DREAMS, HAPPINESS and SUCCESS

Yesterday, as I walked around the train station enjoying the beauty of the natural environment that surrounded me. It suddenly resonated within my mind how nature brings a colourful beauty to ones heart, how it flies in our hearts like colourful butterflies and strengthens the heart with huge wings to fly.
The quietness and serenity of the natural environment equally enabled me to reflect on some key questions, I had been asking myself for a while. WHAT REPRESENTS REAL SUCCESS and HAPPINESS? What qualities do I need to reach my DREAMS? These questions and more fired me to reflect about the lives of some people that I admire and consider successful. Among them include Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.
These two people all represented an idea and they all wanted the world to be better because they were here. They all held the view that HAPPINESS is something that exists in our lives, constantly waiting to be found and recognized. It is that one thing you are ready to sacrifice your ultimate for. I would advise you to please read the biography of Gandhi http://www.progress.org/gandhi/gandhi01.htm and buy the book “No easy walk to freedom” an autobiography of Mandela. It will enrich your life and make you understand the real meaning of success, happiness and the truth in the fact that, there is no obstacle too BIG to stop a TRUE DREAMER.
Some of the qualities I found common among these two persons and other successful people include;

Optimism
Optimism is power. This is a secret discovered by all who succeed
against great odds. Nelson Mandela, Ernest Shackleton, Eleanor
Roosevelt—all admitted that what got them through tough times was
an ability to focus on the positive. They understood what Claude
Bristol called “the magic of believing.” Yet great leaders also have an
unusual ability to face up to stark reality, so creating a single powerful
attribute: tough-minded optimism.
Optimistic people tend to succeed not simply because they believe
that everything will turn out right, but because the expectation of success
makes them work harder. If you expect little, you will not be motivated
even to try.

A definite aim, purpose, or vision
Success requires a concentration of effort. Most people disperse their
energies over too many things and so fail to be outstanding in anything.
In the words of Orison Swett Marden:
“The world does not demand that you be a lawyer, minister, doctor,
farmer, scientist, or merchant; it does not dictate what you shall do, but
it does require that you be a master in whatever you undertake.”
So to be successful, you must have higher aims and goals and doggedly
pursue their realization.

Willingness to work
Successful people are willing to engage in drudgery in the cause of something
marvelous. The greater part of genius is the years of effort invested
to solve a problem or find the perfect expression of an idea. With hard
work you acquire knowledge about yourself that idleness never reveals.
A law of success is that, once first achieved, it can create a momentum
that makes it easier to sustain. As the saying goes, “Nothing succeeds
like success.”

Discipline
Enduring success is built on discipline, an appreciation that you must
give yourself orders and obey them. Like compound interest, this subject
may be boring, but its results in the long term can be spectacular.
Great achievers know that while the universe is built by atoms, success
is built by minutes; they are masters when it comes to their use of time.

An integrated mind
Successful people have a good relationship with their unconscious or
subconscious mind. They trust their intuition, and because intuitions
are usually right, they seem to enjoy more luck than others. They have
discovered one of the great success secrets: When trusted to do so, the
non rational mind solves problems and creates solutions.

Prolific reading
Look into the habits of the successful and you will find that they are
usually great readers. Many of the leaders and authors covered here
attribute the turning point in their lives to picking up a certain book. If
you can read about the accomplishments of those you admire, you cannot
help but lift your own sights. Anthony Robbins remarked that
“success leaves clues,” and reading is one of the best means of absorbing
such clues.
Curiosity and the capacity to learn are vital for achievement, thus
the saying “leaders are readers.” The person who seeks growth, Dale
Carnegie said, “must soak and tan his mind constantly in the vats of
literature.”

Please share with me what means real happiness to you and how you define success in life.

The POWER OF HOPES and DREAMS

I strongly believe with Brian Tracy that the people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future. My wide interest and quest for knowledge have made me read so many books on different issues. However the biographies and autobiographies of ordinary people in our world who have achieved extraordinary things in life is one of my favourite. One of such biographies that have inspired me immeasurably personally is Theodore Roosevelt’s biography, the 26th president of the United States of America. What makes him inspiring to me is not because he was a president or because his named like me, rather it is his extraordinary story, great imagination and dreams that cought my attention. His compelling account testifies to the strength of the human spirt, its ability to overcome any challenge and the power of dreams and hope. I would advise everyone with dreams and hope to read the biography of this great man. One of those famous statements made by him in April 23, 1910 in Paris has become my driving force and philosophy in my quest to realize my dreams and hope.

