Overcoming All Odds
(The Greatest Hack Of All Time)
As we grew older and we start to face the cruelty of life, we realized that our life isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. The hardest part is the pursuit of happiness especially which career path you will take. What is your destiny? It is the most common question for oneself. Many people are getting stuck at point in time, particularly in their 20’s because they don’t know what they want to do, what they are capable of, and the careers that will ignite fires to their souls.
Where are you now in your life? I suppose, you are still in the exploration phase whether you don’t know or you know, but fear got the best of you. You might be jealous of the success your peers have or something/someone is hindering you from achieving your dream. Whatever it is, you must know that YOU ARE NOT ALONE. The thing you’re experiencing now is a normal phase of life. As we go on in this life, we will be forced to face challenges that would take our innocence away and will make it difficult for us to decide for the betterment of our futures.
Every dream will be challenged. It is rare to see a dream handed to you on a silver tray. Dreams comes with many obstacles and pain that you have to overcome, and the bigger the dreams you have, the tougher your challenge. It isn’t about how difficult the path will be but how determined you are to overcome those obstacles to finally achieve your dreams and fulfill your destiny.
The most common reasons why people chose to not pursue their dreams are the following:
- Afraid that you are not good enough.
- Financial crisis
- Low self-esteem
- Too difficult or too impossible to pursue
- People that influences you
Have you heard the story of Will Smith’s bunjee jumping? One day, his friends planned a skydiving activity for everyone. He said, the first day his friend announced the plan, he was so ecstatic however, as days go by, his fear increases to the point that he wasn’t able to sleep for days. On the day of the activity, he was so scared that he almost quit. All of them were excited to jump, except him. He was terrified once he was on the edge of the helicopter’s door and ready to jump. However, he overcame that fear and jump. A second after the jump, the fear was gone and he only feels a complete bliss. He’s experiencing joy while falling 100ft from the ground, he was finally flying! He realized that those days, where he tormented himself of fear and sleepless nights were nothing and a waste of time because what he experienced were full of joy and happiness that he never felt before.
Another story was the story of the Bumpy Road. A woman who loves camping booked a space she always wanted to go to with an amazing view. It was her dream to camp to that place one day. However, on that weekend, there’s a sudden heavy rainstorm. Instead of going back, she continued to drive to that area, and when the car can’t drive anymore due to a muddy and slippery path, she decided to hike the rest of the way to the camping site. Once she got there, the rain stopped, the clouds started to clear out and the sun starts to shine. She saw the most breathtaking view that she won’t never forget. The perseverance she portrays in this story is the attitude we all should have to achieve anything and everything we want in life. A lot of your success will depend on your attitude towards life and experience. A some portion of it will depend on your skills and network and luck or chance only influence the smallest portion of your success.
These attitudes is powered by your purpose. What is the reason why you keep on going? What drives you to go this far just to achieve your ultimate dream? Being it the “ultimate dream” isn’t an enough reason for you to pursue it. Here are some questions that will help you answer if those dreams are worth pursuing:
1. Does it matter?
If your ultimate goal is life-changing or world-changing, if it matters to you like it is a part of yourself and it completes you, it is worth pursuing no matter how difficult the obstacles are. Working hard to achieve your dreams means that you deserve to obtain it.
2. Do you love it?
At some point of our lives, we experienced something that made us forget about the rest of the world. It might be writing a book, travelling, painting, or doing a volunteer projects. You got so deeply involved and invested on it that you have forgotten the existence of time and space. Those were the things that you are passionate about, an activity that you won’t stop unless you’ve produced a brilliant work or you achieve something worth remembering. Finding that kind of work and choosing it as your full time job will help making the rest of your life fun all the time!
How to overcome all odds?
1. Find the Silver Lining
Challenges and misfortunes are an inevitable part of life. Social, economic or political circumstance are just some of the things that you don’t have a complete control over, thus the earlier you developed the habit of finding the silver lining, the earlier you will master life. Silver lining has a huge potential on enriching your lives and powered your dreams along exciting and unimagined directions. Through this unconventional way of thinking, you will find unique ways of dealing with those mishaps and still be able to achieve every goal and dreams you have.
2. Laser focus on the end-goal
In all aspects of life, ten years is A LOT of time to achieve everything you have ever wanted, you just need FOCUS. If you set plans (A,B,C,D,….,Z) as long as the end-goal is always the same, whatever misfortunes you’ll face along the way of achieving your dreams, you’ll be able to overcome it. Reminding yourself of the end-goal will give you so much motivation that whatever you do, wherever you are in life or around the world, you’ll always be reminded the reason why you are there and what are the next steps into fulfilling your dreams.
3. Encountered obstacles? Find solutions.
As challenges are inevitable part of life, we tend to focus on those problems even the ones we can only see in the near future. STOP. Instead on dwelling on these problems, you must find for the solutions that will help you overcome obstacles. If we’re seeking for excuses to fail or to justify our decisions not to pursue our goals, our brain will try so hard to find them through complaints, setbacks, and limitations. But, if we push ourselves to the limit, find ways to move past those restraints and limitations, then we will definitely overcome those challenges and finally find solutions.
4. Support System
No man is an island. Our species was designed to be around each other and depend on each other’s action towards the community and the environment. At our lowest point, it is difficult to ask for help, even to tell someone what you’re going through. There’s always a thought of “I might be a liability” or “They might not understand me”. Erase those thoughts! You must remember that you are not alone and you are worth listening to, worth experiencing all good things on this planet. The challenges of life is meant to break or make you, it is not a rare phenomenon, it is just what it is. People around you might’ve experienced almost the same situation as you, or they might have innate wisdom in advising people about their lives and how to overcome all challenges. Our species are designed to care for each other to build a society worth living for. Having a support system that will help you whenever and wherever will help you keep going and overcome all challenges that comes your way because they will provide you inspirational and motivational talks or experiences that will definitely change your outlook on life.
The Pivotal Life Coach 