Don’t Wait For The Storm To Pass

“Life’s not about waiting for the storm to pass . . . it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” – Vi Greene

You can always wait until conditions are perfect before starting to take action towards achieving your goals. But unfortunately conditions will never be perfect – some factor will always be sub-optimal or missing. So what will happen is that you keep putting off any action on your part. Procrastination will set in and your chances of progress will at best be delayed, and possibly eliminated altogether. Meanwhile your competition may not have the same hesitation and get in ahead of you.

Instead “learn to dance in the rain”. Do what you can at the time, in the particular circumstances. Conditions may not be perfect, but at least you will be taking action and making some progress towards your goal. Remember that you can never achieve anything unless you take action – no matter how good your ideas may be.

John Cusworth

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“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” – Charles R. Swindoll

Do you sometimes wonder why life has dealt you such a bad hand? You see other people around you with better jobs, bigger homes, faster cars and happier relationships. Why do they get all the luck? What about me?

On the other hand, have you ever noticed that a very large proportion of the most successful people out there have had a tough start to life. They have often been very poor or from broken homes or with some other difficulties which have made life very hard for them.

How come they have become such a success then? Usually it is because they have had some dream and decided to pursue it no matter what. They have not always made a go of it from the start. They have often failed in whatever they were doing. But what have they had in common? They didn’t give up. They tried again . . . and again . . . and again . . . until something worked out.

If something happened to thwart their plans they adapted and modified what they were doing to achieve their goal slightly. Then they tried again . . . and . . .

Life will always confront you with a curved ball – or brick wall – but if you take it in your stride and react positively by modifying your behaviour to get around the obstacle – and still aim for your goal – you will eventually get there. All the stronger for the experience.

So don’t worry about what happens to you, concern yourself with how you can best react to it, and press on towards your goal.

“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” – Charles R. Swindoll

John Cusworth

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Carl Jung

“I am not what happens to me. I choose who I become.” – Carl Jung

It is not the event that happens that determines what happens to you or what your final outcome is. It is how you react to that event or circumstance.

Don’t just accept the current situation that you find yourself in. Rather than whinging about your latest incidence of bad luck, respond by thinking about what happened to produce that result and modify your behaviour accordingly.

Life is a series of choices. Where you end up depends on how wise your past and current choices are. Remember that not making any choice is actually making the decision to do nothing or to make no change in your current behaviour. If that behaviour has led to poor outcomes in the past then it will most likely lead to poor outcomes in the future as well.

Try something different – any new action is better than none – but why not observe what people who have been successful in your area have done and choose to try that. Let those “mentors” or “role models” make the mistakes for you – just copy what has worked so well for them, and adapt it to your circumstances.

Don’t be a victim of circumstances. Decide where you want to go and make wise choices as to how to best get there.

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“To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” – Anatole France

Most people wish to achieve things in their life. However unless you take action (in other words you actually do something), there is no way that anything – no matter how small or insignificant – can be achieved. The size of the task you set out to achieve may be large or small – but unless you dream big, it is unlikely to be a significant or challenging goal. The dreaming allows you to imagine places you have never been, things you have never done and outcomes you would never rationally think possible.

If you have dreamed and set a goal to attain that dream, it is unlikely that you will ever achieve it unless you plan out a series of small, do-able steps to make progress towards your goal. Otherwise you will be frittering away your time going around in circles, only making progress by chance.

Finally, in order to follow the plan towards your goal persistently and enthusiastically, you must believe that you are capable of eventually progressing through the steps and accomplishing your goal. Without belief you will be easily discouraged by the first signs of difficulty or failure and quite likely give up.

Therefore “To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” – Anatole France

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“Imagination is the most powerful force in the universe.” – Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

Imagination is a marvellous thing. We can picture in our minds things from our past, things from other people’s past, things happening elsewhere in the world – and even more imprtantly things that have never happened.

Without the ability to imagine, there would be no new inventions, medical discoveries, great novels, artistic masterpieces or . . .

If we had no imagination we would be tied to the things that we could experience first hand. We could be taught how to do something that someone else could already do. But we would not be able to come up with NEW IDEAS – always being stuck in the past.

