Soulspiration

#7

A boy and a girl were playing together. The boy had a collection of beautiful  marbles. The girl had some candies with her. The boy offered to give the girl all his marbles in exchange for all her candies. The girl agreed. The boy gave all the marbles to the girl, but secretly kept the biggest and the most beautiful marble for himself. The girl gave him all her candies as she had promised. That night, the girl slept peacefully. But the boy couldn’t sleep as he kept wondering if the girl had hidden some more tasty candies from him the way he had hidden his best marble.

Moral: If you don’t give your hundred percent in a relationship, you’ll always keep doubting if the other person has given his/her hundred percent.

#short_story

Day 10

Writing a novel is a daunting task if you’ve never written one before. It’s hard to write even a single paragraph, let alone write two or three hundred pages that will capture the attention of the reader and keep them reading until the last page. What’s worse, after all this effort, you’ll probably realize that your novel, when compared to a widely-acclaimed bestselling novel, is only good for kindling.
What you fail to see is that the author of that bestselling novel most likely has spent a decade or more mastering their craft. They started with words, which then became sentences, paragraphs, and eventually stories. Their first attempts — like those of everybody else — were unsuccessful. It took them hundreds of thousands of words’ worth of practice to finally write a masterpiece.
Building self-discipline is similar to writing a novel. You might consider a disciplined person who always wakes up at four in the morning, is physically active every day, eats a healthy diet, is super productive, and is capable of balancing it all with their social life and family obligations as a superhuman. But in reality, this person, like the bestselling novelist, probably started with one simple change and kept building on top of it.
Whenever you get discouraged, or feel tired by how far you still have to go to accomplish your goals, remind yourself that everybody who has built self-discipline had to go through the same process — starting with little changes which then turned into habits, which then led to big lifestyle changes and identity shifts, and eventually, into successes.

#daily_motivation

Day 9

Studies suggest that people who are aided with technology to imagine their future selves are more likely to delay gratification. In the case of the cited study, they’re more likely to save money for retirement.
This shows that your self-discipline is largely affected by your ability to feel empathy toward your future self. If the vision of you ten, twenty, or thirty years from now isn’t particularly vivid, you’ll have a hard time denying yourself pleasure today so that the stranger in the future can benefit.
For this reason, consider occasionally meditating on your future self. Ask yourself if today you’re grateful for the choices you made several years ago, or if you wish that in the past you had been more concerned about your future. Are the choices you’re making today choices that are only benefiting the present “you,” but don’t contribute to — or worse, jeopardize — your well-being in the future?
The person you’ll become in ten years will most likely not be the same person you are today, but it will still be you — and it’s in your hands whether, ten years from now you’ll look back and feel glad you extended self-empathy well into the future, or find that you decided to be selfish and steal from your future for some fleeting pleasure today.

#daily_motivation

#6

It was one of the coldest winter and many animals were dying because of the cold. The porcupines, realising the situation, decided to group together to keep each other warm. This was a great way to protect themselves from cold and keep each of them warm; but the quills of each one wounded their closest companions.

After a while, they decided to distance themselves, but  they too began to die due to cold. So they had to make a choice: either accept the quills of their companions or choose death. Wisely, they decided to go back to being together. They learnt to live with the little wounds caused by the close relationship with their companions in order to receive the warmth of their togetherness. This way they were able to survive.

#short_story

#5

Once a young man asked the wise man, Socrates,  the secret to success. Socrates patiently listened to the man’s question and told him to meet him near the river the next morning for the answer. The next morning Socrates asked the young man to walk with him towards the river. As they went in the river  the water got up to their neck. But to the young man’s surprise Socrates ducked him into the water.

The young man struggled to get out of the water, but Socrates was strong and kept him there until the boy started turning blue. Socrates pulled the man’s head out of the water. The young man gasps and took a deep breath of air. Socrates asked, ‘What did you want the most when your head was in the water?” The young man replied, “Air.” Socrates said, “That is the secret to success. When you want success as badly as you wanted the air while you were in the water, then you will get it. There is no other secret.”

Moral of the short story:

A burning desire is the starting point of all accomplishment. Just like a small fire cannot give much heat, a weak desire cannot produce great results.

