Bloom Where You are Planted

You are unique. There is no one quite like you except for your twin sibling and futuristic clone.

Bloom where you are planted. Be the best that you can be. Develop your natural giftings and it will open doors of opportunity for you.

"A man’s gift makes room for him, and brings him before great men (Proverbs 18:16; NKJV)".

Hone your skills and increase your mastery. Do not settle for mediocrity or join the so-called cult of the average. Be an outlier by learning from others who are far better than you in what they do.

The following is a sample of outliers for your refreshing to raise your level of competency.

a) Janice Wong - Dessert Chef

  

Click here for NHK "Her Story" Chef Janice Wong Singapore

b) Nuseir Yassin - Vlogger

Click here for Life Of Nas In 10 minutes | Nas Daily

c) Lang Lang - Pianist

Click here for Lang Lang - live concert in Vienna  

The only limitations are those you place on yourself. Take massive actions and create the future of your dream. 

"The rewards of life are only distributed to those who have chosen to  embrace the art of distinction." -- Robb D. Thompson 

Start today, continue what you have started, make adjustments along the way, learn from your failures, learn from others, keep on believing, and persist until you achieve your breakthrough. 

How To Overcome Boredom

Idleness or boredom is the devil's workshop. When you are not down physically but still unhappy, there are things you can do to take charge of your life. The following are just a sampler:

1. Dream

   

Give yourself the freedom to write down your wildest dream. Make it as clear as possible until you can see it plainly like a picture. Put in all the details for your dream. Start with a sketch. Think of a fishbone chart. Draw the head, backbone and tail, and then line up the rest of the bones.

Your vision or dream in the eye of your heart will give you the motivation and courage to endure the valleys, knockdowns and detours before you reach the Las Vegas, Hawaii or Paris of your dream.

2. Smile

It takes less muscles to smile than to frown. Smile and keep the wrinkles away in your later years. Choose the positive over the negative, and the outcome on your mental wellbeing will be a world apart. 

Be thankful for the little things in life and you will be a happier person with a lot more reasons to smile. Stay on the positive side as you don't need to wait until you are reminded by someone who is always wearing a smile because he has 'lost' his mind.

3. Enjoy Life

Be content with your lot in life. There will always be people who have a better quality of life than you. On the other hand, there will also always be people who are much worse off than you.

Stop comparing and enjoy your current state of being. Take in a few deep breaths right here and now to pump in some fresh oxygen for your body and brain, and you will already be more uplifted.

4. Imagine 

Do some dreaming or visualisation while you are awake. If morning is too rush for you, then schedule for the evening before you hit the sack. Read your written dream and spend some time imagining living out your dream life -- how it feels, looks and sound like; where you will be and what you will be doing; how you will look like and what clothes you will be wearing; and what kind of people you will be hanging out with.

Feed your subconscious mind with the image of your future, and you will sustain the achievement of your goals.

5. Be Kind 

Being kind and doing good is a virtue as with having a good character. There is a difference between being good and being great. You can be a great person, but not a good person. Likewise, you can be a good person without being great. Greatness has to do with size or magnitude.

Choose to be good, primarily, rather than to be great but void of a good heart. That said, charity or kindness begins at home. Start by treating well the people who are in your immediate circle.

6.  Have Fun 

Life is serious. Our actions or inactions will have consequences. And, the choices we make may hold untold ramifications. The journey of life goes on unstoppable.

However, if we take ourselves too seriously, we may blow up whenever we make a mistake where even a molehill may appear like a mountain and a milk spill like an oil spill.

Also, take some time off from work and enjoy a Sabbath day of rest weekly. When you are working without rest, you will become dull and lacking in sharpness, alertness or cognitive skills -- "the core skills which your brain uses to think, read, learn, remember, reason, and pay attention". 

The worst time to do some thinking or work is when you are tired or lacking in sleep. Take a nap or get some sleep and you will find yourself in a much better shape mentally to enjoy life, thereafter.

That's a wrap for this article. Thank you for visiting Daily Refreshing.

