The everyday events of life affect our thoughts, our
thoughts in turn affect our mind which shapes our entire lives and controls our
attitude towards life. Because of this chain reaction—cause and effect—we may
find it difficult to live up to our potential in life.
Our attitude towards life in general is not
steadfast; never constant. We dilly-dally, we falter, we fall and often times
we give up on too many things. We give ourselves tons of excuses why could
never achieve what we first set out to achieve, we point out the obstacles
instead of the way out the obstacles. Our hearts race and our palms becomes sweaty,
we throw-up on opportunities life gives us because of our nervousness and doubt.
We fall hook-line-and-sinker.
Despite the ups and downs though, we still have this
perfect picture of ourselves painted deep in the layers of our subconscious.
The image is a painting of ourselves at our apex. In this image we are perfect,
flawless; we’ve achieved all that we set out in life to achieve both materially
and spiritually. No matter how bad we are injured we have this image stuck in
our mind day in day out. And like anyone who is obsessed, we would do anything
to get the object of our obsession, therefore the image acts as a motivator—it becomes
our drive, the adrenaline that gets our heart beating. But how can we achieve
our dream? How can we turn that image buried deep inside our minds into reality
with our present habit of fallowing?
How can we become the man of our dreams, when our
present character could be compared to a farmer whose dream is to fill up his
basket with fruits he sees on his way home, but carries a basket with holes
under it? The more he adds into the basket the more the basket takes away from
him. The only way for the farmer to achieve his goal would be for him to stop
and buy another basket or patch up the one he’s got. The same thing applies to
our lives, although it’s good to make mistakes and learn from them; although it’s
good to rise after falling, if we continue to fall and to rise, if we continue
to make mistakes and learn from them (especially when they are the same
mistakes) then we would become like the farmer that puts his fruits into a
basket with holes. We would not achieve our goals and if peradventure we do, it
would be at a later time.
What is the solution?
The solution would be for us to stop and search
ourselves. Like the farmer we have to patch our baskets, to find the hole
therein and seal them up. We have to ask ourselves some questions and provide answers.
We have to conduct a soul search and annihilate our weaknesses.
We begin by asking ourselves questions like, ‘what
are the most common mistakes I make that has great impact on my goals?’, ‘how
often do I make these mistakes and how do I put an end to them?’, ‘what have I learnt
from my past mistakes and how do I apply the lessons I’ve learned in order to
avoid future mistakes?’
When we begin to provide answers to these questions
and many more and apply the answers we get, we would become the man or woman of
our dreams faster than we ever imagined.
Remember: it is better to run constantly, than to
run, fall, stand up and run again. In other words, we steadfast.