#short_story

Day 8

Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus would have his hands full in modern times if he wanted to spread his philosophy. We live in the world in which you feel you deserve to have luxuries. In fact, they’re no longer considered luxuries but necessities because most people mistakenly think they can’t live without them.
The problem with mistaking luxuries for necessities is that it’s impossible to develop powerful self-discipline if you need a lot just to function.
How is a person who believes that they need to eat empty calories in the form of burgers, pizzas, or white bread supposed to lose weight? How likely is that an individual who thinks that it’s necessary to lease a new car every two years will exert enough self-discipline to save money and “deprive” himself or herself of what they consider a basic human need?
Periodically try living without something that you consider a necessity. You’ll benefit in several ways .
First, you’ll voluntarily put yourself in an uncomfortable situation that will help you expand your comfort zone and develop your mental resilience.
Second, you’ll discover whether you really need this thing in your life — and if you find you don’t, it will provide food for thought as to how many other things in your life are in fact not as important as you thought they were. This can then help you eliminate the unessential from your life and free up additional resources to focus on what’s important.
Finally, you will increase your ability to feel happy with less — including being happy in a situation when you’re deprived of something involuntarily.

#daily_motivation

Day 7

Financial stress (or for that matter, all kinds of stress) diminishes your ability to delay gratification. Consequently, poor people find it harder to resist temptations. In the end, they get stuck in a vicious cycle — they can’t escape poverty because it imposes constant mental stress on them, which then leads them to making bad decisions — not only the financial ones, but also those relating to their health, relationships, and general future.
Does it mean that if you’re struggling financially, you’re destined to have a bad life? Not necessarily. Taking personal responsibility and becoming conscious of the source of the problem can help you push ahead and overcome your circumstances.
Launching one of my businesses put me in debt. It exerted immense daily stress on me. No matter what I was doing, there was always the thought in the back of my head that I had a debt to repay. In some months, I was so close to not meeting my obligations on time that I would have been forced to close up shop if it weren’t for some money I managed to make at the last minute .
This experience has made me realize that no matter what they say about money not bringing happiness, at least several months’ worth of income kept as savings in the bank means the difference between a relatively stress-free life and the soul-crushing fear when you can’t cover an urgent, important expense.
If you’re struggling with finances, make it one of your priorities to get out of debt as quickly as you can and build an emergency fund covering at least three to six months of basic living expenses. In addition to improving your financial health, it will dramatically reduce stress and strengthen your ability to delay gratification and make more optimal choices favouring your future.

#daily_motivation

Day 6

Despite an enormous selection of movies about superhumans, they don’t really exist. I know, it’s shocking news, right?
Nobody — including the world’s biggest geniuses — was, is, or ever will be a superhuman, infinitely better in all aspects than the average mortal.
It’s easy to forget this fact when you look at the accomplishments of the people who are changing the world around you. After all, they appear to be so perfect — extremely productive, intelligent, beautiful, creative, persistent, strong… and the list goes on.
Behind the scenes, everyone struggles in some areas of their lives.
I deal with the same problems as every other person, and the only difference is that I’ve discovered how to handle some of them a bit more effectively. I’ve had my fair share of failures, found myself unable to resist some temptations, and I jeopardized some long-term goals because I succumbed to the allure of instant gratification .
This is the human condition. People whom you consider to be extremely successful aren’t that different from you. Many of them in the past had less willpower than you exhibit now, and many of them might be more disciplined than you in one aspect, but less disciplined in another.
Becoming a self-disciplined person is within everybody’s grasp. You don’t need to have won the genetic lottery or get introduced to a country club to develop self-control — and neither you nor anybody else will ever achieve permanent, flawless self-mastery over every aspect of life. Accept that and accept yourself, as well.

#daily_motivation

#4

A gentleman was walking through an elephant camp, and he spotted that the elephants weren’t being kept in cages or held by the use of chains.

All that was holding them back from escaping the camp, was a small piece of rope tied to one of their legs.

As the man gazed upon the elephants, he was completely confused as to why the elephants didn’t just use their strength to break the rope and escape the camp. They could easily have done so, but instead, they didn’t try to at all.

Curious and wanting to know the answer, he asked a trainer nearby why the elephants were just standing there and never tried to escape.

The trainer replied;

“when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them and, at that age, it’s enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free."

The only reason that the elephants weren’t breaking free and escaping from the camp was that over time they adopted the belief that it just wasn’t possible.

Moral of the story:
No matter how much the world tries to hold you back, always continue with the belief that what you want to achieve is possible. Believing you can become successful is the most important step in actually achieving it.

#short_story