Getting Yourself A Mentor

Tags

business, entrepreneurship, mentor

As an entrepreneur, it is almost impossible to succeed without having someone to look up to. You need someone that can guide you through the twists and turns of the business world so that you could achieve your goals faster. This is where a mentor steps in. A mentor is someone who has reached the top of a mountain that you are just beginning to climb. Being at the top, he can look down and see where all the dead ends, holes and cliffs are and could guide you through a safer and better path. That is why you need to choose the right mentor.

Your mentor should be someone in a field that you are in. Don’t get a mentor who is on top of Mt. Everest while you yourself are at Mt. Kilimanjaro. It won’t do any of you good.

You should also look at how ‘high’ he is and compare it to where you are. Don’t get a mentor who is on top of Mt. Everest while you yourself are just getting ready at the foot of the mountain. It will be a waste of your mentor’s time. Also, don’t get a mentor who is at the same level as you are. He wouldn’t know anything either.

Select your mentor wisely because your choice of mentors could determine your whole career. After selecting a certain mentor, you have to ask that person whether or not a mentoring relationship is possible. This is the hardest part of the process, but you could start by getting one foot in the door at first. I will discuss some do s and don’t s in my next post.

A Guide To Find What Your True Passion Is

In previous posts, I have wrote about WHY you should do what you love, HOW to do it in spite of what others say and I have even shamelessly copied a speech from someone WHO has done it. But I also realize that a lot of people have trouble on finding out WHAT they should do. If you are one of them, try asking yourself these questions;

What makes me smile? Try to find out what makes you smile. I suggest that you try out everything possible in this world. Great people are often people with a short attention span that gravitate to things that make them smile, leaving the things they hate do to.

What do I excel at? Have you ever been in a situation that no matter how hard you try, there is always someone who can do the thing you do better and even more effortlessly? These people always have creative ideas that make them even better every day. You can say that they have a natural gift in the subject, but most of the time it is just that they are so happy to do it that they don’t even think about the hardships. If you ever find yourself being that ‘gifted’ person, you might have found your true passion.

What will I want to do even if I don’t get paid? Things that are worth doing usually don’t get the immediate monetary benefits. But do them anyway. Because you will get the immediate spiritual benefits. You have to pursue what is important for your soul.

The third question might lead you all to thinking that in this money-controlled world, you have to lead your life to where the money is. If you have that thought, please let go of it. It is a product of thought that unsuccessful people pass down to us. The fact is, you can turn anything you love in to a career. That is what entrepreneurs do for a living. Instead of abandoning what they love to pursue a ‘career’, they fit their career in to doing what they love. And this is the start of pursuing true happiness in the world.

Back in the days, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple had no idea that their dream of a computer on every desk would ever become a reality (besides, mainframe computing was the ‘hot’ stuff those days). But they took the plunge and made a career out of their passion. Now, personal computers are so common, you might not even believe that in one point in time, it didn’t exist.

What really is important is that to find your true passion, you have to dig deep down inside you. That is the only place where you can find it. No one else could tell what your true passion is no matter how hard they try. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.”

quotes

to be happy,

you have to question yourself…

“There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them.”

-Anthony de Mello, spiritualist-

you need to know what you want..

“Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it.”

-Don Herold, writer-

you have to be daring..

“Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!”

– Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher-

you need something to be enthusiastic about..

“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements in life, when all we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”

– Charles Kingsley, novelist-

not just do something “enthusiastically”..

to succeed..

you must be happy..

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”

-Albert Schweitzer, 1952 Nobel Peace Prize Recipient-

you have to dream..

“All men dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible.”

-T.E Lawrence, known as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’-

realize what you have..

“The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence and educational advantages; the question is what he will do with the things he has. The moment a young man ceases to dream or to bemoan his lack of opportunities and resolutely looks his conditions in the face, and resolves to change them, he lays the corner-stone of a solid and honorable success.”

– Hamilton Wright Mabie, essayist-

take action..

“An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.”

-Siddharta Buddha-

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

-Thomas Edison, inventor-

be positive..

“There is no such thing as failure. There are only results.”

