A Dozen Ways To Totally Screw-up Your Life
by
Sala-d Malcolm
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Sala-d Malcolm on Smashwords
A Dozen Ways To Totally Screw-up Your Life
Copyright © 2011 by Sala-d Malcolm
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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A Dozen Ways To Totally Screw-up Your Life
This book is written with the hope that after you read it you will have learned something that you can use to make your life worthwhile. When it all boils down we have one life in one body. Nobody is invincible and no one is perfect. We cannot do all things neither is our potential as limited as some of us seem to believe. I strongly believe that on this earth we should not merely exist but we should live. Nevertheless in the midst of living and enjoying life to the fullest we should also be mindful of laws and also use common sense because although we will all make mistakes in life some mistakes can turn out to be very detrimental. Some inactions and some actions can be so bad that they leave our lives totally screwed-up.
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1 Not Having A Plan
There is much truth to the saying that if you fail to plan then you plan to fail. A Plan helps to provide both a roadmap and a goal post in your life. It is essential that you know where you want to go in life and how you intend to get there. All this comes from having a plan of action.
Many people who feel like they are trapped in life and can’t seem to get out of the rut that they are in are the very ones who have no plan in their lives. Planning gives your life direction and purpose. When one has a purpose in life, one tends to be a lot more motivated and is therefore more likely to be a go-getter.
Your life should consist of short term plans, medium term plans and long term plans. Know what you want to do today, next week, a year from now, five years down the road and beyond. There are some people who are afraid of planning because they don’t want to be disappointed if the plans are not achieved. Do not allow the fear of failure or falling short to stop you from planning. Use your smarts when you are making a plan. Your plan should be realistic and it should be measurable. It must be something that is possible for you to do even if it requires extra effort on your part and importantly it should have a reasonable time frame. You should not set a time that will be inadequate nor should you have the time set too long so that you will end up not being as productive as you could be.
A plan helps you to have a clearer view of your goals. It helps to remove all the clutter and irrelevant things from your path to achieve what you want and helps you to focus on the road ahead.
A person with a clearly defined plan tends to be more responsible and also more accountable. These are qualities which can cause your stocks to rise at the workplace, in your social settings and in life in general, as people will have more respect for you and will be more inclined to have confidence in you. This can in turn lead to job promotions or other rewards which can result in greater personal benefits.
To sum it up, when you have a plan you are giving yourself the opportunity to be all you can be in life. While not having a plan can simply set you on a path to nowhere.
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2 Procrastinate
A comedian once said that procrastination is like masturbation because in the end you are just screwing yourself.
What is procrastination? It is the act of postponing, delaying or putting off, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness. It refers to the counterproductive deferment of actions or tasks to a later time. Psychologists often cite such behavior as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing a task or decision. You may not stop to think about it and so you may not realize it but procrastination can lead to total disaster with very serious ramifications for your life. Just imagine if you are in school or college and you have an assignment to complete and you keep putting it off, then you put off another and another. Then they all pile up on you and it’s now time for them to be turned in.This can lead to a total melt down which can cause you to fail and either drop out or having to repeat. The same goes for procrastinating at work. This can lead to work not being done on time or more work for other people.Then it leads to your co-workers and management losing confidence in you causing you to lose your job.If you are a manager or owner of this business procrastinating may even lead to loss of business which could lead to bankruptcy and collapse.Many business owners who have seen their business collapse have been known to commit suicide, leaving wives and children behind to suffer the loss of a loved one.
When we put things off and they file up on us and we realize that the deadline is upon us, we then try to scramble to get them done. This can cause serious physical and mental problems. It puts us under stress. Stress can affect personal relationships. When you are stressed you tend to be less polite to others many times without even knowing it.This affects our interaction with co-workers and even your family. Tension in a family often times lead to break-ups.
There is also medical evidence that stress and anxiety lead to illnesses like ulcer and immune deficiencies. A deficient immune system then leaves the system vulnerable to many diseases. Stress and anxiety also cause us not to be able to focus properly. This then leads to driving accidents or accidents at the workplace or in the home, which can then lead to loss of property, limb or even life.
Many people will just shrug or brush it off, treating procrastination as just a small inconsequential thing. But this view can turn out to be so wrong. A person who spends his or her life procrastinating can find themselves stuck in a life of underachievement which then leads to them living in shame and self -doubt. When they see others moving ahead in life they start seeing themselves as being worthless.
It is human to want to take a break sometimes from a task. But when you allow that break to stretch out forever because of laziness or because you are trying to avoid doing the task then you are procrastinating. We should always take stock of the pain and consequences that ignoring a task can cause. How will your inaction affect your future? Will you end up losing your home if you keep putting off paying the bills on time? Will you be fired from your job if you keep missing deadlines? Will you fail your exams and not be able to get a degree if you neglect your assignments. We could go on and on with all these questions. The point is that we can destroy our lives by procrastinating.
People procrastinate for many reasons. We may put off a task because it is not something that we enjoy doing. It might be a case where we think that we will not be able to do it well and so rather than not doing well we prefer not to do it at all. Then of course there are cases where we believe that it is just something that we cannot do as in not having the ability to do.
What are some signs that you are procrastinating excessively? If you keep putting off tasks that you consider to be difficult. If you have a tendency to quit a task whenever you get to a point that you find to be difficult. If instead of going ahead with the job you are spending forever wondering why you should be doing it at all. Finding it difficult to get started or starting so many different things that it becomes difficult to actually finish any is another sign of procrastination. If your mind keeps wondering to other things or you ignore the job with the hope that you will eventually not have to do it. Regardless of what the reason is that we keep putting off or avoiding important tasks the fact is that if we do not want our lives to be negatively affected by such behavior we need to find ways to deal with this bad habit.
By ignoring and by extension not taking action to fix this bad habit you will be doing yourself a great disservice and in fact not just yourself but also the people that you should love and care about. The fact is that when you destroy your mental and physical well- being, it will have a ripple effect on the people around you.
When you have something that needs to be done and you find yourself wanting to put it off and look for something else to do, take a pause and ask yourself if it is important for you to get this job done. After accepting that it is important and beneficial to get it done, follow up this acceptance with the action of doing it.Once you have accomplished this you will feel a great sense of satisfaction.
For those who put things off out of a fear of failure or a fear that you will not be able to do a good job, this is not a healthy way of thinking. By thinking that you have to be a perfectionist you are putting unnecessary stress on yourself. You need to recognize that not everybody is able to do everything as well as everyone else. Some people are better at some things than are others. It is just a natural part of life. So do not create unnecessary expectations of yourself. If there are things that you are not sure how to do, ask someone who has a better understanding of it to explain it to you. Then give it your best shot. It does not make you less of a person to not be good at everything.
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3 Staying Stuck In The Past.
When one door closes another one opens, but we so often look so long and so regretfully look back upon the closed door that we do not see the one that is open ahead of us…Alexander Graham Bell.
In life bad things happen to everyone at some point or the other. It is just a fact of life. It does not matter your race, color or creed. It does not matter whether you are rich or poor. Hurt and disappointment will come at some point. Many of us choose to spend our lives moping over something that has disappointed us or hurt us. It might be a job situation, a friendship, a relationship, death of a loved one or something else. This moping usually causes us to feel sad or mad or even worse to feel depressed.
As human beings it is only normal for us to have feelings and emotional reactions over matters that have affected us. But when we allow ourselves to become totally absorbed in a state of anger, sadness or depression for an extended period of time, we are causing ourselves emotional and physical and psychological harm.