Before we talk about time, let's talk about everyone's favorite subject, money. Believe it or not there are a lot of close parallels between the two.

Wealth isn't just money, and power isn't just influence

We look at money as the ultimate wealth. Most of us spend our whole lives chasing it - but why? This may seem like a ridiculous question, but it's a question that I believe deserves some serious thought, considering how most people spend about 50% of their waking hours working for money.

Most of us believe that money will solve our problems. We've heard that more money brings more problems, and that old problems find a sneaky way of presenting themselves in new ways - but it's still hard to believe that more money isn't the answer. Let's take a closer look.

When you get more money, you suddenly have more options regarding how and where to spend it. These options become problems when we don't want to make the wrong choice. Though there's nothing inherently wrong with money, where we get all twisted up is when we don't see the responsibility that's paired with those riches. This is why I make it a point in my life to prove myself responsible with whatever I've been given. I'm training myself to be responsible with more. This concept is by no means exclusive to money.

We've all heard the saying from Spider-Man (which according to Wikipedia actually stemmed from the French Revolution), "with great power comes great responsibility." We've heard it, but usually the meaning doesn't sink in because we don't think of ourselves as in a 'position of power.' I learned in school to think of every dollar as a vote for which business should stay open. So, when you replace the words 'great power' with money, the saying takes on a whole different meaning. With money comes great responsibility. Money is power. Power is money.

As it is with money, so it is with time. Most people spend their lives working for time rather than having their time work for them. This usually leaves people broke - if not monetarily, it usually means that they don't have any time for themselves. Which leads us to the next section:

Broke is a mindset

Most people trade their time for money. Most people work at the office as a means to enjoy themselves on the weekends and their vacations. By contrast putting time to work for you looks like getting paid to do what you love and learn skills that you can use somewhere else. Though it may not have infinite returns like passive income, you're still putting your time to work for you because you're killing at least two birds with one stone - therefore making the most of you time. Put your time to work for you by doing something once that will pay off continually moving into the future.

To all the people who say that's impossible, they're trapped in the broke mindset.

A perfect example of the broke mindset are most winners of the lottery. Surprisingly, most of them go broke rather quickly. The same thing happens to professional sports players who retire with millions of dollars - somehow, they find a way to spend every penny and file for bankruptcy. These things happen because these people don't know the true value of that money. They take it for granted, thinking it will last forever, and don't spend it responsibly. That lack of responsibility is a broke mindset.

Our perspective on time and money

So, why all this talk about money if this article is about the value of time? Well, for starters both are resources; actually, they're our ultimate resources - everything that we have stems from them. How we handle money isn't exclusive to our finances, it's the lens in which we see all our resources through.

How we deal with finances directly influences how we spend our time. How we handle money isn't about the dollar amount, it's about what you do with what you have. That's how self-made millionaires did it - they turned what little they had into a slightly larger sum, and after a long enough time of repeating this process they had a fortune. They knew the value of their time, talent, and treasure.

If you're not responsible with the money that you have, whether that's a lot or a little, you will spend your entire life working for it. People who are financially responsible put their money to work for them. The same concept applies to your time. Just like money, time is a resource - it just happens to be much more valuable. We need to start treating it that way.

The ultimate investment isn't some startup that's going to blow up, and no it's not even cryptocurrency - the ultimate investment is your life, more specifically your time. Every moment you spend is a seed you sow - the question is are you planting the right crops, are you nurturing them well, are you harvesting at the right times?

We all have the same amount of time; it just comes down to how we think of and by extension how we value our time. How we value our time dictates what we will do with our lives.

Make the most out of every moment

What do you do with your time? What are you planning to do with your life? Do you truly understand the value of it? I doubt that many of us live day to day like this is the only chance we'll ever get.

Something that continually blows my mind is how many people seem to waste more time when they have more free time. Conversely when we don't have much free time, we tend to make the most of every moment. You don't need to be busy to value your time, just like you don't need to be wealthy to value your money. You just need the right perspective.

Clearly other people are willing to pay you for your time, why don't we think about paying ourselves? Too many of us conceptualize the worth of our time in terms of what other people are willing to pay us. Is it worth missing your kid's tee-ball game to put in a few extra hours of work at the office? Know what your time is worth. Constantly ask yourself 'what really matters?'

What are you doing with the life that you have? Though our time is scarce, we still have to choose to make our time valuable. The chances of you being born were about 1 in 400 trillion; you've already won the lottery, so act like it by dealing with the limited time you have responsibly. We can only shape our lives to be meaningful and valuable when we come to grips with the value of our own time. This is your one chance to live your best life. Make it count.

If doing or being something was as simple as believing, this world would be a much different place. True confidence is much more than a belief, it's a deep understanding of your abilities. It's a common misconception that people can do things because they're confident - but rather people are confident because they do things.

Confidence is more than a feeling

In popular self-help culture the phrase "fake it until you make it" has gone rampant. While in certain contexts the phrase certainly has its place, too often I see this concept being used as a consolation prize for a lack of skills. You can't fake being a neurosurgeon if you don't know anything about the brain. But what you do is try to fake your emotional responses to the world.

You can try to be confident if you're terrified - essentially, "fake it until you make it" just helps you push through feelings of inadequacy. But pushing through inadequacies is a vastly different thing from gaining competencies. Confidence overflows from competencies which is why it's so much more than a feeling. Pairing competency with your confidence is the only way to make real progress. Confidence is not a choice, it's a byproduct of your state of being. You can only choose to be confident for so long.

While you can choose your attitude, confidence is far more than an attitude shift. It's a perspective transformation. Confidence is the gatekeeper of taking impactful actions. If you wait for the day you feel confident to take action, that day may never come. Waiting for a feeling to act is like waiting for the weather to clear up before going outside; you're differing the power of your actions to a force beyond your control. If you wait until you feel confident to do anything, life will pass you by.

Furthermore, we don't deserve to feel confident for existing. Just like you don't deserve to be happy, you have to do certain things to get you to that emotional state. Feeling a certain way won't change your life. It's not your emotions that lead to a better life, it's facilitating a healthy relationship between your actions and those emotional responses that will form a better life. Until the life you're leading is aligned with the life you know you should be living, you won't feel confident despite how much you want to or how much you try. You can only live a lie for so long.

Courage is temporary confidence

It's easy get confidence and courage confused; think of courage as a choice and confidence as a lifestyle. Confidence is built upon a history of past successes, and a byproduct of a life well lived. Courage is a decision that you make in the spur of the moment.

