Limitless Inspiration

lessons from nature

2009-07-09T14:38:00.000-07:00

The nature is the wisest teacher ever. It teaches you silently. Just act as a humble student with the curiosity of a child and you will be amazed by how many lessons you were ignoring. Nature, by the way, is not only the jungle it’s the sky, the sun, the moon, the wind…..etc

Let’s take a look at the palm tree

The palm tree stands very tall with its head up against the wind. It bends SMOOTHLY with the wind. The palm tree takes many years to grow. It doesn’t provide us with shed. Instead, it provides us with one of the healthiest food ever (dates).

What can we learn from all this?

Be patient and focused on your goal. Bend with the wind but don’t lose control. You may not be convincing for people at the beginning, like the palm tree which doesn’t provide them with sheds. Don’t let this bother you but don’t forget to let the people taste your “dates” after reaching your goal

I believe there’s a lot to learn from the palm tree and there will be always more to come.

Another lesson from the sun rise…

The sun takes its time it doesn’t fight the clouds. It just flows smoothly and slightly with faith that there’s a time when it will be in the middle of the sky and the cloud will go away.

What really impresses me is that the common lesson is patience that developed by certainty and faith. The faith that makes the palm tree grow steadily without distraction. The faith that makes it bend with the wind knowing that there will be a time when the wind will go away. The faith that makes the sun wait for the right time without being willing to fight the clouds.

Spiritual Success

2009-06-23T04:04:00.001-07:00

In order to be successful you have to step out of your comfort zone. In order to find your way you have to swim against the current. You have to fight against the odds…

Isn’t this the concept we have been fed for so long?

There’s no question about the effect of the words we project on things, on how we see the things, and so by adopting the former concept we have neuro-associated failure with comfort and success with discomfort. That association, that false association indeed, magnifies the obstacles of success that leads many people to give up trying and go back to their comfort zone away from being under everlasting stress.

Well, am I saying that the concept of stepping out of comfort zone is completely wrong? Absolutely not. The fact is, as I see it, that this concept is just a part of the story of success – not the whole of it.

So in order to tell the whole story, from my point of view, we have to define success, as I perceive it, at first. Success is the “state of enough”, it’s the art of enjoying what’s in hand not grieving what is not suitable for you. It’s the “state of oneness” when you feel the connection between your spirit and the whole universe, when you are detached from desires and enjoy the state of gratitude arising from your inner self. A poor man who is grateful for his life is much more successful than a multi millionaire man who commits suicide after a recession. I would like to quote a verse from the Tao Te Ching:
“The sage goes about living in the oneness of all things, teaching without speaking,
accepting and dismissing all things with indifference, creating without attachment, working without credit.
Things arise and he lets them come;
things disappear and he lets them go.
Acts and deeds are completed and forgotten.
Because the sage is at one with Infinity, he is immortal.”

If success is that easy, then why aren’t some people successful yet? The answer is very easy: because they are caught up in their HABITUAL zone without even trying to look out of it.
I would like to use the bottle as a metaphor to make the concept clearer: The bottle consists of two parts, which are the body and the neck. Life is this bottle with the two parts of it. The body is the habitual zone where many people find it safer and wider than the neck to stay. They unfortunately don’t even know that there’s a world, a whole world, out of the bottle. On the other hand some people are questioning their habitual zone. They feel that it’s not enough for them. They know about the world out of the bottle and they are striving to reach it. By questioning their habitual patterns and trying to go out of the bottle they move to the bottleneck, which is the hardest part of the story. In this part they keep trying to find the answers, the right ones, they keep smashing their heads against the bottle borders each time they try another way, another answer; until they find the real answers, then they find their way to the WORLD, when they know their purpose of life, when they know why they came from nowhere to now here, when they, instead of fighting against the wrong current, drift with the right current. At this moment, when they make their desires in alignment with their purpose, dreams are not dreams anymore. They become their DESIRED destiny. They now have the momentum to even go through another bottle and make it out of it. This is the point of success, of spiritual success.

A road to wisdom...

