Organizing your dreams

I was taking with my friend the other day about his dreams and what was his plan to pursue them.  He was explaining me what he wanted from life and how he was planning to get it. I was paying attention and couldn’t avoid noticing that in his words something was missing, even if he knew what he wanted, he wasn’t sure about his priorities in life, wasn’t sure either in which time scale he was planning to fulfill his dreams and didn’t have a real plan to pursue them. From this conversation I learned a lot about what people is missing to effectively follow their dreams and I separated in four main topics:

-Lack of knowledge of what they want: if you don’t know what you want is very difficult that you will move anywhere. Although people that don’t know what they want can have great experiences in life, at the end they finish waking in circles and not moving towards an end. They just flow with life and life takes them anywhere, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. The problem is that they never ask what they really want from life, if you do not know what you want you will not be able to claim from life what you deserve. Think about what you really want from life, do it as specific as you can; your desire for your dream to become true will boost you energy, capacity and potential to the limit and will take you anywhere you want.

-Lack of knowledge of their priorities in life: although my friend knew what he wanted, he wasn’t sure about what he wanted more. He didn’t know what his bigger dream was, and that was making him unsure about the way he should follow, the time he should spend, the tools he should use. Define your priorities and which your biggest dream is, first. I would suggest that you take your biggest dream and built the others from that one. For example, if your main dream is to be a writer, but you also want to travel, plan a way in which getting profit from your writing let you travel around the world; or if your big dream is to be rich but you also want to help people, then plan on how you will help people after you get rich. The more of the small dreams you can include in your biggest dream, the easier will be to stay focus and pursue you dream.

-Lack of knowledge about the time scale in which their dreams could come true: if you don’t set a time goal in which you want to make your dream come true, maybe you will waste many days of your life without moving forward at all. A time goal gives you an idea on how often and how much you will have to do in order to make your dream true. The best time to start pursuing your dreams is now! Doesn’t matter if you don’t have enough experience, money or knowledge, because nothing of that is required if your desire to get what you want is very high. Lack of experience, money and knowledge are just excuses that people create to avoid taking the risk of pursuing their dreams.

-Lack of a plan to pursuit their dreams: Finally, if you don’t have a plan to pursue your dreams it will be very difficult for you to achieve them. The best way to have a plan for your life is writing it down in a notebook, following your achievements, setting goals, making some challenges. The best you describe your plan the easiest it will be to achieve your dreams.

So, evaluate yourself today and start following your dreams in an organized way. If you know what you want, you’ll get it!

About reality and your reality

Have you ever think that you see only what you want to see, or what you see is limited by your perception about reality and your experiences? Have you ever realized that 2 persons can have different perceptions and definitions of the same object?

Different people have different perceptions of the same reality. In neurolinguistic programming the reality or the world, in which we are immersed is called the territory. The way you described reality, or the territory, is called the map. Imagine that the world is a huge place with millions of resources and information, is so big that we need to filter that information and use only what we find useful. The map every of us use to describe the territory, is not the territory. That map is made by our own experiences of the world

Imagine that you enter a forest where you have never been before, and you want to go through that forest to a town which is located just in the other end of the forest. The forest itself can have a lot of different paths to go through to the town, but when you start walking through it you are just following one of those paths. When you finally reach the town, you’ll have created a map of the forest, the territory, where you were walking. That map that you created does not represent the whole forest, the territory; it just represents the path you followed. Next time when you enter the forest you can do two things, either you follow the map that you created or follow a new path and you enrich your map about the forest, the territory.

This is an example analogue to how you create maps of the world, the world can be infinite in information and to live in it you have created your own maps about the world. Every person in the world has different maps of it. Simple examples of this concept are the perception people have about dogs. Some people in the world find dogs are cute animals that serve as companions to people while other people think that dogs are good meals!, people can have different points of view of the same things! Depends on how they have built their maps of the world.

Some people find that they cannot agree with others about the same things. This is due to the fact that their maps of the world are different. Next time you cannot agree with somebody think that you may have built a different map to describe the world than the other person. If you realize that everybody has different perceptions about the same things and you stop thinking that your own map is the one that correctly described our world, you will have a great tool to start understanding better other people and communicating more efficiently with them! What is very easy for you can be very difficult for others. For a runner running 5 Km can be very easy, while for most of the people is a huge effort. For some people taking in front of one hundred people can be a rich experience, for others the same thing can be very scary.

I invite you today to explore the world, to increase the size of the map that you use to represent it, the more you expand your map of these huge territory called reality, the more tools you will have to ultimately realize your dreams. As in the example of the forest, how rich is your map about the world depends on how rich you want to make it. Start also thinking that everybody has different maps of the world and instead of fighting with them because you don’t understand their point of view, try to find out how they describe their own world, what are their maps of the world.

People that believe their maps are the only representations of the world are the people who cannot grow up in life, who never seem to understand others, to never forgive, to always want to be right. The more you enrich your map the better your life will become.

How do you deal with your mistakes?