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of the deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust, sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and short comings; but who does actually strive to do their deeds; who knows great enthusiasm, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat” Theodore Roosevelt ( 1858 – 1919)

Diana Rusickaite ( a lady I fondly call Mom) a great friend whose life truly reflects one driven by hope and dreams, argued me to share my own story with its dreams and hopes. So MOM I will do so……….

Permit me begin by telling you a little about my self. I was born in Canada by my amazing parents (they are Cameroonians) who both escaped the poverty of their environment for a better western education in order to come back and be of help to their family and community. Given that my parents are Christians and strongly believe in implanting moral values in the heart of their children, they sent my siblings and me to Christian institutions where I learnt to embrace values like equality, caring, honesty and love. It is these values that have guided me through out my life and in the way I perceive my world. I am not an idealist, but strongly believe that our world can be much better than what it is. As I browse the internet, watch television or walk down the street, my heart can’t help but reach out to the many children and women either sleeping on the streets under trees or staying in houses that are less than deplorable. These harsh realities I see on a daily bases are so difficult for me personally to comprehend in a world where there is so much affluence. There is certainly something that can be done. Some believe there is nothing one man or woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills. Yet many of the world’s great efforts, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man or Woman. These men and women moved the world, and so can we all. I agree that we can’t solve all our worlds’ ills but surely we can all play our own part in a larger effort to put an end to this moral genocide. I strongly believe that towards the end of our lives, when all the excitement of youth has gone and the body is ready to rest from the pressure and pleasure of this world. We shall ultimately be judged, and we will surely judge our selves on the effort we contributed to making our world a better place for that little baby girl I saw on the street offering her body for a plate of food, that little boy who cant afford to have basic education or the old woman who has to sleep under trees.
It is therefore the suffering I constantly see, the inequality, and my values that made me join AIESEC and gave me the desire to create a foundation in the future that seeks to fight against poverty and poor governance. This dream of mind is my constant source of hope and inspiration. It’s my main driving force. It is this dream that gets me up in the morning prepared to set goals, challenge my limits and meet the obstacles that come my way with strength and courage, as well as defines who I am.
I hope that at the end of my life I will be described as a generous man who gave his time, effort and intelligence to better community life.

Please share with me in this blog, what dreams and hopes are growing in your life, how they are nourishing you and your plans to make them a reality

I love dreaming …………and hoping. I love every one to dream and hope. I love everything about dreams, even the messy and the scary parts when you think no one will appreciate the dream or it will never come true. I don’t see the essence of living without dreams or hopes

Human beings are the only beings who can turn dreams and hopes into reality. That to me is one of the greatest gifts endowed within us by our creator. It worries me sometimes how we’ve created this society where it’s so easy to hide from our true nature, where it’s so easy to focus on making money and making sure everyone else’s needs are met and it’s so easy to put our own dreams and hopes aside. Just the idea that people put aside their dreams and decide to take on a hopeless journey makes me sad. Our dreams are our life! I really don’t see the point in living a life where dreams are pushed down, ignored, or put on hold until after the more practical aspects of life have been taken care of.
Our dreams and hopes can nurture us, nourish us, support us, and energize us – if we let them. All we have to do is let them out, let them be out in the world, share them with others, stop hiding them and putting them off and making them less important. it’s amazing how letting dreams out and giving them space to grow impacts the rest of our lives – everything starts to flow a little easier, life is lighter, we are happier. We really do need that nourishment.
Dreams are no accident. The dreams that live in our hearts are life most precious gift. we are not here to do chores and save money. We are here to express and live that dream that lives in our hearts. I wish we could live in a world where everyone is living in tune with their own heart. It’s among the most amazing things that could ever happen to our world.

My life is all about dreams right now and I couldn’t be happier! And one of those things that I want to see in my world is youths being given the space to nurture their dreams and support to make them a reality.

Please share with me in this blog, what dreams and hopes are growing in your life, how they are nourishing you and your plans to make them a reality.