True confidence will last as long as your supporting actions do. This is why you can't suddenly become confident overnight; you can't materialize those past successes out of thin air. At its core, confidence is a direct reflection of what you believe about yourself. Everyone wants a dose of confidence in their lives, but not everyone is willing to do what it takes to get there.

Courage on the other hand can be gone in an instant. Just because someone was courageous doesn't make them an eternally courageous person. Courage is not a reflection of your abilities, but what you are willing to face in that moment. Courage can be eroded by fear, while confidence can only be eroded by a lack of belief in yourself and/or the deterioration of your abilities.

Avoiding false confidence

Just like we can't understand what light is without darkness, in a similar way we can't begin to fully grasp what false confidence is without comparing it with true confidence. At its core false confidence is about the perception others have of you while true confidence is less about you and more about your abilities. In other words, false confidence is essentially cockiness.

Confidence that isn't grounded in a history of actions is cockiness. Cockiness is what you want other people to see. Confidence is what you see in yourself. There is no element of faith or chance when it comes to confidence. Confidence is purely a byproduct of actions that support your beliefs. As Drake would say, "My luck is a sure thing because I'm living right." On the other hand, cockiness is misplaced confidence; instead of being confident in your abilities, you're confident in your perceived image.

This is a subtle distinction that is paramount to creating your future. Confidence isn't about you. The more confident you are, the less your life revolves around you. When you're confident of something, it's no longer about the act of you achieving a goal, it's about seeing those goals come to fruition. Confidence means letting your ego fade away and making your goals the focal point.

When you can do something purely for the sake of accomplishing that task, you won't care about people's recognition or approval. Confidence means knowing what you can do and going after more; it means pursuing your goals without any regard to potential praise or recognition for your efforts. Confidence is finding freedom from the opinions of others - freedom that leads you to living your life to its fullest potential. You press into that freedom because you know it's your efforts, not how much others approve of you, which will determine your success.

When you're confident you have the ability to separate yourself from your accomplishments. You no longer measure yourself by how much you've done because you know that your past accomplishments are an outdated measure of your capabilities. When you're truly confident your mind doesn't assure you that "you've got this," your mind tells your body to do it and it does it - no prep talk needed.

This however doesn't mean that to be confident you have to be perfect. When it comes to your weaknesses, confidence means being aware of them while choosing to push into your strengths. False confidence deals with weakness by trying to cover them up, often by stealing respect that wasn't earned. By contrast, confidence is first earning the respect of yourself which will then garner the respect of others.

Confidence is a vessel for achievement

It's nearly impossible to accomplish anything if you don't have confidence in yourself. But you won't build confidence unless you're taking very specific actions in a certain area of your life. But, it should never be your end goal to build confidence - accomplishment through the accumulation of skills should be your goal. This is how you ensure continual growth.

The byproduct of achievement is confidence; but if you pursue it, just like with happiness, it will allude you and you'll end up chasing after the wind. Instead, seek to build competencies that will bring you confidence. For in the end it's not confidence that enables you to accomplish once seemingly impossible feats, it's your competencies.

When people are confident of and competent at their skills, the world begins to bend to their vision. At this point confidence no longer becomes about looking for a way, but it becomes about making a way. True confidence exudes from a person when their actions speak so loudly that they don't have to say a word.

We need to stop thinking about confidence as a binary trait. Instead we should seek to take specific actions that earn us the right to be confident. You must earn confidence because it's a byproduct of your beliefs aligning with your actions. Earning confidence mandates that your actions backup the idea of the person you want to become. Confidence paves the path to your success long before you step foot on that pavement. In the end, you can't cheat that process.

Without question, technology has fundamentally transformed the world we live in. What used to take decades to accomplish can now be done almost overnight. It's hard to believe for some, but there was actually a point where you had to wait weeks or maybe even months to receive a reply to your letter. Now we have instant access to anyone in the world with the click of a button. This is what we've come to expect, but as technology has evolved our minds haven't fully adapted.

Despite the progress in biohacking, most of us still have virtually the same body people had centuries ago. Until we've reached cyborg status with insane bandwidths of data transfer, we're stuck with our computer mice, keyboards, and touch screens. Presently technology merely augments our lives and isn't quite fully intertwined with our beings. Therefore, we must evaluate how technology has impacted our lives to better understand where we need to focus our efforts.

Despite all the good technology has done for us, we must be cognizant of how it can rob us of patience. Because we have everything at our fingertips, we're unlearning what it means to be patient. It takes time to develop skills. It takes time to build a company. It takes time to make a life for yourself. But because we want it now, we're not willing to wait. In my mind one of the largest consequences of this lack of delayed gratification is a distorted view of success.

Tony Robbins put it well when he said, "The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you." This is exactly what we're unlearning in our now centered culture.

When breaking down success into pleasure and pain, I think of it like investing. We can cash out on our pleasures today or invest them to yield even greater returns in the future. Often the process of such investments is associated with pain and difficulty. When we seek to shortcut this process, we're uprooting the seeds of patience in our life. We spend all our time looking for the immediate rewards - consequently there are none to reap in the future.

Because of technology, we've come to expect exponential gains for minimal investments. But that's not the way the natural world works. If you forged a diploma or certificate of achievement, it ultimately would render useless once you can't back up the claim with the skills. We might not realize it, but this is what we're doing when we try to bypass hard work. Only when you stop doing things for the reward and find a reward in the process do you understand the true value of growth.

Unlike a promising tech company, we can't grow exponentially overnight. Things like learning follow the natural course of life that takes time and patience to mature. Next time you're trying to find some life hack or way to shortcut the trials and tribulations of life, consider that if you skip the hardships you're avoiding the lessons that accompany those experiences. Until we can download these lessons into our brain, we're all better off embracing the process of learning and growth with patience.

We seem to be in love with the idea of dreaming of a better life. Most of us grow up being told that we can be anything we set our minds to. So that's what we did. We dreamed of being an astronaut or President of the United States. We've got the dreaming part down.

When dreams hit reality

I can't tell you how many people I run into that seemingly forgot all the dreams they had when they were younger and became realistic. Instead of making their dreams a reality, they stumbled into a profession that was suitable - suitable is a far cry from a dream brought to life.

So what happened? Why does "a dose of reality" uproot more than a decade of dreams for so many people? Something Harvey Reese mentioned on this topic is his book 'How to License Your Million Dollar Idea' really struck me; he said, "Never trying at all keeps the idea alive."

