Chapter 1: Introduction

Some essays from my soul and a rundown of what's to be revealed from being led to this book. Challenged Beliefs... Not quite done yet, work in progress. Inspiration & Information.

Some essays from the heart to get started... Intended to get the Inspiration & Information flowing.

 

Journey to Source:

 

I try to be as true in my writing as Ralph Waldo Emerson was in his. I have always known that I am an intricate writer, but until I was blessed to have my path cross with RWE's, I was a shell of my author-self. I admire that last sentence for two reasons. The fact that when Emerson crosses one's path it is considered to be a "blessing" is in itself a complement in the highest order. He dug into and valued Truth, Wisdom, Knowledge, and Observation so much, that his thoughts and words became a blessing to all persons with a well-developed enough intellect and understanding of the world to be able to decipher his teachings. How inspiring is that? To become a blessing, a saving grace, in any situation, is a most admirable feature. The truth that we can become a blessing to our fellow man is astonishing to think about. Our words, written or spoken, have more power wrapped in them then we can comprehend. Through imaginary stories, analogies, advice, guidance, or just describing our experiences and observations, while speaking from our hearts, we can be the flint to spark one of our companions to accomplish the next huge shift in the world. What if all that spurred great people like Emerson or Edison along their world changing paths was a few heartfelt words? Any one of us can deliver some heartfelt words. A lesson one of the greatest speakers of all time, Jim Rohn, taught me was this; Welcome every human interaction, you never know, which one, is going to get it all going for you...

Secondly, I admire how His, and our own if we wish, inspirations can live on after we perish. I was compelled to write that before I read RWE, "I was a shell of my author self". To me this is miraculous. I love and cherish the fact that we humans can build on each other's discoveries and thoughts. How many thousands or millions of people have 'found themselves', or have better knowledge of self, therefore a better life, from reading some of Emerson's work? It's funny that we are just, led to the things that we should see, to become the things that we should be. Essentially, we are all the same, but in a more refined sense, we are all different; each of us with our own set of things we value, desire, and for some strange reason, are compelled to go after. In my soul's unique set of ingredients, leading, motivating, inspiring, and sparking others to achieve their greatness, is head of the list. That is why I'm drawn, attracted to, great people like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Napoleon Hill, Tony Robbins, Will Smith, Oprah, and many others... They've sparked and awoke the heart in my chest the way I long to do for people today. One of the ultimate goals of human life is longevity of spirit. "We all have to go, but who wants to be forgotten?" RWE has imprinted his name and teachings on the hearts of the wise for eternity, achieving the most idolized accomplishment and source of positive karma one can capture. Don't we all want to pass on from this world knowing that our lives will inspire other people to righteousness, greatness, and progress in the future? | "When our influence can turn people we've influenced into influencers, anything we can envision and become real." - Tony Robbins | Every day for the rest of time, someone around the world will get inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson. We must consider this to be the one, or at least one of the most incredible and desirable situations we can strive for. That's the definition of our ideas and our spirit living on... I respect and salute you Mr. Emerson. I am forever indebted to and must repay you for the gift you have given me. It seems, for many more than two reasons (which we won't get into here, haha), that the only way I can repay you is to work towards and accomplish the ideals that I have mentioned here.
Hopefully I have already started...

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

I believe in Inspiration & Information

Love

 

Be You:

 

