The Power of You!

A producer told Elvis Presley after one performance; he’d better go drive the truck and never think of singing again! I won’t talk about Elvis… you know him! He is one of the best selling artists of all times!!

Steven Spielberg was rejected from California school of theater and film and television three times!!! He is currently known as one of the best movie directors in the world, and his name always means, a kick ass and one on-top-of the chart movie!

 

Van Gogh only sold one painting during his life.. Van Gogh to Van Gogh was a very normal person who is unable to be recognized, but  he is Van Gogh to the world..!

Stephen King’s first book got 30 rejections!  STEPHEN KING… you know!?

Einstein was thought to be handicapped mentally, slow and anti-social and was expelled from school and his mother taught him by herself. He won the Nobel prize and the whole world is after what he taught!!! 

Galileo was said to be insane for believing that the earth rotates around the sun.. the church attacked him non-stop and considered him a non-believer!

Marylyn Monroe was told that she was so unattractive, a failure at acting.. by a producer and modeling agents told her she should be a secretary or something of that sort..! .. mmm Okay!

Thomas Edison was fired from his first two jobs and at school he was said to be too stupid to learn anything… and around a thousand unsuccessful attempts to invent the light bulb! Oh please!

Socrates was thought to be a corrupt youth.. whose ideas are immoral… and corrupt.. and he was sentenced to death and forced to poison himself for that matter, not only that but there is a few written records of his work.. am talking about Socrates here guys!

Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper he worked for because had no ideas and was said to be an unimaginative person.. lacking the creativity!!! He started many businesses and failed at them to the extent of bankruptcy … and I won’t say more!

Nobody  Said that life is easy.  No one claimed it’s a bed of roses and whoever really tries to convince you that it’s cute and sweet is someone living in denial! My words do not mean that life sucks…because it doesn’t either!!! 

We are not the product of our lives by any means.. Our lives, how colorful or dark your life looks, is the product of “You” and “You” alone! Of course we don’t choose our circumstances, and we don’t choose our parents, we don’t choose to be born rich or poor, we don’t choose to be finding ourselves educated in the best schools or the nameless ones.  We are all born with “Assets we have” and “Assets we miss”.  None is completely responsible for his misfortunes and yet, none is completely off the hook!

Partially, we are the product of our parents, whatever they do in our early childhood is carved in our memories to some extent. We are the product of the surroundings; a person who lived in the slums is not like the one who lived in a palace. In each one of them there are certain attitudes instilled in them at their early stages, early enough to be emphasized on them and to become part of the subconscious minds, and how they behave consequently but not how they “Necessarily” behave.. and ill explain the difference now! 

So we would think, normally, the kid born to a rich family, that goes to the best school and the best sport club is more inclined to become successful while the kid who is born in the street who doesn’t go to school or goes to a nameless one is – by every mean- failing! Right!? Now I will have to disagree.

There are NO absolutes in life. A kid who is born in the streets or born to a dysfunctional family is not necessarily going to fail, and a kid who is born to an amazing family is not necessarily going to reach anywhere!  It ALLLLLL lies within. Of course at early stages in our lives we are not powerful or aware enough to decide how to choose a path for ourselves but later on, I – personally – hold us responsible for every decision and every choice!  Even if our choices and decisions are backed up and only shaped by our – “possibly Disorientated” understanding of life, we still have the ability to decide upon anything we want to decide upon!!!

Abbas el Akkad studied only until the fifth primary only.  Does Taha Hussein ring a bell!? It’s not about having the equipment, the money or the capability, it’s about how STRONG your will is, to reach the best with the least. We create what’s around us, not vice versa. Some people say, if I have this and that “like this person” I would have been able to do and be better! Well, again I disagree.  A person is capable of making or breaking…a person is capable of looking at what others have to envy them and blame his misfortunes or just focus on what he has and create miracles out of it.

There are three types of people. 

1– Someone who has nothing, neither education, money capability or anything but he decides to make EVERYTHING out of this.. he decided to move out of this hole of nothingness or pit and climb to get somewhere, where he feels he is of a huge value to himself and to others..! TOTAL Faith in GOD + self-belief = miracles ! Patience and perseverance, and enduring depressive others, insecure others, those who will bring down, and work hard on fighting this person’s will to “Create” something.

