What I Learned About Success from Albert Einstein

If only ambition is as easy to come by as poets quote it. The chances of people becoming successful would count thousands. I'm at 0001.

Half of those successes are driven by hard work; the other half driven by luck. But none without constant or occasional prayer. 

If the road to success is put into words, I can summarize it into two: "The most successful people are those who didn't give up on themselves" and "Success is not just about what you know but who you know".

Decent jobs alone are hard to get these days. We're in the era where CV is no longer the only thing to gamble, money is required of us before we can earn it, and "backer" is a stronger qualification than having Latin honors.

The world is more competitive. And investments barely return.

While some people have the ready option for easy success, most of us learn by trial and error. We tolerate daily hardships in the hope that our sacrifices can mean a good change one day. But the hardest part sometimes is in not knowing when that day will arrive, or whether our actions always lean towards that success. We don't know. But haven't you ever wished life came with a detailed instruction manual?

How I wish there's a crash course for it with no demands for an average score to pass. On a second thought, the point of success, I guess, is that it is never equal to mediocrity. We cannot really call ourselves successful by simply aiming for the "good enough". We should settle not to be the best but to be better.

I realize that only now do I truly understand what Albert Einstein meant: Imagination is more important than knowledge. It is essential that we do not only know, but that we apply what we know and we do not intend on stopping.

Einstein deserves the moniker, genius. With emphasis.

30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself

English writer Aldous Huxley once said, "There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's yourself". What power does it to develop ourselves and cut whatever negativity that holds us back from realizing it? 

When you stop chasing the wrong things you give the right things a chance to catch you.

It is easier to believe when we are at our best position. But we are all meant to live a happy and successful life, except for the fact that the very things that keep us from experiencing it is neither our lack to start doing the right things nor our failure to stop doing those that are wrong.

Marc and Angel of Marc and Angel Hack Life has a brilliant take on the 30 things we can stop doing to ourselves. They have explained in details the benefits of dismissing all these things that, we might have subconsciously been missing to notice, are ruining the happy and successful life we deserve. They have covered far and wide between facing problems, to making decisions and handling relationships. I suggest you NOT  to skip a single sentence. It will be all worth it.

Here are my favorite tidbits:

1. Stop spending time with the wrong people.

Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you. If someone wants you in their life, they'll make room for you. You shouldn't have to fight for a spot. Never, ever insist yourself to someone who continuously overlooks your worth.

4. Stop putting your own needs on the back burner.

The painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too. Yes, help others; but help yourself too. If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do something that matters to you, that moment is now.

5. Stop trying to be someone you're not.

One of the greatest challenges in life is being yourself in a world that's trying to make you like everyone else. Someone will always be prettier, someone will always be smarter, someone will always be younger, but they will never be you. Don't change so people will like you. Be yourself and the right people will love the real you.

7. Stop being scared to make a mistake.

Doing something and getting it wrong is at least ten times more productive than doing nothing. Every success has a trail of failure behind it, and every failure is leading towards success. You end up regretting the things you did NOT do far more than the things you did.

8. Stop berating yourself for old mistakes.

We may love the wrong person and cry about the wrong things, but no matter how things go wrong, on thing is for sure, mistakes help us find the person and things that are right for us. We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are NOT your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future. Every single thing that has ever happened to your life is preparing you for a moment that is yet to come.

9. Stop trying to buy happiness.

Many of the things we desire are expensive. But the truth is, the things that really satisfy us are totally free-- love, laughter, and working on our passions.

10. Stop exclusively looking to others for happiness.

If you'e not happy with who you are on the inside, you won't be happy in a long- term relationship with anyone else either. You have to create stability in your own life first before you can share it with someone else. Read Stumbling on Happiness. 

11. Stop being idle.

Don't think too much or you'll create a problem that wasn't even there in the first place. Evaluate situations and take decisive action. You cannot change what you refuse to confront. Making progress involves risk. Period! You can't make it to second base with your foot on first.

12. Stop thinking you're not ready.

Nobody ever feels 100 % ready when an opportunity arises. Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones, which means we won't feel totally comfortable at first.

