Your seeds for tomorrow

Sometimes I wonder how I have got where I am now; at this moment when I am finishing my doctorate, I have travel to many places around the world and I have lived in two wonderful countries, Germany and Australia. I have travelled to Spain, Netherland, Czech Republic, Hawaii, etc. I have enjoyed many things and shared with people from all around the world, I have got to know wonderful people which who I have made very good friendships and for sure, I have increased my vision of the world and how it works. Unfortunately, a lot of people from my country ask me how I can be enjoying all this at this time, if they have to keep working hard to just make their living. It makes you wonder what you have done different to others in order to get the privileges that you have. I am not a great person, yet, not rich but certainly I have a better live than at least 30 million people that lives in my country struggling to survive, and of course that make feel very thankful to life and very responsible of taking these opportunities, enjoying them and living them at the best. So I go back in time to remember what I did that brought me where I am. And I have realized the following.

One day, long time ago, I decided to sow the plants from which I am getting the fruits today. Actually, I didn’t know I was sowing anything; only now, when the consequences of my acts in the past are showing me their results I can realized how important was to plant those seeds in the fertile land of success. As I said before, I am not yet successful as I want to be, but life has gave me many good things and I am collecting the fruits of what I sow yesterday, I will explain you.

15 years ago, when I was a young boy that didn’t know what I wanted from life, I decided to learn many things, just for the pleasure of it, because I have always liked to learn as much as I can. I was very curious at that time on how the world works and it was very motivating for me to learn about science and other things, so I decided to use my free time, the time after school or during the holidays, to learn more about what I used to like, I dedicated 4 or 5 hours daily to study algebra, biology, chemistry or reading books. I change my freedom as a teenager for the discipline of studying and learning by my own. As I said before, I was a lonely boy without many friends, so I had a lot of free time to either use watching TV or playing video games or learning new things. I did both. I dedicated many hours to play games or watch TV as well as I dedicated much time to improve myself. I guess now that if I have invested all my time learning I could have been higher than I am. But it was OK, it was a good time anyway.

I was the best student of my school. Some years after, I became the best student of my university, in Chemistry. Some years after, I had the chance to work in a prestigious research institute in Colombia and some years after I got a scholarship from an Australian university to study there. I remember that during my university studies my friends used to tell me that for me learning was easier than for them. They used to tell me that I did not have to study hard to achieve what they were not able to achieve by studying double the time, sometimes all the night. People always complain that it takes half of the work or half of the time for me to learn. I have many learning skills and I learn a lot faster than others in many fields. I wasn’t and I am not really intelligent and I was lacking a lot of social skills during those years. In fact, I was very bad student the years before I started to self-discipline. I have been thinking all this years that there must be something else that took me where I am, in a moment where I can enjoy my life while others are struggling to survive. And I think what made a difference was the time I spend growing myself during all those years of solitude.

What now I recognized has taken me so far is the seeds that I plant many years ago, those seeds, I am sure, has taken me until here, they have been producing their fruits during all these years. While I spent most of my time investing on my knowledge many others spent their time in unproductive activities. Investing in ourselves is the best we can do with our free time. As Robert Kiyosaki said “the only difference between a rich person and a poor person is how their use their time”.  

Because I recognized those seeds that I plant yesterday, and that became great trees of fruits, will die someday, I keep sowing new seeds for my future. I enjoy life as much as I can, I go out, share with friends, travel, have sex, have wine, but also spend my free time investing in myself, growing up, planting the fruits of tomorrow. I invite you today to think how you are using your free time, that one that you spend maybe watching television or in the internet, we can plant seeds for our future without having to sacrifice any pleasure of today! We don’t have to become nerds but instead self discipline people and, believe me, the fruits you can eat from those seeds have the best taste you will ever experience.

Building our dream world together

One of the major problems that arise when a society is pushed towards poverty and a lack of resources like food, money, houses and jobs, is that people tend to become more aggressive in their pursuit of those basic things that everybody needs to survive.  I know this very well because that’s what has happened in the last 30 to 40 years in my country, where the diminishing of opportunities and resources for people, together with many social problems, converted our society into an insane competition for those opportunities and resources. I have to point out that this not only happen in my country but in many others, wherever the society has been pushed towards poverty. In my opinion these brought two main consequences to my country, a good one and a bad one, with the problem that the bad one dominated the good one and became a sign of our way of thinking.