2- There is someone who is dull, stagnant and passive and with sluggish steps when it comes to his life. He leads an OKay life… with an OKay understanding of life.. with an OKay mood, with Okay money, with Okay Everything. He just chose to dwell in the comfort zone of the known stability and decided never to risk anything. This is a person who is VOID of the “Will-power” to change anything to the better!!! By the way, changing anything to the better requires sacrifices and huge risks. Nothing is just a piece of cake. Nothing renders security so sweet as exposure to alarms. God has intended us to feel some pain in the course of achieving anything else we wouldn’t feel immensely happy when we achieve. Reaching a target and the feeling we get when we reach our targets, is “WORTH” the pain of the process.. is “WORTH” the fear of the Risk!  

3- There is a person who has everything… money, parents, family, education, a luxurious life.. but chooses to always complain… complain of  life and how harsh it is, a person who chose to find someone or some circumstances to blame, I was always like this personally. My life wasn’t easy but I chose to remind myself of how horrible it is and it never got me anywhere other than the hospital! I used to ask God, this silly question that most of us ask “Oh Lord, Why me!”!? I have never found a more stupid question than this one! The moment I changed my attitude towards the misfortunes, everything changed, even the things I THOUGHT were “IMPOSSIBLE” to change.. have changed!!  I later, have realized that every misfortune was just a way for God to thicken my skin and promote me to another level and make me more qualified to lead an even more sophisticated life with better understanding and stronger endurance!

Nothing affects a Human being. A human being was created to “make something out of nothing”. We were born with the raw material of everything, good and bad, gardens and forests, and we are the ones who managed to create something out of the RAW materials. A human being like you, was walking and when he looked at the moon he thought it’s possible for him to get up there and you know what? He did it! And you are here whining about your adversities!

I don’t believe in despair.. I don’t believe that life is harsher than us. In fact I have seen people harsher than anything on earth, animals or even nature.. ! We were harsh on ourselves not life.

What’s really bothering you about life?! What’s the harsher thing that could happen to you?!
1- losing your  parents!? Losing your sons or daughters? Losing someone you loved?! Divorce!?

The solution is here -à strong faith in GOD and understanding that it was better for you, will hold you together. Your STRONG love to GOD is capable of compensating you emotionally if you show him “acceptance!” !!Do you think I reached this stage easily!? No, it took me a lot of rejection, tenacity and reluctance to reality, to reach where I am now; the total acceptance to everything. Sometimes we please ourselves at the expenses of God..which is the most horrible thing a person can do to himself before he does it to God.

I am not belittling the magnitude of losing someone we loved.. because it could change us forever deep inside and crack something, but it doesn’t mean we live in pain all our lives. The crack inside you is where the light of God comes in. Where there is strong faith in GOD, pain lessens naturally..

Do you have A GOD like ours and fear anything?! Don’t you just look up to him and ask anything freely!? Doesn’t he listen to you!? Isn’t he capable of relieving you!? Aren’t you aware enough of this?!  What else do you want?! If you believe in GOD the way he believes in you, you’d see magic in your life. The tougher the hardships you go through, the stronger is God’s belief in you to act and pass through them like A WINNER. God knows exactly what you can endure.. (La Yokkalleff Allaho Nafsan ella Wes3aha).  God wants to show you PRACTICALLY “What you are worth”!

2- Second harsher things à Are you poor!? Move your lazy ass and work…. Suffer and work, follow until you lead. Endure your manager, your master, tolerate their ups and downs, their depressive tones, their lack of faith in you.. be self-motivated. You don’t anyone to motivate you.  Make GOD your only ENGINE. Wait until you get a grip of things and move on and never look back. And always remember you have to follow in order to lead.

3- If you don’t have a family -à Make one!  You can always be nice to everyone and get the best out of everyone and gradually create a family of the people who like you and love you no matter how much or for how long. Don’t be over attached to people so that if they go away, you feel broken and don’t be too detached that they feel you’re not present. Keep it balanced.

4- If you blame life that you have never found a real true friend; learn to be one first. Be a TRUE friend to someone in order to find a true person to you. And learn never to expect anything from people, because whichever good treatment you give away, you give it for the sake of GOD not because you want anything in return. The moment you expect, you will always be disappointed. Don't be nice to others as much as you get from them! Because in this manner you will fail to be nice if they give you nothing in return! 

