Each and every day, there are people all around the country and world who are living their dreams. Millionaires are made every day. Families are experiencing tremendous relationships. People are becoming more and more healthy. Life-long learners are growing intellectually and improving their chances for success.
The fact is that living the life of your dreams is possible. People prove that every day. Someone somewhere is going to get rich, get healthy and improve their life. My recommendation is this: Let it be you!
Have you ever wanted to make more money? Have you ever looked at someone who has money and wished that it could be you? People think about getting wealthy all of the time, when only a small percentage actually does. But any of the masses could. Someone is going to start a business. Someone is going to make a great investment. Someone is going to begin the journey to great wealth. So why not let it be you?
Someone is going to decide to improve their relationships. Someone is going to enjoy love with their family. Someone is going to schedule some meaningful time with their friends. So why not let it be you? Someone is going to go back to school to improve their life. Someone is going to become a life-long learner. Someone is going to set a goal to read a book. So why not let it be you? Someone is going to look in the mirror and see that they need to lose a little weight and they will make the decision to become healthy. Someone will join an aerobics class and improve their health. Why not let it be you?
I think that by now you get the point: Every day, people are improving their lives. Whether you do or not doesn’t matter to those who do. They are going to do it, regardless. It is simply a matter of a decision being made. Let that person be you!
The first and most important is to make a commitment to work on yourself. Are you going to improve or stay the same? No matter what you have achieved, you are at a certain point right now. What you have achieved in the past is fine, but it doesn’t make a difference for the future. The decision about what you will become is made each day and every day. Each day someone is making the decision to better him or herself. Let that person be you!
The second is to make a plan. Once you have decided to become better you will have to have a plan. It doesn’t have to be a long, intricate plan. It can be simple. Save a naira a day. Walk a mile a day. Read an article a day. That is a simple plan with achievable goals. Someone is going to develop a plan that will take them into the future of their dreams. Let it be you!
The third is to begin to act. All of the great ideas, without action, become stale and useless. The key to turning dreams into reality is action. People who have great ideas are a dime a dozen. People who act on their dreams and ideas are the select few, but they are the ones who gain the wealth, wealth and wisdom that is available. Someone will act today. Let it be you.
My encouragement to you is to stop looking at others who live the good life, wishing that you were as well, and instead begin to commit to your improvement, develop a plan and act on it. Someone is going to. Let it be you!
CHANGE YOUR PACE
All of us have experienced at one time or another the feeling of renewal that comes from a change of pace. We may be walking or driving along slowly, and something happens that makes us speed up. New sensations occur; new thoughts cross the mind. We become more alert. Or if we have been walking breathlessly beyond our pace there is a feeling of relief, even repose, in slowing down.
The pace that kills is the pace that never changes; frequent change of pace will keep us from tedium on one hand or apoplexy on the other. For most of us a change of pace means slowing down, but in many activities we should speed up. We may walk and talk too fast but think and work too slowly.
Everyone in journalism knows that as a deadline approaches the reporter, the make-up artist, the people on the copy desk all turn out better work in half the time it takes when there is no pressure. The acceleration releases latent powers. I have seen people, when there’s time, bone for an hour over a title or a heading….conjuring up, as the slow mind at work will, dozens that are no good. But as the last hour approaches, when there is no time to dally, their minds click and the captions come in a flash. It is not mere speed that does the trick, but speed that follows deliberation.
Experts in charge of reading clinics point out that the best way to get something out of the printed page is to read it fast, to set about to see how quickly it can be intelligently covered, because the mind may wander when reading is too slow. The chances are that you should change your reading pace from one of leisurely inspection to one of concentrated, swift consideration. On the other hand, if you have allowed yourself to become a hit-and-run reader, you may need to give more time. No one pace is adequate in reading. There are books to be read hastily and others to be read with loving delay.
I have a cousin whose slowness is the despair of his teachers, not to mention his kin. At the age of nine he gets his work done in his own good time. The other morning his mum suggested with wisdom that he write a letter before going to school. His other letters had taken as much as a day, off and on, to compose. In this case, his time was limited to 20 minutes in which to write his grandmother everything he could think of. The result was the best letter he had ever done. It was the change of pace that did it, by putting emphasis upon the preciousness of time and the importance of using it to maximum effect. We’ve been kidding ourselves too long with the notion that we are rushed to death. We are rushed with the wrong things. In these we ought to slow down, but in others speed up. “Slow and easy” is no motto for an interesting life, as some contend. Indeed slowness may be a deterrent; often a person can get further with a difficult job by plunging into it full steam.
