Do not give up, but make daily choices

If I could go back, and give just a single advice to my younger me, I think it would probably be: be an observer all the time, do at least a little step everyday, do not stop, but make daily choices. You would probably say that it is not just one advice, but the reality is that, at least for me, it is all related. And, answering a possible other question, this advice is the reason I stopped writing in this blog frequently.

I have been in a daily effort to recover the lost time: lost using computers and smartphones the wrong way, lost doing nothing, lost just because, with no specific reason, I decided not to put myself into action.

And, some day, while chatting to myself, I asked: why not to focus on yourself, other than trying to be accepted? An the answer put me back on the road of self deployment. I started this blog, came back studying IT, English, and so many other subjects, like cybersecurity.

When you start a journey, you will soon get to the point where you realize that you do not have all to tools and knowledge that are necessary. That was my case! I firstly saw myself in front of an enormous book, with all kind of data that could be good for me. But what about the time!??

The reality of time: it is limited! We do not have 24 hours a day, because we have to sleep. You have to eat and do other things, like giving attention to kids and wife, in my case. The other problem: you are not mentally and physically prepared. Its is a long run, not just a few steps.

So I observed, I continued to do little steps everyday, I did not stop, but I had to make some choices, and one of them would be to use the time of writing here, to study some other things.

Just to share: I started studying network and security, but chose to dig a little into cloud, and, doing so, I got my first achievement: an AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification! Than I came back on network/security, still mixing with Cloud.

That old guy that did not have time do to anything new some years ago, started to wake up before 6 am, and now I am back on muscle training, exercising my body for almost a month, already getting some results; the plan for now is not to became mister universe, but to look nicer in the mirror! ☺ And, guess what? This will make me stronger for the long run.

I have been saying is this blog, and the other one in Portuguese also, that the speed is not the most important thing, but the direction. You will have to be patient, and you will have to understand that you will not get the results immediately, specially if you, like myself, lost time not doing what you should have done. First you will have to get the results of your bad actions, not the sweet fruits of the right planting.

But it is possible, and I am here to already prove it to you. You want to make a turn or to something new? Start it now and go on. It is just a matter of being a consistently observer, a daily doer, to have persistence and, everyday, make good choices!

What is luck?

Wanna be lucky? Be prepared! Luck is to be prepared when the opportunity comes to visit us! But maybe you are now asking yourself if it could really be like I said. So I will let you a simple example.

Imagine that you have eggs. And you have salt, a stove, a pan, a spatula, a plate and butter (could be oil too). For sure you have gas and light, so, you have all tools and ingredients to do a delicious egg. It is meal time, and you are hungry. But, what if, you are not prepared, and you do not know how to do the eggs, even thought you have all that is need to do? You really do not have everything, because of lack of knowledge. Luck is gone!

You could say that it is not absent of luck, because it is a common example, that maybe you do everyday without even thinking anymore, but it is. In this example, you could have the luck to get a good meal, but you would have missed the opportunity, for not being prepared.

And to exemplify with something different, related to business and work, this week I finished a Cybersecurity course, and received an opportunity to get another course, this time to became an instructor, and for free! Luck smiled to me. Guess what: when looking in the pre-requisites, I needed to have another training done! The opportunity was there: a free tech course, that would open ports in a near future! Was I prepared? No. So the luck is gone!

But let me share with you a change in mindset, that is mandatory if you want to be successful. Years ago, and this probably happened countless times, I lost opportunities like this one and just sat down and "cry". I froze and didn´t do anything and probably more countless lucky moments went away.

This time was different, because I finally understood that my luck is up to me. I shared with a friend and he said: "don't worry, because we always receive this opportunities". What am I doing so? I already started that missing training and will put my efforts on finishing it!

The next time this luck knocks my door I will be prepared! It will be the sum of the opportunity with me being prepared, and "let there be light"!

Yellow September - Pursue your balance

This text is my little contribution to help you find your balance in life, be it material, mental or whatever you may be needing right now. It will not be for sure something complete, or without flaws, but I share here some thoughts I took my whole life to learn, and in spite of being so simple, helped me, and are still helping, to keep up.

First, probably the hard part: the truth.

I do not know anyone, even myself, that have achieved something without hard times. Yesterday I was talking to my little son, and I wish to share with you some part of our talking.

As I said him, unfortunately, the reality is that things will not always be as a dream. Most of the time, people will come to us with the hope to get something, be it love, comprehension, knowledge, money, and so on.

Like some friend said to me years ago, when I was on a hard time, people will not go to you when you are down. And, understand this: it is not because you or them are not good enough. The human being is always in need for something, and it goes where he believe he will get it.

