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Tag: happy

  • HOW VIRTUAL CAN OUR EXISTANCE BE?

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    Image source: www.mondolithic.com

    So I came to this topic when I was writing my last blog. I mentioned that it´s good to have at least good Internet contacts that are “more like us” or “believers like us” so that we can feel encouraged to follow our dreams and make them come true. Then I came with a sudden question while I was writing those lines: How virtual can our existence be? I mean for a person like me, a sort of loner on the way, sometimes we tend to look for social “contact” on online communities but even from my loner perspective this has pros and cons.

    So take into account the following:

    1. Online contacts may present themselves differently. Who can assure you that everything that you know from this contact is real? How much can you trust?
    2. We are not always sincere with our online contacts, yes, as they may be disguising themselves, it is also easier for us to disguise just a little bit (even if it´s not intentional), and who is going to know if we lie about something? If we pretend to know or do something that is not real, it is plausible that our contacts in Kazakhstan, Latvia or Mozambique will find the true?…. (Please take into account that the countries just mentioned were just a random example and any coincidence…well it´s just coincidence…  :))
    3. Communication can be totally misinterpreted, when we chat, email or write messages with some virtual friend, no matter the quantity of emoticons we use or how well we think before writing something, there´s always the chance that we could be misinterpreted, or the other way around, maybe we´re reading something in between lines that was never the intention of the sender…
    4. These online contacts or virtual friends may not be able to help us when we have a situation in the physical or real world, they may motivate us or write good encouraging things, but the extent of their help is limited, you know that…Image

    5. So if making friends is not your best attribute (like me 🙂 hence the loner tag..) Then remember, your virtual being with many virtual friends has to have a limit, prudence is the word, because you will never know what the real intentions of others might be…so prudence my dear friends, besides from that, enjoy all you online friends and community, be virtual but not that virtual… 🙂

  • FIND THE “RIGHT PEOPLE” TO BE WITH YOU

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    So this post may be a continuation or probably a contradiction of the one called “You are the result of the 5 people that hang out with you the most: WRONG”, but don’t be disappointed, this won’t be more ramblings about the same topic but rather a different and more interesting point of view.

    So in that previous blog, in summary, we said:

    –          One has to fight to find their uniqueness and not engage in the same behaviour as the people surrounding them.

    –          One should define its own character so well, that we’re not influenced by those traits we don’t believe in, especially from our friends or family.

    Don’t worry, I still agree with this and I’m not going to argue it, BUT – always the big BUT – there is some true in the fact that you must look forward to be surrounded by people like you; and I don’t mean people that think, act or behave exactly like you, but people that intrinsically have the same BELIEFS as you. Yep, that’s the word I was struggling to find when I was thinking, this afternoon, about writing this blog.

    If you are a true believer that with perseverance you can make your dreams come true, no matter what dreams are; then it’s actually discouraging to be with people who think that you are such a dreamer, or don’t get your point in focusing in something that you probably won’t achieve according to them.

    Well, I know sometimes our closer friends and relatives will be this crashing- dreamer types and that we won’t able to get far away from them. But we must look for and try to find those people (or at least internet contacts) that have our same BELIEFS, so that we feel energized, and motivated. Because sometimes it’s not enough to be our own drivers and motivators, sometimes we need a hand or a little push.

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    So if you just spotted somebody that is a BELIEVER like you, get the chance to know that person, you may find a good friend in him or her, and who knows, maybe the path to achieving everything you always wanted to will be easier with some support by your side.

    You noticed that I mentioned “Internet contacts” before, well actually as a loner,     I´m not the “expert”  in giving advice of how to make friends, but I found that the least I could do was engage on online communities, or blogs with people that help me feel encouraged to follow my dreams (I may explore this topic deeper in a future post) but If I spot some positive thinker and believer like me in my neighborhood, I may introduce myself…

    So what do you think? Do you think it is good to find BELIEVERS like you?

     

  • Fear of mistakes and risks? Why? Those are the best things in life!!!

    Well, this is the final week of my gift store. Well, it’s a long story but I’ll summarize it for you.

    Two years ago I decided to quit my job because I was tired of the path I was taking and I wanted to be independent (meaning not working for somebody else). I didn’t have much money at that point and started a little business of my own: a gift store with many novelties that were not to be found anywhere in my city. I didn’t do much market research and I thought that the products I was trying to sell were so awesome that people were going to buy it without hesitation. Unfortunately, things in my country are really different from what I expected, and after 2 years of investing money in renting a place and trying to make the business grow, I came to the conclusion that it was not profitable. I was never good in accounting and finance, but I know that in the course of those 2 years I have invested a significant amount of money and I haven’t recovered not a third of it, yeah it sucks…. But I’m actually happy, I‘ll tell you later why.