One of the major characteristics that I analyzed about people when I interact with them is how do they deal with their mistakes, what position do they take when they make a mistake. This is very important for me because it tells me a lot about their personality, about how good they know themselves, how they assume their responsibilities and how they deal with their mistakes, also their response to their mistakes let me know what answers I should expect from them in a difficult situation.

Reading one of Robert Kiyosaki’s books, Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing, I found that he described perfectly how people deal with their mistakes. He listed 5 types of wrong attitudes that people assume when they make mistakes, which I want to share and discuss with you, hoping that you can find what your attitude about mistakes is, and find by yourself how you could change it; hopefully you will have a better knowledge about yourself and use it to in your pursuit of your dreams.

So, here are the five types of roles people generally assume when they make a mistake:

1. People who lie: these people tend to deny what they did, they prefer to say that they didn’t made a mistake than assuming their responsibility, they say things like, “No I didn’t do it” or “No I wasn’t”, or “I don’t know what happened”. It is a very coward attitude. You cannot be afraid of making mistakes.

2.  People who blame others: these people never assume their mistakes as their own, they always like to blame others and they never see what they did. This is one of the worst attitudes you can assume when making a mistake, there is millions of people in the world blaming others for their failures, when most of the time they are completely responsible for their acts. These people blame their wife, husband, kids, workers or their boss for what are their failures and incompetence. They say things like “I cannot pursuit my dreams because of my kids, my salary, my social status, etc.”

3. People who justify their mistakes: they use phrases like “I do not have a good education, then I cannot go further” or “I would have realized my dreams if I would have what other people have” or “anyway, I didn’t want to have that”. They always justified their laziness and mediocrity with this type of phrases.

4. People who quit: these people always prefer to quit than to fight, they don’t want to take responsibilities and say things like: “I told you this wasn’t going to work” or “this is very difficult and is not worth, I’ll do something easier” or “why am I doing this, I do not need to bother.

5. People who deny reality: they tend to assume that nothing ever happened; they prefer to say “there is nothing wrong, everything is going well”.

There is a sixth attitude that people assumed and is when they take responsibility of their mistakes and are willing to learn from it. I’m glad if you are one of those, in my case, I have found myself blaming others for a lot of things that happened in my life, especially in my past, and only when I have realized that I was making mistakes I started to learn from those experiences, and that have made me move forward in an incredible way; now I have a lot more control of myself and know how to react better when I make a mistake. Remember, there is nothing wrong about making mistakes, is the attitude you assume after you make a mistake that can take you further in the pursuit of your dreams, or can keep you living a life full of failures.

Now you have the chance to get to know yourself better, check if you assume one of the attitudes listed here after making a mistake and start to change it know, knowing yourself is the first step to pursuit your dreams, being in control of yourself gives you a greatest tool to go further in life and find what you are looking for!

Releasing the internal power that hides behind shyness. Part 1.

I have been studying different aspects about psychology and human behavior during these last years and I have learned very valuable lessons about our way to express and related with other persons from these studies and my own experience. These are lessons which I am using to improve myself now, and I work on it every single day of my life, because I have came to realize the great potential that they have for many people that has had or have problems socializing with other people. This post is a call for all shy people to overcome their fears, to realize their great potential and start showing it to the world, to the people around them. If you are not shy I am sure you can learn from this post and share it with somebody else who you think may need it or apply it to your own life.

Unfortunately, most of the great people that I have met in my life can be considered as shy people, most of the greatest minds I know, most of the best people I know, most of the more sincere, kind, lovely persons I have met, are shy people. I was one of them, and still some of that very shy guy that I was a few years ago remain inside me. Shyness limits people potential so badly that depending on the degree of shyness, people can limit their ability to get a job or find love. Shyness is like a ghost, or a voice inside you that never goes, you have to learn how to fight with it every single day of your life, every moment and every interaction you have with another person. The pathway to overcome shyness is long and hard, but at the end brings to your life great rewards. Overcoming shyness open to you the doors of glory and the understanding of a new world, a world far away from fear, pain, emptiness.

From my big experience dealing with shy people I have managed to recognized patterns in their behavior as well as what are their fears and their weaknesses among other people which are not shy. And from these interactions, the major weakness I have recognized in most shy people is the lack of capacity to show others the great potential that they carry inside their minds and their hearts, great potentials such as love, faith, desire, intelligence, honesty and thousands of great ideas, great qualities that are hidden because fear control their lives. Shy people do not externalize all the power that they have inside themselves, they don’t communicate what they are and what they are able to do to the world; unfortunately, shy people is usually ignored by the rest of the society because of their lack of abilities to communicate effectively with others.

There are a lot of different lessons to learn about overcoming our fears and we will develop them in this blog periodically, taking ourselves to a new way of understanding of our own capacities and our own reality. The way we communicate what we are can take us as far in our relations with others that we can be amazed of what we can achieved after that!