It suddenly made perfect sense to me why so many people don't live out their dreams. They want to keep them alive. We're often told not to let our dreams die, so we protect them. Then eventually after a long history of not taking action on those dreams, the mere allure of possibility becomes enough. We become content vicariously watching someone else live out our dream life behind the safety of our computer screens. For many this satisfies the itch of their dreams and quenches their curiosity. Many fall into the trap of believing it's better to dream than to live - their dreams become an escape from their real life.

Dreams demand action

When dreams hit real life, they take effort and will be accompanied with discomfort and resistance. But how many of us were told to work hard to become President or an Astronaut? It's as if society expected us to watch our dreams die as reality set in. This is no way to live. This is existing. You should only let your dreams die when you choose to, not because they seem impossible or out of reach.

The magnitude of your dreams will correlate with the effort required to attain them. Don't dream big if you aren't willing to work hard; like a toxic relationship, it will only hurt you. If you aren't willing to work for a dream, then you should save yourself the heartbreak and kill it off as soon as possible. It's better to live an average life devoid of dreams than to dream of all you could be and end up in the shadow of your potential.

There's a fine line between a dreamer and a visionary leader. That fine line is called hard work and action. Your dreams only become yours when you start to put the work in. But dreams that aren't acted upon will turn into weights that will hold you down. Dormant dreams suppress our ability to live out our lives; we get too caught up in what could have been that we end up not making it happen. Freedom can be found through killing dreams that don't align with the future you're creating, or by turning your dreams into a reality.

Addition through subtraction

Don't let the awestruck wonder you had as a kid dissolve; embrace that sense of infinite possibility because your belief in the impossible is what makes those outlandish ideas possible. Although it may be true that almost everything may be possible, we don't have time to bring those countless dreams to life. Accordingly, we must mercilessly cut through our options. Eliminate the dreams and ideas that will hinder your growth and press into the ones which lead to the future you want to see come to life. Life is too short not to act on your dreams.

In startups their philosophy is to fail as fast as possible so that resources won't needlessly be wasted. In life it should be no different. The energy we needlessly spend on dreams we never plan on living out is energy that we cannot get back. Ruthlessly cut through your options and determine the ones that will work. The sooner you do this, the sooner you'll be left with options worth pursuing. These are the things that will come to matter far more than any fantasy.

The most difficult part of deciding on which dreams you want to bring to life is that you're not choosing others. This is commitment. In life, commitment is nonnegotiable; if you don't work hard for yourself, then you'll end up working hard for someone else. Not making a choice means that your insecurities ended up giving you the leftovers.

The cost of your dreams

I meet people all over the world who say that one day they want to become someone extraordinary. I look at them and sincerely wish them the best, but many times I can tell that they're only trying to convince themselves when they talk about their future.

Dreams are like talk, they're cheap. But on the flip side, both words and dreams have also been the most powerful force in history, that is when they're backed with supporting actions. The price you are willing to pay for your dreams often determines their worth. If you don't do anything to make them a reality, they're virtually useless.

We try on dreams like outfits. We want to see what it would be like if we lived there or had those type of friends or had that kind of job. We live unsettled and unsatisfied lives because we can't commit to our dreams. Then we wonder why the life we're living isn't the life we dreamed of.

Avoiding regret

As it's crucial to learn from the mistakes of others, you might find yourself wondering how more "mature folks" lose their childlike sense of wonder. I don't believe there's one silver bullet, it just happens one compromise at a time. They slowly give up on their dreams and the life they have ends up being the life they were running from. In my mind, this is the definition of tragedy. Shattered dreams and broken lives are the byproduct of a lifetime of compromises.

Don't spend your life wondering how things could have been. Imagine that you're on your death bed reflection on all the things you thought of but never did. It doesn't matter that unfortunate things happened in your life. Make adjustments, not excuses. Your dreams need to be adaptive, fluid, and resilient in order to be useful.

While you should kill the dreams in your life which have no place there, you should nurture those that have potential. Nurturing in many cases looks like pruning; you have to cut the small branches off to produce focused growth.

I am not an any way discouraging dreaming. Indeed, the sky is the limit, but that sky will soon become a glass ceiling if you don't do something to support your dreams.

When I heard someone say that everyone should plant a tree and watch it grow, I didn't fully understand the profound implications of the statement. After some time of subconscious rumination, the underlying principles finally became clear to me.

In life every action we make every moment of every day can be thought of as us planting seeds. Whether we're intentional about it or not, we can't stop it from happening; it's inevitable. Like any seed, the seeds of our life take time to fully mature. Unlike the natural progression of a seed, we don't always know the season we'll reap the harvest we've sewn. Because of this uncertainty many lose sight of what their future holds. Consequently, they fail to invest in their time that has yet to pass.

Whether it's the consequences of your actions or the fruits of your labor, the life you live today is fully a result of the past investments you've made. Because we can't outrun your past, the only option we have is to shape our future. To do this we must not envision our future as a forgone conclusion, but rather as a malleable concept that we can shape today. As obvious as it sounds, we must constantly remind ourselves that the future is coming whether we're terrified, indifferent, or can't wait.

Watching trees grow over my lifetime helps remind me to live for the future in the present. When the seasons of harvest come in life, ensure that those days are full of rejoicing rather than despair by planting the right seeds in your life today. All time matters, but today is all any of us have for certain. Make the most of your life by making every moment count. Seek to live your life in such a way that you're not only planting your own seeds, but you're watering the seeds of those around you. This is what marks a life guided by honorable intentions.

Amid a culture that's constantly bombarding us with 'the next thing', most people scarcely know how to define a true need. We end up thinking we need things that we didn't know existed the day before. How often do these things satisfy us? The next day we want the next thing, we're monetarily poorer and still just as empty inside. What if our positions weren't the antidote to this endless cycle, but rather where we place our desires?

The disease of more

No matter how much we have we always want more. When asked "How much money is enough?" some attribute John D. Rockefeller, one of the richest people in modern history, as answering, "Just one more dollar." We just want more, often for no concrete reason. You know that feeling when you refresh your news feed? It's as if the desire to never be content is hardwired into our brains.

In today's world, we're too busy building bigger and better things the concept of enough is almost completely foreign. When a person's means expands, naturally their ends follow suite. Given this trajectory, the most that people can hope for is solace in the fact that they tried their best. Satisfaction can seem like an allusion at best, and yet some find contentment amidst the chaos of life - but how?

There are few definite answers to the plethora of life problems, but most issues can be worked out through a shift in perspective. What if we were to shift our perspective of enough and redefine it as a state of being rather than a state of having?