Inspiration from J. K. Rowling

Click here for Evan Carmichael's J.K. Rowling's Top 10 Rules For Success (@jk_rowling), which  he has summarised as follows:

Photo credits: Jack Anstey @jack_anstey
(Courtesy of Unsplash.com)

"1. Failure helps you discovers yourself

She went from living on state benefits to multi-millionaire status within 5 years.

2. Take action on your ideas

The Harry Potter books have become the best-selling book series in history.

3. You will be criticized

Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers asked that she use two initials, rather than her full name. 

4. Remember where you started

She was diagnosed with clinical depression which she claims gave her inspiration to create the Dementors in the Potter series.

5. #Believe

Twelve publishing houses rejected her original Harry Potter manuscripts, but eventually small publisher Bloomsbury gave her a chance with a small advance. 

6. There is always trepidation

She conceived the idea for Harry Potter in 1990. The 7 years that followed saw the death of her mother, divorce from her first husband and relative poverty until Rowling finished the first novel.

7. Life is not a checklist of achievements

She named communist and civil rights activist Jessica Mitford as her "most influential writer".

8. Persevere

She's the United Kingdom's best-selling living author, with sales in excess of  £238m.

9. Dreams can happen

In 2010, she was named the "Most Influential Woman in Britain" by leading magazine editors.

10. We have the power to imagine better

Harry Potter is now a global brand worth an estimated US$15 billion."

Photo credits: Carlos Cram @cramtek
(Courtesy of Unsplash.com)

To fire up your belly and get you moving to do your thing, you may wanna review the following quotes by J.K. Rowling:-

"I've been writing my entire life, and I'll always write."

"Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared."

"You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity."

"The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive."

"We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better."

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

May you find good success as you persevere in the pursuit of your passion and dream life.

Change Your Mindset and You Will Change Your World

Along the lines of "Attitude Determines Your Altitude" and "You Are What You Think", if you can change your mindset you can change your world.

Mindsets refers to what you believe (your beliefs system) or your way of looking at things which will, in turn, determine your behaviour, outlook and mental attitudes.

Image by geralt, courtesy of Pixabay

For example, have you ever seen a negative person (full of negatives or minuses)? Of course not. BUT, you can hear and determine whether he is negative by the ways he talks. On the other hand, we have Positive Personalities who could bring sunshine on a rainy day by the way they speak or communicate. We speak what is in our heart -- that which has become our mindset.

Therefore, "Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life." -- Proverbs 4:23 (NLT)

Here then are some quotes to refresh your mind and foster a new mindset for the making of a new you. You have it within you the power to change your world.

"People with a growth mindset believe that they can improve with effort. They outperform those with a fixed mindset, even when they have a lower IQ, because they embrace challenges, treating them as opportunities to learn something new." -- Travis Bradberry

"Common sense would suggest that having ability, like being smart, inspires confidence. It does, but only while the going is easy. The deciding factor in life is how you handle setbacks and challenges. People with a growth mindset welcome setbacks with open arms." -- Travis Bradberry

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Howard Thurman

"The human mind is naturally creative, constantly looking to make associations and connections between things and ideas.  It wants to explore, to discover new aspects of the world, and to invent.  To express this creative force is our greatest desire, and the stifling of it is the source of our misery.  What kills the creative force is not age or a lack of talent, but our own spirit, our own attitude.

We become too comfortable with the knowledge we have gained in our apprenticeships. We grow afraid of entertaining new ideas and the effort that this requires. To think more flexibly entails a risk—we could fail and be ridiculed. We prefer to live with familiar ideas and habits of thinking, but we pay a steep price for this: our minds go dead from the lack of challenge and novelty; we reach a limit in our field and lose control over our fate because we become replaceable.” -- Robert Greene

"To create something exceptional, your mindset must be relentlessly focused on the smallest detail." -- Giorgio Armani

"Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking." -- Marcus Aurelius

Image by Alexa_Fotos, courtesy of Pixabay