In a wrap: 

GET INSPIRED, DREAM WITH CONVICTION AND GRANDEUR, AND DON’T SETTLE FOR LESS. 

Another great post sourced from PMou :].

1) Availability / Comfort

We often settle for what’s available, and what’s available isn’t always great. “Because it was there,” is an okay reason to climb a mountain, but not a very good reason to take a job or a free sample at the supermarket. Why pursue greatness when you’ve already got 324 channels and a recliner? Pass the dip and forget about your grand designs. Nothing destroys a good idea faster than following the norm. There’s a difference between being agreeable and agreeing to everything. The lowest common denominator is never a high standard, so sometimes you need to get comfortable marching to your own beat.

Alex’s Note: This is a good explanation of why I’m so very non-committal sometimes — I’m always evaluating. Sometimes I need to just flow though :P. I’ve recently been inspired by Bing Chen, a fearless fellow who advised me to get used to jumping into “cold pools,” and to do something (even ten things) new every day — something that scared you. Get comfortable being uncomfortable.

2) Ignorance

If we don’t know how to make something great, we simply won’t. If we don’t know that greatness is possible, we won’t bother attempting it. All too often, we literally do not know any better than good enough.

Alex’s Note: Inspireeee yasseeellff.

3) Momentum

If you’ve been doing what you’re doing for years and it’s not-so-great, you are in a rut. Many people refer to these ruts as careers.

Alex’s Note: I’m really frustrated by people that join the flow just because it’s the best thing they know. I’m frustrated by myself — I don’t find particular pleasure studying electrical engineering, but it’s the best thing I know career-wise even though it’s occupying so much of my time. HMM.

Credits to xcbass.tumblr.com for original post.

…The more we are able to draw upon our right-brain capacity, the more fully we will be able to visualize, to synthesize, to transcend time and present circumstances, to project a holistic picture of what we want to do and to be in life. 

Expand Perspective 

Sometimes we are knocked out of our left-brain environment and thought patterns and into the right brain by an unplanned experience. The death of a loved one, a severe illness, a financial setback, or extreme adversity can cause us to stand back, look atour lives, and ask ourselves some hard questions: 

“What’s really important? Why am I doing what I’m doing? 

But if you’re proactive, you don’t have to wait for circumstances or other people to create perspective-expanding experiences. You can consciously create your own. 

There are a number of ways to do this. Through the powers of your imagination, you can visualize your own funeral, as we did at the beginning of thischapter. Write your own eulogy. Actually write it out. Be specific. 

You can visualize your twenty-fifth and then your fiftieth wedding anniversary. Have your spouse visualize this with you. Try to capture the essence of the family relationship you want to have created through your day-by-day investment over a period of that many years. 

You can visualize your retirement from yourpresent occupation. What contributions, what achievements will you want to have made in your field? What plans will you have after retirement? Will you enter a second career? 

Expand your mind. Visualize in rich detail.  Involve as many emotions and feelings as possible. Involve as many of the senses as you can. 

I have done similar visualization exercises withsome of my university classes. “Assume you only have this one semester to live,” I tell my students, “and that during this semester you are to stay in school as a good student. Visualize how you would spend your semester. 

Things are suddenly placed in a different perspective. Values quickly surface that before weren’t even recognized. 

I have also asked students to live with that expanded perspective for a week and keep a diary of their experiences. 

The results are very revealing. They start writing to parents to tell them how much they love and appreciate them. They reconcile with a brother, a sister, a friend where the relationship has deteriorated. 

The dominant, central theme of their activities, the underlying principle, is love. The futility of bad-mouthing, bad thinking, put-downs, and accusation becomes very evident when they think in terms of having only a short time to live. Principles and values become more evident to everybody. There are a number of techniques using your imagination that can put you in touch with your values. But the net effect of every one I have ever used is the same. When people seriously undertake to identify what really matters most to them in their lives, what they really want to be and to do, they become very reverent. They start to think in larger terms than today and tomorrow.

- Excerpt from “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” Stephen R. Covey