein smoothies, and googled my own name several times to make sure that I have at least once written something that someone would actually want to read.
Lots of people procrastinate, of course, but for writers it is a peculiarly common occupational hazard. One book editor I talked to fondly reminisced about the first book she was assigned to work on, back in the late 1990s. It had gone under contract in 1972.

I once asked a talented and fairly famous colleague how he managed to regularly produce such highly regarded 8,000 word features. “Well,” he said, “first, I put it off for two or three weeks. Then I sit down to write. That’s when I get up and go clean the garage. After that, I go upstairs, and then I come back downstairs and complain to my wife for a couple of hours. Finally, but only after a couple more days have passed and I’m really freaking out about missing my deadline, I ultimately sit down and write.”
Over the years, I developed a theory about why writers are such procrastinators: We were too good in English class. This sounds crazy, but hear me out.

Most writers were the kids who easily, almost automatically, got A's in English class. (There are exceptions, but they often also seem to be exceptions to the general writerly habit of putting off writing as long as possible.) At an early age, when grammar school teachers were struggling to inculcate the lesson that effort was the main key to success in school, these future scribblers gave the obvious lie to this assertion. Where others read haltingly, they were plowing two grades ahead in the reading workbooks. These are the kids who turned in a completed YA novel for their fifth-grade project. It isn’t that they never failed, but at a very early age, they didn’t have to fail much; their natural talent kept them at the head of the class.

Forced into a challenge we're not prepared for, we often engage 'self-handicapping': deliberately doing things that set us up for failure.

 

This teaches a very bad, very false lesson: that success in work mostly depends on natural talent. Unfortunately, when you are a professional writer, you are competing with all the other kids who were at the top of their English class. Your stuff may not—indeed, probably won’t—be the best anymore.
If you’ve spent most of your life cruising ahead on natural ability, doing what came easily and quickly, every word you write becomes a test of just how much ability you have, every article a referendum on how good a writer you are. As long as you have not written that article, that speech, that novel, it could still be good. Before you take to the keys, you are Proust and Oscar Wilde and George Orwell all rolled up into one delicious package. By the time you’re finished, you’re more like one of those 1940’s pulp hacks who strung hundred-page paragraphs together with semicolons because it was too much effort to figure out where the sentence should end.

The Fear of Turning In Nothing

Most writers manage to get by because, as the deadline creeps closer, their fear of turning in nothing eventually surpasses their fear of turning in something terrible. But I’ve watched a surprising number of young journalists wreck, or nearly wreck, their careers by simply failing to hand in articles. These are all college graduates who can write in complete sentences, so it is not that they are lazy incompetents. Rather, they seem to be paralyzed by the prospect of writing something that isn’t very good.

“Exactly!” said Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, when I floated this theory by her. One of the best-known experts in the psychology of motivation, Dweck has spent her career studying failure, and how people react to it. As you might expect, failure isn’t all that popular an activity. And yet, as she discovered through her research, not everyone reacts to it by breaking out in hives. While many of the people she studied hated tasks that they didn’t do well, some people thrived under the challenge. They positively relished things they weren’t very good at—for precisely the reason that they should have: when they were failing, they were learning.

Dweck puzzled over what it was that made these people so different from their peers. It hit her one day as she was sitting in her office (then at Columbia), chewing over the results of the latest experiment with one of her graduate students: the people who dislike challenges think that talent is a fixed thing that you’re either born with or not. The people who relish them think that it’s something you can nourish by doing stuff you’re not good at.

“There was this eureka moment,” says Dweck. She now identifies the former group as people with a “fixed mind-set,” while the latter group has a “growth mind-set.” Whether you are more fixed or more of a grower helps determine how you react to anything that tests your intellectual abilities. For growth people, challenges are an opportunity to deepen their talents, but for “fixed” people, they are just a dipstick that measures how high your ability level is. Finding out that you’re not as good as you thought is not an opportunity to improve; it’s a signal that you should maybe look into a less demanding career, like mopping floors.

The fear of being unmasked as the incompetent you 'really' are is so common that it actually has a clinical name: impostor syndrome.

 

This fear of being unmasked as the incompetent you “really” are is so common that it actually has a clinical name: impostor syndrome. A shocking number of successful people (particularly women), believe that they haven’t really earned their spots, and are at risk of being unmasked as frauds at any moment. Many people deliberately seek out easy tests where they can shine, rather than tackling harder material that isn’t as comfortable.

