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

7 comments:

  1. Although I use companies as an example in the middle, I think it can be applicable to every choice in life.

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  2. I have been reading to similar topics as well, it's interesting who you always have to do "something someone is telling you" to be successful.

    From all the material I've read, the ones I like the most is:
    1-) Secrets of the millionaire mind, T. harv ecker
    2-) Think and Grow rich, by napoleon hill ( it's old, really old, but i believe it really focus on re NLP (neuro-linguistics programming). BUY THE AUDIOBOOK FROM ITUNES)

    But you are right about the plan, or the goal, or the idea. YOU HAVE TO SET ONE. Mine is to be bigger than salesforce on business SaaS!

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  3. Thanks ;) Haven't read those yet... opening amazon now ;)

    I've been reading:
    1) The E-Myth series (BRILLIANT!)
    2) Change your life in 7 days (quite different than I was expecting)
    3) Accidental Billionaires

    And I'll be starting "Who's your city" soon :)
    (My wish-list is growing too fast by the way!)

    Although they're completely different from each other, put together are very strong! :)

    Good luck ;)

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  4. By reading this post I can only say: WOW! What happen here?

    Don't get me wrong, but really, I've just had an amazing life lesson that made me think in the reasons I gave myself to some choices I've made in the present past and all from you!

    What I retained the most from your words is that whatever you make with your life, you have to ensure that it makes sense to you. No matter if you want to be "only" rich or happy or conquer the world, you have fight To get there because you want and all the pieces work together to build a perfectly designed picture in your head!

    And, know what? I guess that is an ideal that makes sense to me! Sometimes don't matter the society's predefined relevance for some goals or dreams, but instead the relevance you gave them by your own judgement.

    Thanks dude, it helped me a lot this pause to think about this subject...

    (ps-sorry for any spell errors but writing this in my phone isn't easy)

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  5. If you want to be successful you have to achieve not some book author definition of success, but your own.

    My grandmother definition of success was to live well enough and provide well enough for people she took care. She is successful for decades, but no book will ever choose her as an example because everyone is looking for the mainstream success definition.

    So be who you want to be a do what you want to do, the rest is mumbo-jumbo... that is success, to me it is.

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  6. Thanks for the comments ;) really appreciated :)

    aplicadinho: That's a really good way of explaining it :) and I'm glad you identify yourself we it :)
    Sometimes it might not be easy to follow our own path but we can do it with some determination :)
    The power of the break, to think a bit, is amazing! :)
    http://bit.ly/b18Ds6

    Vlad: That's a great concept, "mainstream definition of success". I think that says it all ;)
    Never thought of "the grandmother" example, at least that way :) that's probably the same reason why so many people say, when they travel to some African countries, that people there look so happy even when they're really "poor" (for an European).

    Thanks again ;)

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  7. Estou a adorar "ler-te". Tenho aprendido muito contigo! Não são conceitos de felicidade mas sim o aprender a sentir o que nos faz feliz! Acho que descobriste o caminho da felicidade! ahahahaha! É isso mesmo: inspira-te, cria, arrisca, vai em frente, sendo fiel a ti mesmo.
    Se contribuirmos também para a felicidade daqueles que se cruzam connosco, essa será também parte da nossa própria felicidade.
    Be happy and make others happy! :)
    "See you later"!



    Ah.... e ...sonha...sonha sempre ... muito. :)

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