Happy Quest

The great Plato asked, how does one become brave? The answer is by doing brave things. It is important to note that Plato didn’t say "when you feel brave, or when you are unafraid." That is because a person who says he is not afraid of anything is afraid of telling the truth!

Bravery or courage is not quite the equivalent of absence of fear. This is an important thing to know and remember. I am writing this article because I’ve heard too many people with unrealized potentials who tell me they don’t have the courage or are not brave enough.  Wanting to be able to do something but not feeling brave enough to take the risk can be a great cause of unhappiness. People who are overwhelmed by their fear of failure or rejection are the subjects of that saying "its better to try and fail than not to try at all. Please note that I said "overwhelmed by fear" rather than afraid of failure. The reason, those who risk failing are not unafraid of failure. I do not remember anytime in my life when I am not afraid of failure, I am always afraid of being called a fool or  of  being rejected. But my fear of regretting not being able to discover what my  real purpose is in this life far outweighs my fear of anything else. I would bet that those who make it in this life have fears of their own. The difference is that they do not let fear command them.

So, how again can we become brave or courageous? By doing brave things. Here are my suggestions:

1. Know what you’ve always wanted to accomplish for your self.
2. Know the hindrances that keep you from pursuing it.
3. Know your fears, recognize them.
4. Accept that you could fail and that you should prepare yourself for it.
5. Do what you need to do despite the fear.
6. When you fail, accept it gracefully, take a look back and see how you can do better next time.
7. Try, try again, remember, quitters never win.

Remember, the journey is sometimes more important than the destination!

Be happy!

Sometimes, not all the time, but a lot of times, I could liken other people to a wall, and us a person playing squash. The amount of strength we exert in throwing the ball to the wall determines the amount speed by which the ball will be returned to us. If we throw real hard, the ball will go back with a great deal of speed. If we throw the ball softly, it will go back softly. People react to us in much the same way that we behave towards them. I remember this story that I read somewhere about a school principal, some teachers and a class. The principal called a group of teachers and told them that they were chosen by the school to work on a special group of students because the school believes that they are outstanding teachers and that they are expected to do well in this experiment.  The principal told the teachers that the class they will handle is composed of students with outstanding intelligence and that they expect the teachers to do their best in ensuring that the students get the best education from them. The teachers excitedly went to work with the students devising everything they can think of to help the students succeed. All their efforts bore fruit as the students succeeded in achieving their scholastic goals. Now comes the good part. After the experiment, the principal called the teachers to tell them that it is not true that they are considered because they are outstanding, they were randomly chosen and so were the students. The big question here is what made the teachers and the students’ succeed?  Our impression of ourselves and our impression of others affect the way we deal with people. When we think well of ourselves, we develop confidence, when we think well of other people, we develop confidence in them. They feel the confidence and become confident of themselves. By becoming self confident, we become more effective in helping others, when we show confidence in other people, they become more confident of themselves and help other people better including ourselves. I would bet that a negative self impression and negative impression of others do the same thing in complete reverse.

So, what is the message of the day? Believe in yourself and believe in others. Give yourself and others a chance to be good. Yes it’s true, you may fail, in fact at some point, you will fail. The same holds true for other people, this goes with the fact that we are only human. But if we continue to believe that despite our imperfections and the imperfections of other people, we are capable of succeeding and so are they. We can always try again and we can make this world a step closer to becoming a better one.

Mushy! Too touchy, feely! What kind of twisted idea came to your head to talk about something so opposite what is going on in this world? These might be what you are thinking about upon reading the theme of this blog.

I do write about a lot of things everytime I get a chance to. If you are one of those who really know me, you know that I have several blogs on different subject matters. What drove me to pick this theme is what I see everyday in people like you and me. How we react to the situations and the people we meet that affects rather negatively. I thought that maybe what we need is to assess these situations and see how we can make things better in order to make this a better world if only for you and me. If we are lucky, people will get to see these posts and your inputs and give inputs themselves about how to achieve the goals of this blog.

Frankly there is so much ideas going on in my mind that I do not know how to properly start, so I’ll just grab whatever I can and put it down here, ok?

A few rules… I’d like for this blog to be as interactive as possible. Meaning, if you are reading this, I will expect you to put in something constructive as a comment. You can probably add your opinion on some of the questions I ask, or add insights, constructive ones I hope. I would love for you to post questions for people reading this post to answer (including myself of course!). Not that I do not like to be challenged but I might not entertain postings that contradict the purpose of this site.I’d like to be focused on something that, as I said, worthwhile. What we need are ideas that will help and encourage, not discourage.

The first order of the day is to define what  we are trying to  pursue.

• How to find happiness amidst discontent (an oximoron, I know but let’s deal with that later.)
• How to find the right way to react to a negative situation or person
• How to achieve grace even under fire
• How to deal with failures and move on
• How to deal with heartaches
• How to pursue our dreams
• How to inspire ourselves to dream

I know that this project is quite ambitious. And the fact that I do not have a concrete answer to all the questions we will come accross,just makes it all the more exciting for me. I hope you are excited too, to join me in this quest and see how things unfold.

Oh, and just a quick reminder, I also hope to hear from you soon!

See you soon!