The good thing that happened is that most of the people there are very well trained to compete with any other person for their own resources, as most people can be called self-made people, those who learn the rules of life not in the school but in the real scenario, the street. That is, the lack of resources has changed their mentality to be very competitive in any area of their life. Also the lack of resources has been an opportunity for the growing up of many ideas and has definitely risen up the creativity of many people. A lack of resources has created an atmosphere for the development of the creativity of many people in my country, sometimes in ways that you may be surprised of the good things humans can create in those “extreme” situations, where resources are lacking and survival is needed. In fact, I consider this something very good for a country; for example, I believe that one of the things that has driven China to become an economic giant is that there is a huge spirit of competition between the Chinese people and also between China and other countries, and that great power of being competitive is driving that country to be a leader in the world. 

The bad thing in my country, and many others, is that competition for the resources made people forget about the others and focused in what they needed to pursue their dreams. This brought a main way of thinking that spread all over the country; it was taught to the children by their parents, in the school, in the streets, by their friends and soon became a part of the values of people. The new generations were taught to think about themselves first and over anything else, they should secure everything they needed before anybody else did it. That is how we started to lose the team spirit and a mentality of I win/ you lose became the base of our thinking. That’s how many people in many places think. They think that every action that can take them further in their pursuit of their dreams, no matter how badly it affects other people, is needed to be successful. When everybody started to think on their own with a mentality of I win/ you lose, the society and the values that kept it together started to fall down, in a spiral which lead to many social problems.

One of the foundations of society is the cooperative spirit between it participants, but in my country this has been lost during the years and the society has started to break down leading to a place where intolerance, disrespect, envy and many other defects prevail. People forgot that a team spirit is what can drive a nation to its development. There are many examples of that in the history and nowadays like the Japanese, Germans and United States people, countries that were built or rebuilt in the bases of unity and cooperativism.

In his book, the 7 habits of highly effective people, Stephen Covey shows us six manners in which people tend to act when they pursue what they want; he called it six paradigms of human interaction:

- I win/ you win                              -I win/ you lose                           -I lose/ you win  

- I lose/ you lose                           -I win                               -I win/you win or no deal

The I win/ you lose people usually are self centered people that only look for their own benefit without taking care on how their actions can affect others, the same as the I win people, who search for their benefit regardless of how that affect positive or negatively others. The more aggressive situation is when people don’t let others win if they cannot win (I lose/ you lose). Also there is the opposite people who sacrifice their dreams and what they are to let the others win (I lose/ you win). While, briefly explained, all this paradigms deal with people that is insecure and do not understand how their actions affect their environment, the paradigm of I win/ you win arise to show us that is possible, in any or at least many cases, to find solutions in the pursuit of our dreams which can not only benefit us but also the environment and the people that surround us, and through internalizing that paradigm in our heart and using it daily in our normal interactions with people we can contribute to the establishment of a new society that grows up guided by the force of the union of its individuals and not by the isolated efforts of them. The I win/ you win solutions can be the bases for the development of a country!

Is obvious that a society driven by the four paradigms in the middle, I win/ you lose -I lose/ you win - I lose/ you lose -I win, will not be able to grow up as society but instead will be destructed by the ambition of any of those who look for their personal benefit first, rather than for the benefit of society.

There is much to talk about this, but today I wanted to focused on the fact that to build the nation of our dreams or the world of our dreams, is necessary to start looking for solutions of the type I win/ you win, rather than I win/ you lose or I lose/you win, solutions that can drive our society further away, much more than if we act separately in search of our own benefit. So start to think today what you could do in your normal life to contribute to your society, your family, your friends, your neighborhood, your city, by thinking in win/win actions rather than I win/ everybody else loses. You can internalize this principle by remembering it every time you do a business or you deal with a problem in your family, just think of solutions that make the two counterparts win something! 

Growing up in solitude

One of the things that affect most dramatically a person’s will and desire to follow their dreams is solitude. When solitude comes most of the people are not prepared to confront it and, instead of taking advantage from it and using it as a positive stage in their life, they fall in an uncontrolled mixture of feelings that lead them to an obscure world where they become depressed, sad, scared and weak. Most of the people try to avoid being alone and find easy alternatives to get away of solitude, filling their empty spaces with friends, new relationships, work, etcetera, and even if this is sometimes good in the way that provides distractions, they don’t take the best of their solitude and do not dedicate time to know themselves, to get advantage of those free spaces that they can assign to grow up, and when solitude come again it hit them in their face the same or in a worst way than it did before, leaving them again in a state of depression, sadness, fear and weakness, and this become a cycle in their life. Also when trying to escape from solitude most people just fall into bad friends, bad relations or bad habits and what they thought was their escape from the pain of being alone becomes a bigger pain which now they have to deal with.