13. Stop getting involved in relationships for the wrong reasons. 

Relationships must be chosen wisely. It's better to be alone than to be in bad company. There's no need to rush. If something is meant to be, it will happen-- in the right time, with the right person, and for the best reason. Fall in love when you're ready, not when you're lonely.

15. Stop trying to compete against everyone else.

Don't about what others are doing better than you. Concentrate on beating your own records everyday. Success is a battle between YOU and YOURSELF only.

17. Stop complaining and feeling sorry for yourself.

Life's curveballs are thrown for a reason-- to shift your path in a direction that is meant for you. You may not see or understand everything the moment it happens to you, and it may be tough. But reflect back on those negative curveballs thrown at you in the past. You'll often see that eventually they led you to a better place, person, state of mind, or situation. 

18. Stop holding grudges.

Don't live your life with hate in your heart. Forgiveness is not saying, "What you did to me is okay." It is saying, "I'm not going to let what you did to me ruin my happiness forever". Forgiveness is the answer...let go, find peace, liberate yourself!

19. Stop letting others bring you down to their level.

Refuse to lower your standards to accommodate those who refuse to raise theirs.

20. Stop wasting time explaining yourself to others.

Your friends don't need it and your enemies won't believe it anyway. Just do what you know in your heart is right.

22. Stop overlooking the beauty of small moments. 

Enjoy the little things, because one day you may look back and discover they were the big things. The best portion of your life will be the small, nameless moments you spend smiling with someone who matters to you.

23. Stop trying to make things perfect.

The real world doesn't reward perfectionists, it rewards people who get things done. Read Getting Things Done. 

24. Stop following the path of least resistance.

Life is not easy, especially when you plan on achieving something worthwhile. Don't take the easy way out. Do something extraordinary.

26. Stop blaming others for your troubles.

The extent to which you can achieve your dreams depends on the extent to which you take responsibility for your life. When you blame others for what you're going through, you deny responsibility-- you give others power over that part of your life.

29. Stop focusing on what you don't want to happen.

Focus on what you do want to happen. Positive thinking is at the forefront of every great success story. If you awake every morning with the thought that something wonderful will happen in your life today, and you pay close attention, you'll often find that you're right.

30. Stop being ungrateful.

No matter how good or bad you have it, wake up each day thankful for your life. Someone somewhere else is desperately fighting for theirs. Instead of thinking about what you're missing, try thinking about what you have that everyone else is missing.

You can also read Marc and Angel's sequence to this post, the 30 Things to Start Doing for Yourself.

I hope it inspired you too. Share it to your friends and loved ones. Doing so might unexpectedly turn a negative situation into something positive. 

God bless you!

Photo Credits:

Rob Brucker

(Un-) Cram Your Case Presentation in 6 Ways

Speaking engagements are still few of the hardest things to prepare for. At least for working professionals with a pink collar job who don’t seem to have a uniform work-time schedule.

               

Few words to all nursing students, case presentations don’t end when the schooling is over. For professional growth and well, for requirements’ sake, it carries forward even after getting a paying job. It’s a little awkward for me to use the phrase “paying job” though.

I have started a clinical job in nursing that doesn’t pay much. But yes, case presentations come in even higher level. The only distinction is that, I don’t get graded for my output this time around.

I together with a group of workmates was actually set to present a case study last 14^th of June. Plus that we work in different shifts, we still haven’t come up with a final case of a patient to present. That was supposedly what we had in line to look for from the time we started our job last November but didn’t. Because of course we are still wise to ways of procrastination. Teehee!

We lived through inconveniences of preparation-- including the inadequacy of time, lack of thoroughly decided options, and uhm, a meticulous supervisor whom we thought would give us flop sweats on the day of presentation.

Drafting, finalizing, brainstorming. Group mates from left to right: Gen, Lily, Mae, Myra

Having only 6 days left to work on our case, we cannot for anything best take the leisure of time or to have like nurses-meet-the-avengers sort of power.  

Here’s what we had to do:

Headstart

We get lesser time each day.  There’s nothing we can do otherwise so we firmly set our day 1 for obtaining consent from the attending physician, the patient and her family on the case presentation.