If they’re forced into a challenge they don’t feel prepared for, they may even engage in what psychologists call “self-handicapping”: deliberately doing things that will hamper their performance in order to give themselves an excuse for not doing well. Self-handicapping can be fairly spectacular: in one study, men deliberately chose performance-inhibiting drugs when facing a task they didn’t expect to do well on. “Instead of studying,” writes the psychologist Edward Hirt, “a student goes to a movie the night before an exam. If he performs poorly, he can attribute his failure to a lack of studying rather than to a lack of ability or intelligence. On the other hand, if he does well on the exam, he may conclude that he has exceptional ability, because he was able to perform well without studying.”

Writers who don’t produce copy—or leave it so long that they couldn’t possibly produce something good—are giving themselves the perfect excuse for not succeeding.

“Work finally begins,” says Alain de Botton, “when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.” For people with an extremely fixed mind-set, that tipping point quite often never happens. They fear nothing so much as finding out that they never had what it takes.

 “The kids who race ahead in the readers without much supervision get praised for being smart,” says Dweck. “What are they learning? They’re learning that being smart is not about overcoming tough challenges. It’s about finding work easy. When they get to college or graduate school and it starts being hard, they don’t necessarily know how to deal with that."

Embracing Hard Work

Our educational system is almost designed to foster a fixed mind-set. Think about how a typical English class works: You read a “great work” by a famous author, discussing what the messages are, and how the author uses language, structure, and imagery to convey them. You memorize particularly pithy quotes to be regurgitated on the exam, and perhaps later on second dates. Students are rarely encouraged to peek at early drafts of those works. All they see is the final product, lovingly polished by both writer and editor to a very high shine. When the teacher asks “What is the author saying here?” no one ever suggests that the answer might be “He didn’t quite know” or “That sentence was part of a key scene in an earlier draft, and he forgot to take it out in revision.”

Or consider a science survey class. It consists almost entirely of the theories that turned out to be right—not the folks who believed in the mythical “N-rays,” declared that human beings had forty-eight chromosomes, or saw imaginary canals on Mars. When we do read about falsified scientific theories of the past—Lamarckian evolution, phrenology, reproduction by “spontaneous generation”—the people who believed in them frequently come across as ludicrous yokels, even though many of them were distinguished scientists who made real contributions to their fields.

“You never see the mistakes, or the struggle,” says Dweck. No wonder students get the idea that being a good writer is defined by not writing bad stuff.

Unfortunately, in your own work, you are confronted with every clunky paragraph, every labored metaphor and unending story that refuses to come to a point. “The reason we struggle with"insecurity,” says Pastor Steven Furtick, “is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.”

Young people are uncomfortable with the unstructured world of work. No wonder so many elite students go into industries with clear boundaries, like finance and consulting.

 

About six years ago, commentators started noticing a strange pattern of behavior among the young millennials who were pouring out of college. Eventually, the writer Ron Alsop would dub them the Trophy Kids. Despite the sound of it, this has nothing to do with “trophy wives.” Rather, it has to do with the way these kids were raised. This new generation was brought up to believe that there should be no winners and no losers, no scrubs or MVPs. Everyone, no matter how ineptly they perform, gets a trophy.
As these kids have moved into the workforce, managers complain that new graduates expect the workplace to replicate the cosy, well-structured environment of school. They demand concrete, well-described tasks and constant feedback, as if they were still trying to figure out what was going to be on the exam. “It’s very hard to give them negative feedback without crushing their egos,” one employer told Bruce Tulgan, the author of Not Everyone Gets a Trophy. “They walk in thinking they know more than they know.”

When I started asking around about this phenomenon, I was a bit skeptical. After all, us old geezers have been grousing about those young whippersnappers for centuries. But whenever I brought the subject up, I got a torrent of complaints, including from people who  have been managing new hires for decades. They were able to compare them with previous classes, not just with some mental image of how great we all were at their age. And they insisted that something really has changed—something that’s not limited to the super-coddled children of the elite.

“I’ll hire someone who’s twenty-seven, and he’s fine,” says Todd, who manages a car rental operation in the Midwest. “But if I hire someone who’s twenty-three or twenty-four, they need everything spelled out for them, they want me to hover over their shoulder. It’s like somewhere in those three or four years, someone flipped a switch.” They are probably harder working and more conscientious than my generation.  But many seem intensely uncomfortable with the comparatively unstructured world of work.  No wonder so many elite students go into finance and consulting—jobs that surround them with other elite grads, with well-structured reviews and advancement.

