Life is an interesting long never ending journey of schooling. With this journey comes the opportunity to learn some of the most valuable lessons that can guide you along the remaining of that journey or help others on their own journeys. There are things that you tend to learn from the pain or joy of others and those that you learn through your own experiences. Whether you learnt them from your own experiences or from that of others, the ones that stick most with you are the ones you learn the hard way.

1. Not appreciating or celebrating your life enough. Have you noticed that we come into the realization of how fortunate we are to be alive only when a famous person or someone close to us dies? Well perhaps if that quick gutsy realization stayed with us every waking day, we could begin to appreciate and enjoy life much more.
2. Not being patient enough. Impatience is a thief of many great potentials of our time. Not being able to persevere through a temporal discomfort in hopes of a greater reward in the future. How many times have you decided to desert a new Idea just a few months into it because of challenges that you faced initially? Well perhaps if you had stuck to it and had a little more patience, you could have had success eventually.
3. Self-doubt. You can have all the potential and seeds of greatness in you but if you do not have self worth and begin to nurture your potential, that greatness will only lie dormant in you. Perhaps you have never had anyone speak life to that Seed of greatness in your life but you can begin to turn that around. Have the attitude that you are able to accomplish your goals. Get a mentor if you are able to. If you are naturally shy, begin to look for ways to boost your self confidence, take a class or two on public speaking, take baby steps and work towards building a more confident and bold self. Remind yourself that you are equally capable of achieving your goals.
4. Waiting for applause. Many people have learnt the hard way that is rare to get people to acknowledge you for your contributions. Waiting for applause before doing things is only going to set you up for disappointment and heartbreak. Have a purpose and a drive to do things with or without being acknowledged. Ask yourself why you need that recognition before achieving your set goals? The most important thing is to set a positive goal for yourself and work towards achieving it regardless of people cheering you on or criticizing you. That recognition might come but just not too soon.
5. Wanting a reward or recognition from people you have helped or done good to. When you help someone or contributed to someone’s life, it is just like having a seed. Don’t eat that seed. Sow that seed and forget about it.  After you have helped someone, let them loose. Don’t hold it over their head expecting a reward too soon. The idea of sowing a seed is to let that seed go into the ground, die before it germinates into bountiful harvest at a much later time. Doing good to someone and waiting for a reward is not a good deed, that is a Lender-Borrower situation since you are expecting them to pay you back.
6. Not taking good care of yourself or putting yourself last. It is good to help others and to give to others but you cannot give what you don’t have. Take time each day to do something for yourself. Eat healthy, exercise, get enough sleep and take a few minutes each day for yourself. Not only is this good for you but will help you to be the best that you can be for the people you love.
7. Not putting your dreams into actions or waiting too long to work on them. Ever had a brilliant idea but felt too embarrassed or doubted yourself to put that idea into action and then a few months later, you hear of someone else doing the exact same idea you had? You can only live once, go for your dreams and work on bringing them to pass.
8. Not giving due credit to people from whom you derive your ideas. Not only is this not right by itself but it also makes you a dishonest and an untrustworthy person. Build long healthy relationships that will stay with you for life and make efforts to be fair to others around you.
9. Not being a good friend. Be excited for your friends. Be among the first to encourage their dreams, innovations and ideas. Don’t be envious of their successes no matter how much you are tempted to do so. Control your emotions and look at the long term picture. Ever had a friend who never seems to be excited about your ideas but turns around and do the exact same thing you suggested earlier? How did you like that. You probably tried to stay away from such friends and kept them from knowing your future plans. Do not be such a friend.
10. Waiting to find motivation and encouragement from friends and family. The thing about family and friends is that they are the only people who sees and know you in your worst moments. It is sometimes hard for them to see past these vulnerabilities and limitations and appreciate the great potentials you have. As much as it feels good to have that validation from them, do not let that be your fuel to take off. It usually takes them a while to come on board.

To be successful at whatever venture you choose to undertake, it sometimes take thinking out of the norm, having a child-like faith and abnormal ideologies. You might be teased or ridiculed for having childlike thoughts. If you are a dreamer, you come up with some of the most ridiculous ideas. Your ideas are met with the usual roll of eyes and facial expressions of disbelief but that should never stop you. Pursue those dreams anyway and very soon, you will get the last laugh when one of those ideas become successful and everyone else wants to join in and have a piece of the pie. Do not wait for people’s approval to carry on. Neither approval nor disapproval should be your source of strength. Many years ago, I was trying to make healthier choices to loose weight. I had my fair share of negative comments about my weight from people who knew nothing about my personal battles. Then I lost the weight. Well, I still got a few comments about loosing too much weight. I asked myself a very good question, the answer to which has liberated me to date. My question was: “Why should anyone’s approval or disapproval direct and dictate what my goal was?”. The answer to that question was “It should not”. I was not going to let opinions dictate what my goals were. It was important to me to set a positive goal for myself and work towards achieving this goal regardless of cheers or criticism. That was my moment of liberation and has been ever since. Set positive goals, have a strong resolve and shoot for the skies.

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