Fighting Talk: Crazy

"The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are usually the ones who do" 

Walter Issacson about Steve Jobs 

You'll probably never be short of people queuing up to tell you that you can't change the world. But all it takes is one dream, idea or opportunity; and a persons crazy enough to pursue it, to change the face of the world forever. 

Balancing Your Future With Your Present

Last week I wrote a blog post about the importance of having vision for your life. I got a really good response from readers, which was great. A few people commented on the post, suggesting that while vision for your future is important, it's a greater priority to be at peace with your life and enjoy the 'moment'. This is a sentiment that I fully support. If you can't enjoy where you are in the moment then you're on a one way road to ruin.

Vision for the future and a recognition of what you have now are complimentary, there should be a balance between the two. A balance where you strive to meet your ambitions whilst enjoying your life in the moment. Without vision, your life can become stale, and without an appreciation of the moment, your life becomes hollow.

I mentioned before that I am a carer for my wife, who has a chronic illness. When illness impacts your life, like it does ours, it can become easy to put your life on hold. For the longest time, we did this exact thing. We, in effect, were stuck in a place where we were waiting for our lives to begin.

There's an element of wisdom in this. You have to be realistic about what you can do when sickness has such a massive impact on you. You get to a point, however, when you realise that you can't sit back and wait, for years, for your situation to improve, when it might never change. We learnt that we can't just look to the future, we had to enjoy where we were at present.

We work hard to strike the balance between having vision for the future and enjoying the present. To maintain this balance, even the simplest things can make all the difference. Me and my wife have a vision board in our house and then make sure that at least once a week we have a 'date day' where we focus on each other in that moment.

What do you do to make sure you strike that critical balance between having a vision for the future, and making the most of every single moment?

Fighting Talk: Hardship

“Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.”

― C.S. Lewis

When you're in a fight, you have to expect that you're going to take some punches. They're going to hurt, and they might just knock you on your backside. The blows you take will make you strong.

I don't think that it's a coincidence that people who achieve incredible things, have often gone through hardship which prepared them. Just look at some of the great men and women of history. Abraham Lincoln, Rosa Parks, Albert Einstein, Freda Carlo and Henry Ford all either failed, or suffered great hardships, before their destiny was realised. 

When I go through hardship, I try to remind myself of this quote. Frankly, It's not easy. Eventually I start to believe it. When I believe it, I get excited. I'm excited to see where all this hardships will lead. The greater my hardships, the greater my destiny will be.