It’s not likely that you commit to something when you are not sure about what you stand to gain by doing it. Forgetting about the past to start over has numerous benefits. This chapter will explore some of them to give you the impetus to start making changes that will give you a new lease of life.

High Self-Esteem

Your self-esteem is a product of the way you see yourself. It will be low when you feel that you don’t deserve to be loved and treasured. Note that you cannot separate self-esteem from self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the level of confidence you have in your ability to succeed in a task before you attempt it. It is vital that you have high self-efficacy because it makes others trust you to handle their projects on their behalf.

You need to earn the trust of people before you can be given the opportunity to prove yourself. Meanwhile, the only way you can convince them that you can do the job is when you have confidence in your ability to get the job done. Even when you have the qualifications for a job, you’ll still be doubted when you sound unsure about your chance of success in the task...

You’ll be stuck in the past when you think it has a vital role to play in your chances of future success. However, it’s not true that you cannot thrive again because of your mistakes and past failures. The future promises a lot if only you are willing to let go of the past. This chapter examines why the past doesn’t define the future of an individual.

The Past is a Closed Chapter

Treat your life like a book. Your experiences are previous chapters. The present moment is the chapter you are reading. In most cases, you don’t go back to a chapter you have read. You only flip back to those pages when you have something you didn’t get correctly. In some cases, you also flip back to that chapter when you find a similar concept in the current chapter. The implication of this is that you should only remember your past when you need to draw lessons from it.

You will not make progress if you remain stuck in a chapter of a book and refuse to read on. In fact, you might find better explanations regarding a particular concept you find difficult to understand in the subsequent chapters. Life is like that. Sometimes, you will not understand why some things happened the way they did until you forge ahead. For example, you might find out why your former boss treated you wrongly later. It could have been because of a jealous colleague....

When you have refused to start over, you are endangering yourself in various ways. As earlier mentioned, it can make you lose sight of the opportunities around you. This chapter explores what you stand to lose when you’re stuck in the past.

Depression

According to the World Health Organization, depression is a leading psychological problem affecting millions of people around the world. Note that depression is different from the occasional mood swings we have because of an unpleasant event. Depression is more intense and persistent than that. When you are depressed, you will not want to talk to anyone. You will prefer to stay on your bed rather than go out to have social interactions. At that moment, everything in the world becomes colorless and tasteless to you.

Note that depression can become fatal in the long run. It can lead to suicidal ideation. In other words, depression can make you feel like taking your life. Meanwhile, you should never get to that point. There is nothing worth it in this world that should make you feel that taking your life is the best option. As long as you are still alive, you can still rewrite your story. No one is denying that you are hurt, but you cannot get stuck in the past. The price can be too costly. ..

In the words of Chuck Palahniuk, “Your past is just a story. And once you realize this, it has no power over you.” These words were spoken some years ago. However, they are still as potent and relevant as the first time they were spoken. If only many people realized this simple but extremely powerful truth, life would have been easier for them. We would have had more individuals that are less cranky and frustrated in the world.

Some people struggle to overcome their past demons. For instance, bad experience from their past relationships often hinder them from building robust and happy relationships in the future. They built a mental wall and find it difficult to trust another person or commit into another relationship. Letting past experiences interfere with our future is detrimental to our growth and mental wellbeing. This chapter will explore some vital things about the past you need to know.

Life is a Journey

This statement might sound like a cliché, but it’s not. You have to realize that life is a journey. In fact, it is an experience we are all having for the first and last time. In other words, no one has been to this world before that is now having another opportunity to live it all over again. Indeed, there are people who are experienced in this world. However, their experiences are all parts of their journey in life...

Just as with other social media platforms, it’s the connections that you make that provide the most value to you. You should make it your driving goal on this site to locate the people you want to learn from – and lead.

This might be comedians, musicians, or others in the entertainment field. Or, it can be marketers or branding experts – other people who are creating a business. Many of these connections may offer the opportunity to take part in a Q & A session.