Yearning for being more, not having more

Though you may dream of the day you have everything you want, that day will likely never come. Even if that day did come to pass, we wouldn't know what to do because most people have spent their lives pursing bigger and better things. As a sort of counteractive measure, I've made a conscious effort to stop wanting physical things and instead find value in the experiences that shape who I become.

Most people think that the more money they have, the more cars they have, the more houses they have the better their life will be. People who chase these things rarely find fulfillment, and if they do it's not in those tangible things. Instead of thinking the more you have the better your life will be, try thinking that the less you want the more potential you have to find contentment - over time this in turn lead to fulfillment.

Though things are indeed alluring, they are all temporal. It's shocking how easily the most valuable of your positions can be misplaced, stolen, or destroyed. But it's the intangible things that cannot be appraised which have lasting value - your relationships, your experiences, your character, and your accomplishments. These are things that only death itself can rob us of.

Wanting less means that you'll have more

It's clear that if no one wanted anything more than what they already had the world economy would come to a grinding halt. If we can't completely rid ourselves of desire, how then can we discern what quests to pursue and which to abandon? That all depends on what you value most.

When we consciously seek what we value most, we can begin to find freedom from the meaningless pursuits that have no lasting consequence. I've come to realize that when I think I have enough this becomes my reality. Life is not a zero-sum game, enough is a mindset not a state of being.

The pursuit of more can leave us in an endless cycle of endless desire. Though more can lead to new heights or new lows, it will never lead to enough. Your desire isn't something that can or should be tamed - it's something that should be redirected. Yearn to accomplish more, to be more, to experience more not to have more. It's this minimalism of desire that will pave the way towards enough and the freedom found therein.

Choosing certain things by definition means not choosing others. We live in a world where we can't possibly have everything and yet that doesn't stop us from wanting it all. It's easy to get lost in the infinite sources of knowledge and wisdom on the internet. By the time the real world comes back into focus, you realize that what you were doing didn't support our long-term vision for life. Even though you were learning, that was technically wasted time. A lack of prioritization leads to procrastination that feels productive.

The trap of infinite knowledge

Unless what you're doing directly support your immediate goals and your long-term vision, it probably is distracting you from what you need to accomplish. This is the trap of having infinite information at your disposal. Because of the sheer volume of information that we have access to, on average humanity is having a crisis of meaning because everything they see tells them that the next piece of entertainment will bring fulfillment. This never-ending cycle of buying and selling peoples' attention is a black hole that seeks to rob us of our time. If we don't take measures to guard ourselves against this trap, our time will slip through our hands and life will approaching its end in the blink of an eye.

Too much information is like too much food

An over consumption of knowledge without doing something with it is like eating too much food without exercising. Without exercise, when you overeat you become lethargic and eventually unhealthy. Likewise, when your life is devoid of taking action on the information that you consume, your mind becomes lethargic.

When people try to lose weight, generally people try to remove all the unhealthy food from their surroundings so that they're not tempted. With all your favorite junk food around you, even if you could hold out, you would be using your will power which is a finite resource. In the same way you need to take measures to stop your time from slipping through your hands. Block social media if you have to, hide suggested videos - do whatever it takes to own every moment of your life. Once you gain control of your time you won't understand how you lived before.

Acting on knowledge

It's imperative to balance what you learn with supporting actions. Lessons that aren't implemented are soon forgotten. This is where the age-old wisdom of learning first by watching, then by helping, and finally through doing it yourself comes into play. There is a world of difference between consuming and applying what you've learned. It will be challenging. But through those times remember that just like when you exercise, hurt is an indication of future growth.

It doesn't matter how many things you learn or do over the course of a day or over the course of your life, if those things didn't support your vision for your life then it was all for not. It all comes down to prioritization. If something you're doing doesn't directly support your goals, then it's just a well disguised form of procrastination that's hindering you from doing what's important. You must choose wisely where to focus your efforts; what you focus on will eventually turn into your life.

Could you put a dollar amount on your life for an insurance policy? What do you think you're worth? Obviously every human life is priceless, but when we partake in the exchange of time for money we're forced to put a dollar value on it. But even though our lives are priceless, how often do we throw our time away? Why do we treat our time as more valuable when we're working for money than when we're off the clock? Show me where you spend your time, and I'll show you how much you value it.

Even with your money working for you, you can never buy your time back. Therefore, it's crucial to make every moment and even every second count for something. When you live life vigilantly protecting every second, you begin to approach things with a spirit of gratitude that overwhelms an entitlement mindset. You need to treat every second like it's the only second that you'll ever have. That's the level of urgency it takes to make lead an exceptional life. To live an extraordinary life, you must take extraordinary actions.

Shattering the victim mentality

You certainly won't have control of every moment of our time; so, what should you do then? To start with, if you make it your goal to ensure every moment counts for something, you'll take actions that align with that intention. But even in circumstances that you can't fully control, it's imperative to take control of the things you'll always govern - most notably your attitude towards the given situation and your outlook towards the future.

Not only will living life in this manor lead to ultra-productivity, but it will also shape your experiences to become fulfilling in profound ways. Everything in life changes when you're giving your all to what you believe in - this makes the thought of wasting a moment look like insanity. This is why I feel guilty when I try to sit down and relax by watching a movie. Even at twice the normal speed, I simply can't stand to watch my life melt away before my eyes when I know I could use that time for things that will have a lasting impact. For me this reaction isn't just head knowledge, but it's a gut reaction.

Guard your time because it's your life

It makes no sense that people take measures to protect their money and yet let other people waste their time. We must ultimately take responsibility for everything in our lives if not for the simple reason that no one else will do it for you. Always be vigilant about finding the best ways to use your time, because once you spend it you can't get it back. This is how you lead a life that people will remember: you strive to make every second worth living.

Ideas seem to come from nowhere. Yet when we look around it's ideas that brought almost everything in our society to life. Ideas have continually guided humanity from the beginning of our time. Ideas are ultimately what make the world go around, and it's the idea that there could be something more that drove people to dream of what could be and explore into the unknown. Being creative is a fundamental cornerstone of what makes us human - without the ability to envision what can't be seen (i.e. an imagination) we would probably still be living as primitive creatures not far from the cradle of civilization.

Ideas will come with openminded perseverance

It's easy to see the value in ideas because they lead to creative thinking which then leads to innovations that can transform the world. Yet, it's easier said than done. Henry Ford put it well when he said, "Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it." Though it may be the hardest work, it certainly isn't the end of labors - quite the contrary, thinking is only the beginning. Entrepreneurs know this firsthand; they often say that ideas are cheap, and execution is everything.

