Not everyone will understand your journey. That’s fine. It’s not their journey to make sense of. It’s yours.
Author | Photographer | CG Artist | Filmmaker
Excerpt from: What it means to “live life to the fullest”
The key to living life to the fullest is opening your mind and stretching beyond your comfort zone. Because if you’re not being challenged or intentionally pushing yourself beyond the realm of things that are familiar to you, then the experiences you’re having are no longer changing you.
“If we are growing we are always going to be outside our comfort zone.” — John C. Maxwell
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Consistently being on time is the product of proper planning, personal discipline, and a respect for other people’s time.
Making a habit of being late demonstrates none of these things and is often a sign of patchy priorities and selfishness. Habitual lateness says, “My time is more valuable than yours.”
Learn to be reliable and a person of integrity by adopting the discipline necessary be on time.
“Your ability to listen to and take action based on your inner voice — regardless of how you feel, other influences, or temptations you face — is the key to self-mastery.
When you increase (or decrease) your discipline in one area, it increases (or decreases) your discipline in all areas that require self-control.”
The excuses that often accompany one’s tardiness often demonstrate priorities issues and not unavoidable problems leading to inevitable lateness.
Learning to be on time will not only reduce unnecessary stress in your life, it will earn you respect from those who know they can count on you to be reliable.
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Seen in a meme:
“Happiness is a choice.”
No. Happiness is not a choice. Attitude is a choice.
Happiness is not just putting on a fake smile, acting cheerful, and pretending everything is OK.
Sometimes things are not OK. And that’s OK.
That’s life.
Stop for a moment and imagine you’re grieving over having just lost a loved one.
Now imagine someone comes up to you and says, “Happiness is a choice.”
Would you believe it? Would you be able to let go of your grief, shrug your shoulders and say, “Ok, I’ll be happy now” and actually be happy?
Unlikely.
What about depressed people or people who have suffered psychological trauma?
Would you tell a suicidal person that “happiness is a choice” and expect this superficial catchy catchphrase to solve the problem?
Of course not.
Even if attaining a state of happiness was as simple as making a choice, telling someone who isn’t happy that “happiness is a choice” is as about as helpful as teaching someone how to fish by telling them that “there are fish in the sea”.
It isn’t helpful.
Happiness is a byproduct of enjoying the journey of life.
You teach people to achieve happiness by providing them with the tools necessary to deal with life’s challenges in a positive and productive way.
You teach people to achieve happiness by showing them ways to navigate their mental & physical world in such a way that they can enjoy their journey.
And one of the most effective ways to enjoy one’s journey is to adopt a healthy attitude that allows one to appreciate life experiences regardless of one’s circumstances.
Suggesting that being anything but happy all the time isn’t a healthy way to view life.
Making people feel bad about feeling bad isn’t terribly effective at making people happy either.
The fact is, there is nothing inherently wrong with being unhappy.
“The ability to feel a full range of emotions and different states of being is an important part of the human experience.
It’s ok not to be happy. And in many cases, a large part of personal growth is dependent on recognizing when one is not happy and then actively working through it.”
Sometimes that journey will be difficult and life won’t be fair.
Again, that’s life.
“It’s ok to have negative emotions. It’s ok to make mistakes. These are an essential part of life and how we learn. But it’s important to not let these things hold us back or lock us into a cycle of self-pity.
Instead, we can use negative emotions and feelings of discontent as the motivation to initiate positive changes in our lives.”
We may not like everything that happens to us in life and we may not always be happy as a result of what happens, but we can always choose our attitude when dealing with it.
A bad attitude inhibits happiness. And when we are happy, a positive attitude accentuates it.
It’s not happiness that’s a choice, it’s attitude.
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“We actually have as little choice about wanting to become happy as the heart does about pumping blood. We’re incapable of wanting not to become happy. The pursuit of happiness isn’t merely an inalienable right with which we’re endowed or an activity we’re capable of choosing; it’s psychological law we must obey. Even people who appear to want nothing to do with happiness, like those so immersed in self-hatred that their principle aim becomes self-sabotage, will say they haven’t lost their desire for happiness so much as ceased to believe they deserve it” — Alex Lickerman, MD (From: The Undefeated Mind: On the Science of Constructing an Indestructible Self)
Each day you awake, assume something good is going to happen to you.