Today’s new graduates may be better credentialed than previous generations, and are often very hardworking, but only when given very explicit direction. And they seem to demand constant praise. Is it any wonder, with so many adults hovering so closely over every aspect of their lives? Frantic parents of a certain socioeconomic level now give their kids the kind of intensive early grooming that used to be reserved for princelings or little Dalai Lamas.
All this “help” can be actively harmful. These days, I’m told, private schools in New York are (quietly, tactfully) trying to combat a minor epidemic of expensive tutors who do the kids’ work for them, something that would have been nearly unthinkable when I went through the system 20 years ago.  Our parents were in league with the teachers, not us. But these days, fewer seem willing to risk letting young Silas or Gertrude fail out of the Ivy League.

Thanks to decades of expansion, there are still enough spaces for basically every student who wants to go to college. But there’s a catch: Most of those new spaces were created at less selective schools. Two-thirds of Americans now attend a college that, for all intents and purposes, admits anyone who applies. Spots at the elite schools—the top 10 percent—have barely kept up with population growth. Meanwhile demand for those slots has grown much faster, because as the economy has gotten more competitive, parents are looking for a guarantee that their children will be successful. A degree from an elite school is the closest thing they can think of.

So we get Whiffle Parenting: constant supervision to ensure that a kid can’t knock themselves off the ladder that is thought to lead, almost automatically, through a selective college and into the good life.  It’s an entirely rational reaction to an educational system in which the stakes are always rising, and any small misstep can knock you out of the race. But is this really good parenting? A golden credential is no guarantee of success, and in the process of trying to secure one for their kids, parents are depriving them of what they really need: the ability to learn from their mistakes, to be knocked down and to pick themselves up—the ability, in other words, to fail gracefully. That is probably the most important lesson our kids will learn at school, and instead many are being taught the opposite.

source: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/why-writers-are-the-worst-procrastinators/283773/

Stop Procastinating! - follow the 2 minute rule!

Happy New Year Everyone!

But how do we start the new year again? Most of us have a long list of resolutions and promises that we make and hope that after the stroke of midnight on Dec 31st, something magical will happen and we still change..
It's like being a new chance to life again, and having a pen to write yet another 365 page of a brand new empty book!

Now, everyone aspires to do something great and achieve awesome wonders - that includes me!
So thus, I have been scouting the net and stumbled upon a great article that can help boost that!

Here is something practical that we can all follow:

How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the “2-Minute Rule”
by James Clear

Recently, I’ve been following a simple rule that is helping me crush procrastination and making it easier for me to stick to good habits at the same time.
I want to share it with you today so that you can try it out and see how it works in your life.
The best part? It’s a simple strategy that couldn’t be easier to use.
Here’s what you need to know…

 How to Stop Procrastinating With the “2–Minute Rule”

I call this little strategy the “2–Minute Rule” and the goal is to make it easier for you to get started on the things you should be doing.
Here’s the deal…
Most of the tasks that you procrastinate on aren’t actually difficult to do — you have the talent and skills to accomplish them — you just avoid starting them for one reason or another.
The 2–Minute Rule overcomes procrastination and laziness by making it so easy to start taking action that you can’t say no.
There are two parts to the 2–Minute Rule…

Part 1 — If it takes less than two minutes, then do it now.

Part I comes from David Allen’s bestselling book, Getting Things Done.
It’s surprising how many things we put off that we could get done in two minutes or less. For example, washing your dishes immediately after your meal, tossing the laundry in the washing machine, taking out the garbage, cleaning up clutter, sending that email, and so on.
If a task takes less than two minutes to complete, then follow the rule and do it right now.

Part 2 — When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.

Can all of your goals be accomplished in less than two minutes? Obviously not.
But, every goal can be started in 2 minutes or less. And that’s the purpose behind this little rule.

Sounds easy enough? It only takes 2 minutes to move into a better quality life that you can be proud of:)

The "Now" - Coming out from the comfort zones and relization to change unto greatness

Whoa!!
Talking about finding things in the most unexpected places
I think I have finally found meaning and a very very sharp perspective of my life
I can totoally relate to this stuff that I have found..this article blew my mind!
And here I was looking for "travel tips" when I stumbled upon http://www.mavericktraveler.com
and gave me a sense of perspective of "now". 
Please read this article, all credits goes to him!

===

Several months ago, I met up with an old friend. Like many of the great men with which I consider myself lucky to cross paths in life, I met him overseas — in Brazil. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that he was also traveling alone, brazenly grabbing the things that he wanted, whether they were fine women or crazy adventures, all while running a successful passive-income business on the side.

