Project 365

I was browsing the list of best blogs of 2010 from Time magazine and I ended up myself in this blog. It’s a very interesting blog, I have to say, even from the moment I read the first post! Then I found myself reading this: Why I don’t care about success and I couldn’t agree more to what was written! It’s been in my mind for so long and I didn’t know how to actually say it. But everything was explained perfectly in this post!

If all you’re striving for is money, you’ll do horrible things to get it. If all you want is a successful business, you’ll screw people over to get it. If all you want is fame, you’ll give up your dignity to achieve it.

Success isn’t about achieving something in the future, but about doing something right now that you love.

So forget about “success”, and just find joy, passion, love, awesome-ness right now, in this moment. *That* is a success you can achieve, without any self-help course, without any method. Just go out and do it.

I have been walking this journey of life for quite awhile without carrying the burden of success with me. Many people around me do not agree with it, however. They think that I’ve spent most of my life studying and earning degrees, so the only thing I should be doing next is to find a decent job with a decent pay. But I’m not looking for that anymore, I’m sorry. I may want to have a lot of money just because I want to travel or set up a school or community project, but the term success is far from my mind right now. Is having a top job the only result or advantage that I can take after my years of efforts in academic fields? I just want to enjoy everything and do something I’m passionate about… It’s a simple wish and it’s a flexible one. It’s more flexible than having a good high positioned job in a well-known company, right?

I’m a big fan of TED and I try to watch at least one video per week from the site. It has such informative talks! Anyhoo…

This is a short 3 minutes talk by Richard St. John about 8 secrets of success; after conducting 500 interviews for 7 years! His talk is very useful, entertaining, and funny at the same time. One of the secrets of success is persistance. He said that we need to be persist to failure and CRAP — which is: Criticism, Rejection, Assholes, and Pressure. ROFL!!

After watching this short talk, I found his other TED talk on YouTube and felt reminded once again. It’s indeed true that “success is a continuous journey.” It’s not a one way street. You gotta keep doing the 8 elements of success in order to avoid failure. This is really happening to me right now. I don’t think I’m already successful. But going to and studying in Europe has been my dream since I was in High School. I’ve catched that dream and I feel like I’m on top of my world. But sadly to say that I sit back and relax during the time when I shouldn’t be doing any of that. I have stopped working hard. I have lost my passion. My ideas have been blocked. And I’m on the edge of failure.

I don’t think I feel 100% motivated by this video, but being reminded and “slapped in the face” is all I really need right now. And thank you, my stranger friend, who surely gave me the push to take a one step forward (and even kind enough to be the barking dog 😛 ). I hope I can continue my journey, which has been ceased for as long as I can remember, from this day on.