It really doesn’t need one with a dominant choleric type of personality to dictate what is to be done. It only takes one small act of leadership from anyone among the group to begin the work.

Wise Distribution

We arranged the second day for gathering all information as much as possible and assigning each member a task to work on.

While leadership and management styles work differently in each person or group, what is important is to recognize what will work best-- authoritative or lassie-faire especially when on cram.

Delegating, reading, researching (It's always good to combine printed and online references)

Planning

Third day served for planning out how we would want the case presentation to go about.

Whether you’re expecting for accolades or a fair output, there is no good presentation that happens without a single plan or goal of how you'd want it to turn out. Plan out, even for a little. Set a goal, no matter how small.

Inspiration

Day 4 made room for our first day of “The Making” process. Anyone familiar with nursing case presentations would know that it is usually started with a short introduction, and a touch of the patient’s comprehensive health history.

The comprehensive history is for the most part boring during presentations. It is mostly a mere narration of all the information about the patient. So we constructed something that would create a more comprehensible and captivating way of presenting it by coming up with a video reenactment in a documentary film-like format.

The video shoot locations

Like photography, video making is half shooting half editing. And we have encountered more than enough challenges-- who to act as the subject, when to do the video shoot, what editing software to use (and we would not recommend windows movie maker for its unstable file setup) and where to get the balance between work and sleep.

Shooting day. Straight from duty with barely enough sleep. From left to right: Gen, myself, Ariane

Find something that won’t only get you to where you want but will keep you there. Remind each other always of your goal and why no one should give up. It’s not in times like this that counting who has worked the hardest matters.

The production team

Editing and producing. From top then left to right: Ate Darl, Jan, myself, Ariane

Sacrifice

We tuned for finalizing our output and providing what each one had for suggestion on day 5. We gathered in a place that is favorable for our working (with available wall plug, wifi access which became two of our major problems in day 4, and good food, plus good music to set up the positive mood). 

At Trio Cafe'

Everyone has to make his own part of sacrifice by staying up late, passing up a day of rest for the benefit of the group.

Winston Churchill once said, “If you're going through hell, keep going” and that I think inclined us to continue what we started. Each should not give up no matter how impossible things might seem. Even sometimes that means not realizing everything that was planned so you still have to be flexible.

Trust

Finally came day 6, the judgment day should I call it. There was no turning back. The presentation pushed through in, pardon me for a little prate, positive way. Everyone was definitely proud of how it all came out.

The final preparation

Our case presentation was by the way about respiratory failure from acute demyelinating polyneuropathy. We had a refined idea of putting an emotional video for prayer which we took from youtube. Then said a courtesy to the Philippine National Anthem followed by a powerpoint presentation of the introduction, fitted with good visual theme and arrangement suitable for our audience.

Our case

On the Introduction: Justin

On  Anatomy & Physiology: co-red cross instructor, Ivy

On Pathophysiology: yours truly

On the nursing care plan: Alchie aka John Lloyd :)

On the discharge plan and prognosis: Ariane

Next was the creative video documentary film of the patient’s history, plus a moderate innovation in the format of the presentation that includes-- presenting the nursing care plan in a focused charting format, providing a consented and discrete photo of how our patient progressed from her condition.

The idea is to trust in the capabilities of all your group members. It has always been said that two heads are better than one.

Lastly, we didn’t forget to have fun!

The group

The candid shot. What's the sleeping all about?? :)

Celebrations!

Meal get together

Pardon me as well for including our idiosyncrasies and signature pose below:

The "in-love" smile

The "pogi" pose

The "nyora pose"

The feeler pose

             All the memories are worth keeping.

Postscript: The documentary film video mentioned in this post was not included for the patient's privacy. I would also like to personally extend my deepest gratitude to all my group mates and to you who reads this post. Smiles!

Photo Credits:
google (dot) com (slash) images- 1st photo

Junks God Makes

I came across this video while browsing on my Facebook news feed. It broke my heart. I realized how God molded everything exactly as he sees it suitable.

Watch it. Let it break and change you too.

Junks God makes are not actually junks!

Video Credits:

youtube (dot) com

Why You Should Travel While You're Young

Few weeks ago I was discussing with two of my colleagues about our plan to travel southeast China.