So, why not take a time to reflect on the good things that solitude can bring us in our way to follow our dreams? I have been a very lonely person most of my life and only a few years ago have become a lot more social than I used to be. My solitude came mainly from my fear of people, fear to think that I was not able to fix in this world and being accepted as who I am. I have lived extensive periods of loneliness, which I never liked, but that has taught me a lot about myself and my capacities.

When you are alone you have the big chance of getting to know yourself better than any other time in your life, is when you fight alone when you get to know your capacities and you strength your character, you get deeply in touch with yourself and if you use that time in the correct way you may have a greater power than many people that lives scared of the solitude when you finally stop being alone. For me being alone it has been a time of reflection, I have started to get in touch with my deepest self, and even if it has been really hard, those moments of solitude has gave more rewards than unhappiness.

One of the main advantages of being alone is the amazing amount of time you can spend to yourself, to your personal development and the pursuit of your dreams. For me being alone has represent the greatest investments on myself, I have travel everywhere I have wanted, I have chosen to do what I really enjoy to do and I don’t have compromises with any person, which not mean I have not wanted to be with somebody or my family on those moments of solitude, but I have learned and I am yet learning how to enjoy solitude.

When you are able to center yourself in principles and in your main purpose and dreams in life, being alone become a tool in your way to become what you want and you can get the best of it if you know how to guide yourself, whereas if you center your values and feelings in the necessity to be surrounded by others then solitude can become hell. Centering yourself in what is important for your dreams to come true keep you busy and motivated during your way in life when you have to be alone. Personally I spend 3 to 4 hours daily to the development of myself, I mainly do it by reading different kind of books related with my biggest dreams, or writing (which is one of my biggest dreams), or running (which is an activity I enjoy without the necessity to be accompanied) or traveling, which I learned how to enjoyed doing it alone. Also being alone is a great opportunity to know new people and make new friendships, I regularly spend some afternoons meeting new people in the street or at pubs with just the purpose of increasing my social abilities or capacity to attract women, things that I could not do when I am in a relation.

I personally believe that I have been alone when life has wanted to teach me something very important, and even if I want to surrender many times, I have tried to take the best of the solitude, and at the end life always finish to teach me something bigger than I expected; the moments when I have had the greatest changes in my life (for good) and when I have grow up the most is whenever I have been alone. At this moment I am living one of those moments and have found many great things about myself that in any other time in my life. If you change your view of solitude form sadness and fear to a time of personal grow and development, you will have a new great perspective of yourself and your life!  

5 simple things you can do today to build a better world!

To be part of and build a society where everybody can live properly and follow their dreams we don’t need to be public figures like Barack Obama, or Hollywood stars or great scientist or Nobel Prize winners, we just need to do a daily small contribution to our world without expecting anything in exchange but the satisfaction of making others life better. Yesterday was a day of elections in my country and again people put their hopes, their life and their dreams in others hands, expecting that something will change in our society if the politicians decide to change it. Instead of being proactive the people is being reactive (Read my post on be proactive). Instead of understanding that they are part of a system called society, they behave like spectators, like outsiders who don’t want to actively contribute to the development of a modern society. Why do we have to wait for the politicians to make our life easier if this world belong to all of us! How are we going to contribute to develop a better government from our faculties as citizens? Here there are 5 simple ideas you can start applying to your life if you want to participate in constructing a new society where all of us are participants:

-Plant a tree!, a tree will help reducing the pollution of your city and you’ll not have to wait for the politicians to do something to reduce the pollution!

-Dedicate one hour of your week to help somebody without any expectation!, imagine if that person follow your example and help other one and that one help other one and that other one help other one…

-Smile to a stranger in the street!, maybe somebody is wanting to feel better today!

-Take a bucket and put some earthworms on it, then put the organic waste you generate on it, you will help to reduce the amount of waste in the landfills and the water contamination!

-Be honest!

The wisdom of a book

Through many years I have been wandering what things I did to be at the level of success I am right now, which is not big yet but far bigger than many other people from my country, having the kind of problems that I had when I was ten to fifteen years younger. I have also asked myself the same question about others, what things others did and still do in order to be successful in life, and, from the many answers that have came to my head, like the influence of our parents, our friends, our values, etc, there is one which is very common to those who failed once or more, who where in a deep failure, whose life was ruined and managed to make a better life, sometimes becoming greater than most of the successful people around the world, and this answer, is books.