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    So right now, everything is on sale at my store, and while I write this blog, I’m sitting here in my store trying to get some of the merchandise sold until this Friday – the due date for the rent contract.

    So, how do I feel? Actually pretty relieved and I can’t wait for this weekend to arrive. Maybe in some way, it has become such an economic burden, through this time, that I’m willing to let it go.

    At the same time, I’ve just started working full time as a technical writer in a Software development company, and you may think, well she has her job so she’s going to be ok. Indeed, I’m going to have a very relaxing next week, leaving my job at 5 and going to my home just to rest, because I used to run to my store after work and stay until 9 pm. I used to live in my store on weekends too, and it was really exhausting.

    The thing is that my resting plan is only for next week, because I have learnt that being an entrepreneur and being independent HAS NO PRICE!!! It’s very fulfilling, so I’m just turning my physical store into a virtual store, and I have many plans for my website and that kind of stuff… let’s see how things go.

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    The learning experience, given the fact that I’ve lost money, has been priceless and I’ve already passed the worst and from here to the future I’m pretty sure things will go up. The scariest part is when you start doing a business of your own, you take so many risks, you quit your job and you make so many mistakes along the path.  But for me,  the worst part is gone, I don’t feel scary anymore, I know the mistakes I made and what I should do to avoid them, I’ve grown a lot and I don’t fear for things to come! So if there is something good for you in this, is that mistakes and risks are part of your life, don’t be afraid of them, they only make you STRONGER!!!!

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    People have tried to cheer me up, seeing this as a failure, and I keep thinking why are they doing that? This is actually GOOD!  A NEW START! With better defined goals, better experience and NO FEAR at ALL!!!

    LESSON OF THE BLOG: Don’t give up, learn from your mistakes and rise higher!!!

  • Why waiting for weekends could be so bad?

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    So this is part two of previous blog but don’t worry this piece can be read separately.

    I was saying that I actually found the solution for stop being so passive and from escaping the routine of 9 to 5 jobs. I would dare that almost 99 % of the people who have fallen into the darkness of this routine, wait desperately for the weekends to arrive. Don’t do that! Believe or not waiting for weekends is not that great, because:

    –              It gets you in your endless routine:  work from Monday to Friday, jump on your feet on  Fridays  and hate with all your heart Mondays.

    –              Then weekend comes and it passes so fast that you really feel bad on Sunday nights.

    You keep complaining that you lack of time for doing things that will help you improve towards the accomplishment of your goals?

    You want to take courses in Accounting, astronomy or whatever it is you want to do and you don’t have time for it? You want to go to the gym, learn how to knit, learn Japanese or any other interesting activity, or maybe you just simply want to be able to spend more time with your family and do more family stuff and you find out that weekends pass so fast that you didn´t do all the things you wanted to do?

    These are the sort of stuff that usually fills our lives, we want to do so many things, from learning how to dance salsa to learning Korean… but we don’t have the time!

    Let me tell you something… time management is the hardest thing you’ll strive to achieve in life because it all comes to this: We spent 5 days in our jobs and those days are about our routine and nothing else, then we find out that the weekend went so fast that we didn’t have the time to do all the things we wanted to do, ring you a bell somewhere?

    We will usually work only 8 hours per day and let’s say sleep another 8 hours(sleepy heads or the insomniac ones don´t count here) , so we get another 8 hours for living our lives, yes 8 hours more per day!!!  Of course some of that time will be spent on commuting to work and doing other needed stuff (like taking a shower, eating, etc) but I want to believe that we will have at least 4 hours remaining to do our stuff, and 4 hours times 5 is 20 hours! Which is like an extra weekend in between week!

    So each day has a little weekend of its own, each working day is a whole new adventure of the things we want to achieve! do you still want to let your five working days pass by you – without any impact – and in a constant wait for the weekends of your life? You can find time in weekdays to do many things, really think about your routine…

    When Monday comes, I say to myself: Well this is good! A new opportunity to start running the life that I want for myself! And I begin my countdown, I have five days to go, so many things to do until Friday I better hurry up!

    Please stop hating Mondays!

  • How passive can people be?

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    I actually doubted a lot when I started to write about this topic because I always try to find something in which I’m good at and hence advice about it. If I weren’t following my own advices in this blog, it would kind of weird to write about it, don’t you think? More directly, it would be wrong! , one can’t give advice on something that doesn’t know how it works!

    Well, let’s get to the topic or you may find me rambling about everything and nothing.

    Let’s start with this quote:

    “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them, but went out and happened to things”

    Leonardo Da Vinci

    So the first time I read this, I said hell yes! That’s for sure! But then it got me thinking if I was really acting upon this. This is all about being active and passive; if you get another interpretation you can always write a comment to discuss it.

