Power living is a choice
You have the power to have the life you want. And this power gets strengthened by the tough-minded or uniformed truths you plant in your head — truths that are born out of self-awareness and responsiveness. Truths brought to bear by certainty, courage, evolving events, creativity, and your ability to take risks and seize moments of greatness.
Truths can push you to take daring actions, agree to huge commitments and build a future in the face of total uncertainty. Inspired by Steve Chandler’s list in his thought-provoking tome, 17 Lies That Are Holding You Back & The Truth That Will Set You Free, here’s a list of superb principles that can allow you to function at your peak, overcome personal and professional hurdles, and achieve your dreams, and live powerfully.
• There will always be something wrong with you. S.I. Hayakama, a renowned linguistics specialist, says that there are two kinds of people — one who fails and says, “I failed at that” and the other one who also fails but says, “I’m a failure.” The first person is telling the truth, and the second person is not. “I’m a failure.” To outsiders, that claim doesn’t always appear to be so. It can look like a heartbreaking form of self-acceptance. It is not truthful, and the untruthfulness is intentional. The question is, if you already are a failure, how can you be criticized for not doing something great?
• It’s not who you know, but what you do with whom you know. This is not always true. The promise of what you do doesn’t always have to be spoken, such as when a basketball scout says that a young player he saw in a provincial meet “shows promise,” or when a song and dance group releases a “promising” first album accompanied by a music video. It’s right there in the work. In the world of success, who you know is nothing. What you do with “whom” you know is everything. The doing is the thing that brings success.
• You are never too old for anything. One of the easiest ways for you not to engage in something is to say that you are too old to do it. It’s a claim that keeps you out of action, although it’s almost never really true that you are too old to do it. But wasn’t it not too long ago you were telling yourself that you were too young to do things, that you didn’t really know how to yet? This happens because you plant in your head that you didn’t have enough experience or confidence. Not true. These days you often hear yourself say, “I’m too old for that.” It becomes your way out of things. It’s a copout, and almost never the truth. Most likely, it’s just a feeling covered by an invented “fact.” Should you honor and respect that feeling? Is feeling old a useful feeling anyway?
• You are a person of courage. The self-concept of bravery brings about the truth that having the guts to act is being able to act. You can always find courage. You have it like a heartbeat, like breath. It is right there inside your fears. It’s like a jewel inside a closed fist waiting to be uncovered. It is something you have just waiting to be tapped. It escapes you, only because you have programmed in your bio-computer that you are a coward. How many times have you dictated in your mind statements like, “I don’t have what it takes,” or “I don’t have it in me to stand up to this,” or “I’ll never make it”?
• You always have the time to do what you want to do. If you really want to do something, you would make the time. It is never time that you lack, it is always the purpose. So it would be more honest to say, “I think I should say I want to, but I don’t have the commitment.” It’s all a matter of desire. If your desires are strong, they can be converted into clear commitments, which in turn can cause the creation of time. When the drive and passion to accomplish a job or project are overflowing, you have all the time in the world.
• You are at your best in worse situations. Oh, yes, you can do something when faced with crisis. In fact, you become more creative or are able to come up with even more brilliant solutions during periods of trial. Before a crisis hits, be it financial, familial, or professional, you would just tell yourself, “There’s nothing I can do.” By saying that, you simply stop stretching your imagination, stop firing your energy, and thinking any further about the problem or situation. In today’s life and work environment, you have to do everything you have to do to get things done. You either serve in life, or we don’t serve at all. If your commitment is to serve, then there’s always something you can do. Just like being an advocate, there is no gray area.
• You gain big time from taking the shot. In the book Journey to the Boundless, Dr. Deepak Chopra says, “To worry is to pray for what you don’t want.” When you catch yourself worrying, take an action. Anything. This is a great way to train to avoid being a worrywart, especially if you hate being in battle. The truth is that you worry because you are in the habit of worrying. You worry in order to do nothing, and doing nothing about a problem soon becomes the problem. As Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”
• You are wiser now. The wiser you are, the happier you get. Wisdom gives that happiness to you. If you are becoming sadder, it’s not because you are becoming wiser, it is because you are quitting. You are giving up. Sadness comes from dimming the lights, not turning them up. Happiness, on the other hand, comes from being progressively wiser; from brightly lighting our consciousness with new knowledge and power.
• You can break a bad habit. Tom Peters says, “People change in a nanosecond.” You can go from smoker to non-smoker in an instant. You go from drunk to non-drinker in a heartbeat. You give up your pills the moment you throw the last handful of them into the toilet, watch them disintegrate in cloudy, wet powder trails just as former habits disintegrate too. Whether you’ve had a habit for two years or 20 years, the process is exactly the same. How long you’ve been doing something means nothing. The action you take to create a new self-perception means everything.
• People make you happy. You will not be upset if you choose not to be upset. It’s easier to feel than to think. Thinking about people, your commitments to them, and your love for them takes courage and imagination. And if you are afraid to develop these two traits, the easiest way is to not be true to yourself.
• Winning the lotto will not necessarily make you gleeful. It can’t solve everything. People who become millionaires in the lottery are often treated with jealousy and a kind of contempt. The universe has a great deal of fun unmasking the untruths that you tell, like money solving everything. Most people who win money quit their jobs and try to spend their way to happiness and fulfillment, only to find themselves growing less and less happy. A wealthy person who has earned his or her money is treated with respect. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, both self-made multibillionaires, were greeted with a standing ovation when they spoke at the University of Washington to share their business and life experiences.
• Your self-esteem is your own making. No one can raise your own self-esteem but yourself. This should lead you to obtain a certain freedom to act on your own behalf. You may take longer than others, but there is no limit to the kindling or re-kindling of self-esteem. There is no age limit to it. Learn from senior citizens who began their lives fresh and new with a whole new sense of self-confidence and self-respect.
• Your future is better than your past. Death gains power over you when you begin to worship your own past, or when you do everything for nostalgia and have no fantastically fresh new future to look forward to. When you do that, you transfer all power to the past. It is important to notice that the past can waste your life that you use the bygone years this way. It makes the present feel empty of its promise. Thus, it should not really be a shame when you didn’t record the past on video and post your life in Facebook. It is more shameful when you do not seize the present, or when you neglect to invent a current life worthy of seeing through the video lens of your mind.
• Your self reinvention must be constant. This asks you to nod your head and accept that you have permanent characteristics that dictate what you do. It is telling you to agree that who you are is beyond your control. You have no power. You are helpless and hardwired. But you should face the truth: You must constantly reinvent yourself all the time and the method of reinvention is always an internal intention to change. To play hard, to work hard, and to really go for it.
• Your addiction is just an addiction — kick it! You hear a lot about the banality of evil, but it is nothing compared to the deadly effect of the worst vices — alcoholism, drug addiction or too much attachment to wealth and material things. Once you get wrapped up and trapped by these dangers, you decline and become grotesquely boring. Addiction to anything is just addiction — it’s boring, brutal and banal.
• You are powerful. Stuart Wilde declares, “If you intend to consolidate and quicken your energy, as I’m sure you do, “you will find accepting the truth and living in it to be the two of the strongest concepts you can embrace.” The untruth is that you are helpless. The truth is you are powerful.
Power living is your choice. And with the choice comes conquering fear and being triumphant amidst a more truthful self.
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E-mail bongosorio@yahoo.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions.
