Why You Should Achieve Your Goals

Why should you do everything in your power to achieve your goals? Why should you go through the trouble of disciplining yourself to take consistent action each and every day towards your goals? Why should you have to deal with setbacks and challenges that will bring you to your knees? Why do go through any of these things just to accomplish your goals? One reason is because if you don’t, you will feel regret. The second reason is because you will miss your chance to change other people’s lives. When people get to the end of their lives, they will even feel fulfilled or full of regret. If there is something you have always wanted to do, do it. Even if there a possibility that you may fail, do it. Realize that most of the things we regret in life will come failing to take action, not taking action. In other words, we will have more regrets over the things that we didn’t do than the things that we did do. So when you accomplish your goals, how does that affect other people’s lives? Well, if you think about it, we are all motivated by one of two things. The first is desperation. When we become desperate, when our backs are against the wall, when there is no other choice, we will spring into action. There are hundreds of stories of people who went from being sick of being broke and living in poverty to becoming successful. The second reason people are motivated is inspiration. When you see someone achieve massive success, you start to believe you can to. The problem is that many people see successful people as being lucky. Now if you achieve your goal, you will be able to inspire the people around you to believe in themselves because they won’t see you as just being lucky. Whether you are trying to achieve your financial goals, fitness goals or any other kind of goal, just realize that your success or failure in achieving that goal doesn’t just affect you, it affects everyone around you. Learning how to achieve goals and more importantly, putting what you learn into action, will help inspire others to pursue their own goals with the same determination that you had in achieving your goals. No one said living your dreams was easy, it’s not. That is why so many people end up quitting. There are far too many stories of failure and not enough stories of success. No matter how big or small your goal is, do everything you can to accomplish it. Your accomplishment can possibly inspire someone to become more than they thought they could become.

The Night Came Slowly

I am losing my interest in human beings; in the significance of their lives and their actions. Some one has said it is better to study one man than ten books. I want neither books nor men; they make me suffer. Can one of them talk to me like the night – the Summer night? Like the stars or the caressing wind? The night came slowly, softly, as I lay out there under the maple tree. It came creeping, creeping stealthily out of the valley, thinking I did not notice. And the outlines of trees and foliage nearby blended in one black mass and the night came stealing out from them, too, and from the east and west, until the only light was in the sky, filtering through the maple leaves and a star looking down through every cranny. The night is solemn and it means mystery. Human shapes flitted by like intangible things. Some stole up like little mice to peep at me. I did not mind. My whole being was abandoned to the soothing and penetrating charm of the night. The katydids began their slumber song: they are at it yet. How wise they are. They do not chatter like people. They tell me only: “sleep, sleep, sleep.” The wind rippled the maple leaves like little warm love thrills. Why do fools cumber the Earth! It was a man’s voice that broke the necromancer’s spell. A man came to-day with his “Bible Class.” He is detestable with his red cheeks and bold eyes and coarse manner and speech. What does he know of Christ? Shall I ask a young fool who was born yesterday and will die tomorrow to tell me things of Christ? I would rather ask the stars: they have seen him.

by Kate Chopin

Overcoming Hopelessness

Hopelessness is a feeling that can be far more destructive than facing defeat and failure. When you are out there trying to accomplish your goals and you fail to achieve them, as long as you still have hope and faith that you will eventually reach your goals, you will keep pressing on. When you feel hopeless, that’s when you are in danger of just giving up on your dreams. Let’s take a look at this specific feeling and what you can do to overcome it. One of the main reasons why people fail to achieve their goals is because of obstacles. If you think about it though, what is a goal without obstacles? Is getting up and getting a drink of water hard for you? Of course not. That’s why it’s not considered a goal. When you attempt to accomplish something where there is a chance of failure, you are pursuing something worthwhile. As long as you believe that the goal is within your reach, you will have a chance. Feelings of hopelessness will usually come when you have experienced defeat after defeat. After failing so many times, it can be easy to feel as if there is no point in continuing. What’s the use if you are going to end up failing again? You can sit around and feel sorry for your hopeless dreams or you can stand up and say, “So what?” So what if you don’t achieve your goals the first for 100th time you try? If you want to achieve your goals, then your approach must be about doing until. How long will you get up and try again? Until you accomplish your goal. Hopelessness is just another word for giving up or surrendering. You feel like there is no point or no use in continuing so why bother? Well, you need to understand that many of the greatest successes and accomplishments in life came after the point where having hope was easy. It’s easy to be hopeful when you are first starting out to pursue your dreams. It’s still easy even if you are met with your first couple of challenges and obstacles. It’s when you meet your 10th one, or your 25th one, or your 100th one that having hope starts to get difficult. It’s during this time where you must not lose hope because you will be so close. Being hopeful means to have faith. Having faith means that you know things will turn out well even if you have not evidence that it will. If you know of at least one person, living or dead, who has accomplish the goals that you have set out to accomplish, then you can use them to strengthen your resolve and your faith that if it’s possible for someone, then it’s possible for you. Hopelessness is easy. Anyone can feel that way. It’s the people who will keep going, who will never allow themselves to lose hope, are the people who achieve their goals and dreams in life.