More than that, we know more how to ask for, than how to give from ourselves to the ones that really need it.

Now, the good part: also the truth.

You are not alone, be it on struggle, be it on happiness: permit yourself to share. It is normal do feel lost, to have pain, to feed sad sometimes, but also to be in the need for help. And what you should do, if you need help? Ask for it!

Just look around, and I am sure you will find someone to open with, even if it come to be a professional, because sometimes it will be necessary.

But what the pursue of balance has to do with all that? This is my everyday advice to my children. It took all my life to understand that I do not have to be perfect, and that not everyone will agree with me, or have the same wishes that I have. Take it easy and breath.

Sometimes we do not even need to know or do something, but we go beyond our limits to do some things that are not always really important for ourselves; we just need to show the world that we can.

For pursuing your balance, you have to respect your on limits. Even to push harder, you cannot give a step bigger than the one you are prepared to. The burnout we are seeing in so many people nowadays come from not respecting themselves.

So, you wanna feel better? My advice is to put yourself on first place. Doing so, you will find the path to take care of your body, your mental health, your soul. We are a whole universe made of so many things that must align together.

Will this work? Will the pain go away like magic? I can say, for sure, that things will be lighter. Get a personal project, start your day praying and exercising gratitude! Start your day with a good bath, a pleasant breakfast; show yourself that YOU matter.

The balance is not only on material things, although they are part of the packet. You have to feel that you are important, and enjoy the little things.

Like I said before, it will probably not be easy, but it is possible! Let us focus on our best friend, the most important person, that hottest one, that one, that only one, that can make us happy, and that one is just ourselves.

I hope you find your balance and your self love! I do not regret from getting this knowledge and from pursuing it day after day, because it is hard and it is a daily work, but it got me the peace I was looking for.

The best way to achieve success

I used to believe that everyone should do something for me. Sometimes in my life I really believed that the world was against me, and I could not understand why I did not had what I want. I cannot blame my parents, or even the world or other people, because I had so many opportunities.

But it is not about the opportunities that you get, but much more about how you get prepared for them and, so, how you benefit from it. It took me so many years to understand, and to accept, that nothing happens if we do not prepare for the success. But how to we do that?

We live in a time of fanciful appearance, where every other one, specially on social media, seems to be great, pretty and rich, without so much effort. If we to not take care of ourselves, it is even possible to get a depression, if we start to compare our normal life with all the succeed media actors.

But the reality is a little different from that. If, even for curiosity, you search on the Internet for some people who succeed, and we could mention, just to exemplify and for you to get something to start on your search, Arnold, Jordan and Senna,  you will see there the dream of being the best, without hard work, is just a dream.

And now we start to really get on the best way! Hard work is not just hard work. It is more related to doing what need to be done, at least, everyday. My motivation for writing this text is my son, where I am seeing the same struggle that I had to accept our responsibility in life. You do not need to became a superman to get things done in a awesome way. For sure, like Arnold said once, if you want to achieve things that others don´t, you will need to do things they don't.

After understanding how things work, I now have a certainty that, the sooner you start doing, day after day, the things you should do, the lesser will be the extra that you need to do, to get the same results. I am not saying that you do not need to do the extra, because it is really necessary, if you want more, but if you accept the reality, and start to work today, instead of tomorrow, tomorrow you will not need to do what you would have done today.

As I registered on latest writings, I came back on studying IT. This week I am really fascinated with all the things I learnt, and, just in one week of good work, how we can get apart of the herd. Imagine if I had done this, twenty years ago? Now, as I said about today and tomorrow, I have to compensate what was not done yesterday, with a important restriction, that my day will not be larger.

The best way to achieve success is to start, and do what you have to do. Start now, not in a feel days. Do it, and do the extra. And for the ones that maybe thought that it is impossible if you lost some years in your journey, I would say that it will be harder, but it is still possible. Work on it, and don't let anyone discourage you, even yourself.

How is it going?

Last week I got a question, about my studies: How is it going? It is interesting when you start to do something new or, in this case, when you return to do something that you used to do, and want to go back.

The first general reaction is that on not believing that you will succeed. Sometimes you hear some jokes, and that initial flame that got you in action must be traded smoothly by discipline, otherwise you will give up before even starting.

After a while, the jokes start to change for something like "I wish to do this too", or "how are you doing this?". In short speech, you start with a exterior feeling of doubt, and, if you insist on your goals, people gradually became your supporters, be that with or without telling you.

I had that once when I decided riding a bike to work. First the jokes, than questions about how I was doing, where I was taking a shower, questions if it was difficult, and than, even some friends that became also going to job riding their bikes.