2009-05-05T15:40:00.001-07:00

You are in a class and there's a naughty student, who is so intelligent and leader. You are the teacher of this class. What will you do?
You have to main options:
1. Give up and let this student act out while influencing the rest of the students, but who cares as long as you don’t have to deal with his constant annoying behavior.
2. Try to let him make use of his capabilities and direct him to make a good use of his brain for the good of himself and the rest of the students. That gives you two sub options:
a. FORCE him to obey you, without paying no attention to what his desires are, through a set of orders “dos and don’ts”
b. Direct his desires so that you can transform him into a positivity radiant, who gathers the rest of the students and help you in directing them in addition to himself through STIMULATING QUESTIONS

The naughty student is YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS MIND. He is so naughty and yet phenomenally intelligent. You can just leave him process according to the habitual patterns without paying any attention to whether those patterns are good or not for you, or you can make him obey you through repetition of certain AFFIRMATIONS describing the desired state you want to put yourself in, or you can stimulate him to go search for answers for certain questions you ask yourself.
The affirmation technique is a very effective method that has been mentioned in “The Secret”, the movie and the book, in detail. It relies on feeding the subconscious mind with certain mental images through REPEATEDLY AFFIRMING WITH BELIEF that you are IN this picture already. For example, if you want to be happy you can feed your subconscious mind with “I AM HAPPY I AM HAPPY I AM HAPPY” pictures. And then the subconscious mind will be convinced with the ILLUSION that you are happy and begin to deal with this as a fact.
But what if, instead of affirming, you used questions? Instead of saying “I AM HAPPY”, and forcing your subconscious mind to believe that you are really happy, you stimulated him to go find some REAL reasons that make you REALLY happy by asking:”What am I happy about right now?” and if you received a “NOTHING” answer you can ask: “If I want to be happy, what should I be happy about right now?” now you are CHALLENGING your naughty subconscious mind. He will accept nothing but to go for getting some REAL answers to the questions and he will MAGICALLY direct your focus towards those answers.
Here I want to share with you something I do on a daily basis which really helped me a lot in my road to wisdom, I see wisdom as learning from daily life experiences and understanding the core reason behind each appearance.

At the end of the day before going to sleep I get a notebook and start writing in three categories
1. Three or four positive deeds I did throughout the day
2. Two or three negative deeds I did throughout the day (deeds that I intend to not do again. I try to resist the temptation to write all the negative deeds, on the contrary I try to keep them less than the positive ones to raise my self-esteem)
3. QUESTIONS, EMPOWERING questions, I don’t write (Why I did that negative deed? Or why did that person treated me so badly today?) Instead I write (What can I learn from this negative deed? How can I change this behavior of that person, what good thing I can do for him?)

And then I get myself out of this state completely. I go chat with my family, and/or do some prayers asking God to give me the needed guidance to find the answers…etc
After that I go back to the notebook in which I wrote the questions and write the answers to the questions in another notebook. I try to write the first answer that comes to my head. I try to follow my intuition and trust it. After answering all questions I review all of them. I try to keep the answers the last thing I see before going to sleep and the first thing I put my eyes on after waking up on the next morning.
This method helps me to make a good use of every event in my life and to not let anything goes like a blowing wind. This method helped me to discover my road to WISDOM.

Bassem Zakareya El-Samragy
bassem.z.elsamragy@gmail.com

Develop a Kaizen

2009-04-17T01:59:00.000-07:00

Let’s move to Japan.
After a MASSIVE knock out of The World War II Japan, now, is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. They did this without revolutions, without any massive shifting in politics or something. The Japanese rise was SILENT and SMOOTH.

How did they do this?

It’s all about COMMITMENT. But how many MASSIVE REVOLUTIONARY SUDDEN changes, to them did you try to commit yourself and didn’t continue? For me, they are COUNTLESS.
So what is the magical thing about the Japanese commitment? The magical way which the Japanese used is commitment to small and continues changes. For instance I tried to commit myself to read a book every month and failed after one book or even after ten days, but What if I tried to commit myself to read only one page?

RIDICULOUS. What can only ONE page do? Well. Two years ago I intended to read 10 pages per day and now I finished only 2 books with about 100 pages each. If I practiced reading only 1 page per day I would be able to finish SEVEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY PAGES (ABOUT SEVEN BOOKS).

This is what small commitments can do.

