#nowna

All people wanted to achieve something great. We all dreamed of being a person that can someday, be at the top. Sometimes, it is because we envy others who achieved something. Or because we just wanted to gain respect from our social group or prove something and avoid the feeling of being left behind. The main reason is because we have pride. We are being motivated by what we see from the achievements of other people or by the situation we are currently facing and therefore comparing ourselves, our lives, from the lives of other people around us. So we wanted to act and start doing something that could help us reach our goals and dreams. Have you heard the saying, “the hardest thing to do is to start”? Maybe it’s true, but I’ll explain later why you don’t have to think about the word “start” for you not to make the “do” hard. For now, let’s talk about the goals and dreams that we have in our minds and the reasons why all of these dreams that we have all stays in the mind, as illusions, and are not becoming a reality.

First reason why all of our dreams are not becoming a reality is because we always build a “trash” habit.

You know that the time of our day is divided into three (3) eight (8) hours: 8 for sleeping, 8 for work, and 8 for leisure. But of course we cannot legalistically follow those exact eight hours. Sometimes it’s just sleep, work, and leisure. The hours? Who cares? It’s your time you are free to use it. The question is, what habit are we really building in the span of these 24 hours? A habit of sleeping? A habit of playing computer games (unless you are pro who makes money out of it)? Habit of scrolling, checking, liking, and staring at your Facebook page or twitter account? Or simply having the habit of wasting your time. How much do we spend our 24 hours with our habits? I’m not saying that the habits I mentioned are bad. They are not. It is just they become a trash in our lives if we don’t give meaning and purpose to our own habits and if we let these habits control us rather us controlling them. Doing such habits could help us become a person that we want in the future if we know its value for our life’s success. If you can’t find any value with your current habit, try changing it into something that you think can help you in the future. This may sound existential but what can you do? You’re existing.

Second, we can’t identify what we really want. 

Maybe this is common to people who are known as jack of all traits and master of none. We can’t focus and master one thing because we want to try many things but then we can’t identify what we really want. Sometimes we get confused, asking ourselves, “What do you really want to do? What do you really want to be?” It is not also easy to choose between following your “passion” and following “other’s passion” and identifying which of the two really has the truth. But which of those gave you real happiness, excitement, thrill and challenge? Think of that and think how you can improve that one trait that can help you master your talents.

Third reason is we always live in the future, not in the present.

There’s nothing wrong on thinking about your future. We just don’t have to be stuck in a long distance time which is not present in the present reality. For example, thinking about tomorrow distracts us on what we really have to do today and we end up accomplishing nothing in the present because we’re too busy thinking about tomorrow. None of us knows the future. So why bother? Doing what is to be done today is the thing to be done, and just trust what will happen next.

Another reason is we often want to take time with “lazy.”

I’m too lazy to write, I’ll just do this some other day... Oops. Yes it’s me. Anyway, I don’t think people are lazy. We actually want to do something, we just can’t find something that is interesting for us or something that we understand the value. But I admit that laziness is indeed our problem. Even though we already know what to do, “lazy” often time attacks. So we procrastinate and delay things that we know we can already do and finish. As I said at the first reason, most of us already made laziness as a habit controlling our time. And it’s dangerous. I believe in the balance of things. In each word, good and bad are present. They’re not separated. But the level of goodness and badness depends on how a person used the word and perceived by the receiver. Being lazy or delaying things could still give us good results like giving you more time to think or makes you to wait that maybe better opportunity might come. But like I said, remember to live in the present and know that we don’t live forever. So you might not be able to do tomorrow what you delayed now.

Lastly, despite of being motivated by what we see in the present, we’re just good at the start. 

We’ve already built our good habits, we identified what we want, we are already living the present, we already stopped being lazy, but after a few days or weeks, our fire burns out. We don’t anymore want to continue doing what we’re doing because we’ve been distracted or discouraged. From running towards making our dreams a reality, we turned back again because we think that we can’t afford the cost. “It’s not about how you start, it’s about how you finish the race.”

Let’s go back to the saying that says, “The hardest thing to do is to start.” I can agree that it is true because most of us doesn’t know how to start even though we wanted to start. But the thing is, you don’t have to “start”. You just have to “do”. Even doing nothing is doing something so there’s no such thing as doing nothing, it is just wasting time. Right now, do and achieve to have every piece of your present and collect those, day by day like a puzzle. Then see what it may look like by the time you’ve completed and formed those pieces in the future.