Imagination is what drives the human race to keep “evolving” technologically, socially and medically.  It also may result in problems for the world such as global warming, extinction of species etc – but solutions to these problems also lie with imagination.

If you want a better future – imagine what it could be – set your sites on it and work towards it.

If you can imagine it – you can achieve it.

Indeed – “Imagination is the most powerful force in the universe.”

John Cusworth

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“I am always doing things I can’t do, that’s how I get to do them.” – Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Often goals appear unachievable and individual tasks look daunting. So much so that we can be so scared of failing that we don’t even make a start on the project.

However one thing is guaranteed. If we DON’T make a start and try to succeed – then we have a 100% chance of failure!

On the other hand we can make an attempt at the thing that we haven’t done in the past. For sure, we may fail. But there is a chance (even if slim) that we may succeed.

Even if we fail, we can evaluate what we have tried, see what we have done wrong, modify our method of attack – and try again. Yes, we may still fail. But each time we show persistence and go through this cycle we will be closer and closer to actually pulling it off.

Provided we learn from our mistakes (and preferably from the mistakes of other  inspirational people who have tried before us) then the chance of success gets greater and greater.

If we didn’t try the chance of success would be 0%. By having a go at the problem (and not giving up) you will eventually succeed.

Practise this in your life and you will be able to say like Picasso: “I am always doing things I can’t do, that’s how I get to do them.”

John Cusworth

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“You can’t go forward when you’re looking in the rear view mirror.” – Pat Mesiti

If you are always dwelling on what has happened in the past – regretting mistakes that you have made, or rueing the missed opportunities that have passed you by – then you are not in the right state of mind to notice any new opportunities which may appear. New opportunities are always coming up but you need to firstly become aware of them and secondly be receptive to them and ready to grasp them.

Just like driving a car looking in the rear view mirror, you may see where you have been – but you will miss seeing openings in the traffic as well as any obstacles which may suddenly show up in front of you.

Instead, have a clear goal in mind of where you are headed. Always keep your eyes trained in that direction so that you will see both the openings and obstacles as they crop up ahead of you. You will then be able to navigate your way through and have the best chance of reaching your destination in the shortest time with the minimum disruption.

John Cusworth

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“I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than regret the things I haven’t done.” – Lucille Ball

Many people live their lives in fear of failure – scared of taking  risks. In reality not taking risks actually condemns them to failure, since unless you start something, the chance of success is zero!

The other alternative is to ‘have a go’ at the new thing. Yes, there is a risk of failure. But this time there is also a chance of success which did not exist before. If you do fail, the important thing is to learn from your mistake, modify the procedure and try again. With persistence and by constantly adjusting, the chance of success becomes much greater, until eventually you are assured of success.

So it is much better to have tried and to regret the failures encountered along the way to success, than to regret never having tried and facing certain failure.

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“Procrastination is opportunity’s assassin.” – Victor Kiam

Even though we may not always recognize them, opportunities are flying past our eyes every minute of the day. The only way to achieve success is to notice those potentially life-changing opportunities as they present themselves – and to ACT ON THEM!

There are three main reasons why people fail:

• they are too busy focusing on something else to recognize the opportunity
• they have their eyes and ears switched off to any possibilities around them
• they recognize the opportunity, and its potential for them, BUT they put it off to another day when they are ready to follow through with it!

“Procrastination is opportunities’ assassin”.

• Either by the time they get around to pursuing the opportunity, it is too late and the opportunity has passed.
• They never actually get around to it, because other things have come up (probably put on hold also.)
• The perfect preparation they are waiting for never eventuates. The opportunity stagnates and dies.

Don’t be a procrastinator!

Realize that conditions will never be perfect. Get started on the opportunity straight away – you can always modify things along the way.

Follow these steps:

• Be on the lookout for opportunities which may arise around you.
• Recognize an opportunity and check whether it fits in to your life goals.
• If it fits in, is it more important than what you are spending time on at the moment?
• If yes, put your full energy into following the new opportunity – straight away.
• If no, put it aside and continue pursuing the important tasks you are already engaged in.
• Don’t dwell on a “missed opportunity” – others will come up if you are in receptive mode.

Don’t procrastinate! Prioritize according to your goals and get stuck straight in!

John Cusworth

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