 You've heard that ol' saying, "Education pays." As someone who is big on education (heck, I'm a teacher with two college degrees), I thoroughly believe that the more education you have, the better off you are.
But, when I say "education pays," I'm not talking about in a monetary sense. I'm talking about in a personal development sense. Back in the "slave days" of early America (1700s), it was illegal to teach blacks how to read -- in fact, you could be executed if you did! If blacks knew how to read:
Soon enough, you'd have a bunch of slaves revolting because they would learn that there is a better way of life that slavery couldn't offer. Those who made the best changes for themselves were very educated. No, this didn't mean that they went to college. These people simply learned to read and kept reading...and reading...and reading until they decided that they could do much better in life. In fact, your current state in life, whether good or bad, is mostly due to how much you educate yourself. Think about someone who HATES to read -- except for maybe the newspaper and Yahoo! gossip. How far you think that person would get in life? Not very far! Think about the person who LOVES to read. How far would this person get? Only as far as he or she wants. You see, the person who is always learning knows what his or her options are in life. Should that person stay in a bad state of life, it wasn't because that person didn't know any options. But the person who chooses not to learn doesn't know what his or her options are in life. And if you don't know what your options are, then you'd be living life by default. You would have no control over where your life goes. You'd be like a sailboat without motor, going wherever the wind takes you. I don't know how many times I've spoken to people about all the stuff they could do with their skills and to have them look at me in disbelief. They truly didn't know all of their options, and they didn't know because they didn't educate themselves! Again, this is not about money. This is about personal development. The more you learn, the better off of a person you could be -- and often times, improving who you are could lead to more monetary gain. Seek knowledge! Always read! Everyday, keep finding better ways to go about life. Know what your options in life are. The more stuff you feed your mind, the more opened doors you'd see.
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One time when teaching a BodyPump class at my gym, I told the class, "It's not about how many classes you take. It's about what you do in those classes."
Many gym-goers who are trying to lose weight want to do as many fitness classes as they can nearly everyday, PLUS they want to do extra exercise activities on their own. These folks kill themselves to drop a few pounds, but they end up getting little to NO results. You can't possibly do your BEST in all those classes. Since you can't do your best, then you won't get the desired results. Instead of doing a bunch of stuff that really don't get them anywhere, they should just focus on doing a FEW classes and maximizing their activities in those classes. Those who get the BEST weight-loss results are the ones who put in their BEST in a FEW activities -- not those who put in mediocrity in MANY activities. The same thing applies to other aspects in our lives. Instead of being busy with a bunch of activities, we need to be EXCEPTIONAL in one or two activities.
Think about your goals as baggage. The more goals you have, the more they weigh you down. You can't move too fast if you're loaded with too much baggage. But once you start dropping some of those goals, the weight gets lighter and lighter and you could move with speed! Or in other words, if you want to hit ONE goal, you need to drop two other goals. If you want to hit TWO goals, you need to drop the other five goals that you have. As long as you are focused on a FEW things in life, you don't have to work so hard everyday just to get nowhere. How many of you have made a bunch of New Year's Resolutions just to accomplish NONE of them? That's because you were trying to do too much. If you only had one or two resolutions, you could have accomplished them! Don't be busy doing a bunch of stuff. Busy yourself with one or two things and be EXCEPTIONAL in those things. The less goals you have, the better your chances would be to hit those goals. But if you load your plate with too many goals, you won't accomplish anything. Yes, LESS is always better -- unless we're talking about your paycheck! If you fill up your car with gas, would your car run better? Probably not, and if it did, you wouldn't notice anyway. Your car runs just the same on FULL as it did on a quarter tank.
