Ok, so what is success then?

Well, another good question. I am sure all of us have some notion of what we think success is but is that notion we have correct? Success, failure, existence, mediocrity, high-society, fame, disgrace... What actually are these things?

They are words. That is all they are. And what do words do? In a very general sense, they describe or convey some idea or knowledge. Words are open to interpretation. So who interprets the words? Well in this example and topic, you do.

Just as failure is a matter of your opinion, so then is success. Failure and success are not what they are, they are simply results (words) and how you view them or interpret them is up to you. At any one point in time you can view yourself as a success or a failure, it is ALL up to you and no-one else.

If you were to maybe study hard (as an example) and go through whatever was required and at the end of it all someone declared or entitled upon you a degree in chemistry, then maybe you could carry that around with you for the rest of your life. "I have a degree in chemistry". This does not make you successful nor a failure, it simply means that one stage in your life you did at one time succeed in doing that which you pursued.

Change the words! Change your thinking! You are not successful but rather you succeeded this time. You are not a failure but rather you failed this time. Successes and failures are time and deed relative. They are instantaneous descriptions of an event or perhaps a short series of events - not a description of persons life.

I really do hope this blog makes you think, after all, that was the intention of the thing in the first place. There is no success. There is no failure. There is only a result from doing or not doing something. The action or inaction either provides a good result or a bad result or any combination of the aforesaid in varying amounts. Is how you interpret the result that may be your basis for success or failure?

Life is not about winning and losing, it is not about success or failure. Life is simply about living. You can live in many ways. You can live in the past, you can live in the future, you can live with regret or remorse, you can live with elation and expectation... You can live how you want. The main thing to understand is that you are ALREADY living how you choose- it just maybe that the result you are getting is not really what you want.

In short - to succeed is to "not fail" and to fail is to "not succeed", thus one could make the assumption that to be successful is to fail infrequently and to be a failure is to succeed infrequently? Sounds logical? Although the statement is valid it is not true because life is a test and failure is not an option. You must therefore succeed - eventually. You can never be a failure, nor can you ever be a success. You can only but succeed or fail from time to time - the choice is yours.

Remember: The latest blog is at the top. To get some historical background, scroll down a bit. Feel free to comment.

So what is a failure?

Good question. A failure is somewhat a matter of opinion - mostly your opinion but also may depend on the crap that others deal to you because they think that they have the ability or power to control you.

Those others may control your job, your income or if you are in the Mafia or a Cartel then they may have a much greater control over you, but at the end of the day, no one can ever make anyone do something that that person does not willingly or unwilling choose to do themselves. They may tell you you have failed, but that is not necessarily true. You are only a failure in their opinion, their eyes. You do not have to be a failure in your own opinion.

Even more so, others like your children, wife/husband/parents may exert a good deal of control over you through fear of losing what you have already invested in time and perhaps also money. There are words for this kind of thing. Extortion, blackmail, hedging, calling your bluff and many more I am sure - depends a bit on the extent of the collateral damage.

You must pass life's tests. That is not an option. But the challenges you put in front of yourself of your own volition are a little different. Life did not necessarily chose this course of action for you, you did - and it may have been inspired from some prior or current event or mistake but life did not put that test in front of you to pass - you did.

Life's tests are most often based on really simple mushy stuff (simple - Yeah Right!) like emotional responses, attitude, compassion, frugality, manliness, womanliness, motherhood, fatherhood, parenting, self control, calmness, deep thought,spirituality. Wow, I could go on for a long time here but I won't. The life tests are real easy stuff that anyone can handle like a piece of cake - NOT.

You don't need a lot of life skill to know that if you put your finger or hand into a flame, it will be hot and if there is no light, it will be dark. Life's tests are not about simple binary stuff that a baby perhaps learns within a few days. No, don't put your babies hand under a candle to prove it - LOL.

The only time I would consider myself to have failed is if I had QUIT on one of life's tests. Not "not passed - as in willing to take the test again" but quit. Quit means that I have totally and resolutely given up on the whole damn thing. Then I have failed. However as resolute as I might be, life won't let me do that. All I am doing is quitting on myself and life will regurgitate the same test again.

If I was to quit on a relationship, a business venture, a job or any other such thing that I created or obtained of my own volition, then there is leeway. I would balk at the idea of quitting on a person unless that person proved unworthy of my effort. (see Trust a bit later on).