One of the things we struggle with so much during our process of discovering who we truly are and what we want to become, is the grey area of discovering/deciding our purpose within ourselves. All of the books we read and all of the advice from people who are already where we want to be, tell us in one way or another, that we have to have a purpose and a direction, something to go for, to be happy and successful. This is so true, but so misunderstood, and such a delicate matter to each of us. "Finding ourselves" and deciding what our purpose should be given our strengths and values is a continual process in which we get consistently tested throughout life... Totally worth it. We continue uncovering new bits and pieces every day. Life is a constant search for who we want to become. I put finding ourselves in quotations because I don't think that we find that many new things about ourselves in a personal process like this. We just kind of make the best and truest qualities in ourselves stand out more. The ones that we could always feel there inside of us, the faint whispers in our thoughts with how we would truly like to act, but we didn't let them show as much because we might have been focused too much on fitting in and conforming, trying to be one of the cool kids... Also, we drop some of the qualities that at the time we thought were good for us, or would get some laughs from those around us, but we later realized that they no longer did us any justice as far as propelling us toward the direction that we want to be headed in our lives. Redefining ourselves is a more accurate term. I learned a lot of that from experience, and from Tony Robbins in one of the first useful videos from a successful person that I watched on YouTube. It was called "Tony Robbins - The Keys to Massive Success", I took notes on it and probably watched it over 20 times. He taught me that the strongest force in the whole human personality, is this must to act consistent with who we believe we are, and how we define ourselves. He taught me that identity is one of those simple fundamental basics, and that when we make a shift in it, everything else in our life around us shifts as well. So true. The identity I had for myself before I learned that was honestly, kind of just to be a jackass and hope the people around me got a kick out of it. Haha, I will say, I was pretty good at it, I just didn't realize the negative effects it was having on my life and personality at the time! That video made me do some serious thinking about my life and my personality. It made me start valuing myself and my life. That day, even though I was totally clueless as to how I was going to do it, I decided I was going to be a smart, successful, good hearted person. I changed my identity. "True nobility, is not about being better than anybody else, it's about being better than you used to be". Long story short, my purpose came along a while after I made that decision. I found that my true purpose eluded me, and was going to continue to elude me, until I stopped conforming to the not so smart influences around me, until I started trying to impress myself rather than trying to impress other people, and until I started trying to be my true to who I really was. "And always be yourself, because nobody else is better at it." One thing I opened my eyes to about being true to who I am, was having some substance to who I am. To put it as simple as possible, to me, it was just a matter of knowing things. Older people have many more life experiences they can learn from and reflect on, so that's they're substance, that's who they are. Being 19 years old, I didn't want to wait until I got "older" before I knew who I was. Two lessons; I realized that life is mostly about inspiration and knowledge, and that I was really going to have to focus on and learn as much from every book, interaction, and experience as I possibly could. One of the biggest parts of life is literally just, how much you know, and what you know about. I stepped back and took a good look at myself. I saw that really the only knowledge or substance I had was about useless information, that wasn't going to help me be successful in any way. At that point I knew that in my first 19 years, even though it might not have been all my fault (School system, society, bad influences, no knowledge of things greater than myself or natural laws of the universe, etc.), I had laid almost no foundation for my future. More importantly, I knew the fact that I immediately had to take responsibility for it and get started. I was just wandering around aimlessly without a direction, looking for a good time or some pretty girls or what was on TV or whatever the case was. I was not looking for success. I wasn't thinking about ways I could help people, contribute to the world, or provide a service I would enjoy providing. It took me a few months to learn all of this, and at times it was pretty rough, I had to be very honest with myself. I was so hard on myself, I had an insane drive to get smarter and just, be a better human being. I wish someone would have told me to just, relax, to take it one day at a time, and know that my purpose will become apparent to me when I'm ready for it. (Coincidence that ready is just read with a y on the end..?) I love and always remember that old saying about life "When the student is ready, the teacher will come." So true. It sometimes seems like life is a long hallway with a series of doors, and the doors will open only when you as a person are ready for what's behind them. A lot of times the keys can be found in books... The drive was an awesome part of myself that I was happy to see show up, but the stress I piled on by putting myself down because of how I was in the past was unnecessary. I will say I let the disgust with myself drive me to levels I never thought I could get to, I just wish someone would've told me the fact that that part of my life was over, that it already happened, and that I couldn't change any of it. If I would've learned that part sooner, I wouldn't have been all mad at myself about it. I would've known that to get mad or upset at something like that, something that I couldn't change, was a waste of effort, and a waste of the present moment as well. I live by this statement now: Control the things you can control, deal with the things you can't. Just keep going. Another truth I realized is, as simple as finding my purpose was, it wasn't just going to jump out and bite me, and then solve all of the problems in my life. (Side note, just because things are simple, doesn't mean they're easy!) I realized we are only rewarded when we do things that are worth rewards. I realized that if I wanted things in my life to eventually change, I was eventually going to have to put in the work to make those things change. The day I had the realization that things don't just magically happen, that I have to read and learn and be smart and plan and take actions to make them happen, is the day my life changed for good. I'm not sure where I got the idea that things were eventually going to work themselves out without me fulfilling the necessary requirements to make those things work out, but boy, was I way off. One day in my mind I finally said "Wow... I'm responsible for how my life turns out."