A Strange Story

In the northern part of Austin there once dwelt an honest family by the name of Smothers. The family consisted of John Smothers, his wife, himself, their little daughter, five years of age, and her parents, making six people toward the population of the city when counted for a special write-up, but only three by actual count. One night after supper the little girl was seized with a severe colic, and John Smothers hurried down town to get some medicine. He never came back. The little girl recovered and in time grew up to womanhood. The mother grieved very much over her husband's disappearance, and it was nearly three months before she married again, and moved to San Antonio. The little girl also married in time, and after a few years had rolled around, she also had a little girl five years of age. She still lived in the same house where they dwelt when her father had left and never returned. One night by a remarkable coincidence her little girl was taken with cramp colic on the anniversary of the disappearance of John Smothers, who would now have been her grandfather if he had been alive and had a steady job. "I will go downtown and get some medicine for her," said John Smith (for it was none other than he whom she had married). "No, no, dear John," cried his wife. "You, too, might disappear forever, and then forget to come back." So John Smith did not go, and together they sat by the bedside of little Pansy (for that was Pansy's name). After a little Pansy seemed to grow worse, and John Smith again attempted to go for medicine, but his wife would not let him. Suddenly the door opened, and an old man, stooped and bent, with long white hair, entered the room. "Hello, here is grandpa," said Pansy. She had recognized him before any of the others. The old man drew a bottle of medicine from his pocket and gave Pansy a spoonful. She got well immediately. "I was a little late," said John Smothers, "as I waited for a street car."

by O. Henry

How to Stop Worrying

If you want to stop worrying, then you need to stop thinking so much. Thinking is a good thing of course but when you focus a lot of time over analyzing things, it can cause a lot of stress. Sometimes worrying is a good thing because it’s your mind’s way of acknowledging the importance of the situation. However, many times we worry excessively for invalid reasons. This article will give you a couple of different ways to help you to worry a little bit less. When we worry, what we are actually doing is projecting our mind out into the future. We picture negative scenarios and images. We think about the worse possible situations. Students may spend a lot of time worrying about how they did on the test they just took. The person who is running late and is stuck in traffic is worried about what people will think of him when he shows up to the meeting late. The employee watches the news during his lunch time in the break room and sees that unemployment rate is climbing starts to worry about the security of his job. In all of these situations, the person is worried about something that hasn’t happened yet. Not only that, they are worried about something that they have no control over at the present moment. If you want to know how to stop worrying, then you need to learn how to be in the moment. Realize that the majority of things people worry about coming true, never come true. You can spend a great majority of your waking life worrying yourself to the point where you start to lower your happiness level. You may even start to draw back from life because you’re afraid of every possible negative situation that you have imagined in your head coming true. So how do you just stop worrying about everything? Here’s a simple rule. If you can’t do anything to improve the situation at the moment, let it go. Stop worrying so much about things that you have no control over. The student who is worried about what score he got is just wasting his time because what’s done is done. Whether he spends his time worrying or having fun, it’s not going to change the outcome. The employee who sees the unemployment rate increasing can worry about his job and perhaps start working harder but at the moment, during his lunch, he can’t do much about it so there is no point in worrying. A great book about this topic that you should read is called, “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” by Dale Carnegie. The book offers a lot of great ways to help you reduce your habit of worrying. You can try writing down the things you are worried about and find out what percentage of those things actually come true. Once you realize that there was really no point in stressing over things you can do anything about and stop worrying about everything, you will start to enjoy life a lot more.

The Story of An Hour

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death. It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message. She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her. There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul. She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which someone was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves. There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window. She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams. She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought. There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air. Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under the breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body. She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome. There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination. And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being! "Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering. Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door." "Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window. Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom. Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife. When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.

by Kate Chopin