Marathon

A friend invited me to join him in his training at 6:00 AM last Sunday.

We ran continuously for about 30-mins. I was drenched in sweat even though the weather was pretty chilly.

8 hours later, my legs started to hurt. I knew that was going to happen. My muscles were shocked. The only time I would run for that long is when I join those short fun runs.

5 days later, I can still feel the “pain”. It seemed like my leg muscles are taking a while to fully recover.

But it was a good run.

The whole time, right after the 15-minute mark, I kept telling him I was ready to take a break whenever he feels like taking one. But he pushed through. And so I had to push through. Training with a partner (if done right) is a good thing because one will push the other to reach its limits.

He called it “training” – training to push yourself a little farther than your current limit.

And that thought, as simple as it sounds, kept me going. It was probably driven by my code to avoid complacency.

EVERYONE can go much much farther in life if we were just a little more ambitious.

Dream big.

Go for it.

Work EXTRA hard for it.

And with that mindset, anything you want is virtually possible.

This is why I kept buying books to improve my…

 

 

 

Principles

Or Codes or Belief System

I wanted to master the fundamentals, the basics, the things we neglect, the basic habits that drive the course of our lives.

Information is useless if you can’t apply it.

Much of us rely on our past academic credentials or other accomplishments to prove to others how smart we are.

But in most cases, those credentials or accomplishments aren’t worth much in the real world if don’t continuously use them. Such accolades lose their value over time. Who you are today is different from who you were back then.

I notice a lot of fresh grads at work who find it tough to process overwhelming loads of information while trying to handle their responsibilities perfectly. They shouldn’t feel bad about it but they do. I understand why.

We are trained in school and throughout our life to aim for the A+.

We want that A+ to reflect on pretty much everything we do.

But when you’re overwhelmed, achieving an A+ will be incredibly tough.

Your focus is everywhere.

You don’t know where to start.

Then you wonder what’s expected of you.

Then you start considering yourself as a failure because you’re aware you’re not handling things at an A+ level.

I always aimed at being good enough. Although, aiming to be the best crossed my mind a lot of times but I couldn’t justify why.

If there was a better strategy for success it would be to aim for an A+ at dealing with “overwhelm” – to do things to the best of our abilities.

The world expects of us to do our best, NOT to be best at everything.

I don’t wanna preach but for some reason this morning, I feel like preaching sharing my thoughts on success.

I feel good, really good. No, it’s better than good. I feel…

 

 

 

Content

Why? It feels like I have everything I wanted. It feels like all that hard work paid off. I feel happy.

That orange color of the morning sun that hit our blinds perfectly gave me a feeling of appreciation.

That’s probably why I’m feeling all inspirational today.

Then that desire to continue my journey to create a side business kicked in. I’ve been waiting for that to kick-in for a while.

A few days ago, I was asked to provide an invoice for a CAD service I’ve done.

I don’t know how to create an invoice yet but I’ll learn how this weekend. This is the first payment for the side business I started a year ago.

And no, the pay is not a lot. It was almost done for free. But this is my way of familiarizing myself with the process of owning a business.

I’m happy with the job I currently have. And I certainly don’t want to give myself more stuff to do after work for the sake of making more money.

My goal was to: realize what it takes to create and run a business.

Whatever money I get from it is just a side effect.

This is to support my dream to have a small business on the side when I retire in the future.

Not so I can make money but to have something to do. I’m not gonna sit all day on the couch and wait for the day to pass by.

I totally disagree with old folks who define “freedom” as a way to not do anything.

Retirement is a long way. But any prep work I can do today will benefit me in the future.

What about YOU?

What are you doing today that will benefit your future?