Many of the connections you can find here are people who already have a huge following on other social media sites. What you want to focus on is finding the people who will want to follow you as well.

That’s how you build your brand on the site. The way to find someone on the platform isn’t that difficult. There’s a search feature that will allow you to go through the member list.

Unlike other social media sites, there’s no way you can hide your profile. So anyone who joins will be able to see who you are as well as be able to read the information you put in your profile’s bio.

As soon as you join, you’ll be able to access the various rooms. When you see these rooms, the app will show you who’s in the room. Sometimes, the room will be packed with participants, but other times, there may only be a handful of people....

You might not have realized this yet, but Clubhouse is a place that’s ripe for potential product ideas that you can tap into. It’s also a great place where you can get the ideas that you may have already turned into products checked out by others.

The first thing you want to do is identify what’s missing or wanted in someone’s life. There are so many rooms with a lot of people talking about what they need. You can mine these conversations to find out what they feel they’re missing or what it is that would be helpful to them.

Sometimes during a conversation, someone might throw out a wish that has to do with a business or a personal need. You can dig through the conversations to find product ideas based on solving people’s problems.

You can also look for ways to improve on competitor’s products and bring something better to marketplace. For example, you might be in a room that’s related to the music industry and someone suggests a need for better distribution services.

That might spark the idea for you to create that service. Or you might come across an audience where some members are looking for better software within a niche. You might realize that you can provide that answer.

You can crowdsource information to help you generate product ideas. You might have an idea, but you’re wondering how it’ll go over with the public. You can use the audience to test that idea.....

The site uses followers to draw in a crowd as one way to create the opportunity to go viral. If you have a connection on the site and that person becomes a speaker, you’ll get a notice.

It’s the same way with you. Once you start speaking, those in your following list will get notified and can drop in on the conversation. You can go from a handful of people listening to thousands.

The more you interact within a room and the more you speak on stage, the more followers you’ll gain. But there are a few key tips to making sure you draw a large crowd that can lead you to viral fame on the platform.

The first is content. You must have something of value to talk about. That goes for any room that you’re in - even if you’re in a hobby room or just chatting about an interesting topic.

Have something to add to the conversation that invokes emotion or informs. Tap into the audience’s emotion and they’re with you. But you can only do this if you understand your audience.

That’s why you need to get to know the people in the room or in the club. The better you know or understand them, the more likely it is that you’ll go viral. Say something that matters and people will talk about it and you.

As soon as you open up the Clubhouse app, you’ll enter a hallway. This is the area that shows users what the active rooms are. Plus, you’ll see the events that are going to take place as well as the plus sign followed by the “Start a room” ability.

Once you enter the room that you choose, you’ll hear the conversation taking place and you’ll automatically part of the audience. If you decide you want to speak up, you’ll have to choose to raise your hand.

It’s up to the room creator or moderator to decide if you get to speak on the stage. You don’t have to worry about everyone talking over each other because Clubhouse doesn’t give this option.

The person who runs the room can mute or boot the speaker. In the room, you’ll be able to identify who the moderator is as well as who the speakers are. You’ll see this information at the top.

The top is known as the stage in each individual room. Anyone who’s being recognized as a speaker is on the stage. You’ll be able to see their profile photo as well as who they are.

There will be an icon on the speaker’s photo if they’re currently muted. You’ll also be able to see who the moderator is. What you want to be careful about is that you know what’s going on in the room’s conversation....

Social media is a type of platform that you can use to build your brand, boost your sales or connect with people in the same niche or other niches that you’d like to lead or learn about.

There are some familiar sites around that are household names - like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more. But now there’s a new social networking app called Clubhouse – and everyone is talking about it.

What’s the Difference Between Clubhouse and Other Social Media?

While most social networks are similar in nature, allowing images, videos and text communication, Clubhouse is different. Innovative. That’s because it uses live audio as the media format of choice.