One of the things I have learned so far is that shy people don’t express themselves with their bodies in the same degree as social people do. One of their weaknesses is their misunderstanding about communication. Someone could ask me why a shy person should take care about their body language, if they are happy with themselves; although is true that you must be happy with yourself the way you are, the way you communicate your ideas, your thoughts and yourself it is as important as the value of your ideas, your thoughts and yourself. Unfortunately in this world our most important sense, among the 5 senses we all use, is our vision; and our vision determines, according to science, 55% of our communication (through body language, eye contact, etc). I’m not pretending here to give you a guide to all the positions you could adopt when communicating with somebody else, but better, here I want you to think about how do you use your body when you talk to others, how do you feel when you assume different postures? Stand in front of your mirror and start playing around with your body, discover by yourself the great potential that your body has to express your wonderful interior, discover how many new gestures you can make and start using it when expressing your ideas, opinions, thoughts, they will flow with power then when you are talking to others. Start finding all you can do with your body, dance and act and see how far that it takes you!

Our body is our best way to communicate to others, analyze how well you are using your body, how far you can go by moving it, making gestures, etcetera. Start playing with your face, smile to a stranger and see their response, open your arms and feel the freedom that it brings, straight your back and feel the power flowing from your interior, look ahead not to the floor, look to others eyes, feel the honesty and security that brings you! Learn how to use your body, you can do it by modeling your friends or famous people or you can experiment yourself, the best laboratory is the world!

Remember, is not bad to be shy, is how you let shyness affect you that can limit your power. If you learn how to deal with it, you are going to have more tools to become successful in life.

Most people lost their fights without starting them

One thing that characterizes me is that whenever I start a battle, a fight for something, I never quit it, independently of the results of that battle. I can be afraid, very afraid, I can get disappointed, very disappointed, but whenever I start a fight for something that I really like I know that I’ll take to the end, no matter how difficult it looks, no matter how stupid it looks to other people. I have realized that the only battles that I have quit are those I didn’t really wanted to fight, those that wasn’t going to give what I want, those where I was fighting for a lie.

I remember so many times in my life when I have stand out above others not because I was a great man, not because I was powerful, intelligent, rich or anything else but because I never quit my battles, simple, not even complicated battles that many has quit. I remember those battles and the people around me fighting at the same time with me; I remember how they always quit before me. The reason why I am in Australia is because I got a scholarship from an Australian University to live here; before getting this scholarship, I applied to so many others and get rejected from so many places around the world, if I’m not wrong I applied maybe for 20 different places and got frustrated so many times after reach rejection, specially knowing that I was one of the best chemistry students of my country! What I never did was to quit. I remember that so many of my friends at the same time were applying for scholarships and most of them never got one, not because they couldn’t, but because they quit after getting rejected in their first or second application.

I remember also my friends in Colombia and their attitude after losing an exam. I was one of the best students of my generation, but beside that, so many times I had to confront the fear of losing one single subject. In Colombia the subjects are evaluated using marks from 0 to 5 where 0 is the worst and 5 the best, and to pass a subject you have to go through at least 3 exams during a semester. I’m not sure why but I remember so clear my attitude and the attitude of some of my friends when we used to get a mark of 1/5 in the first exam of the semester. Their attitude always was to say that after getting such a bad mark it was impossible to pass that subject and they used to gave up not even taking the 2 other exams. In my case, instead of saying that was impossible to pass the subject I used to study harder and believe that it was possible to pass the subject. I never lost a subject, all of my friends did!

What I have came to realize is that many people quit their battles even before starting, is enough a little difficulty in the horizon, small words of hopeless from somebody or a small fight lost for them to quit, I would say that more than 90% of the people I now are like that, and that’s one of the reasons most of the people around the world never get that they really want to get from life.

Fighting for your dreams is a difficult task that requires strong character, powerful mentality, it requires to overcome your worst fears, fight against others ideas, fight even against the people who love you and try to advice you from their point of view. Fighting for your dreams is about never give up, no matter how difficult your goal look, no matter how much deep you have to sink into darkness, hopeless, frustration and all those feelings that are common after failure and rejection.

To fight for what you want you require four main things, desire, faith, perseverance and work. Desire and perseverance to not surrender, faith to understand that you are going to get what you want without knowing how or when, and work because you need to keep moving towards your goal, learning, beating yourself every single moment of your life. From the examples I gave you before, you could see that to get my scholarship or pass the exams in the university I used these 4 things, I always believed it was possible, I desired to get what I wanted with all my heart and I worked and persevere to get it no matter if my goal use to look impossible. Believe me I wasn’t and I’m not such a great student, I think I never studied so hard as others, and now I understand it was because my driven forces were faith, desire and perseverance first, then work. For others, most of the people, work is their driving force but they do it without desire and faith and that’s where they fail, that’s why they surrender so easily.

Never give up after losing the first battle, all of us has to lose something always in order to win, in order to become what we really want, in order to take from life whatever we want to take! Faith perseverance, desire and hard work should be the driven forces to make you follow your dreams!