Though ideas are certainly not everything, you don't have much without one. Try as we might, the closest we can get to a formula for an epiphany is cultivating habits that get us into a state of flow. Where ideas come from is one of the many great mysteries in life. One thing is for sure, persistence and consistency are key to finding inspiration. The ideas that transformed the world came from people who stopped at nothing to see them through. They continually dedicated themselves to bring those ideas to life and eventually to fruition.

But what about those ideas which fail? Certainly, not all ideas are created equally. It doesn't matter how much you believe in an idea, if it's a bad idea it will die out. In that way ideas naturally select themselves because the inferior ones can't survive. No matter how much money or talent you put behind a poor idea it's almost always destined to fail.

Generating ideas is a skill

Why do some people have a plethora of ideas and others can't seem to come up with one to save their life? Personally, I don't think there's that big of a difference between not being creative not really trying. Everyone has ideas float through their head, it's human nature - we simply can't help it. When people don't think they're that's a choice they made not to pursue ideas. That choice turned into something they identified with and grafted into their life.

We as humans are capable of so much more than we could ever imagine. When you press into these limits, you'll find that after persevering long enough some ideas will stick and the rest fade away. After making this a habit, you'll come to learn that good ideas are a result of sifting through all the ideas you can generate. After continual refinement, the ideas that have weight will stand out and will withstand the test of reality.

Some people believe that good ideas come from thin air. They believe that some people were just born with supernatural insights and are blessed with nuggets of wisdom that the rest of humanity just don't have access to. Though this might seem like a special gifting on the surface, upon closer examination it becomes clear that creativity is synonymous with intentional tenacity. Creativity is always built on self-confidence and the willingness to be wrong and learn from your mistakes. In the words of Johann Sebastian Bach, "I worked hard. Anyone who works as hard as I did can achieve the same results."

Don't wait for an idea to take action

People think that they need ideas before they should act. I have personally spent countless hours and days basking in indecision over whether I should pursue various ideas. At my core I was never confident enough in the merit of those ideas to do something with them. While stuck inside my head I couldn't fully figure out if those ideas would work. I needed to bring them into the playground of the real world to determine their merit. If you wait for the world, it will pass you by.

If you don't have an idea, take action and trust that inspiration will follow. If you have an idea and you're formulating the perfect plan, just start executing - there is no such thing as a perfect plan. These words are an example of this. I started this article without much clarity as to what I was going to write, but I did it anyway. You should never wait until you have a fully formed idea to do something with it. Just like motivation, if you wait around for a sudden gust of inspiration, it may never come.

It doesn't matter if you believe that original thoughts exist or not. None of that matters when ideas come face to face with reality. It doesn't matter how many amazing ideas you have floating around in your head, if you never do anything with them they'll go with you to your grave. For this reason, I've committed to bring as many of my ideas to life as is humanly possible. Who knows, maybe one of those ideas will transform someone's life.

I'm sure you've heard the saying that life isn't a race against anyone other than yourself. While this may sound good and even true, what exactly does a life that's only measured against one's self look like?

It's not hard to imagine living life in a constant state of comparison. If you're measuring your life by any standard other than your own, you're spending far too much time focusing on others. Letting go of the opinions of others is the first step towards reaching your goals - this enables you to take ownership of the trail ahead of you. If you try to be like someone else but better, you'll always fail because you aren't playing to your strengths.

Running a race against yourself means that you have a clear picture of the finish line in your mind. What's the point of running a race that doesn't have a finish line? When you have a vision, you'll have something to measure your actions against. Without beginning with the end in mind you'll be forced to settle for something because you couldn't envision anything better.

What's the point of running a race that we don't enjoy? This should be your greatest fear: that you'll spend your life doing something you don't enjoy. How many people work jobs they can't stand? How many of people's closest relationships are constantly overrun by conflict? This doesn't happen because they were unlucky, but because they gave up on clearly defining and working towards their ideal life. It's like running on a treadmill where there's no end in sight. You can't ever win a race if you don't know where the finish line is.

It's all too easy to think that someone winning in the race of life means that someone else had to lose, this however is not by any means the case. Life isn't a zero-sum game. When you're running against yourself, the only thing that matters is that you learn and become better. But ultimately life is a race that isn't measured in time but rather in meaning. So, if you can maximize the number of meaningful things you spend your time on, when you cross the finish line you'll know that your life counted for something. That's what it looks like to run the race of life against yourself; when you're so focused on what means the most to you that everything else fades away.

In every one of our lives there's a gap between what we do and what we believe. I call that gap integrity. A while back I had a revelation that this gap is fundamentally where our problems stem from. In a world where we're now more prosperous than ever, we have a moral epidemic. People have become indifferent to cultivating integrity.

Our default state, no matter who we are, is to minimize this gap to increase our integrity. What's wrong with most people is that they change what they believe to fit their actions. Instead, to cultivate true integrity we should change our actions to fit our beliefs.

Self-sabotage through self-deception

Take for instance the addict who can't seem to drop a habit. Eventually they won't believe that they have a problem because they've grown to believe that what they're doing isn't wrong. The scary thing is this usually happens very subtly. This epidemic is the silent killer of our morality.

In a sense it's a survival instinct. At the crux of who we are we desperately yearn for consistency. We don't want to feel fake. That's why when we lie, we justify it. We morph our morality to conform with what was convenient to believe at the time. In a very real way, we bargain with our personal definition of morality so that we can live with our poor decisions.

When we're confronted with the fact that we've done something wrong, we're faced with the reality that we did something against our moral conscience. A choice is presented to either right our wrongs or to accept wrong as our new right. Frequently we take the easy way out. We've become soft as a society; this all too often means the only way we can look ourselves in the mirror is by looking into a different mirror.

Seeing good with a clear perspective

For as much debate as we have over what is right, there are at least two certainties we can hold on to. For one, doing the right thing is rarely easy. And second, easy things shouldn't be twisted into the right thing just because they're easy.

Using those principles as guidelines we must actively develop what it is that we believe. This should not be done in the face of a moral dilemma. To an extent we need to decide what we view as right and wrong before we are faced with such a decision. Otherwise it's likely that we'll take the easy way out and convince ourselves that the easy way was also the right way.

Changing your actions to fit your beliefs is much harder said than done, and reorienting your beliefs is even harder. Despite the difficulties, it's necessary that we do so in order to live a respectable life. Not taking these steps denigrates our integrity which will ultimately destroy what good we have within us. Consequently, we will no longer be able to see good for what it truly is.

Make your future self proud

I can't say whether most people are good or bad, but I can say that most of us think we're alright and most bad people certainly don't think that they're bad people (this is very different from denial).

