What STOPS You

• bey0ndM@gz!ne
• February 12, 2018
• People-Perspective
• 0 Comments

You have to find out what stopped you from reaching your full potential. No wonder you will have to dig deeper within yourself, as the first few answers you will receive from yourself are the sugar coated excuses.
– By Sweta Kanchan Boghra

All of us live every single day doing the mundane things, wake up, eat, work and sleep. Similarly our whole life gets over following the herd. We come to life, grow up, get married, have kids and get them educated, married and one day we die. We have to stop for few seconds, become aware and give it a thought, and ask ourselves…. “Are we here on earth just for this much”?!

“Why did I not work on that idea and come up with this new technology?” Or… “Why am I not as successful and happy as my friend?”

If that is all that was necessary from each one of us then why did God make each one of us so very unique, with different talents and gifts? Each and every one of us is here to make a difference, we all have purpose to fulfill, something to give back to this beautiful world. We forget to ask ourselves ‘Am I leaving behind a legacy that will keep me alive forever’.

The above questions rarely have space in our busy lives. They come to mind, only when all of a sudden we meet an old friend and see he has achieved so much more in life. Or perhaps when we see some new technology,and suddenly remember, “I already had this vision or idea”.

Yes, those were your dreams and your ideas, but because you didn’t really want it and didn’t act on them, someone else worked on it and brought them to life. You have to step back and ask yourself, “Why did I not work on that idea and come up with this new technology?” Or… “Why am I not as successful and happy as my friend?” You have to find out what stopped you from reaching your full potential. No wonder you will have to dig deeper within yourself, as the first few answers you will receive from yourself are the sugar coated excuses.

The first thought that comes to your rescue is “my conditions were not favorable”. May be if I was born in a rich family I would have done much better. This is the biggest lie we can tell ourselves, as there are many examples of those who have reached the top even with all the odds and misery in their favor.

Dr. Benjamin Carson, is one of the world’s top pediatric neurosurgeon. He was not born with a silver spoon, rather was brought up in dire poverty, and raised by his mother alone, just working as a domestic helper. He could have settled down telling himself that there is nothing more that he could do except get a decent job, but these conditions didn’t stop him from dreaming big. He was selected in United States best hospital, (John Hopkins Hospital) at a very young age and is the first surgeon to successfully separate conjoined twins. Today even after retirement he is one of the candidate in the race to be US president in 2016 elections. There are many such examples, and so the above thought is just an excuse that we should rid ourselves of! The next excuse can be “if I was not born in this country I would have been successful”.

If there was any truth to this, then young 18 year old Malala Yousafzai born in swat valley of Pakistan would not be the one to receive the noble prize laureate in 2014. She is the one who at the age of just 13, started her campaign against Taliban for banning female education. There are numerous examples from India who have moved beyond this excuse, like the CEO of Google (Sundar Pichai), Microsoft (Satya Nadella) and many others.

Another common reason given and accepted well by everyone is “I am not physically strong or have some disability and so I cannot reach a certain level”. There is only one answer to this- Nick Vujicic. He is a man born without arms and legs. Against all odds, he became one of the most famous and influential motivational speaker’s, and has travelled all around the world and despite his disability, he is able to do almost everything like swimming, skiing, surfing.

There are numerous others reasons to give out as an excuses to run away from our goals and purpose of our life. The conditions will not be favorable always, and we should be thankful even for the adverse conditions, because diamonds cannot be produced on a bed of roses. The unfavorable conditions are a sign that you are “special”.

If only you can safeguard and nurture that dream and vision inside you, just nothing on the outside can make a difference. So none of the above things should really stop you, the answer to everything is YOU. Yes!! We ourselves are the ones who sabotage our dreams during the period of conception itself. The ideas came knocking at our doors, cause they knew you have the potential to bring them to life… but you never payed attention to that voice.

It’s the fears within ourselves which can just paralyze our minds to such an extent that we prefer to just live life the easy way and accept it as it comes. We fear change to such an extent that we compromise with our lives and live that mundane life and sleep cold in the grave, with all our dreams. The fear of rejection from fellow peers or society, when the actual reality is that they can never see your dreams, nor can they feel the pain of your shattering dreams. It’s as simple as sleeping and dreaming and only you can feel and see the dreams.

Similarly your vision for your bright future can be envisioned only and only by you, you cannot wait for others to validate it. We cannot reach our full potential because we keep waiting for approvals from others. The fact that you are seeking approval is a sign that you already have been selected by the almighty for that purpose. If you keep waiting for others to either walk with you or to give you a green signal, by the time you get approval someone would have taken that place that was waiting for you. Success is does not easy, but it’s better to walk on a difficult path and leave a trail for others, rather than walking on the easy road following everyone leading to the same destination.

Everyone has to face fear when we have to get out of our comfort zone and TRY…as this is the phase which can make or break our dreams. As a child if we never tried to walk after falling down numerous times, we would never have been walking now. Every time you fall down, you get up and walk and rather after every fall you learn a new way of guarding yourself from falling down.

Every great discovery was once just a dream, had Thomas Edison given up after failing 1000 times, there would not have been any light bulbs. It is not how many times you fail that counts, but what matters is the learning that every failure will teach you. We always look back at our lives and regret for not trying things that could have changed our life forever… “Just once if I had tried for it”. The failure to try, shows that you never came out of that “wishing phase”, wherein you just wish you had this and that. The conviction of trying comes only when you really ‘want’ that thing.

The transition from wishing to wanting can happen when you consciously communicate with yourself and ask the required questions. Once you have had the dialogue with yourself and you are sure of what you want….then never give up or doubt yourself. If you try and persistently try things over and over again, nothing can stop you from reaching your full potential. We need to have trust in ourselves when we start heading for our dreams and faith in God. The faith in Him… that even though it’s dark, He will guide you only towards Light.