So, when I returned back to the States several months ago, he was one of the very few people whom I notified of my arrival. He’s one of the few guys in the world I can fully relate with and trust; an interesting and cool guy who’s always either hustling 18 hours per day, planning, building and launching a new business or looking for adventures in the most random corners of the globe. (I have other friends, but I’ve long learned that a one-sided conversation where I tell them my countless adventures and they just keep nodding isn’t a fun way to spend an evening.)

The plan was to have a couple of beers and reminisce about our old times. We met up and immediately began talking about where it all began: Brazil. After that, he told me about his recent two month trip to Colombia’s Caribbean coast. I told him about my European adventures, and what a fantastic time I had living in The Baltics this past summer. He was enthusiastic, asking me lots of questions and even making a few mental notes about going to Europe in the near future.

But, then something happened. We ran out of things to say about our past travels. We ran out of things to say about our future travels. Right there, in a split second, he did something completely unexpected: he switched to the present. He began talking about things that he was doing now. I fully expected that our whole evening would be spent talking about that night in Rio, or that night in Belo Horizonte, or that night in São Paulo, but as far as he was concerned, the past was firmly in the past. He was now busy living a new chapter in his life, and that chapter was right now and right here in New York, not inside the samba clubs of Brazil or the salsa clubs of Colombia.
Living in the present isn’t a bad thing, but what caught me completely off guard was my complete unpreparedness for the topic at hand. I felt like a high school student who got caught in surprise pop quiz. I felt ambushed. I didn’t know how to react. Truth is, I didn’t have any plans for the present. I didn’t know what I was going to do. In fact, that was probably one of the reasons why I really came out to meet him; maybe I was seeking some kind of guidance, some kind of support, someone to point me in the right direction. And here he was, a guy who always got shit done, a guy who always had all the answers.

I was searching for answers to my own emptiness and lack of direction (living in the past was the most obvious hint that I didn’t have anything better in the present). I was still mentally in that glorious old world and didn’t know how to adjust to this new one. Maybe I didn’t want to adjust at all. After all, in that other world I was free from planning concrete goals; I could eat, drink, and flirt with gorgeous women all day, every day. It was truly a carefree life. But in this world, I needed to get serious. I needed to set direction for the future. I needed to create my own reality. But where do I start? How do I bootstrap myself out of the past and into the present?

The breakthrough came to me one evening while I debated whether to go for a run or not. Running, as far as I’m concerned, is a boring, monotonous activity, but it’s also the easiest and most effective way to engage in a vigorous physical exercise, especially given today’s sedentary lifestyles. There were many times in the past where I made all kinds of excuses, but something about that particular evening was different. It suddenly hit me like a ball of lightning that I’m a healthy young man with two legs and two arms. I’m not sick. I don’t have a fever. I don’t have bad knees. I don’t have a heart 
condition. I don’t have a lung condition. Physically, I have everything I need to be able to run any distance I wanted. The only thing that was holding me back was laziness (which was my way of saying that my time was better spent sitting on the couch and watching a mindless TV sitcom than investing in my own mind and body). Maybe when I’m 80 years old with bad knees, I wouldn’t be able to physically run anymore, but now as a perfectly healthy young man, not being able to take advantage of what I possessed hit me as the most illogical thing in the world. I went out and ran the longest distance in many years.

That evening sparked a revolution in my mind, forcing me to scrutinize and reexamine my thought processes and actions. An image popped into my head; I began to see myself as a nation which was blessed with countless natural resources, but didn’t have any form of government nor a well functioning economy to convert those resources into wealth. Imagine a country that has within its borders all the major raw materials: oil, wheat, sugar, copper, silver, cocoa, ore, diamonds but doesn’t have the machinery to turn those resources into goods or doesn’t even bother to trade these commodities with other nation. I realized that everything I needed was already in my possession, and that all I now had to do was begin extracting, harvesting, processing, marketing and exporting them.

I had everything: experience, health, intelligence, intimate knowledge of various subjects, but yet I was still looking outward for some magical potion that could somehow fill an obscure void and give me that little push into the right direction. That’s why I began seeking salvation and guidance from someone else, namely my friend. But how could my friend ever help? How could he give an answer to such an open-ended question as to what to do with my life? He was just another guy, a guy just like myself, who only differed from me in his unstoppable tenacity to implement his raw ideas into money-generating assets. We were like two countries with the exact same resources, except his country had a stable government and a robust economy and mine didn’t. He had guts, I didn’t.