In some way or another we will come to terms with the person that we are. Life will inevitably become onerous if you can't accept yourself. Every day on the path towards self-acceptance we're faced with a choice, we can either evolve, devolve, or stagnate. Daily we must actively choose nothing less than growth. For stagnation is a one-way path towards devolution.

We should make it our ultimate goal to be proud of the person we've become. We should seek to be a living example that inspires others with our actions. With the passing of time it's unlikely that you'll recognize your former self; as such it's imperative that you take the appropriate (though sometimes difficult) steps so that your future self will be proud of the decisions you made.

We are often told that the best way to live your life is to be yourself, to be genuine to who you are. What this translates to is living in accordance with your values, which will facilitate a clear conscience. Living with a clear conscience is living in freedom, and that freedom is often what people are really referring to when they talk about being yourself. This means who you are fundamentally hinges upon your values - which is simply what you value most in life. Life can't be meaningless if you choose to find value in something; but regardless of how meaningful it is, does being yourself really lead to the best way of living your life?

Being yourself means being confident and comfortable with who you are

Deep satisfaction with who you are is rooted in an assurance that you are living the life you know you were meant to live. Confidence about your life can only come from putting in the effort to figure out where you want to be, then charting and following that course to get you there. Lives are forged, not discovered. So many people think that being yourself comes down to flaunting and taking pride in the personality you have. But your personality is something that you didn't even choose. You should never take pride in the things you can't control, and this includes your personality. At best such things are a blessing, but you should never take them for granted because you could lose those blessings at any given moment. But what you can take pride in is the work you accomplish and what you strive to create. Even though your personality is something that you have little control over, it isn't something that fully defines you - the more important part of what defines you are your actions, something you do indeed have complete control over. So, the confidence and comfort of who you are shouldn't come from things that were bestowed upon you for your sheer existence on planet earth. That confidence and comfort should come from taking steps every day towards a position that you’ll be proud to be in.

What does it mean to be genuine?

You can't help but be yourself, but by no means should the person you are today be the pinnacle of your existence just because it's genuine. We lose the meaning of being genuine because we think that if we live out our daily lives as normal that that's somehow being genuine. But that isn't being genuine, it's just being and there's a huge gap between the two. Being is just an excuse not to create lasting change in your life. Being genuine means knowing yourself and letting your values guide your life. It's not living in accordance of the whims and desires of your heart but doing what you know is right regardless of whether or not you feel like it. Being genuine isn't as much a matter of what you do, it's more a matter of what you do as a means of becoming who you believe you were meant to be. You shouldn't need to ask yourself whether every action you take is genuine; there should come a point where the right things to do are no longer principles, but rather they're instincts. You shouldn't do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, but you should do it because you wouldn't feel as if you were being genuine to who you are if you didn't do that right thing. Your values need to be this automatic for you to come off as genuine. If you're not doing something with genuine intent, is it worth doing? If your intent isn’t genuine, you'd just be putting on a show behind some masquerade - this is something that the people you interact with can see through and will feel as if they can't relate to your or trust you. The crazy thing about being genuine is that when you show your genuine self, it brings out the genuineness in those people you interact with. Being genuine, like almost any emotion we exhibit, is contagious. Therefore, honesty is always the best approach. You feel as if you have nothing to hide, because you don't; you have a completely clear conscience which is a prerequisite for being genuine. Honesty and living with a clear conscience are why people will reciprocate genuine behavior. So being genuine can be distilled down to having a clear conscience, which is often confused with doing the right thing. They may sound synonymous, but having a clear conscience is doing what you think is right, not what others think or say is right. At its core being genuine means walking the line between casual and genuine vulnerability - not being too open and not being too guarded; but above all it means doing this while caring about people - we don't care how genuine a person is if they don't care about us.

What if someone is just genuinely a bad person?

We've all come across them at some point in our lives; some people genuinely don't care about the well-being of anyone other than maybe themselves. Their values are so skewed that they lose touch with reality because they have created a world in their head that doesn't exist. While it's okay to disagree with what it means to be a "good person", it's not alright to lead a life that makes other peoples' lives worse off because of your existence. But whether we like to admit it or not, we each have a dark side that we need to fight so it doesn't gain a footing in our life. Though this sounds easy in principle, delineating between whether you're pressing into the good or bad part of yourself is much harder in practice. The world has debated over "right thing to do" since the beginning of time. Because there was (and still is) no easy answer, society agreed to disagree which lead us to the "consensus" that what each individual thinks is right is fine for society so long as everyone operates within some general guidelines - i.e. laws. This also means what you do shouldn't infringe or impose on someone else's freedom to live their life. So, if someone not only doesn't have someone else's best interest at heart, but also actively seeks to make life worse for others, it wouldn't make sense to justify their actions in the name of "doing something that's genuine". You can never set aside your personal values for the sake of being genuine because living out those values is what makes one genuine in the first place. So, what should you do if you come across someone whose values are malicious? Actions always have and always will speak louder than words - what this practically means is that we need to show them what we think a good life should look like. Whether or not they agree, they'll likely respect you on some level for doing what you think is right, especially when it's no easy to do what you’re doing. Judging them may make you feel better about yourself for a brief instant, but this will create no positive lasting change and is more likely to make things for all parties involved worse. All this is to overcome the obstacle that we can't change anyone, the best we can do is convince them to change themselves. The reality of most peoples' value systems is that they opt for whatever is convenient, not what they think is right. And after living like this for some time they'll start to confuse what is right with what is convenient, which means they don't really stand for anything, and can't be genuine. Given enough time and space we can all convince ourselves through justification that anything we do is morally right, but unless you have a consistent set of values, we could all too easily become a "genuinely bad" person in the blink of an eye. If someone is indeed a genuinely bad person, you need to realize that you are no better or worse than them, and treat them genuinely, just like you would anyone else. We should do this because it's not right to selectively exemplify our values - this is when it's hardest but counts the most.

Which part of yourself should you embrace?