The Japanese word for this small improvement is kaizen. It comes from the Japanese words 改 ("kai") which means "change" or "to correct" and 善 ("zen") which means "good". They applied it on the personal and the managerial level. We are here to focus on the personal Kaizen which is foundational. Also, it’s a continuous improvement process in which you refuse to stop growing. You can develop your kaizen and commit yourself to it and when it become habitual you can raise it and so on

Based on the previous post ( here ) in which I talked about (Synergy and The uniqueness of the human being) I am looking forward to create a community of Kaizeners in which we can practice synergy by helping each others to develop our Kaizens and improve them.
So, how should this community take place? There is an application form in which you can define your Kaizen, its period, when do you intend to raise it and if you are willing to help others to develop their kaizens.

We will not only “know one another” but also we will “coach one another”. How? You will tell us about your kaizen through the application form and people who are willing to help will receive it

to participate in the Kaizen process you can send e-mail me on bassem.z.elsamragy@gmail.com and put “KAIZEN” as the topic of the email. I will send you the application form within 24 hours. Please notify your friends with this post, whom you think they can benefit from Kaizen concept

PS.: The application form will contain ur desired kaizen and whether it's daily or weekly and if you are willing to help others to develop their kaizens

you can also join the kaizeners on Kaizeners

"Why are you blogging?"

2009-04-07T13:32:00.000-07:00

Well…

First of all I want to thank you all, you who provided me with your valuable opinions and contributions that led me to this thought.
Secondly, I want to express the joy that gives me having managed to go beyond the first post. I can’t remember how many times I didn’t before.
“Why are you blogging?”
This question, which I received from one of my best friends, induced me to really think deeply about why am I really blogging. A quick answer can be easily deduced from the title, but what lies WITHIN the title is deeper.
There are two interdependent ideas that were, and still are, dominating all of my thoughts and intentions:

1)Synergy

Let me just mention a verse from Quran which inspired me a lot. Whether you have studied the Quran or not try to think about it and you may get inspired too

“[49:13] O people, we created you from the same male and female, and rendered you distinct peoples and tribes, that you may know one another. The best among you in the sight of GOD is the most righteous. GOD is Omniscient, Cognizant.”

What really inspired me was that phrase” THAT YOU MAY KNOW ONE ANOTHER” this is the purpose of being so different. This is why we all don’t have the same skin color, same voice, same taste, and above all SAME WAY OF THINKING, and don’t you think that KNOWING one another leads to integration and synergy? Don’t you think that in this verse we are told that no one has it all and that’s why we are created different?
And that leads directly to the other idea which is:

2)The uniqueness of the human being

God has the absolute WISDOM. Believing in this concept will remove every barrier between us, and being convinced of the fact that “God didn’t create copies”, I thus believe that every single human being in this universe is UNIQUE. Don’t you think that associating this concept with the first one – synergy – will lead to a GREAT INTERDEPENDENT LIFE?

That’s why I started blogging. To get inspired by other people’s uniqueness and to help those to whom my uniqueness may be helpful in order to create that interdependent life in which we can help one another to live positively.

Wait for the next post and you shall see a real expressive action.

My first ordinary post

2009-03-30T06:44:00.000-07:00

A kid with no privileges at all. His father is drunk or maybe even dead his mother can’t afford his life or maybe doesn't exist at all. He has no money. He started to get labored in an early age in different hard jobs but he kept his dream to be successful so he persist and persist and then he became a great writer, businessman, or even an inventor.

Looks familiar?

I think you read or heard about a story like this several times. It became a proverb “A miserable guy who turned to be one of the most successful people”. I can’t deny that those stories INSPIRE us indeed, but do they represent us?

Actually, the majority are ORDINARY people, like me, who live an ORDINARY life without being exposed this amount of massive pain. Don’t we have the right to succeed also?

As you know we have to basic motives behind our actions.

1) Escaping from pain.

2) Desire for pleasure.

I think you can figure out that “escaping from pain” motive is more powerful than “desire for pleasure”. That’s why people who suffered great deal of pain can easily manage to succeed as they experience a great deal of pain which activates the “escaping from pain” motive. We, ordinary people who haven’t experienced a great deal of pain, have to have a great deal of MASTERMIND and SELF-MASTERY to DECIDE that we will succeed and activate the “desire for pleasure” motive.

Here you will share with me my story of success, as I COMMIT MY SELF TO REACH THE SKY, and it may be go beyond blog to be a book, a real book, . You will not only have the opportunity to share it with me but also you will take part in impacting my life through your comments and advice.

Let me take the Captain role for the first few posts to show you my past and then be prepared for grabbing your steer wheel and share me sailing.

feel free to contact me

bassem.z.elsamragy@gmail.com