5– If you married a man who turned your life upside down…
first – admit your mistake,  because he didn’t do the mistakes alone. No one is totally responsible for your devastated life. SO ADMIT your mistake...you must have done something wrong, too!

Secondly – try to reach a solution if you couldn’t, talk to him, if you couldn’t, try to reach a middle ground. If you couldn’t then BREAK FREE!

Thirdly – If you have kids, that no one will be able to cover their expenses; then let me stop here.. for a while..

Did you admit your mistakes? Did you apologize to God!? Now do you believe in GOD?! If yes, then never fear that your kids will be lost. If you live by the intention that God is there for you and your kids, you will never accept a mediocre life. It’s never too late to fix your life.. it’s never too late to make a U TURN and start over .. and START correctly.  This is not an advice for married people to get a divorce if things do not work out. It’s an advice to stop at the things that bother you and never leave them to accumulate to reach the dead end.  1 Endure, 2 – discuss it, 3 – find a solution, 4 try, 5 try, 6 try again. 7 Retry! 8 – Decide – the condition to decide is hanging by your STRONG belief that God will never forget you.

I’d rather advise people to get a divorce than to cheat on their spouses or to lead a dull stagnant boring life! Honesty is always the key! If you were honest with your spouse for the sake of GOD and they chose to be upset with your honesty then at least you know God is pleased. Never lose “both”.

6 – if you are not educated enough, seek education, read.. find ways to get educated in the manner you would have wished to be. It’s not about the name of the school or the university. It’s not about New York university or the Harvard PHD. It’s about YOU. You can be as good as a person who got the PHD from Harvard, if you want.  Your character towards matters forces itself.. it’s not what you “have” it’s what you “Are”.

Don’t tell me there are reasons for you to be a desperate lost soul who is complaining non-stop. I used to complain too, I am the NOBODY yet, used to complain and when I figured out it doesn’t get me anywhere, I changed It the way I thought. I worked on myself, I refused the depressive reality and took very hard decisions that I would have never thought I would take! I changed my life dramatically! 

I get angry a lot.. I throw a tantrum.. and I get sad but, if I only get sad for one month in the year, it’s ok with me. Anger is rejection… never be submissive and never succumb!

You are never aware what you are up to and what you can do until you refuse the comfortable zone of complaints or acceptance to the passivity that rules your life… or acceptance to let others no matter how close they are, rule your life! 

No one should rule your life. No one should rule your emotions… it took me a lot of heartaches to reach this stage of detachment from anything  and anyone that will bring me down. It took me a lot of losses, a lot of endurance to work managers that made me believe I am nothing and that I am no one.. it took me a lot of tears and painful nights.. lonely nights to understand that we are the makers of life and that our lives are not waiting for anyone to be set straight and that we should not wait for anyone’s opinion in what we do or what we are..!

You really have to think and be convinced deep inside you that’s it’s very important to reach your best self… and to reach out for God.. Because he loves you and is reaching out for you… Our life is not waiting for anyone… our life is waiting for total FAITH in GOD and a set of self-made decisions based on that faith… and between our faith and those set of decisions there are “our efforts”!

If life is a war, it’s your choice to come out a victim or a warrior.  Both of them get injured by the way, but one looks at the injury forever, and someone searches for a new one to “get over”.. and teach others to get over them!

It’s your choice..

It’s not life .. it’s not others… it’s not circumstances… its You.
Believe in you. Wake up with the Faith.. in GOD and believe in yourself and believe that your life could be an example and it will be…. Before you set your life straight, be sure to fix any harm you have inflicted on anyone. Never fix your life at the expense of another person.. never do it.  Start over, say sorry to those you hurt… have peace with everything… peace with everyone… smile to everyone from inside you.. may be my words are cheesy to you… but if cheesiness is kind to life, I’d rather be cheesy all my life.

If you are desperate – Hold on to God’s hand.
If you are depressed – Smile to God everyday and be sure he is smiling back.

If you are lost --- search for God and he will find you.
If you are Lonely --- God is your best company
If you are Sad --- make someone happy..
If you are incapable – pray God to teach you..

I don’t think anyone is missing anything… but we leave everything we have… and search for what we don’t have.

Count your blessings.. people and never give up!