    So the people who stay passive and let things happen to them are not achievers? Well yes! Even for those who wait for lottery money, they have to go out there and buy the lottery ticket! And they just can’t expect to win the big prize without any ticket!

    This may be a post that makes references to my previous posts but it all comes to the same things: You have to go out there and make things happen! You have to act to achieve your goals!

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    Sadly, if you look around, I would dare to say that maybe 80 % or more of people that surround you are really passive, they would have a 9 to 5 job then go back to their homes, do some chores or routinely stuff and then get up the next day and start the same routine. These people are like an outbreak… are we going to let them absorb our beings?

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    We must go out there! Act upon our dreams, on the virtues we admire on others! Our life is a countdown, how much are we going to wait?

    So I actually found the solution and I hope that it will really help people out there who work in 9 to 5 jobs and desperately wait for the weekend to come, so keep in tune for my next blog! (Don’t worry it will come very soon, I decided to divide this blog so it won’t be too long !!!)

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  • How much should we admire people?

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    Most of us, usually admire somebody either because of their intellect, their charisma, their beauty or their skills. But what is the point in admiring if we’re not going to try to replicate those “things” we admire? And let’s be clear, I’m not talking about imitating others without being ourselves, there is a fine line between copycatting others with no purpose and cultivating in ourselves that we admire in others.

    The difference is simple, we “admire” those things that we would like to have for us, and with “things” I’m referring to values, skills, characteristics, personal features, etc.  So we would usually like those things that are according to our inner selves, to our personality, in other words, to our uniqueness.

    You won’t “admire” a smuggler for getting materials things easily, if you were to admire that smuggler it would mean that you actually admire the characteristic of being a smuggler.  You could also admire a fashion model for its physique but I want to believe that you would admire the fact that he or she manages to have a healthy body and not the fact that the model starves to death to be like that.

    Well anyway, I’m mostly sure that you get what I mean. We admire the good things, the things that make us better; we don’t admire the bad things in other people unless we are “questionable” people.  But the important thing is that each time we admire, it should only be a short “period of admiration” and that’s it, period. Because once we recognize that which we admire, we should perform, we should act. We can’t stay in the “admiration period” forever.  We have to start asking ourselves what do I have to do if I want to improve this or want to be able to do this or that.  The true is that probably the person that we admire also had to cultivate his or her skill from scratch and with a lot of effort.  

    We are meant to achieve whatever we want; there is no limit to our aspirations and dreams.  The sky is our limit and we should never hesitate about this.

    We must look forward to achieve these “things” not because we want somebody else’s approval but because we know we want that change and improvement for us. We don’t improve for others we do it for ourselves. 

    I as a loner believe I have a good sense of direction for this; I seek to change and to improve myself always because of me. I thought about this a lot, and maybe my super independent personality and not allowing people influence me directly (of course unless is something good) is part of the reason that I keep the loneliness.  But like I always say in my posts, I always try to get the good aspects of my loner situation; this doesn’t mean that those of you who are not loners should not find the above written also useful.  

    Finally a very smart quote for everybody:

    “The awe, inspiration and talent you recognize in others are but a reflection of the same thing in you. I highly suggest you do not seek approval or recognition of those you admire but instead cultivate in yourself that which you see in them. There´s a dormant creative genius within you – let them out!” – Jackson Kiddard

    And you, how much of this admiring state let pass by you?  Do you take actions to have the same skills and talent you admire in other people or do you just let the admire feeling let go forever without doing anything? 

  • Why daydreaming with open eyes is actually good…

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    I´ve always daydreamed with open ever eyes since I have a recollection of memory. If you don´t know what I´m talking about, maybe you should read this Wikipedia definition first: (just to be sure we´re on the same page)

    “Daydreaming is a short-term detachment from one’s immediate surroundings, during which a person’s contact with reality is blurred and partially substituted by a visionary fantasy, especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes or ambitions, imagined as coming to pass, and experienced while awake.”

    When I was younger I remember daydreaming while I was trying to “study” for school, maybe it was out of boredom or maybe I was trying to evade the “studying” aspect of that moment.

    I used to dream about what I was going to do when I grew older, how my life was going to be and how would things be that If I were different, if I were richer if I were prettier and others things (the “if I were prettier” dreams were a result of my poor self-esteem at that time but now I have another concept of beauty…). I used to spend a lot of time on this, of 3 hours of study I would spend half of it dreaming about everything and nothing…

    As time passed, I started to get stronger ideas of what I wanted to do with my life… do you think I stopped daydreaming? Not at all!, until now I still continue daydreaming all the time even when I´m at work….is it because I really have nothing better to do other than spending time imagining about the things that I would like to achieve or the type of life that I would like to have? Not really, actually I´m always struggling to find time for everything…

    It’s because of my nature, I´m a daydreamer by default but I´m proud of it because it actually keeps me in focus in the goals and dreams I want to achieve. If I weren’t frequently remembered by these dreams, I would probably let common life pass by me, forgetting my main ideals and where I´m heading for.

