Built not Born.

Built Not Born.

Characters are not born but built and formed from a powerhouse called life. We form the true strength of our character when our mind goes through difficulties and challenges in life.

• Leaders are built not born. They are created by hard effort, which is the price that all of us must pay to achieve any worthwhile goal. It is based on truth in our purpose and willpower in our character.

• A flame of fire burns inside us and the battle is won in our hearts. Our finest hours are those moments when we have worked our heart out in good cause and lie exhausted on the field of battle, victorious.

• Mental strength and vigour come when we are put to contend with difficulties in life. We learn to respect and identify with others, and we will never know how difficult life can be until we are in such a situation.

• Character is a state of mind called to action. It requires sacrifice, self-denial and a disciplined will that refuses to give in. Obstacles are what we see when we take our eyes off our goals.

• After all, the headlines have been written and the fanfare has faded, the enduring thing that is left is the dedication to doing with our lives the very best we can to make our world a better place to live.

Understanding is the truth we stand under. Humility, humbleness, respect, and empathy are great characters that life instils in us. We may not understand it before, but after all that we have been through in life, now we understand.

Built for Life.

Life is not just something that happens to us, but something that we also create for ourselves. And by engaging in art and creativity, we feel more capable of taking control of our thoughts, emotions, actions, and life in general. Being creative empowers us to build.

• No one is born to be a leader. Not even Steve Jobs. He had several mentors including Robert Noyce, founder of the microchip and Jobs had to learn how to become a leader.

• To be built isn’t taught as much as it is discovered. Teachers, trainers, mentors, and supervisors all play a role in our development. The best teachers are the ones who can coach us to understand the key moves that must be made in each situation. 

• To be built, not born means progress. It means that we can’t just show up and expect amazing results. We do all the things that culminate into building ourselves for what we want to achieve.

• The adversity and challenges we face provide us with invaluable insight. As we mature, we learn to recognise, seek, and steward the crucial experiences that come our way.

• One of the hardest things we tend not to do as humans are to listen. The second is to take criticism. Put our ego aside and embrace our humility to find and create a partnership with the most amazing coach. That person will greatly impact our lives.

• The idea that we are in control of our abilities is empowering to some and is the driving force behind every great learner. We all have the tools to grow and get really, good at absolutely anything we want if we believe we can and we do the work.

• Stories that say skills and attitudes are born. That our shortcomings are not our fault, that great performers are the lucky ones, and that we just missed out at the talent lottery are limiting beliefs.

Search for Meaning.

Viktor Frankl wrote in his book Man’s Search for Meaning how even under the harshest conditions we can find meaning in our suffering and live with dignity and satisfaction.

• When Frankl was put into a concentration camp during the Holocaust, he used to give lectures to an imaginary audience. In this way, Frankl learned to cope with his suffering by using his imagination to create a more meaningful existence in his life.

• He believed that by playing out his imagination objectively, he could find a deeper sense of purpose. And he did.

• The human mind is gifted with this incredible ability to restructure the way it views reality and experience. And as Frankl demonstrates, we can take truly awful circumstances in our lives and transform them into something positive for ourselves.

• when we participate in art or other creative activities, we simultaneously change the way we think about ourselves and our world. We begin to recognise that we are built in this game of life.

• The “why” behind any endeavour usually determines the success of the outcome. It is important to understand the difference between the mission of the start-up and the role we play in getting our vision to its destination.

A Solid Foundation.

Building a foundation isn’t a one-time event. Habits will slip and we will need to rebuild them periodically. Our goals may change, forcing us to change our foundation to suit them. But if we’ve spent the time investing in a foundation initially, these changes are maintenance, not complete reconstruction.

• At the beginning of any self-improvement effort, it can be difficult to make lasting changes. Just like we must create a level foundation before building a house, we must set a level foundation before taking on self-improvement goals.

• If we are surrounded by clutter, both physically and mentally, every goal will be much harder. Disorganisation in our environment creates chaos in our thinking. Clear, focused thinking is a necessary attribute for self-improvement, so don’t clutter your mind with junk.

• If our daily routines aren’t conducive to our goals, we need to rely on willpower for every action. Establishing daily routines raises our baseline level of productivity.

• Our physical health is the third part of a solid foundation because achieving any goal will require energy. If our body isn’t in great shape, we’ll have less energy to invest every day. Think of our body as the fuel tank for any goal. The better shape we are in, the more fuel we must use every day.

• The idea behind a morning ritual is to take the pain out of waking up by making it automatic. A well-designed morning ritual also offers us extra time in the quieter hours of the morning to devote to something important.

