By Adunke Olatunji
EMILY Dickinson, an American poet and author once said “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all”.
In similar vein, the immediate past President of the United States of America, Barack Obama dropped this shot;
“The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.
Incontrovertibly, hope is a powerful force and probably the most important factor when it comes to overcoming life’s biggest challenges. Without it, everything is lost.
If you don’t have the discipline to push through all the boring moments that are guaranteed to arrive at your feet at one point or the other, then you won’t make it very far. Having great ideas in your head is excellent, and if you have a big picture of where you want to be then you know what you want to work towards. However, as each day goes by, more ideas in themselves won’t get you any further than you already are.
Daily action is what brings you closer, so why haven’t you started yet?
You’re Easily Distracted.
This one holds so many people back from achieving success. There won’t be any work being produced if every 30 seconds you decide to check your texts, your emails, your Facebook and so on. Some people like distractions because like I mentioned above, they have no discipline. Eliminate all distractions from around you, so that you can actually get through some solid hard work without continuously stopping.
The reality is, that it’s all in the mind. Our brains are programmed to push us toward the easiest ways in life, when we’re really looking for the best. One major thing holding people back from achieving success is fear. We’ve all been there. You’re getting anywhere with what you truly want to do because you’re worried about what others will say. Maybe you’re just not quite working on the right things. There are plenty of successful people in the world who started out in one area and then realized it wasn’t quite for them, so they were then able to find out what their true passion was for.
Sometimes impatience can be a good thing, if you can control it. It can force you to work incredibly hard and get things done that others may take quite a while to do. So if you are impatient, be sure to use this wisely with what you do, and not let it get the better of you when it comes to things like the quality of your work, or giving up.
More importantly, keep hope from fading. Keep faith alive. Keep love strong.
Does the stress and strain of daily life sometimes wear away your hope? Does the relentless barrage of bad news batter your faith? These daily assaults are like a virus that can take over your thinking and make you sick at heart. How can you protect yourself from the negativity that threatens to overwhelm the world?
Failure is not easy to take, but you know what? It separates the losers from the winners, because the losers will give up completely and the winners will learn from their mistakes and be able to try again implementing what they’ve learnt.
Some people hate change. They get scared by it. They decide that they don’t want to push themselves hard to then end up with something they are unable to handle. With this mentality, you are committing suicide before you even start.
Change is good. Change is growth and that is incredibly important if you want to make a success of your life. One day you’ll wake up, sick of the same old thing, and wish you’d started to change yourself before it became too late for you to do so.
In conclusion, life honours those who learn right, live right as discipline will bestow on them the needed dignity assured as a result of concentration in what you do.
Olatunji is President, Tabitha New Life Foundation