Next, came the second part of the puzzle: how to stop looking for some opaque, nebulous, open-ended salvation from others, and instead be more concrete with what I need and how I should go about getting those needs satisfied. (The part about being more concrete with my needs made me immediately remember a couple of one-itis’es in my youth when I idolized women without being forward with what I really wanted: hardcore, monkey sex.)

Since people are inherently egoistic, I quickly realized that in order to get what I wanted, I need to give them something that they wanted in return. Successful people are successful precisely because they spend their time on things that yield them the maximum possible return. Doing lots of things for free would bankrupt them quickly. (I doubt my friend would meet me again if only to reminisce about some distant past that’s no longer relevant.)
The key to getting what you want is figuring out how to use what you already have in ways that are beneficial to someone else (who, in turn, has what you need). The important point is that you can only begin bartering with others once you’ve done a complete inventory of your present stock. It’s only after you know the true value of your own raw materials, will you be able to trade them profitably with other parties.

Armed with this understanding, I began to view myself as an efficient factory with two assembly lines: assembly line of my “outputs” (things that I’m able to synthesize and “sell”: my knowledge, experience, intelligence, skills, etc) and assembly line of my “inputs” (things that I’m “buying”: what I need/want/desire from others). Essentially, I realized that my success lay in seeing and presenting myself as a flexible microeconomic unit which could efficiently generate output while simultaneously processing input, instead of some insolvent opaque matter that only sought very abstract things like the meaning of life and salvation from everyone it interacted with. I even visualized myself being composed off various gears, like the ones you find inside a mechanical watch. The gears are constantly turning, with one gear spinning another, and so on.

Whereas before I was like a land blessed with natural resources but with no government and no functioning economy, now I was an efficiently running factory, producing things that can be used to get what I want from others.
I ultimately realized that no one — not my good friend, not my parents, not the bartender, not my boss, not some cute girl, not even The Pope — had The Answer. I was asking the wrong questions. Everyone, after all, is simply trying to get by with what they have. Nobody has the answers to very abstract questions like the meaning of life. Construct a more specific question — the more specific, the better — and now finding someone with the answer is a much simpler task.

It all made sense. At the core, life is based on inter-human barter. I sell, he buys. I buy, she sells.

As time went on, I began to observe my environment in a completely new way, as though I was suddenly graced with x-ray vision. I began to see and feel the intricacies of each situation, no matter how simple or complex. I started noticing that certain people always magically get what they want, no matter where they are and what they are doing. But I’ve also noticed other people who are always stagnant, lost, confused, and forever struggling, as though the answers to their problems lie outside their realm; for, they are always seeking something, be it understanding, support, salvation, sympathy, empathy, compassion, or pity from someone else. If they only knew the right place to look.

Lesson C: C O N F I D E N C E

You know...I think after so long I have finally stumbled across something 
The key to conduct and run a business is not what products  or services you have
I have found that in the beginning I have just scratched my head to figure out a ingenious need of the people, to see what kind of amazing product or wonderful service that I could wow my potential future clients...
And I thought to myself "This is what is needed to rocket up in the business world! - Imma a Genius!"

BUT...after much self-searching and sitting under the feet of Jesus, the only thing that is needed...to start anything, business or whatever is this. The big "C"

CONFIDENCE

Without this "C", life ain't nothing. You gotta catch life by the "balls". Keep Life surprised at all times! 

In a way,  life is like a girl that is waiting to be impressed by the guy. Life is like the crowd of people that you are eagerly awaiting to pitch your presentation to. Life is like the feeling of when the guy who fucked with you and was caught by surprised when you gathered the courage to plant that bombshell punch across his face.It's the spontaneous feeling when you just jump into a bull fight - just to get a rush of feelings!

Yay - I have gotten this, and this is a stage when I will have to do anything and anything to grow and gain the confidence..even if I dont feel "safe" or "comfortable" about it. 
NOW hear this out carefully. What I had just mention doesn't mean crazy un-calculated risk. It's not the crazy risk of standing in front of the train and expect to laugh about it later and not to get crushed and smashed in. Understand this. YOU WILL DIE. Do it seasonably and with common sense
and you will live! 
My gawd, 

YOU WILL LIVE!

This heart of mine

Broken 

I am so broken

My heart is in pieces

This heart of mine

I boast of its innocence when I see this dark world

Never would I thought of hate and jelousy

Until I had encounter it myself

 

How other praised me for a heart of gold

Gentle as a dove, giving as a waterfall

Whatever I have, I never keep away

from those who need it more.