I have said a lot here in this blog about the "must go on", "don´t give up", and other related sentences, and it is because I have given up so many times in my life. Still, it is never to late to go back, and starting again, and again, and again.

I sometime heard, or maybe read somewhere, that the pain is the weakness going out of us, when we start to do something that we are not fully ready to do. You have to get hurt, struggle, fall down sometimes, to get the skills needed to be succeed. If you stop, the only certainty is that of not getting to the top, not becoming strong enough to make it happen.

Sometimes you will have to slow down, stop and analyze you achievements, maybe chance this or that strategy, so you can take the right path. See, that the right path is not always the easiest or the shortest, but you can and must go on.

As I said before, you start like an underdog, that one that nobody believes in, and, with persistence and discipline, you can became that one that make people believe that it is possible.

The world needs us. They need to believe that is possible to dream, but also make thinks happen. Like that sentence (maybe from Mark Twain): "They did not know it was impossible, so they did it".

Do not regret your past

It is so common to hear people, even ourselves, saying that "I would do this or that in a different way, if I had the wisdom I have now, some years ago". Maybe all of us have something that would have been done differently, or even not done, at all. Inside this thought I hidden the regret for not being able to see some things how we now thing they should have been saw.

I like so much a story about a guy that entered in a bar, and started talking to other people, and realized that everyone in that bar was him, if he had took a different decision, a different path. If he had study more, if he had stayed with that girl, if he had gotten that job, and so on. In the end, he realizes that he is the best version between all decisions made.

We have to understand that we are better now, wiser now, because of the decisions we made, because of the errors we did. It is not fair with ourselves to hope that we could know before, what we now know, without walking into to the path, winning or losing the challenges, and coming where we are today.

We do not need to regret our past, but be proud to be alive and still up and running. You have to think about the things that you think you went wrong, and compare with you actual position. Are you still going wrong.

If the answer to the last question is yes, I invite you to put your wisdom in practice right now. Maybe you future you will think the same about his past, like we said in the first paragraph, if you do not.

If the answer is not, congratulations! But, whatever path you decide to go from now, get the certainty that is no only the right path and decisions that make you better, but the journey, and what you decide to do with your defeats: to learn and grow, or to be regret and stop to walk.

Start today, even with just one step

These days I have tried consistently to teach my kids to do things right now, no matter how young they think they are. I spent so many years to have the simple understanding about how a journey works. It seems a little silly, and it is, indeed, but you have to start somewhere, and no matter what you do, the finish will come, but it will demand time.

I was watching a documentary about Kobe Bryant this week, and they put a part of his speech, explaining his technique to be better than others. He just worked harder than others, and as the time was passing by, the distance between than would get higher, and at some point would be impossible for them to get him, assuming that he would continue to put the same effort.

Now think about yourself, how I have done in the past years. If you do something harder, with passion, your worst version will not get you easily. On the other hand, if you do nothing for some time, or just not get really committed how you should, your lazy version will, at some point, be so far from what you could have achieved, that you will probably think that it is impossible to get there.

The journey starts with the first step; that is a fact. At some point you gave that first one, and, for any reason, you just stopped. Maybe you never did the first one. And, maybe you could be now thinking, like I said, that it is impossible, that the path now is too long.

Let me share something with you. Some years ago I was in that place. I used to stop in the middle of the day and think: what will I do if I lose this job? I have family, children, bills, and this is all I have. There was no light in the end of the tunnel. And then, while participating in a trading course, I got the question: what is your why? (I am really not sure if the translation is correct). 

After an explanation about how hard the trading journey would be, and that I had to have a good reason not to give up, I did an exercise to right it down. What I wrote is in my Instagram account, as a record. "I want to unfreeze my brain and get realized doing something for myself. I want to work to make my dreams come true and not the others's."

From them until now, I studied trading (not yet succeeded), finance, psychology, the human mind, meditation, and so many other things to get a self knowledge, including, for sure as an significant part, religiosity (It is a relief to the heart to believe in something more than just ourselves). Recently I got back on studying business administration, programming language, networks, security and other tech related things.

This week I was browsing on some job postings of my interest, with the certainty that I am no ready, but I am really closer to what I want, and, among other things, getting the possibility to at least double my earnings. Am I afraid to lose my job today? Not really! I would have some difficulties? Probably, but I did my first step again years ago, and then the second, the third, and I continued moving forward.

If you, my dear reader, is thinking today that you are lost, my advice to you is, "Start today, even with just one step", and keep moving forward. Like myself, you will probably not get the success immediately, but I can guarantee you will get more confidence after each step, and you will begin to see alternatives that seemed to not be there in the beginning.

It is not easy, but it is for sure possible. Keep walking.