This is a better form of interacting, because it’s easier to have a conversation with someone when it’s in real time. Plus, you’ll get the emotional impact and voice inflection from an audio based conversation when you’re networking that you don’t get just by reading what someone posts.

When you’re part of Clubhouse, you get the opportunity to join in discussions that are taking place live. It happens in real time, at all hours of the day and night, so if you miss that conversation, you don’t get a chance to go back and listen to it because nothing about the discussion gets saved.

The site has what are called rooms. You can choose to go into a room and listen to what everyone is talking about. There will be different topics, depending on the room you choose to enter...

Goals Are Dreams With A Deadline

When I first became an educator at the university I was determined to do things differently and this like any other thing came with its own advantages and disadvantages. The good thing about it was that I gave more thought to my methodology with the aim of channeling my impact on the students to the best of my abilities. I didn't like the pressure I saw them under while working on assignments with pressing deadlines so I vowed not to be a source of such unnecessary stress, or was I wrong to call it stress?

Establishing a hustle-free environment in my classes, I gave them the first assignment and to their most pleasant surprise added that there was no submission deadline! They all cheered in jubilation as I beamed in satisfaction wondering why my colleagues had never thought to trust these students to do the right thing without harassing them with pressing time limits or was I wrong? Oh yes, I was to learn soon enough how flawed my method was when the semester almost ended with me having received only one submission from the class workaholic! To get things moving I gave them a week to finish the work and guess what, more than half the class submitted on the very last day.

When a deadline is given, stress levels may rise as one realizes just how much work they need to get done in a limited amount of time but you know what else rises? Adrenaline levels! This hormone is also known as the F hormone (the fight or flight hormone). The majority of people choose to fight and that is where they discover just how strong, clever, or smart they are under its influence. These levels are usually healthy enough to push both effectiveness and creativity. Students working on an assignment due the following day rarely collapse from stress. They may complain that school is like a pressure cooker but you know what, they do get the job done in time to move on the next one. Talk about progress.

Don't just say “I want to learn the piano", add that you want to do that in the next coming six months and you will see a positive difference. Setting deadlines upgrades you from dreamer to active doer. It does something to you on the inside that makes you restless until you start taking action towards that desired goal. After my experience with the students, I call it good stress. Without it, we wouldn't have much of the ground-breaking inventions, large business structures, and other systems worldwide that make our lives meaningful today. In a nutshell, we wouldn't get much done without this beneficial pressure.

Is your goal measurable?

One professional engineer says, "I want to be the best engineer in the country by the time I turn forty" while yet another one says, “at forty I want to have acquired five patents under my name " Great determination from both ends isn't it? They both put the much-needed deadline to it, but what is the difference between the two? The latter's dream is easily measurable while the former's will most probably give him a headache in his late thirties as he tries to assess whether or not he has surpassed his counterparts in the entire country. As you set your goals, make sure you can easily measure them to celebrate your progress.

Are you being honest with yourself?

Another thing to consider in all this is yourself. I am talking about the truest version of yourself, that inner self that warns you when you try to take in more than you can handle. The often-ignored part of you that tries to caution you into being realistic in as much as you want to be ambitious. Use that as a guide because if you don't believe that you can do it then you won't. That is not to say that you constantly should trim down your dreams but rather that if there is some work to do to get yourself a hundred percent sure that you can achieve your goal in the set time then do it. This may require you to constantly stimulate your senses with an imagination of what it will feel like to get to the finish line. Imagine it, declare it, and speak about it. Repeat this process until your goal becomes a part of you.

Without a dream you cease to live, you begin to just exist. Though at times you may feel discouraged as you watch your ambitions get torn into pieces by the struggles of life, keep going. You will probably realize after you already set out on your journey to the top just how rough the road is but don’t stop moving. Take a rest if need be but don't take your eye off the prize and the ticking clock. You will be there on time if you continue to believe in yourself.