MAKE YOUR DAY!
"Make your day" by that I mean, two things:
1. How you choose to experience your current day, and
2. How your dreams and goals, which lie in your future, depend on your current mindset, your current habits and your current conversations.
Remember the old adage, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going?" Leads me to the thought that boats are built to sail, not to sink. But when building, the boat constructor considers what it would take to sail the boat through a storm. He then builds a boat that can be able to handle rough seas. He builds resilience, durability, strength and toughness, longevity and permanence into the boat.
The same is true when it comes to creating a successful life.
Jensen Huang, NVIDIA CEO, said this in an interview, when asked about what makes successful minds. He said, "I don't have high expectations. Because people with high expectations have low resilience. And resilience matters when it comes to success. But you must be the best at what you do, and work hard."
Resilience matters when it comes to success
I totally agree with that. People with high expectations, not only have low resilience, but they also have low tolerance when things fail and fall apart. They are easily offended and prefer to wallow in their bitterness rather than establish a renewed mindset to pursue a solution. The reason is because they have not built habits that support their current mindset. Or that with every good habit formed in their life, which is intended to build success and wealth, they undo it and destroy it with negative habits which they have not yet abandoned or rejected.
They can never progress with good habits, because bad habits still have a say in their current conversations.
The only way to change an old habit is to go from doing less of it to completely doing none of it. That's only half of the truth. Here's the other half. Concurrently, you must give all your attention to forming new habits. It's your new habits that take the place of your old. Hence, the only way to remove the old habit is to inject the new into your life with persistence, discipline and intentionality.
If you're going to break the cycle of the old man, along with its conversations, you first must begin the new conversation and remain in the new.
The Apostle Paul wrote on this thought in his letter to the Church in Ephesus:
Ephesians 4:20-25, 27, 29 (KJV)
But ye have not so LEARNED Christ; If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: That ye put off concerning the FORMER CONVERSATION THE OLD MAN, WHICH IS CORRUPT according to the deceitful lusts; And BE RENEWED IN THE SPIRIT OF YOUR MIND; AND THAT YE PUT ON THE NEW MAN, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. Neither give place to the devil. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.
When Apostle Paul wrote to the Church in Philippi, he said to them
"FOR OUR CONVERSATION is in Heaven; from whence also WE LOOK FOR the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:" (Philippians 3:20)
The hidden diamond is there, if you can see it? Let me show it to you...Your current conversations are a reflection and representation of your new self and your new conversation. You have chosen a new result by entertaining a new conversation. You are forming and becoming the new and better version of you, by adopting the new way of thinking and the new way of speaking IN YOUR CURRENT CONVERSATIONS. Not your future conversations, but your current conversations.
Your current conversations matter.
Martin Luther King Jnr, in his speech said, the famous words, "I have a dream..."
Though the dream was a future event which was going to be fulfilled, he was living that dream in his current conversations. He wasn't waiting for tomorrow, he had already decided his tomorrow by his present conversation. And he injected the same belief, hope and motivation into many. It was motivation with a specific type of intent that produced a desired outcome.
Martin Luther King Jnr and many like him showed great resilience and courage in their time. One may profess to have passion, but if they don't have resilience for tough times, they have not formed the right habits that sustain and support their growth.
My first job was as an Army Officer. I learned many wisdom lessons from my time in the army. One of them was mental toughness. As you know soldiering is a mindset. As a cadet, the instructors we trained under often found ways to make our lives miserable. They would intentionally create and inject difficult tasks into our training to break us. I quickly understood, that it wasn't how big or strong you were. It was more, how much resilience and stamina you had. If you were still standing but your body already gave up on you and was ready to shut down and collapse to the ground. You didn't show them that you were weak. They weren't trying to mould ego into us. That's not what they were looking for. Rather, they were looking for our resilience. If you could put up with pain without talking back or complaining. If you could put up with pain and fatigue and still be focused on the assignment.
But mental toughness had to be built into us through hardship. Therefore, resilience is a key factor in how well you survive and thrive.
The second lesson was, we also needed to form the right habits quickly in order to cope with the pressure of the moulding. And if we formed the right habits, we thrived and we conquered, sometimes with ease, that it surprised me.
The third lesson was a blend of the two. Resilience combined with the right habits and conversations become our mindset. Hardship shaped our minds to think differently. We had to be teachable, in a matter of seconds to be able to accommodate the high volume of change. We needed to develop a mindset that could accommodate that pace and pressure. For me, it came when I decided my end goal. The person I wanted to be was the person I was pursuing to become. But I had to be that person in my present; in my current mindset.
When you know what you want before you attempt to pursue that outcome. You then form the right habits and conversations for that outcome.
Your conversations matter, your habits matter and your mindset matters.
The dream you speak of may be in your tomorrow, but its fulfilment lies in your current habits, only if your habits are aligned to that dream.
It's operating with clear intentions about where you want to be. You are becoming your desired outcome, not only as an event to be fulfilled in your future, but you are that outcome in your present thinking and conversations. You therefore form habits that are building blocks and key to what becomes you.
What you are going to be, started the moment you conformed and aligned your habits to that version of you.
Big results comes from the aggregate compounding effect of every small step you took and every small result you gained. Each small achievement taught you new lessons and allowed you to grow. If you perceived each lesson as an investment into your life, you saw correctly. You are the total sum of all the lessons you applied to your life, along with all the failures you went through, and all the successes you experienced.
To conclude, your habits are leading and keeping you somewhere. Choose them wisely. They are a big part of your mindset. Know deep within yourself that you are the means by which you reach your dream and your end goal.
-- From my journal --
🌿Norman Sabadi
My Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0OHqOX1OyciINWAhpLUJ9A
Youtube Handle: @normansabadi
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