Between ten to fifteen years ago, when I was fourteen to nineteen years old,  I was a lonely and very depressed boy, somebody extremely shy, living a life that is not the proper life for a young men, rejecting myself badly, living my life completely separated from my family (emotionally not physically), not sharing with them my problems, thoughts or anything that happened to me, far away from people from my school, my neighborhood, having only a couple of special friends, that now I am very glad I have had by my side all these years, spending hours and hours isolated in my room, far away from any social interaction common to any people from that age, spending my time playing video games, thinking, thinking, thinking and dreaming about another possible life where I could be happier, encouraging all those bad thoughts I had about me, that I wasn’t a good men, not good enough to be loved, to have friends, etc, thinking that maybe was better to commit suicide than kept living a life that the one I had, dying inside…But apart from that, there was something else that I did during those years, I started to read books.

I still remember that it was a Saturday afternoon, when I was alone in my house, when I took the decision to start reading books, I wanted to read any book I could find in our personal library; that’s how I started to read every day, any book I could find. Some of them were novels, some of them were poetry and some of them were about motivation, self-improvement and success. I still have in mind a poem from a very important writer, Rubén Darío, the father of Modernism in literature, and that I made my personal pray, a poem that described who I was and how I though just before I started in the way of self improvement; the poem is called “the fatal”, and the first part goes something like these (I traduced it from Spanish):

Fortunate the tree, which is just sensitive,

And more the hard rock because does not feel anymore,

Because there is no bigger pain than the pain of being alive,

And no bigger sorrow than the conscious life.

After started reading I came in touch with many books about personal development and self motivation, and these books started to change my points of view, about life, people and most important myself, some of the books I remembered I read are the biggest salesman in the world (Og Mandino), your erroneous zones (Wayne Dier) and my favorite a book, that I am not sure it falls into the category of success or self improvement books, but which is more like a spiritual guide to me, the manual of the warrior of light, by Paulo Coelho. Among all this books, I started to change my complete vision of my life, what it was and how it could be, and this books today I would say had a great influence in my way to become who I am now, someone that ten years ago I could not imagine I could be. My motivation to be here came in part from all those books that I read ten years ago, I left the reading of those books along ago and now I am realizing how important they was for me and how important they are and they are going to be for my future, I restarted to read books a few months ago and again, I’m gaining a lot from them, I am growing up at an incredible rhythm, Im getting to know myself better, every single day, and starting to pursuit my biggest dreams in life. I owned all these to all the wisdom that every single book about self improvement and success deliver to me.

Og Mandino, in his description of the secrets of success, mentioned that a very important secret to success is to read books about self improvement. I shared my story here with you thinking of another way to show what Og Mandino used to teach about the principles of success and how important was for him to read all the books about self improvement, motivation and success that he could find in all the libraries across United States, which he attributed had a great influence in his way to became one of the greatest men the world have ever seen after failed in life. Although I found so much motivation reading the books I read during my youth, I stopped reading them a long ago and just a few months ago I started to realize how important they were for my life, for that young boy to become who I am nowadays.

So, my message for you today is that a great tool that you posses, and is very cheap and easy to find, in order to pursuit your dreams, is the wisdom that comes from all the great books that has been written about success and self improvement, do not underestimated the power that these books posses, because is greater than anything you can imagine!  

Be proactive!

One of the big lessons that I had to learn in the worst way, and I am still learning, is to be proactive. Before that happened, I spent so much of my life waiting for others to do things for me, or waiting for the right conditions to come before starting something new, or leaving my responsibilities to others, making excuses to justify my failures. Also I used to be moved by others attitude and way of thinking which limited my life, career and relations with others. Being proactive means that you take control of yourself and your life and the situations that surround you, basically you anticipate or choose the responses that you want from any event that occurs in your life. You are responsible for your own life.

Being proactive requires that you take your own decisions, that you stop asking others about what to do and how to do it, you start to decide what you want and how you are going to get it; choose, make mistakes and learn, that’s how we learn and evolve to become better persons. In order to be proactive you need to stop being reactive, the other side of being proactive.

Reactive people usually wait for things to happen and then react to those things, adjusting themselves to the situation. Reactive people are always seemed to be affected by their environment and the circumstances around them. For example, if you are the kind of person that gets sad on a rainy day, just because is rainy, you maybe a reactive person, which is leaving the control of your feelings and your mental states to external factors, in this case a rainy day. Another example of being reactive is how much you get affected from other people; for example, if your boss tells you that you are mediocre and after that you get sad, frustrated, etc, you are being reactive to your boss attitude, you are being moved by your feelings; in the other hand  when you are proactive, your mental state does not change after an external stimulus like the one I just mentioned, if you know who you are and how you do things, you should not get affected by others thoughts, you are being proactive. Being proactive mean also to take the initiative in your life, you are responsible for everything that happens and accordingly you have to act to get what you want from life.

We all have the power to choose how we are going to response to any stimulus. If you understand how to be proactive, how you can choose your answers to any external stimulus, then you will be half way near to fulfill your dreams. Being proactive is to understand that you can choose which attitude you are going to assume in any circumstance. Think that you can choose how you feel about anything, for example, you can choose to feel happy after the person you loved leave you or when you have being alone for a long time, don’t expect that good things happen to start feeling good, take control of what you feel, don’t let any external stimulus affect your mental state, keep it positive, if you know what you want from life and you are pursuing it, those external factors should not affect your way!

Make your force reside in your values, do not let your feelings take control over yourself; the less you are affected by others and by any external circumstances, the more control over your life you will have. In your way to make your dreams come true, you have to be proactive!

What do you want from life?

I always think how many people around me are actually getting from life what they really wanted to have. I am getting the habit of asking people about their dreams, their goals and their passions in life and how much are they doing to keep those dreams, goals and passions alive, how much effort they are making to actually pursue those things. It is amazing how many, many, many people give the following type of answer:

-          I don’t know what I really want from life, or

-          I don’t know how to make my dreams real, or

-          It is too late for me to achieve my dreams, or

-          I don’t have dreams, or

-          Nobody gave me the chance to pursue my dreams, or

-          Is impossible for me to make my dreams come true, etcetera

answers that I don’t understand, we are living in a rich world, a world full of opportunities, a world that belong to us, a world that was given to us, but most of the people are not living their dreams, not even trying to pursue them and is very sad to see those people, living life like spectators, while others, only a few others are taking the best from life and living it at their best. How many people I have seen that gave up so easy, probably thinking that there will be another chance to live, another world or reality where they can realize their dreams, or they may think that in heaven they will have whatever they are not able to get here, in this real world where we live.

Actually, the idea of going to heaven is actually quite dangerous for me, I do believe in heaven and I hope when I die there is such a place where we can go and rest in peace for the rest of the eternity, but heaven seems for too many people like the place where they will, one day, have the chance to make their dreams true, which make those people forget that they are living right now, and this live is probably the only thing that really exists!. Heaven could be a false hope for you if you sit down not doing anything in life to fight for what you want, waiting and wondering if there is such a place where all your dreams will become true. If it is like that, then heaven must be a mediocre place, if there is such a place where you can live your dreams without deserving it, without winning them, that cannot be the real heaven. I think that if we are not able to get what we want from life here in this world, this vast world, this huge amazing world where we live, we do not deserve to go to a place like heaven, if there everything will be free for us. Anyway, let’s go back to the main topic.

For me, the reason to be here in this world, existing in the middle of this huge universe, aware that there may be nothing else after I die, that I am just a small point in time and space in the eternal history of the universe, is that we are here to become whatever we really want to, we are here to challenge ourselves and to discover that we can be a big or a small part of the history of the world and we can be part of the evolution of the universe. For me the best reason to live and keep living is because we can challenge our selves everyday to go further, beyond the limits that ourselves or others has imposed to us since we were born, we can be whatever we want and life have gave us all the tools that we need to conquer the world, life is a game and we are the players of this game, if we choose to.

When I start to think that we probably only have one chance to live before going to sleep in eternal peace, that this chance is as short period of time that we have in the history of the universe, I think about all the people who is actually wasting their life, doing things that they don’t want to do because they have left their life in others hands, because they are lazy or cowards to go out and get what they want. What are you doing today to pursue your dreams?, what you really want to be and get from life?, how much time do you spend daily to work for your dreams, or how many excuses are you making to not go out and get what you want from life?, what are you waiting for to live your dreams?, there may be not tomorrow for any of us. Have you ever thought what you are going to tell yourself before you are dying?, when you will look to your past and will realize if your life was wasted or it was a great life?

Remember that what you ask from life is what you get. There are not impossible things, just limited minds. Start pursuing your dreams right now!, today!, wake up and follow your heart, leave all your fear and doubts behind and start looking for what you really want, because maybe, tomorrow, when you are going to be lying in a bed waiting for death to take you away, you may realized that you may have waste your life living whatever you live but not what you wanted to live. There are no excuses to not pursue your dreams!