-Anthony Robbins, motivator-

never give up..

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

-Michael Jordan, The Greatest Basketball Player of All Time-

take control..

“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.”

– Albert Ellis, psychologist-

and be yourself..

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

- Dr. Seuss, writer-

Hopeless Country – Thriving Country

Tags

future, hope, Indonesia raya, thrive

I live in a hopeless country.

and I refuse to admit that

I can make my country thrive.

I realize that this is shocking but,

“You can be anything you want to be”

is nonsense, instead

“What we are is what we will be”

So in the future I will tell my children;

they are wrong.

History records will show that

I am right because

the past

Is more important then

the future

Listen to this

once upon a time

we fought for our advancement

But this will not be the case in my era

this is a pessimistic society.

The media says

in the future, we will be the poorest country in the world.

I do not believe that

I determine the destiny of my country.

In the future

poverty will be the norm.

No longer will you say that

my generation cares about my country.

It will be proven that

my generation is pessimistic and apathetic.

It is useless to think that

We have hope.

And all this will come true unless we choose to reverse it. (read the text above in reverse; from the bottom-up)

———————————————————————————–

inspiration from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA

How I Go Against The Grain

Tags

entrepreneur, independant, life

Have you ever been in a condition where your inner voice tells you to do something different from what other people tell you to do? Have you ever felt it hard to follow your own guts when other people tell you otherwise? Have you ever felt that it is so hard to go against the grain? I have.. and i still feel afraid to go against the grain sometimes. But every time i feel like going against my guts to follow the masses, this is what i do;

1. I say to myself that even if I were wrong, I would be the one facing the consequences. No one else should (or would want to) be burdened by what I did wrong. I want to be the one responsible for my own actions.
2. I think about how most great people go against the grain to achieve their greatness. Think about Rosa Park’s refusing to give her seat to a white person in the bus, despite the law that obligated her to do so. Think about Warren Buffett who declined to buy internet stocks, despite that all of his peers were making so much money in them, until the burst of 2001 that is (some of them even lost 99.9% of their money in the stock market).
3. I think about the fact that I could be the next ‘great one’, by trusting my guts and going against the grain.
4. I think about the fact that I only get to live once in this world. and I want to live MY life, not other’s.

Every time I come to a crossroad, I always think of the ending of Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken”

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

…And that has made all the difference…

Guess Which Person Has A Better Chance to Succeed!!

Tags

entrepreneur, optimist, thinking

Imagine two beggars; A and B. And imagine that practically EVERY ASPECT of their lives are the same or, at least, different but equivalent. Wealth and income (or lack of it), free time, same connections, same amount of every kind of resources… you get the point…

Anyway…. These two beggars only differ in one aspect; the way they think. Let me give you some examples;

• A always thinks of how he is always poor and how he doesn’t have any hope to succeed because of that. B always thinks about how he can succeed despite being poor.
• A always thinks that he can’t succeed because he has no networks in strategic places. B always thinks about how he can succeed despite having no networks.
• A always thinks that he can’t succeed because he has no formal education. B always thinks about how he can succeed despite having no formal education.
• A always thinks that he can’t succeed because he has nothing . B always thinks about how he can succeed despite having nothing.

Here comes the million dollar question; who has a bigger probability to succeed?

Of course it is B that has a better chance to succeed. It’s obvious. So why am I pointing this out? because although you might know about it by theory, not everyone applies it in real life. I still hear people saying;

• I can’t succeed because I don’t have any startup capital
• Indonesia can’t succeed because Her citizen’s are poorly educated
• They can do it because they are born gifted, and I am not. (referring to people/countries that are more successful)

The sad thing is that most of you try to disguise this as realism. It is not. It is full fledged pessimism. a good realist would say the things that B says. Put every reality into an optimistic expression. By doing that, you don’t alter any reality. You actually acknowledge it and plan to DO something about it. There is no harm whatsoever involved in changing your point of view. It will actually benefit you.

It is a challenge to always be thinking positive. Especially if you are new to it. Every time you try to present the “facts” of your life, please remember this story. Every time you doubt the advantages of thinking positive. just say to yourself that B defeats A all the time!