Not infrequently a change of pace is in itself a means of learning. Thus a change in tempo may increase enjoyment whether or not it improves our work. If you are doing something tedious, it may become fun if done at a changed speed. Many tasks….to mention only cleaning house and writing letters….are oppressive in part at least because they are time-consuming. But if we make them an affair of dashing cavalry our attitude changes. The job becomes an adventure, or a contest at least. For, oddly enough, a job done at different speeds is not the same job at all. The motions and emotions connected with it are different. Many people who pine to change their jobs need only to change the pace with which they do their jobs….mix up their work and get variety into the tempo.
Change of pace is like what we call second wind; in moments of fatigue it sets up a fresh current of nervous energy. If you have been methodically moving around the house, making beds, dusting, sweeping, try shifting the flow of your energy into a different rhythm. Or in the office, vary rush typing with work at slower speed. As you work at any fatiguing task you’ll find that change of tempo rewards you, like the second wind, with a glowing sense of power.
Nowhere in the simple acts of daily life does a change in pace make more difference than in eating. Most of us gulp our food, and we miss half the fun of eating. I was a fast eater, and so tried imagining that I was a slow-motion picture of myself. Then I really tasted for the first time foods I had been eating half-consciously all my life. Since in my work I have to talk a lot, I have fallen into the habit of talking rapidly. Lately I decided to alternate rapid speech with periods of slowing down, weighing each word, and letting its implications have full play. And this, I find, keeps the auditor’s attention on edge, and makes me phrase more clearly the ideas I want to convey. But it does more….it affords me a new sense of confidence.
Haven’t you, on the other hand, known dreary, hesitant people who ought to try talking fast for a change? While they fumble vaguely with facts, ideas and phrases, you’d like to jolt them into thinking a sentence swiftly through before they began it, so that words would follow one another with logical sequence and zip. Deliberate speeding up would not only add tremendously to their conversational effectiveness, but would also transform them by giving them a new and more sparkling personality. In our method of thinking, above all, change of pace can be invaluable. The almost universal curse of worry is simply thought slowed down to a stumbling and circuitous walk. To think through and settle once for all a problem in the shortest possible time, and to act briskly and daringly on our decision, is to annihilate the problem of worry.
On the other hand, on busy days, try slowing down instead of speeding up. Linger over breakfast; pretend that you have a lifetime for the many things which must be crowded in before night. Live at slow motion. Instead of racing, make yourself stroll. And, paradoxically, when evening comes you will have actually done more work than if you had pushed yourself. To live all one’s life at largo would be deadly boring. The symphony you like or the musical composition that stirs you is neither fast nor slow throughout; it has as much variety in tempo as in mood. It is this in part that keeps your interest keyed to the theme.
If we are hectic and rushed it is not necessary to pull up stakes, move to the country and drive a horse to change the pace of living. It’s not the city or business that wears us out; it’s our response to it, our meeting life head-on without slowing down or speeding up. So if you are hitting a terrific pace, slow down. You don’t have to slow down forever: it’s the change you need. Or if you are going too slowly, if you are not alert but stodgy and graceless in your living, “step on it” a while. What’s tedious in one speed may be delightful in another.
LIVING OUT LOUD
I am now receptive to the idea that it is time for me to stop whispering and to start living out loud. Stop hiding! Stop holding yourself back and playing yourself down! Stop worrying about how you look and what people are saying. Stop listening to what people are saying and trying to find out if they are whispering about you. Stop waiting for someone to tell you that you are okay or to make you feel special. Life is special! It is a special gift. This is your life! Now take your gift and live it out in the open! Decide today that you are going to live out loud!
Living out loud means having the courage to be exactly who you are without apology. It means admitting your mistakes without beating yourself up. It means not taking who you are and what you have for granted. Release all shame! Release all guilt! You cannot live out loud if you are hiding behind what was. Living out loud means focusing on what is, right now, and that is you! To live out loud means showing up as your authentic self, without your makeup. It means acknowledging your shortcomings and celebrating your strengths. Living out loud means broadcasting your needs, your likes and your dislikes as they relate to your fears and frustrations. It means that you let people know exactly who you are and expect them to be as thrilled as you are about who you are.
In order to live out loud you must have faith in yourself and in the process of life. You must have principles you live by and standards by which you can govern and gauge yourself. Most important, in order to live out loud you must love yourself enough to tell yourself and everyone else the absolute truth about you. When you can do that, you can live out loud and be very proud about what the world will hear about you. Until today, you may have been living your life in a whisper. Just for today, take one step toward pumping up your volume. Stand up in yourself! Stand up and be yourself! VGKT3K��w3�R�
