“Life is unfair!”
We always hear it. Your eldest sister has a voice that can put a man who drank liters of coffee to sleep. Your bestfriend is the star-for-all-season actor in your school. Your cousin is a Palanca award recipient. Your neighbor travels around the world performing the Philippine folkdances with her co-Bayanihan Dancers.
You? You can do a lot of things too! Like take charge of your yearly induction party in school. You’re the collector of noisy fees. You sing at the bathroom. You naturally make people smile by the mere way you talk. You write on your journal every night… You write every night how you want to be like those people you know who have talents and you keep on asking why life is unfair for not giving you talents, and then you suddenly crack a joke [to make an excuse], that perhaps you were just sleeping when God showered talents to His people.
Life is not unfair. It’s just about being different.
There may be people who were born with talents because their parents are both best at a certain field. But listen! Even the in-born talents evaporate when they’re not being used. They tarnish, they rust. And eventually, they decay.
There are a lot of people who aren’t born talented but emerged as the world’s best because they break away from their fear to commit mistakes, to be laughing stocks, and to fail.
Because of these people’s unwavering determination to grow and know themselves better, they explore, they try, they go out of their comfort zone. They play with people better than they are, they face failure head on, they laugh at their own mistakes, and they keep on trying to hit their target no matter how many times they’ve missed it…knowing that what matters more is the number of hits rather than the misfire.
In the process of trying and trying, they don’t know that they’ve invested time and effort already to what they’re doing… until such time that their ‘play’ is now their ‘expertise’.
Through constant practice Lebron James developed a muscle intelligence that even in a commercial shoot where he needed to miss a shot, he had to close his eyes and take roughly 10 shots before he missed one. Babe Ruth has the most number of strike outs, but he also has the most number of homeruns. The Beatles started as low key 8-hour a day local band performer in Germany before they became an international hit.
Finding our gift of talents is much like a treasure hunting—you have to dig more holes before you find the exact spot of the treasure.
We have to keep on trying so we know where we perform best, or at least find the thing we enjoy most doing and invest time and effort in it.
It all just takes a determination to say YES—to keep on trying and exploring no matter what happens around you—and your willingness to INVEST time and effort.
Finding your gift is like any other journey: 1. you discover; 2. you develop; 3. you deliver.
When you discover, you dig a hole, fail, dig another hole, make mistake, and FIND.
When you develop, you invest time and effort knowing that the sweet fruit is just ahead. At this stage, your availability is more important than your ability. Just DANCE, DANCE, DANCE or COMPUTE, COMPUTE, COMPUTE.
When you have ‘played’ well regularly, you’ll be surprised of the BIG returns of your investment come you deliver. You’ll be in awe about how big your audience is, how many projects arrive, how many invitations to perform you have.
Remember, it’s never too late to hit upon our undiscovered talents and to put them to good use, especially if we use them to bless others and to glorify God.
God doesn’t wait for you to be perfect. He is a proud Father who cheers you as you perform with your best even if your notes jump once in while, or you left foot dominates the right, or you write two-line poem in five days.
When we don’t use our in-born talents, we lose them. If we don’t put them to good use, they peter out and don’t reach their full potential.
Trust that the BEST will happen everyday if we just believe. Even our miss out with the first hole is there to bring us closer to our own talents and failures are there to improve us.
Talents, when put to good use, are built to last… no matter what your age is when you finally find it.
Life isn’t unfair after all. Now we know everything depends on us—our faith, our determination, and our execution.
Stand up! Play! Have fun!
Showing posts with label best things. Show all posts
Showing posts with label best things. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Wealthy and Famous? ...You Are Priceless
Applause. Praises. Tokens. Followers.
These are what we get when we do good in the eyes of people. Well yes, we can be good in different ways. But our being good can be fueled by a range of motives.
In love, we step the best foot forward to impress and win a heart. In sports, we exert our best shot to knock out, hit a goal, or check mate our opponent. In business deals, we exude confidence and display our expertise by using jargons and figures to close a deal. …and so on.
We feel high when we nail our targets. Sometimes we get so attached to them and we become addicted to them, that even after few months or years we are still addicted to that momentous moment and we keep on revisiting the feeling of ‘high’.
Yes that is good for sure. You can use it to motivate yourself or simply make you smile.
However, don’t let your earthly victory bring you to the point of stepping on to others, using others, hurting others just for you to feel good and get another victory. Don’t let your success get into your head.
Just do what you think is both good and right—well yes, this is arbitrary for there are a lot of ethical faculties. Just remember the universal law, ‘what you do the universe will reflect back to you, sooner or later.’
Also, don’t make yourself too attached to earthly things—the object of your affection, your car, your job—to the point of making them the reason why you live, or your world, or your idol.
If just in one blow someone or a certain circumstance tries to take them away from you, try to fight for it. But fighting for it has its limit. If the tiniest voice in you tells you that you can no longer do anything about it except to let go (that means you already did your best or it’s just really beyond your control, the you-can’t-do-anything type), then let go fully. He will take charge. His hands must be at work on it. God surely has a better place for you.
If people hurt you in the process of fighting for it, let them do it without you planning revenge, homing grudge, or uttering curses.
Just let them give you more reasons to be mad and plot revenge (as you move forward and improve the quality of your life), but don’t entertain all the dreadful things that may run in your mind…just play with the thoughts and make better use of them, like make them your caveat and your cue when you have to slap yourself and jump back to reality.
(Hep, hep! You may be thinking this is martyrdom. But wait…)
God Himself will protect you and handle the situation for you. Just do your best to stay on the right track, and He will do the rest.
Just be still. All these series of joy-pain events happen so you become more and more creative in facing life. And because you’re more creative now, you will see things more wonderfully and colorful… as you look at life that way, all the more great things will line up and traffic themselves towards you.
Yeah, sometimes it’s hard to surrender (in fighting for survival and in giving yourself to God). But just entrust your life to Him, He knows best. Besides, we own nothing here on earth for us to fight for these good things until we hurt other people and even our own selves. The One who knows best owns all these things, even our lives.
We don’t have to wait for an ordeal to happen just for us to surrender to Him… our surrender can be a sweet surrender by accepting Him as our God and our Savior.
Remember and trust that God loves you! Endure everything with gladness. Build a strong character. And He will fill up your life with even more beautiful things.
Don’t settle for the good things here on earth…for they are everywhere and easy to acquire. Persevere and wait for the best things. Though difficult to achieve, these best things last forever.
In time, He will bestow you with everlasting joy and treasure—much bigger, more valuable, and merrier than applause, praises, tokens, and followers that you receive now.
These are what we get when we do good in the eyes of people. Well yes, we can be good in different ways. But our being good can be fueled by a range of motives.
In love, we step the best foot forward to impress and win a heart. In sports, we exert our best shot to knock out, hit a goal, or check mate our opponent. In business deals, we exude confidence and display our expertise by using jargons and figures to close a deal. …and so on.
We feel high when we nail our targets. Sometimes we get so attached to them and we become addicted to them, that even after few months or years we are still addicted to that momentous moment and we keep on revisiting the feeling of ‘high’.
Yes that is good for sure. You can use it to motivate yourself or simply make you smile.
However, don’t let your earthly victory bring you to the point of stepping on to others, using others, hurting others just for you to feel good and get another victory. Don’t let your success get into your head.
Just do what you think is both good and right—well yes, this is arbitrary for there are a lot of ethical faculties. Just remember the universal law, ‘what you do the universe will reflect back to you, sooner or later.’
Also, don’t make yourself too attached to earthly things—the object of your affection, your car, your job—to the point of making them the reason why you live, or your world, or your idol.
If just in one blow someone or a certain circumstance tries to take them away from you, try to fight for it. But fighting for it has its limit. If the tiniest voice in you tells you that you can no longer do anything about it except to let go (that means you already did your best or it’s just really beyond your control, the you-can’t-do-anything type), then let go fully. He will take charge. His hands must be at work on it. God surely has a better place for you.
If people hurt you in the process of fighting for it, let them do it without you planning revenge, homing grudge, or uttering curses.
Just let them give you more reasons to be mad and plot revenge (as you move forward and improve the quality of your life), but don’t entertain all the dreadful things that may run in your mind…just play with the thoughts and make better use of them, like make them your caveat and your cue when you have to slap yourself and jump back to reality.
(Hep, hep! You may be thinking this is martyrdom. But wait…)
God Himself will protect you and handle the situation for you. Just do your best to stay on the right track, and He will do the rest.
Just be still. All these series of joy-pain events happen so you become more and more creative in facing life. And because you’re more creative now, you will see things more wonderfully and colorful… as you look at life that way, all the more great things will line up and traffic themselves towards you.
Yeah, sometimes it’s hard to surrender (in fighting for survival and in giving yourself to God). But just entrust your life to Him, He knows best. Besides, we own nothing here on earth for us to fight for these good things until we hurt other people and even our own selves. The One who knows best owns all these things, even our lives.
We don’t have to wait for an ordeal to happen just for us to surrender to Him… our surrender can be a sweet surrender by accepting Him as our God and our Savior.
Remember and trust that God loves you! Endure everything with gladness. Build a strong character. And He will fill up your life with even more beautiful things.
Don’t settle for the good things here on earth…for they are everywhere and easy to acquire. Persevere and wait for the best things. Though difficult to achieve, these best things last forever.
In time, He will bestow you with everlasting joy and treasure—much bigger, more valuable, and merrier than applause, praises, tokens, and followers that you receive now.
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