​What may seem to many of us as overnight success, in reality is the result of many months or even years of extreme hard work, sleepless nights, early mornings, stress, fear, ups and downs, fears, and never-give-up attitude. What we often see or are allowed to see is the tip of the iceberg, but there’s so much more to the iceberg that we don’t see and don’t know that’s hiding below the surface. The thing is, many of us don’t even care to learn about struggles and failures on someone’s path to success. Why? Because, we don’t want to learn about things and obstacles that someone had to go through before they had reached success. We don’t want to see how difficult it was, much hard work such success requires. We want to see the end result, where everyone is happy, accomplished, and successful, because, it motivates us to pursue our own goals and dreams of being successful as well. However, after brief period of time of us trying and working towards our goals, we give up, we stop trying, because, we find out how difficult things really are and how much effort is actually required. We didn’t know that before, or should I say, we never cared about learning individuals who have reached success. We never asked them how they did it and what they had to go through.

When we do actually inquire, we learn about long and often very challenging journey that another individual had to travel before reaching their goal(s). Therefore, we should never assume that success, money, and happiness just happen because one day someone wanted to become successful, and things just happened magically for them. It doesn’t happen that way, even when you were happened to be at the right place at the right time. We must remember that success is the end result of many components mentioned earlier, as well as being fortunate enough to create an opportunity to pursue our goals and dreams in life.

That’s right, opportunities do not just come our way waiting for us to accept them. Opportunities are created by us taking action, creating a plan, and following through on the action items that we’ve committed to completing. Just like with goal setting, it’s not enough to just want something one day and say that we have a goal which we are pursuing. Goals must be well thought out through carefully analyzed, prioritized, and written down on paper or typed in the word document. So, if we want to create opportunities for ourselves which would allow us to pursue our goals and dreams, we must seek out such opportunities proactively every day, wherever we may be, and if such opportunities cannot be quickly found, we must look for ways to create them. For example, if we always wanted to write a book on a particular subject that we are passionate about, but we find ourselves to be always busy with other important things, other responsibilities and obligations at work or at home where we cannot find few minutes each day or week to focus and write, then we must create time. Perhaps, one way we may be able to create time is by going to a library or another quiet place, let everyone that needs to know that you will not be available for a specific period of time, and make such activity a part of your daily or weekly schedule. Make this your time, even if it’s just for a few minutes each week. During this time your goal is to fully focus on your thoughts and ideas and put them in writing. This is not the time to check your phone for updates, read emails, or browse social media applications. Even with busiest schedules we can find just few minutes each day or week when we can spend planning and creating our own successful future. This is how opportunities can be created even in most challenging and busy times.
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So, next time when you meet or see a highly successful individual, don’t just focus your attention on the end result – their success, but instead make a goal for yourself to learn about their journey towards that success. If you have an opportunity to speak with a successful individual, then ask them how they did it, and what challenges and/or roadblocks  they had to overcome, or persona sacrifices they had to make before they could become successful. And, always remember, behind every success story often lies many days, weeks, months, or even years of hard work, persistence, extreme determination, and struggle. Understanding the price of success, you should be able to draft your own plan of achieving success and happiness in life that you hope to achieve one day.

I realize that often it is difficult to be optimistic about our future, when nothing seems to go right. This can be discouraging, demotivating, and just plain boring, especially when we expect only positive outcome in everything that we do, what is being done by others, and in general, everything that is taking place around us every day. We often ask ourselves – “Why me?” “Why do I have to face difficulties and challenges that I am facing today?” But what we fail to ask ourselves is what other people around the world are going through, what problems and challenges that they are facing. We only see our side of the story, and completely fail to look at the world as a whole. Our situation, that we are considering as tough, may be what other people were only hope that they were dealing with, if only they can break though the problems that they are facing right now. Perhaps, we are complaining that we do not have enough money to take our own family on a vacation, or buy a piece of furniture for our home, when another family somewhere else in the world  simply wants to have a hot meal, or to have roof over their heads to stay warm. I feel that we often forget to think about others, and about what someone else may be going through, because, we are only focused on what is happening immediately around us.
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So, how can we possibly be optimistic and create a positive change in our own life and the world outside of our own bubble, unless we are willing and ready to look past our own problems and make an effort to help other people who may be dealing with much tougher situations then we ever did? We can’t. In order to create a positive change, in order to charge ourselves and others with optimism, we must work together and look at the world around us from a global point of view, stepping outside of our own little bubble. Only then we can begin to notice a positive change, not only in our own life, but also in the lives of others. One example that I can think of when it comes to a limited world view and consideration, is when someone presents in the meeting, utilizing a PowerPoint presentation filled with data points and graphs, and completely missing to tell the story from a big picture point of view. Doing so, presenter quickly looses audience and their attention, because, they are unable to connect all data points to create an all-encompassing story and ideas that they are expected to walk away with at the end of the meeting. Similarly, when we only focus on busy noise and what’s happening immediately around us, instead of looking at things globally, we miss a big picture which often leads to confusion, frustration, and limits our ability to find effective solutions, not just to our own concerns and problems, but to problems of others who may be dealing with similar situations as we are. Therefore, I hope that we as individuals do our best and look at the world around us from a global point of view vs what we see immediately in front of our noses, and help each other to deal with tough situations that we often face on this wonderful world what we live in.

​Do we always know what we must do as we go through life? Do we always know the actions that we must take to take care of ourselves and those that we love and care about? I don’t think so. I often struggle to find ways to overcome obstacles and solutions to various problems that I encounter in my own life. I don’t always know what I must do to ensure complete safety and happiness of my family. Now, I am not saying that I stop trying to find ways to overcome such challenges and instead I keep on trying and looking for solutions no matter what. All I am saying is that we don’t always know what to do, and certainly do not have answers to all questions that we often must answer, instead, we just do our best. We do the best we can and hope that our actions are the right ones. If not, if we fail, well, we just keep trying again and again. So, don’t be upset, or discouraged, if you don’t know the answer right away to a particular question or don’t know the best way to solve a particular problem, just do your best.
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It’s ok if you must ask others for help or guidance when you need it. You are not overstepping your own ego; you are simply being human. We all need help from time to time, and it’s ok to reach out and ask for it when you can. I say when you can, because, unfortunately, we simply  may not have anyone that we can reach out to  for help and advice and, therefore, must rely fully on ourselves to find answers and solutions to our own questions and problems. It may often feel like there’s no immediate solution in sight, but there’s always a solution, there’s always a way to overcome whatever we may be dealing with or problem that we may be facing at any given point in time. We just need to be patient with ourselves, and always hope for and believe in a positive outcome. Because, what’s an alternative, complaining how tough our situation is to others, and live in a constantly negative state of being? That is definitely not a solution to our problem(s), it’s a way for our mind to make us feel better temporarily while not actually solving a problem. Therefore, taking action and searching for ways to overcome our challenges is a way to move forward past our problems, and eventually finding answers and solutions we are seeking.

So, when you are faced with a situation where you don’t know the answer, or don’t know how to solve it, don’t get discouraged or upset, don’t lose hope, just keep looking for a solution and ask others for help when you can. Either by yourself or with help of other people, you will overcome difficulties and problems with time, persistence, and hope in a positive outcome. Do the best you can, and never ever give up no matter how difficult things may get. As Abraham Lincoln once said: “I have simply tried to do what seemed best each day, as each day came.”