    From the perspective of loner, I don’t know if this really applies to “my type”, to my personality that tends to be more distant from people in general and perhaps more focused on my own objectives, but this is just a theory and maybe it would be nice to see your comments about this.. .

    BUT, there is an important BUT for the frequent daydreamers, your dreams have to have a little closure of their own, if you want these dreams to really happen, you have to snap out of them by thinking “now what do I have to do if I want to achieve that…” or “well let´s start doing X so one day I can be like in dream Y”… When you come back to reality, or stop dreaming, don´t let this wonderful time that you´ve just spend by go without rescuing encouraging motivations for you to continue life focusing on the direction of your dreams, always give them this little closures, they make you feel better, trust me and it´s a wonderful way to get you excited of the good things that are still to come in the future…

    Daydreaming lets you know that life should not be boring and that we shouldn’t accept regular routine, that there is so much out there that needs to be discovered.

    If you daydream, find the motivation for following these dreams and planning the actions that are needed to achieve them.

    Finally, a quote to remember:

    “All people dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake up in the morning to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people, for they dream their dreams with open eyes and make them come true.”

    D. H. Lawrence

     

  • Don’t let criticism of your personal life get you! Remember the good things…

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    Criticism is hard to take sometimes. Sometimes we wish we didn’t hear it and sometimes we want to know it. In our careers, we like to be told what we are doing wrong so we can improve, but do we really want to hear the “we are doing something wrong” part?, I´ll leave this for another future blog.  But there is also another type of criticism, the one related to our personal lives. Loners will hear phrases like these ones:

    Why don’t you meet somebody? Why don’t you marry that somebody, have kids with that somebody and marry and live happily ever after?

    Well, it won’t necessary be in these words or in such a direct way, but some people will find ways to make us the same questions maybe in a more subtle way (But let´s face it, no matter how subtle they want to be, we always get it what they meant!).

    Criticism at our jobs or careers or whatever activity we do to receive criticism is different from the criticism we receive related to our personal lives and sometimes it gets us most because we receive them from close people (family and friends) (Although I met some people for five minutes and believe it or not they just popped out with those sort of questions, excuse me but mind their own business right?…)

    But however we take this personal criticism, remember to take into consideration these points:

    –          Who says that you have to follow a traditional pattern? Is there somewhere written that says that whatever the traditional society says is what you should do? Can anybody assure you that by doing what others do you will have happiness guaranteed?

     

    –          Do you really have to follow society traditions? Do you really want to be like everybody or you´d rather be unique? Maybe your way of living is destined to be different. Whenever someone makes judgments about your personal life, just think to yourself: “well I´m unique and maybe I can make my life more exciting this way” I´m not against of finding a partner or a significant other, but remember, just be with somebody if you feel it and want it not because people pushed you into that or you wanted to “merge” to society in some way. Remember, better alone than in bad company.

     

    –          Don’t ever question your own beliefs, society has formed certain preconceptions about how a person should develop his or her life, and every generation has done that. Many years ago society thought that women should only raise kids and stay at home, that was how society thought about how thinks should work at that time, do we still think the same? For the sake of goodness, I really hope that people out there don´t think like that anymore… But then if you see these changes in what society thought ages ago and nowadays, who guarantees that what our society thinks now is correct and is still going to work in the future? Maybe you are the future or you are ahead of your generation.

    Personal criticism of your life can sometimes really get you, but don´t let it. Try to remember all these things and just push yourself into your own goals and in living your life the best you can. Don´t get stuck in trying to fit a certain “mold”, don´t let this criticism affect who you are or change you. If you are a loner, then be a Happy One!

     

  • 10 things you should know about loners

    1. We don´t care what people say
    2. We are tired of listening to people saying: “you should meet/date somebody …”
    3. We are masters of our own destiny since we are alone we don’t need to consult/ask for anybody’s opinion.
    4. We have plenty energy to do whatever dream/goal that comes to our mind without having to ask the other…
    5. Maybe it is our purpose in life, maybe we are other type of generation with other ideals…
    6. It is better to be on our own than have bad company
    7. We don’t understand conflicts between couples, so much drama for our kind… better avoid the trouble
    8. Being loners doesn’t mean we don’t have friends, they are everywhere and sometimes we perceive some healthy envy from them….
    9. We have extra time to do everything that we want…
    10. We are happy the way we are….
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