1. Don’t be too “proud” to work at a restaurant — i work at a restaurant and believe it or not, it’s bringing enough money to pay for college tuition, part of the rent, gas/electricity bills, and food for myself. I started out as a delivery guy, then busboy, now I’m a food runner, and next month I’ll upgrade to waiter — although working at a restaurant may not be our life goal, it doesn’t mean we have to do poorly at a current job.
2. If working at a restaurant isn’t your thing, then finding another job is not a bad idea — you gradually gain independence, help out your parents (if living together with them), and feel more accomplished personally. Also, if you want to get a back massage or go to the SPA to take some rest from work and daily routines, you’ll be able to pay for it yourself. You won’t feel guilty asking for money once again — you earned it!
3. Please, respect your Mom.
4. Please, respect your Dad.
5. If you have a sibling, please respect her, or him, or them.
6. During your commutes to work, school, or home, make the most out of your time. Write daily reminders — set a date and time for each reminder, later in the day you can update those times. Just make sure to take action and write reminders — never think your mind will remember everything, and forget nothing. Let the phone remind you of tasks you need to perform — this way you can free some storage space in your brain.
7. If you want to say something, say it! This will contribute to destroy social anxieties. If you feel like not saying anything, then do so! Empathize with your own peace of mind.
8. Do not negotiate with your mind. If you have to make your bed at 6AM before going to work or school, just do it. You feel lazy? So what, find pleasure in fighting against negative inner voices that try to stop you from taking reasonable action! Try to apply this strategy every time your logic says “yes” but your bitchy inner voices say “nononono!!”.
After a period of practicing this type of self discipline your negative inner voices will start to give up on your determination to not change your mind (when not necessary of course).
9. Observe the environment around you. Try to see if you can look at the everyday world with a different perspective. If you have a project in mind, sometimes just by looking at a person taking a picture of another person in the middle of a street can fire up imagination/motivation mechanisms that unconsciously interconnect and bring to surface a new idea you can implement in your project to further consolidate it. In other words, when you’re not looking at the phone make sure to look up, and do so with an open mind. Free your mind, and do not expect to find the perfect idea for your project, your business (or whatever it is) right away — just look around, let your eyes appreciate what they see, and let your mind absorb and work the information it gathers. This will do wonders.
10. Following a passion is vital for our well being. Our body was not designed to work 9–5 for an entire life without permission to enjoy the different colors of life. Life is as iridescent and ineffable as our imagination is. We need to discover within ourselves what is it that fires up feelings of joy in our heart — what is that makes your heart beat faster and with great joy? That is my makeshift definition of passion. Our mission is to uncover that passion and to carry it on throughout our life. There are many people who work in offices during the day, who besides doing financial analysis, or tax work, or customer representative tasks (or any other office job), they’re so versatile they can use Final Cut Pro to edit videos (can check mine here ), or use Photoshop to edit pictures, or use a camera to take stunning photos, or play the piano, the guitar, play soccer like a champ, do amazing make up, bake delicious chocolate cupcakes, or design websites, logos, etc.. There are just so many activities people do to keep themselves alive in a society where social constructs are at times hard to bear with. In my opinion having the courage to follow our passion even during hard times (ex: you need professional headshots to audition for a short film but can’t afford to pay a photographer, or want to become a street artist but it may not be economically productive, or one may be a young parent who has to work to provide food for the kid, and so on..) shows determination to reach the success we envision in our mind. It’s like saying: “Failure Is Not an option For Me!”.
Probably almost everyone has heard the expression ‘Failure is not an option’— yet, only few people fully appreciate its meaning, and take that expression literally. It is better to be part of those people and appreciate the fact that for each one of us “Failure is Not an Option”.
Cheers 🙂
Originally published at medium.com