But what would happen if you decide NOT to put any gas in your car and just drive? Well, you might be one of those folks you see in the middle of a busy street with the hazard lights on! It would be silly to think that you would get some noticeable results by putting more gas in the car. Just like it's silly to think that you would see noticeable results by:
But just stop doing one of those things, and you'll quickly see the powerful impact it would have on your life! Sometimes, you won't see results. Heck, for the most part, you WON'T see results. But life is less about results and more about MAINTENANCE. You might be doing something right now that doesn't seem to be making a difference. But I bet you that if you were to stop doing what you were doing, you would see a BIG impact! If you do website work like I do, you should understand that your website won't always get you new customers. However, by simply making little updates here and there on your website, it keeps your website active and prevents it from being dropped on Google's search ranks. Once you stop making those little updates, your site would drop so low on Google's search rank that nobody would be able to find it. Now that's a powerful impact that it would have on your business -- in a bad way! Or let's say that you make regular maintenance work on your car. You don't notice your car performing any better than it did since you've first bought it. But stop doing the regular maintenance work on your car, and soon enough, your car would just not start up in the morning -- and you'd be already running late for work! Or, just stop doing the following and see what would happen:
The most powerful thing you could do for yourself is to maintain what you already have. You might not see any results every time you do something, but you WILL be maintaining a good thing. Results happen when you keep maintaining. Think about someone trying to lose weight. That person drops 20 lbs during their first month of getting on a weight-loss program. But during the second month, that person only drops 8 lbs. Then the next month, the person drops only 2 lbs. This person still has 40 more pounds to lose, but now that the weight-loss has slowed down, this person might get discouraged. What if this person stopped doing this weight-loss program? This person would start gaining weight again. Instead of focusing on not getting anymore results, this person should have realized that by continuing with this weight-loss program, he or she was keeping his or her current weight under control. If this person continued with the weight-loss program, he or she would have eventually saw results happening again. You can't get discouraged when you stop seeing results. The most important thing is that you maintain what you have going on. So don't get discouraged because something new isn't happening everyday. Don't think that what you're doing is worthless. Heck, what you're doing could very well be keeping you alive and you don't know it!  When you're just sick and tired of the same ol' thing and have lost the drive to keep going, then you are experiencing something called "burn out."
All of us have experience some form of burn out. We get to the point where we just don't care anymore and we just stop thriving. Maybe you have a bunch of weight to lose, but you just can't seem to lose it. Eventually, you would stop caring about weight-loss. Maybe you've been looking and looking for a good job for years, but it looks like all you could find are jobs that you hate. Eventually, you would just stop looking for that "dream job." But just because you burn out, it doesn't mean that the flame can't be re-ignited. Even though all of us have experienced some form of burn out, some of us have re-kindled a spark. The only way to re-kindle a spark is to look at the old things in a new way. My wife and I have gotten rid of our microwave years ago. We didn't care for it anymore. While there were some disadvantages to our decision, we were happy that we got rid of that thing. All of our food have always come out tasting like rubber anyway. But then, well, my wife started looking a some kitchen products on T.V., since one of her loves is cooking. She saw some products that you could use in a microwave to make food taste like regularly-cooked meals! Man, we're talking about steak, grilled cheese, grilled chicken, etc.! My wife started getting excited about a microwave again. We got a very nice microwave from somebody at church for FREE. Just recently, we've cooked pasta in the microwave with a microwavable cookware, and the noodles tasted great! And I'm talking about REAL noodles, not any T.V. dinner kind of noodles. So, we've looked at the microwave with a brand-new perspective. You see, we get burned out because we keep looking at the same thing with the same perspective. But once we look at those old things with brand new eyes, we would get excited about them again. Okay, so you can't lose the weight. You're sick of trying and you just stopped caring.
That just might make you take a second-look at your fat and encourage you to find better ways of losing it. So, you just can't get your "dream job."
You just might get opportunities on that job that would make you excited. Heck, you might be the new CEO! In life, we would always find ourselves doing the same thing over and over again. That's just life! You can't avoid repetition. However, you could ALWAYS get different perspectives for what you are doing. Let's say you go to a group fitness class because you want to lose weight. Well, you've lost the weight that you've wanted. Is there another reason to keep attending a group fitness class? If you say NO, then you'll get burned out and stop attending group fitness classes. But, if you start thinking about...
Then you'll keep attending those classes! Group fitness classes would no longer be about losing weight. Cleaning your house could get pretty boring, right? You just cleaned your house yesterday, and today it's dirty again! If your sole reason to clean your house is simply to have a clean house, then you'll burn out and keep your house dirty. I hope you have some extra food for the six-legged house guests that would come in! But, if you start thinking about...
Then you'll keep cleaning your house everyday! Having a clean house would no longer be about just having a clean house. If you're already burned out, go ahead and re-spark that flame. You burned out because you keep seeing the same thing with the same perspective. Start looking at everything with a different perspective, and you won't burn out so quickly.
Burn out is NEVER a reason to quit something. When you're burned out, it's because you don't have another perspective. Sometimes, you need a break. Sometimes, you just need to step back and breathe. But you should NEVER quit simply because you're burned out. Guess what? If you quit something because you're burned out, then your pattern in life would be to do something until you burn out. You would keep on quitting. How is it that somebody could do the same thing over and over again for years and years? It's because that person keeps getting a new perspective for what he is doing, despite doing the same thing over and over again. Open your eyes and look for different reasons for what you are doing. Sometimes, you don't need to do anything differently in life: you just need to look at the same thing differently. |
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