It would be an over simplification to say that you should only embrace the admirable parts of yourself. It's all too easy to be idealistic about who you are and blind yourself to faults that you inevitably have - no one is perfect. Because of this the best place to start is with your insecurities. What don't you feel like doing? Out of those things, what would help you? For example, instead of thinking that you're just genuinely bad at public speaking and that you weren't meant to talk in front of people, think that it's a genuine fear that everyone has and that you should face. If you don't face these fears, you're hiding from yourself and therefore limiting who you can become. But you may think that I'll never have to give a speech in my life, and to that I could argue, but it's not about whether or not you would ever give a speech - it's really about the principles of breaking your fears so that you can internalize the concept that you're capable of almost anything that you set your mind to. There is great power in this revelation; but don't just be and do whatever you feel like doing because you suddenly realize that you can. Our feelings rarely guide us to where we should be; instead of following your feelings, do whatever is necessary to actualize your aspirations. Have a vision for your life and let everything you do in the present feed into becoming that person. This process should never stop. We all have some idea of what we should do, what's right or wrong in the moment; and yet so few of us act on those beliefs. You need to embrace, develop and cultivate your beliefs because ultimately that's what defines who you are. And if who you are is just some ideas haphazardly thrown together, many people will have trouble respecting you. In short, embrace your fears then destroy them for they are the only things that are holding you back. When you're facing your fears at times you'll feel like a fraud, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're not being genuine. Being genuine has everything to do with your beliefs and aspirations and has almost nothing to do with your feelings. You will constantly be changing, so when you're trying to figure out which part of yourself to be genuine to focus on who you want to become instead. If you don't have a clue who you want to become, drop everything and figure it out. Who you want to become should be a clear vision of where your values will take you, not necessarily a career. Use that vision to guide your life. But if you hold on to your fears, you're preventing yourself from growing because you're too attached to who you were in the past. The past was a set of lessons that you can live out in the present, so the future doesn't mirror your history.

Being yourself doesn't mean being unique

So many people get caught up in trying to be original; they think that they must spend their time thinking of something that no one else has ever thought of before. It's as if this result will somehow provide them with the validation for making use of their existence on planet earth. But after spending all this time trying to find the one thing that they think will make and define them, they'll likely come to realize that with all the people in the world they're hard pressed to do something or think of an idea that is completely and entirely new. Having said that, it can and has been done - but if you look at the people doing those amazing new things, they aren't looking to be unique, they're looking to do something better than anyone has done it before. They look at things they're familiar with in ways no one else has before. They aren't so pretentious to think that they can see something everyone else is missing, but rather they press into their world of expertise and try to expand it. Often being creative means dealing with constraints; it's all too easy to be completely overwhelmed by the myriad of possibilities out in a boundless universe - such thoughts will likely cripple creativity. This means that there is some truth to the adage that good artists create and great artists copy. Remember there is no shame of standing on the shoulders of the giants that came before you. Besides that, you shouldn't strive to be unique as this desire is purely self-serving and will therefore rarely stand on its own. Instead, seek to be exceptional and steer away from the trap of being original. We end up changing who we are when we try to preserve it anyway, so there's really no point in trying to be original when what's original today will be pedestrian tomorrow. We as humans are fluid beings and we weren't meant to be hold on to one point in history as if it meant everything. The only thing that means everything is the moment that you're living right now, and that's what part of yourself you should embrace, the part that's here and now.

You're the only one who truly knows what it means to be yourself

The world can tell you how to behave, what you should look like, and who you should spend your time with - but you can choose whether to listen. Even though some people may tell you what they think is best, just know that all they're giving you is an opinion and you should never let other people's opinions shape your life without thoroughly evaluating them. Because after doing this enough the life you're living will no longer your vision but theirs, which won't have your best interests at heart because you're the only one who truly knows what they are. And if you don't have a clue what your best interests look like, it's your duty to find out if you want a life any better than the one you have now. But what this doesn't mean is that you must find "find yourself" before you can do anything worthwhile. Firstly, finding yourself implies that there is a moment or life event that can reveal something deeply insightful that will completely transform your life. While I'm not denying the possibility of the existence of such an event, it's the disproportional weight that we place on the probability of such an event occurring that's the problem. In other words, you shouldn't believe with such certainty that moment will happen to you and put your entire life hold while waiting for that time to come. Putting all your eggs in one basket is a poor strategy in life. Be open to such a revelation, but don't count on it. You can't afford to wait for someone or something to give you permission or assurance. When it comes to "finding yourself", there will be no singularity in which everything will make sense because we are always changing and therefore the lens in which we look at the world must also always be changing so we can try to make sense of it all. It takes time and space to answer intentional questions, but time and space alone won't get you anywhere - you must make use of that time and space. Don't fall into the trap of putting in virtually no effort and expecting something to come out of it. But during this quest to "find one's self" we often put the cart before the horse. You can't find yourself before you determine your values. Without values how can you know who you are? So, getting to know yourself means defining your values for yourself - not letting anyone else do it for you.

What's the trap?

Being yourself is often synonymous for telling people that they're fine the way they are, and they don't need to work on improving themselves. The trap here is that these same people tell you to celebrate who you are. But you can't take pride in being yourself if you don't do anything to develop the person that you are. To find a legitimate source of satisfaction in who you are, question what you stand for. Have a vision for your life and who you want to become. Then every day live in accordance with that vision and make it a reality. But in conjunction with this know that things can and undoubtedly will change, and you just need to learn how to adapt while maintaining a positive trajectory. The idea of who you are is fluid and will change as life changes around you. This isn't bad, everything will evolve with time, but in addition to being intentional about how you mold yourself, protect who you are from inadvertently changing to conform with the subtle nudges or sharp jabs of society. The idea of who you are is something that you need to protect, it will change - it's just a matter of how. Before you get too protective of who you are, think about who you are right now. How did you even become who you are today? If you didn't intentionally chart your course to where you are now, life just tossed you around and who you are is a result of those chance events and circumstances. The random factor won't suddenly disappear just because you have a plan, but a plan will give you the vision to see how those circumstances and random life events can fit into your life so that you'll use them to your advantage. You'll only make happen what we believe is possible, so do everything you can to expand your beliefs of what you're capable of because we all are capable of much more than we can imagine. But focusing too much on being yourself can curtail your capabilities and hinder you from becoming who you were meant to be. You show your true self when you aren't trying to prove something, aren’t attempting to be someone you're not, or aren’t putting on a show; you're just authentically you in those moments because there is nothing but who you are to hide behind. Another trap of being yourself is holding on to who you were to portray who you are. Holding on to the past stops the future form becoming any better. Your default path needs to be growth, and growth comes from a deep desire to be a better person today than you were yesterday. Growth means always learning what better means in the context of your life, and what that idea looks like actualized. There is more freedom than you can imagine found through being genuine. You don't need to "figure out who you are" before you can be both authentic and genuine - all you need to do is clarify your values and press into the positive aspects of yourself while purging the negative. Living this out day after day, no matter what, is what it takes to be genuine. Being genuine isn't something that you can fake, being genuine is determining a consistent standard to measure yourself against and striving towards that measurement because you're in love with progress.

