Sunday 18 April 2010

Inspirational Time


Hi all,
How are you today?

-
I just want to share a thought.
"Great things can only come from inspired minds." Find your sources of inspiration and keep them safe, very safe!


I feel inspired by so many things, even simple things!

People (they know who) can inspire me in many different ways.
Films mess with my feelings in a good way.
Cities, especially really big and busy ones, make me feel free and are the source for the most diverse of inspirations. The simple fact of walking through people, being at new and strange (good) places, sitting outside of a cafe looking at the busy street and thinking of all things that might have happened there, where the people are going, why? My thoughts move faster than me and that keeps me inspired!
Some sources are even from my quotidian activities, things that I see/do every single day but in that moment they were "different" and made me feel different.

All of them make me dream...


Whatever your sources are, keep them! From inspiration comes motivation and from motivation you can change the World, at least yours!


P.s. Don't forget, to be able to see through them, you need to stop sometimes, relax!


See you later.




Cheers,
Diogo

Wednesday 7 April 2010

No One Knows

Hi all,
How are you today?

When we're young our parents tell us “you need to study”, when we grow up they say “you need to find a good job and keep it for life”.
Although the grown up version might be different depending where you've grown, there's always a path that everyone will try to follow and make you follow it.
People pretend to know how we should be living our lives but truth is, no one knows! Not even us.

Most people have dreams (at least that's what I want to believe) and everyone is afraid of failing, if only a bit. Obviously it's much easier to follow what society tells us to do and blame the system if we fail than to take full accountability for ourselves.

Please, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to argue against the usefulness of our society's definition of good and bad, far from it. My point is that we can be responsible for ourselves and make a positive result out of most situations, even when we have messed up with “the path”.

For a while I was quite good messing up with it (“the path”) and I must admit, sometimes it made me think I wasn't going anywhere but lying to myself telling that “I was doing it for a reason that I believed in”. Then I got the amazing job people told me I could only get by following the right path, I was confused!
After giving it a little thought I realised “Wait! The path doesn't matter, not at all! What really matters are our dreams (some call them goals), values and the capacity to change and adapt to the present circumstances!” Am I right? I don't know. Unfortunately for some, there's no universal formula for success, this is just my today's equation.
I'm happy with myself today and I like to think that I only am who I am because of everything I did until now, even though I made some mistakes, I don't know if it would be better or worse otherwise. It's preferable to learn from the past but only think of what we can change in the present to make the future closer to what we imagine.

Lately I've been reading a lot about entrepreneurship, successful people and other related topics (good reading by the way). It's amazing the amount of times I read “To be truly successful you'll need to...”, sometimes even with opposing ideas and all written by successful people. Some of the articles even start by telling that “the path” doesn't matter but then finish describing the profile of the successful person, the one that succeeded against all odds. We can't fall for the anti-path, that's just another one and in this case it can make people believe the success is only for a small group of elite people (and hopefully they're wrong).

I don't want to sound pretentious, I do listen to all those advices and I really find them useful. I truly respect the people who wrote them but I need to be careful not to take as an absolute truth.

Well... I'm not trying to say everyone should create their own path, I don't believe it is the best to do (neither the worst), actually I don't even think it should be easier to not follow “the path”, after all that's just asking people to believe in us because we say so. What I am saying is that everyone is responsible by writing their own history either by following “the path” or not, your choice!

When we speak about success we usually start by listing some successful cases, I would start by the recent Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Twitter... They are world changers in the technology field.
If someone shouts “I want to create something as big as Google” others will tell them crazy. We compare the craziness of one or two guys to the current state of a successful big corporation. Although starting a company with the single purpose of “being as big as Google” might not be the best idea, what we usually miss is that all those companies started small, from zero.
I'm sure there were other equally or even more special people in the world when Bill Gates started Microsoft. If asked, no one would have guessed, by looking at his profile, that he would change the world a few years later. In the end, Microsoft wouldn't have happened without the will, the will to make something different, outside of the box and take responsibility for it.

All this to say: I'm again ready to mess with “the path”!
This time my goal is to live an happy life, make my dreams come true and be the best person I can be! To inspire myself and never let the energy go away!
As valid as any other goal so, what's yours?

P.s. Just so do you know, initially this post was going to be about the importance of following “the path”, I proved myself to be wrong...

See you later.


Cheers,
Diogo