And if a whole day passes and nothing good happens, realize it’s not that nothing good happened, it’s that you missed it.
Not everything good that happens to you in life comes with bells & whistles attached. Sometimes the good in our lives is composed very simple moments we take for granted.
If you don’t see the good in your day to day life, look more closely.
Because if you’re alive, it’s there.
Good people like to treat people well. Good people especially like to treat people they know are good people well.
If you want to be treated well by those you cross paths with in life, make it your mission to leave people feeling better, not worse, for having come in contact with you.
Be patient with people. Be tolerant. Be generous. Be honest. Be trustworthy. Be kind.
Be a good example of what it means to be a good example.
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“I get so annoyed when people…”
“If this person [performs annoying action], I’m going to respond by [acting badly]….”
Often, when we think things like this, we’re not only setting ourselves up to harbor negativity and carry unnecessary stress, we create triggers for future negative thoughts & feelings.
“I get so annoyed when people…” not only creates the expectation that we will feel annoyed when something we expect to annoy us happens, we essentially give ourselves permission — in advance — to be annoyed when it happens.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And in the worst cases, we take it a step further and use our annoyance as an excuse to behave badly.
“If customer service doesn’t give me the answer I want, I’m going to lose my shit.”
Remember, crossing paths with an idiot is not an excuse to also act like an idiot.
We often deal with situations on automatic pilot and forget that getting annoyed — or at least staying annoyed — is a choice. We don’t have to let the bad behavior of others affect us as much as we often do.
How much more effective it would be if, instead of creating a negative expectation, we created a positive one:
“The next time I encounter something that annoys me, I’m going to handle it in a positive way.”
It’s much easier to handle the negative situations we encounter in life when we expect — or better yet, train ourselves — to deal with them productively.
We certainly don’t have to let the bad behavior of others cause us to act badly or lose our shit in response.
“That guy cut me off, so I’m going to do the same to him. That’ll teach him!”
The “lessons” we often try to teach people by acting badly are often lost on them. Rarely does the recipient of bad behavior respond with, “Wow, you’re right.”
On the contrary, it often provokes more bad behavior and more negativity.
If you want to teach someone a “lesson”, be a role model and set a good example.
Don’t let the bad behavior of others be an excuse to also act badly.
You’ll know you’re on the right track when, if everyone imitated your actions, the world would be a nicer place.
Lead by example.
“Inner Peace begins the moment you choose not to allow another person or event to control your emotions.”
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Are we free if we live our lives in a way that consistently requires the approval of others to be truly happy?
Are we free if we consistently force ourselves to live within the confines of other people’s expectations?
Are we free if we consistently dilute our true selves to make others happy?
Are we free if our emotions and mental state are easily controlled by what others say or do?
Are we free if we cannot consider an opposing point of view without getting emotional or immediately dismissing it because it contradicts our own beliefs?
No.
These are limitations we place on ourselves. They are, quite simply, bad habits.
The good news is that, as habits, we can replace them with better, far more empowering options if we so choose.
It may take work to rewrite years of mental and emotional constraints, but who is in charge of your life?
“When you truly know who you are — and who you are in the process of becoming — you will no longer live in fear of what people say or think about you.”
Whether it’s strong, confident, carefree, independent or all of the above, give yourself the freedom to be as you truly wish to appear to others.
Don’t give power to those who don’t have your best interest in mind. Reclaim the freedom to be your true self by defining your own identity and wrestle back control of your thoughts, feelings, and sense of self-worth from those you have inadvertently given power over you.
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Excerpt from: Not everyone will understand your journey.
“Not everyone will understand your journey. That’s fine. It’s not their journey to make sense of. It’s yours.” — Zero Dean
September 30, 2015:
Today I am truly honored by Quote Investigator (AKA Garson O’Toole), a person whose work I’ve respected for quite some time.
After thorough research, Garson has concluded that I am the author of the often shared, but rarely attributed quote, “Not everyone will understand your journey…“.
Thank you, Garson. It truly is an honor.
…
In 2015, on Facebook alone, “Not everyone will understand your journey…” has been shared with over 15 20 MILLION people …
Which is kind of great. I’m extremely pleased that people like the message so much! The only issue is that it’s being shared without any attribution and often with someone else’s company, logo, and/or website attached.
