I recommend you head over there and have a look around.  You may well be surprised at what you find.  Nelson is a deep thinker who has an interesting commentary about the world around us.  In particular check out his take on Life As The Only Asset.

But for now lets read what Nelson has to say, in his story:

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I grew up in a very rural area of a small village in Africa where
electricity is a luxury, yet people there are happier than some here in
America. My father was the only educated in his family, and I was
fortunate to be exposed to things some kids there weren’t. By being
exposed then, I mean having a TV to watch, and getting half a day
electricity supply in our home - (Not to mention that the first time I
used the Internet was in 2001). By the time I graduated high school, my
father had already passed away and it became almost impossible to further
my education even though I wanted to desperately.

My family and I started working on a “yam farm” with the hopes that by
harvest time, we would sell and save for my siblings’ educational funds
and mine. Selling the yams was even a difficult task because we had to
walk (while carrying the yams on the head) for about 20 miles to the
market where we would sell them. Technology was something I thought about
often because I would tell my mother – “with technology, we would never
have to manually work on the farm and walk to sell yams, hopefully one day
things might change and we can afford it”

After years of saving, we experienced an unforgettable tragedy when the
village was engulfed with the infamous furious army invasion in late 2001
which my family and I narrowly escaped but our house did not.
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1621651.stm]

At this time, the hope of reconstructing our lives was gone, but the faith
of doing so stayed and still remains in my heart to date. My brothers and
I started looking for other means of coping up with life. Shortly after,
my elder brother knew about the US Diversity Visa program through a few
people he encountered on his trip that were current with world affairs.
This is a program in which the US government selects around 50,000 people
randomly from other countries to immigrate to the US and become citizens
from a pool of about 10 million applicants. He obtained three application
forms (for himself, myself and my immediate brother) and brought them back
to the village. We completed them and did not have access to the post
office, but luckily, somehow, we were introduced to someone whom we did
not even know that was traveling to the city, and agreed to mail the forms
to the US even though we doubted if we were going to beat the deadline. I
was the only one among the three of us that was selected. To shorten the
story, today I have the opportunity to be attending graduate school at the
University of California in the field of Computer Engineering with the
faith and goal to open up a primary school in that very small village I
grew up in, to teach the children there more about technology and science,
especially about creativity. Even though I might have started using the
computer and the Internet in 2001, I believe I have achieved some of my
goals by working with top companies here in the US and most find it hard
to believe me that I have only used the computer for barely a decade. Just
like Steve Jobs writes in his resume “I’m not afraid to start from the
beginning.” [http://homepage.mac.com/steve/Resume.html]” – So am I not
afraid for a fresh start.

My story may sound “here and there” but I always feel that I would never
be here today reminiscing on my childhood days of sleeping in a dark quiet
hut, in a small village in a different continent.
To end my story, since the force of passion supersedes “what you would
like to do”, I may eventually become a vocal performer (my passion) rather
than a research engineer.

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Thanks for sharing that with us Nelson

I am still looking for other stories from you all.  If you would like to tell us a bit about your goals, the challenges you face and how you over come them, please send me a message via my contact page.

Thanks

Tom

Over the weeks I was surprised by the way that she was always there.  I run there often and I see a lot of people come and go.  Some people are there once a week and others are there more, but everyday that I trained at this particular park, she was also there at exactly the same time.  It felt she was stalking me, or maybe I was stalking her.  Of course it was just coincidence, but for the past 3 months we have shared the same paths about 4 or 5 times a week. 

Over that time, we have never said a word to each other.  Neither do I know her name or anything about her.  All I know is what I see of her, and that is getting less and less.  Over the weeks of consistently walking she has gradually reduced her size to what is approaching a normal shape, for someone of her height.  I’m sure she would still be technically obese, but she has lost masses of weight.  The best thing about this, from what I can see, is the difference it has made in how she presents herself.  Instead of heading out in her baggy clothes, she now wears normal clothes like any other person who walks.  Instead of slouching along, she holds her head high and I would say that her posture is even better than mine.  When I watch her feet move, there is no more dragging and shuffling.  She now has a distinct spring in her step and she looks confident and proud, the sort of person who doesn’t feel the need to apologize for their life. 

It gradually dawned on me that although I thought I had been sharing the paths with the same person over these last months, somewhere along the line, this person had totally changed.  I suspect that it wasn’t overnight for her, but as she gradually realised that she was getting her life together she became a new person.  It doesn’t matter when it happened so much as that it did.  From my perspective, there old person is nowhere to be seen.  The new has taken over and she looks ready to live.

Today rather than pitying the lady, I envy her.  She has just had an amazing few months.  She has transformed her body which is important, but more importantly this seems to have transformed her attitude.  All she has done is formed a plan and stuck with it until it really takes effect.  She decided that walking was going to help her get her act together and so she does it.  How simple but how effective.  I don’t want to lose any weight and I don’t need to walk endless laps of the park, but I am inspired by her progress.  It makes me realise how simple it can be to transform our situation.  Simple should not be confused with easy, but the path to our goals doesn’t have to be technical and convoluted.  All we have to do, is do the right things - the things that matter - and progress will follow.

This morning, I saw what I think must be the end of her phase 1 of her plan and the start of phase 2.  As I rounded a bend, I saw her running.  She was not going fast and she looked a little wobbly and awkward but she was running.  Pretty soon, she slowed down again to a walk, but I guess that is part of her plan.  My prediction is that over the next few months she will keep coming to the park and will gradually replace all of her walking with running.  Then we will see some change in attitude.  There is nothing like running to boost your self esteem and capability, over time.  She is in for a treat.

When I saw this today, I was so excited that I wanted to go up and congratulate her and tell her how great it was to watch her progress.  It took some effort to hold myself back.  I had to remember that we don’t have a real relationship, we only share the same paths at the same time.  But I would love to get her to write her own version of her story for us all to read here.  Unfortunately this won’t happen, so instead we have to concentrate on making our own stories.

This is what LifeGoalAction is all about.  Deciding what is important to you and doggedly, and persistently pursuing it until you succeed.  Each and everyone of us is able to achieve extraordinary things if we simply do what needs to be done, over and over again.  It is up to us to create our own story - gradually, deliberately and expectantly.

Thanks

Tom

   
My story is, like you said on your post, nothing spectacular.   But just wanted to
share.  I’m a 17 year old from Singapore, as you can tell from my blog. I quit school at the
start of this year, because I found it to be really restricting and repetitive, and
I wasn’t really learning much, just going through the motions. It was a
really risky thing to do, especially here in the “overly-meritocratic” Singapore.Every time the topic of me quitting school came up in conversations, it almost
always brought negative connotations. People assumed that I wasn’t doing anything
with my life, or that I was screwing up my life by doing it.The truth is, I’ve learned and gained a lot since I quit school. In starting my
blog, I’ve gotten to know really inspiring and intelligent people, such as Chris
Brogan, Peter Haslam and Sarah Deutsch. And I’ve learned a lot from blogging. It’s
trained me to think more about what I’m doing, and to see things in a different way.
In reading other blogs and news feeds for ideas on what to post about, I’ve gained a
lot of knowledge as well, that I’d never have learned in school.

Thanks

Tom