Adopt and model your best character

Been doing some serious thinking lately about character and traits. I'm sure you would be in concert with me that most successes in life and true joy is a by-product of character and and its traits. The reason many of us (me too) keep going round and round in circles regarding our personal growth and goals is that we're doing it with all the wrong character. The attitude isn't firing up the engine hot enough to last us even two days. We make a personal commitments today to make some life improvements, oopsy, they're gone tomorrow just as fast as they came. My recent battle with my habitual devils has revealed in me default-failure character traits.

To kill the habitual devils I kind of went on in silence in my head. I gathered the peace and quite in my mind and the best solution I could find in my deepest silence to date, was that I need to invent the ideal me. Character, traits, attitude, behaviour, habits and beliefs that are strictly aligned to consistent personal growth and a success lifestyle. Call it using the right gear to climb a high altitude mountain than going only with guinea mouse faith - running on the same marry-go-round hoping to get somewhere (Hah, what insanity in sane man!).

Adopting or even inventing a character that one really wants to emulate is the sure way to get it right. To get the marry-go-forward results. I decided to take the traits of a few successful people and implant them inside and adopt them as daily habits. This comes in the wake of my missing on some of my goals that I recently set. So most important things are going right since the clean sweep, but it's the significant moves that are not happening yet. The moves that could see my life witness a leap to what I've always desired to live. And I believe that could come only with shedding the sheep skin and wearing the lion hide.

I bet you could also try and create, invent, adopt or emulate a character that you believe most demonstrates what you truly want to stand for. This whole character invention thing came to my mind whilst paging through a recent Men's Health magazine: "After all, his success as an actor depends on his ability to inhabit the mind of another person and then stay in character for months," it goes. That piece was about Gerard Butler who played Leonardis in the epic movie 300. And that's what I admire about actors like Butler and Whitaker's character in The Last King of Scotland - they can stay in character for months. They eat, talk, breath and fart like the character they're emulating - they become that person.

If they stay in character for months and their lives don't depend on it, how about you stay in character for years? I know my life depends on it. I bet you'll have become that person you truly want to be - that characters habits, traits, attitude and beliefs will be deeply implanted in you within a year that you become that person. "Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions, said Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Well, I'm going to give it a try and also live like that character - daily, until I become that character. It's bonding with the ideal me. After all, no tax to be paid in trying and I stand a damned good chance of stopping the marry-go-nowhere.

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"Judge of a man by his questions, rather than by his answers." - Voltaire

Life without any limbs but no limits at all, amazing

A friend emailed me pictures of Nick Vujicic this morning, an Austrailian congenital amputee who leads a normal life, at first I didn't believe them and thought they were photoshopped until I visited Nick's site. Nick has no limbs but goes on to achieve everything else that he sets out to achieve and his biggest goal is to be independent - regardless. And watching his video of his typical day, you'd say he surely is already achieving that as it is.

Then I asked myself a question: with everything that I have and more mobility, why is it that I always put for tomorrow what I could do today. Many of us do that. Day in day out, but Nick is not - he kills it today. We're waiting for the perfect day to come for us to achieve our goals - to start working on them. And that day isn't coming because it was yesterday and the next one is today. We're waiting for something extra to happen before we start working on our goals or living the lives that we really desire - and I'm hurting to be in that league although I'm working hard on it. But Nick doesn't wait for any extras. He kills it. And is leading his life there way he desires and helping others at that. See this video below and be inspired and check his site to very how realy it is.



This video material is not my own and is entirely owned by Life Without Limbs, www.lifewithoutlimbs.org. Visit Nick's site to see more pictures, audio and video clips - and may be even recommend him to come speak at your organisation.

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"Judge of a man by his questions, rather than by his answers." - Voltaire

The moment we stop dreaming, we stop living

At some points I stop trying to onslaught my bad habits and going for the big kill at my goals and dreams. And every time I stop, a day wouldn’t go by without misery of having lost some part of my reason for living. I believe our goals are the thread that holds the fabric of our souls closely contacted to our minds and the world. That our dreams are the green (read: growth) blood in us that give us hope and meaning to our lives. So why stop dreaming and, in fact, setting and acting on daily goals that get us closer to that dream.

Because, at least for me, like a damned human, I’m taught to have my cake and not eat it all – and I live out that small truth in a big way believing things to be impossible.

I’m reminded of some passages in two books that I read yesterday before bed. In Tom Peters’ intriguing Re-imagine, he quotes what Robin Sharma (of The Greatness Guide international bestseller fame I reviewed here) also adores quoting: “There’s no use trying,” said Alice. “One can’t believe in impossible things.” She lamented.

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Those are the insightful words from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. The Queen didn’t miss the mark a bit. I’ve been missing it just like Alice. And like Alice, I’ll take the Queen’s advice and believe in my goals and dreams.

Richard Branson in Screw it, let’s do it in a chapter labeled ‘Challenge yourself’ says, “Everyone needs something to aim for. You can call it a challenge, or you can call it a goal. It is what makes us human. It was challenges that took us from being cavemen to reaching for the stars.

“If you challenge yourself, you will grow. Your life will change. Your outlook will be positive. It’s not always easy to reach your goals but that’s no reason to stop. Never say die. Say to yourself, ‘I can do it. I’ll keep on trying until I win’.

Dreams, and their goals are beautiful things, but nasty to stick to or achieve. At the same time, the reason we keep, I keep, having them or creating them is that we need them. ‘They make us human’, the big dreaming billionaire Branson says. That’s why we can’t be separated from our dreams. By the same token, that’s why on many occasion we are so sad and miserable, left feeling that something is missing. That there’s a void.

For me, that void is created by the lack of action and drive I don’t put behind my goals and dreams. It’s that whole personal integrity dilemma thing again.

Ever really been hard on yourself? The result is that you become miserable that very instant. And the main reasons we get hard one on poor us is because we didn’t stick to that goal of losing some weight off our bodies. That we didn’t visit that such and such we’d been planning to visit. That we didn’t say that daily prayer we been meaning to say or didn’t go to church as planned. We didn’t kick that bad bad smoking habit in the butt. We didn’t forgive our parent, or whoever else, for something we made a big deal out of. That we didn’t make that phone call we put on hold for long. We keep postponing that important project. We didn’t take that trip/holiday we always promised ourselves. That we didn’t do this one thing and that other as we had wished and planned to. Not so ironic, when we do just even a small bit towards our goals and dreams, we become happy that instant.

The music and the dance are different – no jelling together. Then misery abounds. It beholds. It takes over. And, well, like me, on occasion – I’m being modest here – I’m happy on the outside, but miserable from within (in respect of my personal development). And it’s about time one took a stand. Aluta continua!


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"Judge of a man by his questions, rather than by his answers." - Voltaire