I see failure like this. We all go off on tangents at some stage in our lives. We pursue dreams and goals, activities and relationships and now and then, while we are mid stream the red flag gets waved. Time to re-think. Is this worth my effort? What in reality am I going to benefit from this? Is anyone going to benefit from what I am doing that will actually make a difference to them?

There will always be times when the result is not worth the effort like - A great idea but I don't seem to be able to get it to work. I started this then found something else better. It just takes too much of my valuable time and so on. Its hurting my relationship (kids maybe). This is costing me a fortune...

I often quit on those sorts of things. I do not get upset or admonish myself for this. I even thought about tossing this blog aside because the Google interface would not/could not do what I wanted - but I am still here. Many times a person just has to try something and analyse the result. The value of any venture comes from the results, not (as valuable as it is) the feedback.

When you set a goal in concrete be very sure it is exactly (the overall goal, not the details) what you want. If you quit on too many goals, you will run yourself down and fail to set new ones in the future. Millions of people have done this and will continue to do this. Don't be one of the millions, be yourself and be proud of who and what you are.

Remember: The latest blog is at the top. To get some historical background, scroll down a bit. Feel free to comment.

Ok, so I messed up

Really! How dare you mess up! Mistakes are just not acceptable! Nah, just kidding, of course they are acceptable. They have to be because everyone does it from time to time. But have you ever had a boss or someone in authority say something like that? Sure you have. It may have even been your parents or siblings.

Mistakes are OK but in saying that, I don't mean you should welcome mistakes. It is just that mistakes do happen. Life gave you a test and you did not pass. I will not say you failed, I just say that you did not pass. You have not yet failed for a good reason. Life will keep the test in front of you or it will present it again and give you the opportunity to pass the test the next time.

I knew a person quite long time ago who said that he has never made a serious mistake in his life. Really! I mean really really! If he was not lying through his teeth then that person was stagnant. He wasn't going anywhere and had learned nothing of value in his life.  That person was me.

Serious mistakes cause you to take serious account of WTF just happened. This is great. Stepping out of a situation and looking in at all the aspects of what just happened is the best thing you can do. If it was something urgent like a car accident or suchlike then for sure, you may need to action something very quickly. You are more likely to react than respond and that is understandable. Time may be of the essence. More so if there was an injury.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, you may well have to pay a price for a serious mistake. Society has rules, jobs have rules, parents have rules and the list goes on, but don't let a big mistake put you back.

Think if you were a boxer in the ring. A good hit may stagger you or make you fall but if you get back up in time you are still there for a comeback. Life will give you that test again without any doubt UNLESS you have learned that which you need to know on the first incident. When you change, life's tests will change.

You absolutely must figure out what went wrong and correct the object or yourself (yes you, not any other people involved). The only person you are allowed to have control of is you. Not only that but you also have full control over you. The only person you can correct is you. You neither have the ability or the power to change someone else because you want to or feel THEY need to change. The only one who can change the other person is the other person. They also need to pass the test, and if they don't, guess what happens next?

It is permissible to get it wrong until you get it right. Walking, talking, eating - as babies we all struggled miserably here until we got it right. The older you become, the less permissible mistakes become.

Know this. Maturity has absolutely nothing to do with age, it has everything to do with experience. It has everything to do with "passing the tests". Mature people make less mistakes only because of the tests they have passed.

Remember: The latest blog is at the top. To get some historical background, scroll down a bit. Feel free to comment.

Crap is good

Well, strictly speaking, life doesn't throw crap at you. You attract crap! Yeah right you say! What I say is very correct. Life does not throw anything. People do and you are a "people". You throw crap onto other people and other people throw crap onto you. It is that simple. Life doesn't throw crap, it presents you with tests. life wants you to survive and it wants to know if you are among the fittest that will survive.

Have you ever had the experience where the same crap just seems to keep happening over and over again? Sometimes in the same way, sometimes the same thing but in a different way. That is not life beating against you. That is you not learning the lessons from the past.

If life does test you it is doing so in order for you to learn. If you don't learn the lesson from a particular issue, it will not go away. If you manage to avoid or circumvent it, life will somehow find a way to present you with that lesson again. If you still fail to learn, then again and again and again until you do.

Ponder some common examples. Bad debts, several failed relationships, brat kids, troublesome car and so on.  If you are not experiencing such things yourself then I am sure you are aware of someone who is. And then there are the good things like vibrant relationships, controlled debts, model kids etc.

