Motivation ABC

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he had imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Henry David Thoreau

We all have our notions and apprehensions when we begin a new journey. When we have invested our hard earned money or our whole potential into something called a business, we want it to survive the odds and turn around and give us positive results. There are many who followed their dreams and met success in doing so. People have overcome obstacles and turned the negatives into huge business empires.

In today’s business world, you require a lot of the competitive spirit, because, even before you blink, the other person would reach the pinnacle. Business is not for fools, it is for people who are willing to plunge in and experience the rush when they create wealth. It is for people who strive and believe in what they do. It is that determination that makes you move up the ladder. So when you decide that you are ready to move on, take that step right ahead and follow what the master Henry David Thoreau remarked. There was an advertisement that I came across recently and that makes you wonder why you got to outsmart others

One said “Buy this because we kick ass” the other said “Buy this because we want you to kick ass”, see the huge difference here. That is what makes all the difference. The latter is here to survive and make its name heard aloud. That is what you require - an attitude in what you believe. Take the example of a group of fisher women in a small town. One in the group wanted to increase her customer base and make huge profits. She was uneducated and did not know much about expansion. All she knew was that she has to earn profits by doing something that would make her business float. So, she picked up a cell phone for herself and this expanded her business and revenue system. Customers used the number to call her to place orders and voila, there you have a woman who has met every word in the quote above.  This is what you call driven and motivated and at the same time creating opportunity to get the best of results.

It does not take a lot to bring out the creative genius in you. All it takes is the right sense and being there at the right time. If Plan A does not work then bring out Plan B. Keep different options, do not keep yourself tied to one.  There are many tycoons who have achieved success without any kind of business back ground. All they did was experiment and had the imagination to succeed in the venture.  So get ready to rule the world, which demands a single step from you in the right direction.

At the tender age of 21, Maya Lin submitted the controversial design that would become the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial and even then, she must have been aware of the concept that she expressed so well: “To fly, we have to have resistance.”

When we watch birds fly, we watch them beat their wings against the air, fighting against it in order to soar.  Eagles and hawks glide and swoop, their wings catching against the updrafts while Canadian geese beat their wings tirelessly against the air to travel thousands of miles every year.

While the birds do make it look easy, flying is hard work, just like everything else that lets us soar above the rest.  When we strive and move forward, we cannot do it it in a vacuum.  If we try to fly with no resistance, we will get no where.  Essentially, success is not easy, and in truth, it should never be easy.  What sets us apart from the rest is the fact that we are willing to struggle and willing to move forward, even if it is hard, even if it is difficult.

When Maya Lin’s design was submitted to be memorial of all the American Veterans who fell during the Vietnam War, it met with some resistance.  Some felt that it was too aggressively minimalist, while others felt that it was an insult.  Lin herself suspected that if her name had been attached to the entry then it would not have been chosen.  After all of this, however, public opinion has turned around the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial stands today as a symbol of memory and patriotism.

When we try to fly, when we try to make ourselves better than what we might have been or try to make the world a better place, we must expect and even welcome resistance.  When the world fights us, we have a better idea of what we need to do and why our dreams and our visions are necessary.  Like the birds, we would go no where without that resistance.  We would remain on the ground, wondering what else was possible and always feeling unfulfilled.

Resistance enables flight and resistance also creates challenges.  When we are challenged, we soar further we could ever dream.  When we are challenged, we strive and work and suffer for what we believe and when we finally achieve our goals, we fully understand why we did what we did.  We can see everything that stood in our way and we know that we have beaten them.

As Maya Lin said, resistance is essential to flight and essential to success as well.