• Make sleep a priority. Mental work is a result of our energy levels.  If we are exhausted from lack of sleep, completing the same amount of work can take twice or three times as long.  Cutting sleep for a day or two can help in a crunch, but it doesn’t last.

Our life needs to be set up to manage the stress that builds up.  Think about adding some garbage collecting routines to our life to take the mental trash out each day, so it doesn’t build up.

Life Skills.

A life skill is built and necessary or desirable for full participation in everyday life. It is acquired through learning and direct life experience that enable us to effectively handle issues and problems commonly encountered in daily life.

• Whether we’re talking about writing or speaking, communication is a vital life skill that encompasses both. No one makes it through this world alone, so learning to communicate with others will help us get where we need to be in life, and it’s a learnedskill. It’s about expressing our needs and desires while understanding and relating to others’ needs and desires.

• The ability to discipline ourselves enough to make healthy choices about our food and exercise which are a learned skill. No one can be perfect all the time, but when we view exercise and nutrition as self-care, rather than punishment, it helps to reframe.

• The Good Life is about finding our happiness. It’s about simplifying and focusing on the genuine and true things in life that make us happy, including the most important: family, friends, and our relationship with ourselves and God.

• Logic is not a skill everyone has, but this life skill is about our ability to prioritise, but it’s also about our ability to break a situation down and make choices. It’s about measuring possible outcomes and building our thinking skills to tackle life’s little bumps.

• The ability to budget and be financially responsible is vital to our life skillset. Whether we’re just starting on getting a handle on our finances or we’re an experienced, coupon-clipping, money-saving guru, understanding our budget is the first step to achieving financial peace and security.

• The ability to use a clock and a calendar is at the foundation of time management which is a life skill. A calendar simplifies our life and helps us get everything done, every day. We don’t have to live and die by our calendar but learning how to block off time for activities and scheduled events will make our life SO much easier.

Built to Learn.

Learning is essential to our existence. Just like food nourishes our bodies, information and continued learning nourish our minds. Lifelong learning is an indispensable tool for everyday life.

• The process of learning, understanding, and awareness has a positive impact on our self-esteem and self-confidence because it offers the necessary fuel to our creativity. Ideas seem to be at the forefront, and even unrelated things start to have meanings.

• We start learning from birth when we learn to cry to attract the attention of our parents. With time we learn character strengths and good habits as well as ways to interact and deal with others. We develop appropriate skills that save time and energy and offer the chance for better and new opportunities.

• It is not ingrained but an acquired skill that anyone can get hold of with sheer grit and determination. It helps to maintain a positive attitude in life when our earnings are as per our desires, it boosts our self-confidence, enhances our status and improves our quality of life.

• It is intellectual growth that helps us to observe the world through bright eyes, evaluate the things we are seeing, appraise what we have learned and apply our learning into everyday life.

• It is an indispensable tool that nourishes our minds and soothes our souls. It is a necessity for both personal and professional careers as it makes us capable of understanding and handling things in a better way in life.

• It aids in acquiring critical thinking skills and discovering numerous ways in which we can relate with others from different cultures. It is the only way to deal with the continuous change in our life so that we can move forward with ease.

Built for Wisdom.

• The beginning of wisdom lies in the recognition of how little we know. We live in an era when knowledge in the sense of information is constantly available in real-time through computers, smartphones, electronic tablets, and book readers. And yet we still lack the basic skills of reflecting on such information, of sifting through the dirt to find the worthy nuggets. We are ignorant masses awash in information.

• Knowledge is a mansion with many rooms. We feel our way around each room, bumping into and becoming gradually familiar with the objects in it. Eventually, we find the light switch, and we can see everything in that room. Ignorance resides in the corridor, hallways, and stairways. It can only enter the room if it tried to open the unlocked doors instead of assuming the doors are locked.

• To know or discover is to arrive at a destination. A path can be cleared or paved to help us learn or discover. It is finding our way. Ignorance is straying from the path, getting lost, going in the wrong direction, going around in circles, wandering, and failing to arrive at a destination.

• Everything that we do in life is a choice. And these choices define the quality of our life both short term at the moment, and the long term. The choices we make, even the smallest ones, have an impact on our current reality. We choose it every time we see someone being insensitive and we allow their behaviour to affect our life.

• Our intentions are only as good as our understanding of our environment. It’s our reason that grasps a thing as good and then proposes that good to our will as something worth choosing. If our reason is wrong about what’s good, our will is bound to be wrong too.

• We are responsible for our failures of knowledge no less than our failures of will. We obviously can’t know everything. But we do have a moral duty to try to know what’s necessary to act well. Not knowing because we don’t want to know, or because we’ve neglected to learn something we could easily have learned. Good intentions can’t redeem voluntary ignorance.