Never Die Trying, Have A Spirit Of An Explorer!

Written by: Jephthah
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explorer
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I remembered during the days when I was having my tertiary education, my parents could barely afford to pay my school fees. Indeed I was down to my last penny. I was living in lack, all I had was inconsistent amount of pocket money that my parents gave me. I need to walk home almost everyday as I couldn’t afford a bus ride home.

There were at time where I could only afford to have meal for the day, that was the sum total of breakfast plus lunch and dinner for me. I had a joke with my friends about this, I call this single meal that sums up breakfast, lunch and dinner as “brelundin”. I kept thinking to myself that is this the kind of life I want to live? How long am I going to live in lack and if there is a way that I can wriggle out of this pit hole. When I asked myself this question, I checked my pocket and was disappointed to find only a few coins.

The first thing that came to my mind was, how am I going to increase my finances?

I was reminded that my friends were selling used stuffs through the Internet through free online auctions. I began to think what are some of the possible stuffs that I could sell on the web. I search through my house and made a checklist of things that can could generate some income. I filtered the things into different categories and began to set the price range, and uploaded the photographs of the things that I wanted to sell through the auction based websites. I set up the web auction booth as soon as possible, hoping to receive some bidders and to make sales fast. But things weren’t as smooth as I thought.

I waited a week and there wasn’t any single bid on any of the items available. I was so flabbergasted and I thought what I did was a waste of time. Then I asked my friends that had successful transactions made through the same websites for help. They told me that I need to use detailed descriptions and images with higher resolution to attract customers. So without hesitation, I went to make the changes hoping to attract my first bidder for the auctions. To my surprise, the new implementations didn’t work out as I had expected. I was throughly disappointed. After that, I decided to give up my business on the web auctions sites. My friend, upon knowing that I had given up, gave me a call and told me that I was not having a right attitude. He urged me that I should keep on exploring and experimenting till I see sales from the items listed.

That word from my friend had given be a boost of confidence and encouragement. I decided reopened the closed auctions of the stuffs I wanted to sell. I added a dozen more items and edited the captions and descriptions and went about promoting my items in other forums and blogs to get visitors to my auction page. This time round my persistence paid off, I finally saw some bids on my items and I managed to sell items that generated me a small and humble income. I was overjoyed as it was my first successful venture through the Internet.

Some months later, I ventured into new stuffs like computer repair and business card printing. I started to print business cards for my uncle and soon I was distributing fliers to neighborhood estates to publicize about my new business card printing service. I began to have a few clients coming in and I was printing business cards in large quantities. Though the business was very small scale and wasn’t profitable, it was able to generate me some income for my daily needs. At least I need not have to walk home or have “brelundin” meals any more.

Later on, I went all the way into venturing new things that I’ve never tried before like multi-level marketing, direct sales, Internet marketing, had some entrepreneurial ventures, picked up some odd jobs, even all the way to joining a real estate company as an agent, and now I had picked up skills in forex trading as of today. I always had this thing in mind, which is to continuously venture into new things so that I can expose myself to having more chances of successes in life.

Although not all of the ventures I had in my life were sweet and smooth sailing, I never regretted what I’ve done for they had given me important lessons which were first hand and practical. These lessons are invaluable and I couldn’t learn them in school.

dog experimenting
Image courtesy of snuzzy

Keep on experimenting

The thing I would like to you know is that we need to keep a positive attitude in trying out new stuffs in our lives. It is exciting to explore in things that we had never try before. If we never try, we will never know. In life we need to try out things and experiment them before we knew whether it works for us.

One good example about experimenting is Thomas Alva Edison’s invention of light bulb. We all knew that Edison is the inventor and father of filament bulbs. But the fact is, he was an inventor that he wasn’t born gifted in science. He did not know how to make a bulb until he had tried out numerous experiments. In fact he was so hardworking that he kept on experimenting to find what were the possible materials that can make a bulb glow. He had an explorer’s spirit and he went all the way to even using his friend’s beard in his attempt to make the bulb glow! He had experimented countless materials until he had found the ultimate solution, which was to use tungsten as the bulb’s filament that would produce sufficient light under a certain amount of electric current.

Do keep on experimenting. However, it would be a foolish thing when taken to a negative extreme like trying out our luck in a casino and constantly throw in cash on bets into the games until you lost all your assets.

Be wise and discerning while experimenting.

Foiled attempts never equal to bad attempts

You might have attempts that resulted in bad outcomes. Never let failure to become a permanent full stop to the things you are trying. Even if you fail, you will gain in experience, a new knowledge and a new insight. Each defeat can be a sharpening stone to sharpen your skills so that next time if you come across a similar situation, you will know what are the things that you should do.

A failed attempt might not be a bad thing totally. I had a few attempts in Internet investments which I ended up losing quite an amount of money. It wasn’t a pleasant experience especially when it involves money being lost in real time, but I’ve learned new first hand knowledge about investments. It was also through online investment schemes that I indirectly discovered about forex trading, which also led me to discover about options and stocks trading. Each time when you began to explore deeper, you’ll have placed yourself in a position of possibilities to discover something new.

Never die trying

We should always have a mentality to accept new challenges in life and to positively face them. Also, not all things that you’ve tried give you positive experiences. Don’t ever let setbacks hinder you. Though your setback might be a very painful one, they can become invaluable lesson in which you sharpen your knowledge and understanding. You’ll require discipline and internal motivation. Remember that results do not always come instantly. We’ll need to keep on experimenting with various things in life till we hit the mark. Therefore, I shall say this again: never die trying!

Venturing into the unknown

image

You won’t know when you’ll reach your destiny in life if you always remain in a same spot. Exploring and venturing into new things gives you a chance to be nearer to your success. Exploring new things in life gives you a chance to discover your destiny. It is like casting out a fishing net into the deeper part of the huge sea to catch a big fish. You’ll never know when you’ll hit your destiny. But if you choose to remain still and stagnant in your life, not willing to try out new stuffs, or to accept new ideas, or trying a new job, start a new business, trying out new techniques, the likelihood for you to come into your destiny in life is very low. When you venture and explore, you expose yourself to possibilities and chances of success.

So do you find yourself stuck in certain situation? If that is the case go out and be an explorer! The more you explore, the greater is the likelihood that you’ll uncover new opportunities that will eventually lead you to your successes in life. Lets be bold and have a positive mentality to venture out more!

Let us all have a spirit of an explorer!

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Written by Jephthah in Encourage.

Posted on 28 Sep 08 | »

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