 

But this heart has been abused!

What was once a white sheet has now been thorn

It's whiteness is now murky

Because of the filth it has witness and felt

Oh it bleeds of pain

It bleeds with unbelief

It bleeds of dispare

It is humbled and shamed

Of things it thought it once knew

That white things are actually dark black things

 

This heart has poured out love before

After being stabbed and cheated

It still wants to love

How I hate this heart of mine

Can't it understand

People are evil!

Their intentions are filth and full with hidden motives

Their agenda is unending and are never satisfied

 

This heart just wants to love

And make peace

But others are for war and destruction

They feed on your distruction and want to

laugh at your hopelessness

 

Why would they care?

They don't care at all!

Cheated, lied to and betrayed

Things that I never dreamed of

 

I dreamed of a world where I can give everyone a hug

And everybody just had good intentions and want to achieve something great for the world

And for themselves

I dream of a world of comfort

Where the sun will blanket their days

And the moon to fill their nights with comfort

I dreamed of a world where there is food for the hungry

And smiles and hugs for the broken hearted

Where people love and care for each other

If not so,

Maybe even to their own family and neighbors

 

Screw this world!

It is really not like that!

My dreams are as childish as myself

I realize what a fool I have been!

What to trust and whom I loved are purely rubbish!

Everything I did - waisted

Everything they did - a lie

What do I do anymore?

Where can I go?

Can I trust my own steps?

Can I trust anyone?

 

The one who cheated me - free as a dove!

Wears a face of an angel

The one who got cheated - abused and grows in self loath and hate

 

I hate this heart of mine!

I want to smash it to pieaces!

Why do I feel this way!

Why won't it learn?

 

I see the broken I want to touch it

So it can feel warmth and loved

But it bites back and I get burned

And it burns in me and it burns me

So deep I grow and shy away

In regret I shout and scream

And yet tomorrow when I see another

My heart just bleeds for them!

 

Stupid foolish heart of mine

Stupid mind of mine

Can't I see forward?

Can't I know?

Should I know better?

Why can't I move away?

Why can't this go away?

Why does it bother me to help and care?

Why must I be moved to do something?

 

I walked around the places of where I was once found

I seek consolation and maybe comfort of familiarity

Maybe coming here will heal something

Maybe there is an answer here

Maye healing can be found

I don't know

I really am unsure of anything anymore

 

Dream: Directions and Paths

I had a dream before waking up. It seems that the word for me was,

"if you ever loose sight of where your going,

look back to the past and remember why you came"

 

You can get good insight of direction and judge the situation well.

 

I guess I was very confused when I went to sleep,

My body was so tired yet my heart was anxious,

I couldn't sleep till the early hour of the morning as I had so much

Load of throughs that ran through my mind like the early traffic of 8.45 am

Where am I going?

Why am I doing this?

Where is my direction?

Which way should I go?

I am at a cross road,

Right or left?

North or south?

Vertical vs horizontal?

Do I swim like the fish in the deep sea?

Or do I sore like an eagle in the sky?

 

Do I plant my trees overlooking the morning sea,

Or do I root it in the dusky mountains?

Do I immerse with Informational Technology,

Or do I submit to the call of Arts?

Do I strive for the Mercedes Benz

Or that Audi car

Or should I get that proton saga?

 

Yet the sweet presence that is with me,

Told me that he doesn't see me as what people might say,

Who's to say who I am,

That tops the ranking of opinion over the one who created me?

Yes, all I hear is their voice,

Voice of people in the world,

Telling me what to do,

Deceit and hidden motives, agendas and plans

that underline their most concern voices,

But I come to that sound place,

That place of which I can hear His voice,

Holy Spirit is moving,

My physical ears can't seem to hear,

Any audible voice,

But the ears of my heart,

Rejoice for I have heard the voice if salvation,

And it's speakings and teachings for me!

 

Today it came in a dream,

Before I awoke and before I awake,

Half in my deep slumber,

Before I pollute my ears with the world again,

Sweet sweet directions,

Conforming and affirmation,

So ever assuring and soothing,

My word today was:

 

"if you ever loose sight of where your going,

look back to the past and remember why you came"

And I looked,

Pondered,

Even wondered,

The real core reasons,

I detached all the hidden motives,

Agendas and dark plans in my heart,

And looked at the innocents,

Of pure reasons of my intentions,

For I have come to know true love,

A force that fills my empty void,

To filly my empty eye sockets,

To walk in supernatural lights,

Mids' the natural tangible darkness,

Mike Cheong