Hard work, works. That was the magic formula for me.
I believe in Inspiration & Information

Love

 

 

A Taste of What's Ahead:

 

Reading this book is going to be a roller coaster ride supplying you with inspiration and information from my own, and some of the most unique minds we've ever known, while simultaneously inducing you to think intricately about your own life; Who you are and where you are headed. I have tried my hardest to make this an interesting read for people who are misinformed about how much value comes along with, or simply just don't like reading. One of my main goals involved with writing this was for it to be the book that sparks an interest in reading for people who don't really read that much. My dream is for this book to start a revolution against the concept of "The Masses". I'm not sure how, why or when it became acceptable to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 95% of our citizens hidden from the truth about so many critical aspects of life, and blatantly not given the correct inspiration and information necessary to know themselves or to follow their hearts to do something they'd truly love to do, and make a difference while doing it. It puzzles me further that this fact is something that most people in general are aware of, but a good portion seem to think that they're somehow immune to it, or that it doesn't affect them for some reason. The old "No, not me" syndrome... I have a strong desire to do anything I can to help overcome the lack of inspiration and information for our country's youth today. I have an idea of “Mass Destruction” in my mind...

I gave it my all to make it so that if I was able to, I could give this book to myself 8 months ago (Before I started reading and improving myself), and the old me would've been able to stick to it, read the whole book, and come out transformed on the other side. Hopefully by the time you're a few chapters into reading this book, the days when you "didn't have the attention span to read" will have melted away, and what will be left is what seems to be a totally new and improved, self-reliant, and smart person. What does that mean anyway? "I don't have the attention span to read." I'm not quite sure what they mean when I hear a lot of my peers admit that this is the reason why they don't read, but in Truth, this translates to meaning only one thing: "I'm too stupid to read." Now who would want to say or think something like that..?

A lot of times all that we need to become wiser is a simple shift in perspective. A new, more correct, and truer way of thinking about things. When things aren't going the way we want them to, in any area of life we can imagine, it's not necessarily all our fault, or that we're bad or stupid people. A lot of it has to do with simple, fundamental basics, ingredients if we will. (Most of which are incorporated within pretty much all self-help material, these are undisputable and true concepts.) The ingredients that help universally among human beings and that resonate the most with us are, our rituals, beliefs, influences, and strategies. It’s not you as a person, it’s your strategies, or it’s your rituals, etc. Notice that previously stated was "it's not all our fault". Now with that being established, we have to be completely honest with ourselves. We have to seek the truth in all situations. We do not have to go back in our lives and beat ourselves up for our previous thinking or actions that produced our present results if we're not completely happy with them; but what we do have to make a decision about right now is, choosing to take responsibility for our thinking. As required by a system in nature, before we can delve deep inside ourselves to those special, cherished places, where our most chased after life concepts like our future direction, our purpose we want to serve, and even things like our major life goals or our ideal romantic partners are hidden, we must know ourselves and correct our thinking. We must sharpen and add power to our minds to establish a great relationship with ourselves and figure out exactly who we are. We must remove major lumps and minor fragments of ignorance from our minds. We must implant new knowledge, wisdom, beliefs, influences, dreams, and ideas into our thinking. We must get our thinking under control so that, most importantly, we can begin to learn more about ourselves, but we also need clearer thinking so that we can learn about the world around us and how we're best suited to thrive in it. Just a few jolts of correct thinking, and a simple review and analysis of what we believe and why we believe it, can have a massive positive effect on our lives. This doesn't happen all at once, and honestly it's easier said than done, but it's the first step to becoming an intelligent person and opening our minds. You'll notice over the next few weeks, if you continue to read good books and be influenced by the right things for you, incorrect thinking habits will begin to drift away as if they never existed, and you'll just, become a smart person. This process is amazing. You will see confusion and ignorance dissolve from your thinking as you add power to your mind. Every day begins to have a purpose, they become their own separate and exciting journeys, with a new agenda, something new to learn and figure out about yourself and the world around you. This is where we truly start living. As soon as we start putting conscious effort into improving our thinking and strengthening our minds, is when we wake up. This is where we make the changes needed in ourselves to become successful, smart, superior people.

 One of the most effective, yet most uncomfortable, ways to become smarter, is to have our old beliefs challenged, expanded, and corrected.

Why Should We Read?

 

Author's Note

Thank you so much for the read, if I inspired or entertained you in the slightest, I would more than love and appreciate a comment! I also want to welcome any suggestions, corrections or constructive criticism if you have any, I'm always trying to better myself and improve my skills. Don't mind the grammar mistakes if there is any, like I said I'm not quite done with this. Writing is an intricate process for me... If there's more you want to know about me or something you want me to write about please let me know! I'll be more than happy to take a bet on myself and give it a shot. Hope you enjoyed.
My wishes and intentions writing this were to express myself and get some things off my chest, to see how far I've come in knowledge of myself and the world as I see it, to give this public writing thing a go, but ultimately, it was to make a difference in the minds and hearts of anyone who took the time to read this.
I am hoping that I've made even a small difference in your life today.
Thanks for the read,
I believe in Inspiration & Information
Love