But the good things don't keep coming back you say. Correct. They don't need to. You have already learned whatever you needed to learn to accomplish such things and now you can benefit from them or be rid of them as the case maybe.

In a very blunt kind of way, if you are a somewhat undesirable person, you will usually attract undesirable outcomes. It is not as simple as that but the above statement is really what it boils down to. The reverse however is not as true...

Life is a test. You need to pass the test otherwise you will never move on from the current obstacle or issue that is holding you back. And sure enough, as soon as you do overcome that obstacle, you will soon be faced with another. Its called beating the odds. Its called passing the test. It is like sport practice, you are gaining skill - the skill of wiping off the crap and moving forward.

The more tests in life that you pass, the greater your knowledge, the greater your skill, the more you learn and the better and stronger the person you become. This keeps compounding and at some stage in your life you will realize that all these tests aren't so hard after all. When you become a strong person, an attitude reversal happens. It turns to "bring it on baby" - "challenge me, I love it".

Remember: The latest blog is at the top. To get some historical background, scroll down a bit. Feel free to comment.

Life is a test

The human mind is the most incredible thing I am aware of aside the universe itself. It is so versatile, so forgiving and so adaptable and like a camera, it can be focused to perfection yet still maintain enough peripheral vision to put the current focus into perspective with surrounding events.

A long time ago I read a book written by Pat Mesiti. Among the number of principles he outlined there was one phrase that still lingers in my memory. The phrase was "Life is a test. Pass it".

There is power in that phrase. Think about it. If life really is a test, then you only have two choices, pass or fail. Which do you choose? The beauty about this phrase is that it is not constricted by time. He is not saying the test is today, nor tomorrow nor yesterday. The test is ongoing and you must pass everything that is thrown at you from life, not just now but also tomorrow and next month and next year...

So how do you do this? How do you continually pass the tests that life throws at you? You use your head. Now some of you will be thinking WTF. That is a bad bad stupid statement but in reality what else can you use? A baseball bat perhaps? Words maybe? A lawyer or a mediator or someone else? Try throwing the cat at the bailiff and see if that works LOL

Maybe such things might help but I can assure you, you will not get anything much in the way of closure to any particular issue this way. You have to grab the bull by the horns so to speak and deal with your issues from the inside out and that is not always easy to do.

Remember: The latest blog is at the top. To get some historical background, scroll down a bit. Feel free to comment.

Why "capture your mind"

Welcome.

The most powerful nation on this planet is the imagination and this nation is controlled by your mind. It is not left brain or right brain - artistic or logical. It is all brain, every part of you from the day you were born up to and including this very moment where you are reading this blog.

In a general sense, your mind (your thinking) at this point in time has been shaped and effected by everyone you have ever met, everything you have read, everything you have seen and everything you have ever experienced.

Computer technology is struggling to even come close to what your mind is capable of. Your mind can evaluate easy stuff like hot and cold, black and white but more often than not it is evaluating mushy stuff like emotions, attitudes, morals and suchlike.  It is the mushy stuff that computers struggle with and that will always set them apart from the real you.

We are computers in a sense, but light years beyond anything on this planet to date.  You are unique, just like me, just like the last person you spoke with or saw. We are not black and white, hot and cold. We are not binary. We are grey (mushy stuff) with some serious binary ability.

The focus of this blog is to share my thoughts, experiences and knowledge on how your mind can influence you - what you do, how you see things or perceive things and how you choose to react or respond to new things.

I am no expert, just a simple person like yourself but I am by no means the same as you because like I stated above, the sum total of me is MY experiences, the people that I have met and the books that I have read etc.

In this blog I speak from the heart. I use a lot of stuff from some totally excellent books and also a number of totally awesome people. Much of this comes from my own personal experiences and from the experiences I have observed of others whom I know.

I live in a dying age. It is not that this age is dying because we can all see that this age (era) is here and very real. It is that I am coming toward the end of my age and all that I loved and experienced is now coming into a full perspective. I see more clearly now than I did when I was 30 but that is only because I made it to 30 and beyond anyway.

Everything is relevant. Everything has its place. Everything works together whether you like it or not even when it appears to work against you. Everybody is part of that everything. There are no singularities. There are no exceptional people, just people who have achieved something you respect or admire.