I emailed  travel agencies, twitted and searched on google. While I was presenting my output, another colleague murmured from a distance:

“But…”

“But that is quite an expense. There are still several months to come and you might still change your minds”.

“But…”, this word to me sounds lethal. It rubs off more than the enthusiasm. It sounds as if it has a fair way of viewing things when it only magnifies the fear to make out what we intend to achieve.

“It allows us to be cowards, while sounding noble.” said Jeff Goins. True indeed!

I know many people who are vocal about their desire to travel the world but do not actually want to pay the price in order to realize it. They are full of dreams but lack motivations and efforts.

           

I am apparently no John Maxwell but I believe that we can usually succeed in reaching what we want if we put our minds to it.

Why is Being Feminine Better than Being Sexy

                

Image taken from weheartit.com

Someone who wears dress, speaks rightly so, and is able to give birth to a child-- a feminine that is. No need to be in tightly-fitted corset as how history describes it to be. What is considered “feminine” however varies from one culture to another (i.e. someone who gets married and submits to her husband is feminine to most Christian cultures while someone who is able to do tough labors is feminine to other tribes). 

But being feminine in general is something that exemplifies someone’s character as a woman.

There are women who capture a lot of people for their charm and personality; others though ensnare people like magnetizing music without even actually trying. They are the beautiful faces that most men find attractive to their almost delusive and futile desires. 

While there’s nothing wrong with how women fit themselves to shape good (Read: to be sexy), femininity is an influence that lasts longer and boosts better. And we’re not talking of plain aggrandizement. We’re talking of how femininity works at a higher advantage than simply pleasing.

Perhaps this goes to explaining that as women, we customarily associate ourselves into female preferences like learning how to bake, talking about the melodrama over cars that need tune-ups, and even desiring for a sexy body, sexy make-up, sexy hairstyle, and sexy outfit with gusto. But how will femininity give us pro?

Be aware that to be feminine is largely a matter of having good looks and good grooming. I don't mean that you need to look like Angelina Jolie; just start with the “physical level”. Gauge your wardrobe.

You absolutely have been looking for magazines or look books that would tell you precisely how to pull an outfit together-- with all the right accessories, shoes, and color combinations. Some if not all might have probably disappointed you with examples that are only suitable for fashion walk throughs. And I don’t want to put the same things forward. I want to share with you the best ideas. So ready your mind-and-heart-checklist.

Learn to Love Your (Naked) Self

How many times have you thought about being naked? Or so, have you ever thought about your own nakedness-- unclad, bare-skinned, and transparent? And when you have, what did you see and how did you feel about it?

                This entry has been inspired by Amy Bloom in her article from Oprah.com. Glory is to God for his never-ending inspiration through other people’s writings.

Love what you see l Image taken from weheartit.com

It’s not so often that we think of ourselves stripped off from our shoulder straps and our plaid printed pajamas heading to our bathrooms, washing up, and stepping out with our body half-ly covered with towel. People barely talk about nakedness in its literal sense and within the limits of it. Frequently, the scenes that follow in their minds are the ones that become daily challenge to men and women alike.  But that’s a separate point in question.

Amy Bloom said she went from pajamas to underwear to clothes every morning and back the other way every night. And no one had said anything to her about what a good time was to be had between pajamas and underwear. I thought with her experience that many of us, people in our subliminal sense still pass around the pleasant feeling of being at peace with our own brand of nakedness. Most of the time what we see in the mirror turns out to be unfavorable. It’s hardly ever that we come close to the mirror and see ourselves naked and smiling at the same time. Some  of us would only notice the cellulites that crowd in our hind end or the freckles and pimples that lay proudly across our face. 

Fit yourself around the confident few. If you’re not assured with how you look, it will obviously show. God for certain didn’t make a mistake in molding you into how you naturally look today. He’s the best of the best creators more than the famous sculptors and painters. He has the most perfect description of a human body. He made you exactly how you look. But he sure didn’t make you exactly how you feel with how you look. See the difference? And maybe what I’m trying to say is, it can be all about attitude.

Feeling unhappy about the way you look might have started since you were young.

 Image taken from weheartit.com