I've had my fair share of life's troubles and challenges. I have been at certain times tossed by the storms of life like the troubled sea tosses ships. Sicknesses, bereavements, financial constraints, delaying of my goals and dreams and many others.
Throughout all these situations, it has often occured to me that we can exercise some control over how our life goes. We can create the type of life we'd want to live to some significant degree. This was around the time I began fiddling with self improvement and personal development books. The books gave me insights about how every single decision we make plays a part in deciding which kind of life we live. One of the brightest and most practical ideas I chanced upon during these times was that learning, both from our experiences and those of others can change our life in a way nothing else can.
I remember one time I was sharing these thoughts with a close friend, Israel by name. Israel, my friend, has since moved to the western part of the country and he's thriving well where he resides. At the time he was still around, we discussed much about a person changing his life by deliberate actions. I remember telling him one or two insightful discoveries I had made and he was excited.
He said something to the effect of:
“Those are really good ideas and they would be effective in solving practical problems.”
Israel was a somewhat voracious reader. Sometimes I borrowed some of his books to read. This was around the time the dark clouds of stagnation seemed to be lifting from my life. I began to gain clarity and to have lots of useful insights.
I went over to YouTube and devoured lots of personal development videos. I watched videos from Brian Tracy's to Jim Rohn's. They talked about everything from achieving success through goal setting, building good habits, achieving good health, changing one's finances, bettering ones relationships, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I'd had ambitious goals since I was young. Even before my teens I had taken a great interest in creative writing, I read lots of novels, wrote lots of comics, admired every great literary figure I came across and desired to be like them. But I encountered a dire medical condition in highschool that seemed to erode all those ideas and ambitions. After my highschool graduation, it seemed I had to start afresh again.
One useful idea I had grabbed from the books I have read is that small achievements compound over time to create monumental results. Instead of aiming for incredible results in a short space of time, take it gradually but make sure each day the building that's your goals grows brick by brick. I picked this idea first from Jim Rohn and later from James Clear's Atomic Habits. James Clear writes in his book that it was this that help him achieved what he had.
I can confidently say that the time I rediscovered my goals after the medical condition in highschool was the time my life began shifting into position once more. I mean I haven't gone so far in my self improvement quest but I'm making progress and that's what counts.
I hope nothing hinders my progress this time like the medical condition did years back. I'm hopeful that after a couple more years or decades of going at this, my life would have been elevated considerably.
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