[From Reddit to Facebook to Pinterest to Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter, this actually happens with many of the things I’ve written, but this is the most popular and also most “dear” to me because it’s so reflective of my personal journey that inspired it.]If you see my work in the wild without proper attribution, it would be tremendously helpful to me and those who might appreciate some of the other things I’ve written if you mentioned the source.
~ Thank you.
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” — Aristotle
If you don’t ever read, watch, or do anything that challenges you or makes you uncomfortable, you aren’t growing, you’re simply maintaining the status quo.
If all you do is surround yourself with people that think, look, and act exactly like you do, you’re willfully putting limits on what you are capable of learning, experiencing, and seeing in the world.
If you live in such a way that it inconveniences others who cross your path or condemns those who think or act differently than you do, this isn’t “living life to the fullest”, meeting one’s fullest potential, or adding value to the world.
Quite the contrary. It’s exemplifying ignorance & intolerance and stunting one’s growth.
Minds are like parachutes. They serve their purpose best when they’re open and being used.
“The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.” — E.B. White
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It has been said that discipline is just choosing between what you want now and what you want most. But knowing what you truly want and why you want it can be as important as the discipline necessary to attain it.
Without a genuine internal desire to accomplish a very specific “something”, it can not only be difficult to do what is necessary meet a goal, it can be difficult to simply find the motivation to get started.
While motivation from external sources such as inspirational quotes, self-help books, or motivational speakers may temporarily set fire to our desire to achieve, these fires are often quick to burn out.
Zig Ziglar said, “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing — that’s why we recommend it daily.”
This is a clever saying, but it’s more of a crutch for motivation than an elegant long-lasting solution.
As I’ve said before…
“You can read a million motivational sayings to pump yourself up — or echo them to others until you’re blue in the face — but that won’t change anything unless you take action and consistently change your behavior.”
This isn’t to say there is anything wrong with using external motivation as a tool. It works. But the size of the self-help industry is an indication that external motivation doesn’t last.
When one’s motivation is dependent on external sources, the moment those sources are absent is the moment one’s motivation begins to fade. This is because motivation is a state of mind.
And if a particular state of one’s mind is dependent on the availability of things it doesn’t always have control over, it can be difficult to attain the state of mind associated with those things when they’re unavailable.
This is why it’s important to learn how to develop the mental discipline necessary to be one’s own source of motivation.
“Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.” — Stephen R. Covey
When one is able to motivate themselves, they light a kind of fire that can burn indefinitely. And for these kinds of fires to be set alight, one must know what they want and why they want it — even if what one wants is to simply to seek pleasure from something or the satisfaction of accomplishment.
It has been said that 90 percent of success is showing up. I disagree.
I’d say, the largest contributor to success is knowing exactly what you want. The next largest is having the proper motivation to achieve it. And the remaining amount, roughly 20 percent, is doing what is necessary to get results.
(This also complements The Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule) which states that, in most endeavors, roughly 20% of the work produces 80% of the results.)
Along the way to achieving whatever it is you desire, make sure your mindset is conducive to creating positive thought processes that reinforce your efforts.
Because until one changes the way they think, they will continue to follow familiar patterns in life. An example of this is when people start new endeavors with enthusiasm (or make New Year’s resolutions), but then fail to find the motivation necessary to follow through after obstacles arise.
The fire you light within yourself must not only burn hot enough to stay alight during turbulent times, it mustn’t be dependent on things you have no control over.
“Wanting something is not enough. You must hunger for it. Your motivation must be absolutely compelling in order to overcome the obstacles that will invariably come your way.” — Les Brown
Create and maintain your own motivation by having a clear understanding of what you want and why you want it and then reinforce your positive thought process to achieve it until it becomes not just a habit, but a way of life.
“Everything you want should be yours: the type of work you want; the relationships you need; the social, mental, and aesthetic stimulation that will make you happy and fulfilled; the money you require for the lifestyle that is appropriate to you; and any requirement that you may (or may not) have for achievement or service to others. If you don’t aim for it all, you’ll never get it all. To aim for it requires that you know what you want.” — Richard Koch
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