I heard a loud clattering, I looked down and found out my phone had fallen to the floor from my bed yet again. Careless me, I thought, as I took it from where it had fallen and switched it on. The phone, a very old-model Lenovo, had been with me for some time.
That night as I switched it on, the opening sequence caught my attention. Every time it went on or off, it always read: Lenovo―For Those Who Do. It made me ask myself, what is for those who do? What do we have to do?
When I thought more about it, I came to the understanding that one cannot get the most out of life by being passive. Hold on to my phone story, I will come back to it shortly.
Now, let’s imagine a person that excels effortlessly where others strive; gets good grades easily or masters a technique without much effort, there’s a likelihood that such a person may fall into the habit of coasting along.
Generally, such a person may end up being lackadaisical and passive with life. But this is not only true for this individual, it is also true for some of us one time or the other; we become passive to life. There is only so much that passivity will get you or me or anyone.
Not just that, sooner than later, it gets to a point where we find ourselves very unsatisfied with the results we are getting but do not know what else to do. Why? We have become familiar with being passive. In there lies the danger to our growth and progress.
Passivity essentially keeps one in a state of slumber, inaction and makes one unaware or unconcerned to life’s purpose. Back to the opening sequence of my phone, those four words stunned me into reality.
I realise that the successful people we know today were people who did not leave their fate to chance. That is because they knew what they had, what they wanted and actively pursued their goals until they realised it.
Essentially, life, and I mean the good life, is for those who do—determinedly, concertedly. You can’t live a que sera sera life and expect that things will fall neatly in place―it doesn’t work that way. You may be very talented, but if you don’t actively work towards your goals, your potential might end up being just that: potentials.
Now that we have identified passivity as an obstacle to achieving your goals, the next step and a very important one is self-evaluation. Carl Jung, the renowned psychologist, once said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.” This shows the importance of self-evaluation.
This is when you consciously examine yourself, where you are, where you want to be and how to move on. It allows you to see you the way you are and as cheesy as it sounds, the answer does lie within you.
At this point, you have to be brutally honest with yourself here and try not to sugar-coat anything. You’ll be surprised at what you’ll learn. So after evaluating, what next you ask? I’ll say if you had a fruitful discussion with yourself, you should have come up with some action points.
It’s also advisable to involve others that you think might be able to give you useful advice about how to move on (others may also include great books, don’t forget). With the action points you get, the next thing you have to do is to make a habit out of following through. Click here to learn how to create good habits.
This is where we put our humanness into consideration because it will be pretty hard to break the habit of being passive overnight. However, make a conscious effort to be active, to not be idle. When it gets hard, never give up and never surrender to passivity.
There are people that complain always about how life has put them at a disadvantage without doing anything to change their situation. Don’t be one of them. Consider this line from Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar in which Cassius says to Brutus:
“Men at some time are masters of their fates
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
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