Motives determine everything, but only you know what they truly are. Because we can convince ourselves at some point in time that any actions we take are justified, it can be hard to display your true intentions. It's important to denote the difference between motives and intention. While they may be used interchangeably, motives could be either external or internal forces, while intentions are internal desires. Whether you mean to or not, there is a hint of both your motivations and intentions portrayed in every action that you take. The world looks at the actions we perform; reading between the lines they try to discern why you do what you do. Even though they may think that they know for certain what is motivating you, anything that they come up is only a guess or a gut feeling at best. For this reason, you need to make your intentions abundantly clear, because when they're not people generally assume that they're self-serving. People make split second assessments about you because we all have a deep need to gauge whether we can trust someone. Everything you say and do is either consciously or subconsciously evaluated. This process is something that comes completely natural to us - we automatically "judge" people because our mind tells us we need to have some idea of their intentions before we can proceed. Why do we feel such a strong need to know other people's intentions and yet gloss over our own as if they were less important? All too often people will find themselves fairly far along in life without having a clue how they got there. The hard truth is that there was no intentionality behind the actions they took, they lived a reactive life. For better or for worse motives undeniably shape your life, and yet so many people give such little thought to them. They make such a difference that you can have drastically different outcomes for nearly identical actions with contrasting motives.

Similar actions with divergent motives

Think of two people that volunteer at a homeless shelter. One does it just so they can post about it on social media and the other volunteers because they genuinely care about improving their community. Both of them are performing the same actions as they're serving - maybe even saying the exact same things, but their intentions are completely different. The homeless they're serving will see through this and have a natural affinity for the one serving who earnestly wants to be there. The reason for this is simply because they willingly chose to be there and choose to enjoy that decision. Therefore the two people serving will get completely different results and reactions. Service isn't something we should want to get through, it's an opportunity and a privilege to participate in. Who do you think will have the greater impact? It's not what they did in the end that mattered, but the intentions behind what they did.

Why are our intentions often so murky?

Remember the last time you went to the fridge looking for something even though you'd already been there several times before and found nothing? We do things for no particular reason more often than we'd like to admit. Outsiders may be able to put a finger on it, but when we're trapped in our own perspective sometimes we're blinded to reality. Everyone around you knows it about everyone but themselves, but your actions are a direct reflection of your desires. Typically we don't know what we want, and we don't know why we want what we want. We tend to buy into what the masses think is desirable and use their sheer numbers as a source of affirmation. Think about the person aimlessly shopping who comes home with that amazing thing they can't live without. But what's crazy is they didn't even know it existed the day before. This isn't only how people shop, but it's how much of society spends their lives. We end up living our lives by this "go with the flow" status quo. And by the time we realize what's happened we've lost extensive measures of our valuable time. This lack of clarity in thought leads to a lack of decisiveness in action. It seems circular, but the reason why so many people can't take action is because they don't have a reason to act. After living life aimlessly, they eventually come to adopt someone else's reasons. They may have never given any thought to defining their own reasons, but that's because they never intended to discover and know themselves. The key to not living a life with murky intentions is to take responsibility for your actions. This means never playing the victim card and either finding a way or making one. This is easier said than done, but it starts with introspection and evaluating why you want what you want (something only you can know). This will form and strengthen the most important relationship you can ever have; that is your relationship with yourself.

Do pure motives even exist?

Along your journey of introspection you will undoubtedly question virtually everything, but among everything you will question whether or not your existence should be self-serving. We're always doing something for a reason, and more often than not that reason is likely yourself. It's not wrong to look after and take care of yourself, in fact it'd be wrong not to do this. But even though those intentions serve yourself, they enable you to serve others. You have to be selfish before you can be selfless. But on this journey you must ask yourself if you intend to be selfless after you're selfish or will you continually bask in your egocentric little world. Many will choose the latter because they don't think they'll find fulfillment in the former. This couldn't be further from the truth. I've come to learn that the more you give the more you get if you don't give as a means to receive. This might sound like the reason behind why much of the world thinks they should do the right thing - you guessed it, karma.

The intentions of karma

We all know the saying that good things happen to good people. But think of it another way, those who intend to be good find themselves in good situations. Now we know that this isn't always the case, but oftentimes I and many others have found it to be true. There's no hard science to back karma, and that's alright because hard science doesn't dictate how we live our life, it only dictates life itself. Karma is often viewed as some temperamental and unpredictable mystical force. Though there may be some truth to that, attributing anything to magic and pixie dust never allows you to harness it's potential. So instead of thinking about karma in this way, which serves no one, I tend to look at karma as a muscle. The more good things you do (reps in the gym) the more good will result from it. You may not see the results immediately, but eventually if you consistently do good the results will come. One principle that I've lived my life by and continually found to be true is that if you look for the good in life (specifically other people) you'll find it. Think about that one person in your life who always seems to put the people around them in a bad mood. It's as if they're infecting everyone that crosses their path with a similar temperament. I simply see that the opposite of this can be true and flip that principle on its head by trying to infect the people around me with kindness and friendliness. We all are multifaceted people who have both good and bad sides to us, but it's when we are intentional about bringing the good side of ourselves out that we become a magnet and beacon of good. Don't fall victim to karma, wield it as a tool.

You can't stumble upon good intentions

The greats of history didn't just stumble upon their greatness, but rather they crafted who they were and shaped themselves because they intended to; no force of nature would stop them. That's what it means to live an intentional life. Intentionality means having a vision and making it happen because you believe in it. As a result of this pursuit, meaning, discipline, fortitude, and other such virtues arise and will overflow from your life. At times it might look as if your intentions are something you can't control, but in those moments your inner most desires are revealed. So where do our desires and therefore intentions come from? They emanate from the core of who you are and aren't something that you can fake until you make. There is no quick fix to realign your intentions, you'll spend a lifetime developing them. In many ways your intentions reflect your character and your character is direct reflection of your relationship with yourself. This relationship must be approached with the utmost brutal honesty. You know in your heart whether or not you intend to do something, lying to yourself will only denigrate your relationship with yourself, eventually destroying your faith in your capabilities. We all know someone who is all talk and no action (and I'm not talking about politicians). They become this way because they became comfortable lying to themselves. But the only person they're fooling is themselves, people can see their (and your) motives plain as day from miles away. Ultimately, the way you act is determined by where you place your values - which means that when anyone sees your actions, they are seeing your values and by extension your intentions. Your intentions shape your life and who you are - without them your life has no shape, other than that which is thrust upon you by the world. Don't let your life be a circumstantial fluke. Who do you intend to be?