David Stidston
Bio
My name is David Stidston, and I live in the beautiful city of Hobart, in Tasmania, Australia. My aim is to inspire and motivate as many people as possible, to pursue their goals, and create a future blessed with happiness and fulfillment.
Stories (216/0)
The Ultimate Goal Of All Goals
It's a little crazy to try and understand how we need to look after ourselves first and foremost in life, and have that element of selfishness, whilst at the same token, needing to be helpful, supporting, encouraging, and uplifting towards others. How can we be selfish and selfless at the one time? Is it even possible? Let's firstly look at the selfish side to this matter. No matter what else is going on around us, we need to be prioritizing our health, our happiness, and the pursuit of our goals. Our decisions and actions should always be based around ensuring these three elements of our life are being nurtured, protected, and kept satisfied. It's about making sure we eat healthy, exercise daily, have at least a minimum of 7 hours sleep each night, and always be looking after our mental health. It's about living the life that we want, whilst creating the future we desire, rather than being dictated to in how we should live our life, so that we can find genuine happiness and satisfaction. It's about setting ourselves goals that we have an extreme internal emotional attachment to, that mean so much to us personally, that we wouldn't let anything prevent us from achieving them. That means prioritizing the actions that are working towards these goals, rather than following the advice of others, or being distracted by less important tasks and activities of everyday life, that so many people get caught out by. The reason why we should be selfish in these areas is because if we are not keeping healthy, we are not feeling positive minded, happy, and fulfilled, and we are not experiencing the satisfaction of accomplishing what we desire to accomplish in life, then how can we possibly be the best version of ourselves? How can we be beneficial, attractive, and inspiring towards others, if we aren't enjoying life, and being the best version of ourselves that we can be? We can be a much better father, mother, son, daughter, grandparent, friend, work colleague, cousin, and individual in general, if we are happy, satisfied, healthy, and successful in life, that's a fact! That's why we need to be selfish in these aspects of life.
By David Stidston3 years ago in Motivation
Get Serious About Exercise
Not enough hours in the day to get all your work done, or those tasks that need doing around the house, or to spend time with your family, or to even have some quiet time to yourself? Living in such a fast-paced and demanding world, it seems like there are never enough hours in the day to get everything done. What's the one thing we always seem to make a priority in our day? Work, of course. If we don't head off to our job, and complete the hours we are rostered on for, then naturally, we are not going to get paid. What does that then mean? We can't pay our bills, our rent/mortgage, nor be able to buy food. That's not a position we want to find ourselves in, that's for sure. So we therefore make work our priority. Now this wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that we spend a bucket load of hours dedicated to our job. Gone are the days of working 9 to 5! Nowadays, spending only 8 hours of our day at work would be a dream come true. These days, many people find themselves working anywhere from 9, up to 15 hours a day. Throw in the time spend commuting to and from work also, and there's another hour or two spent dedicated to work. We find ourselves in the position where we can't really bargain with the hours we work, because we need that precious salary, in order to survive accordingly. So with 24 hours in the day, by subtracting say an average of 10 hours at work, and another hour for commuting, we are left with just 12 hours of our day. That doesn't look so bad though, right? Well let's also deduct the time we spend going to the toilet, having a shower, preparing meals, and then eating meals, so we will subtract another two hours there, which leaves us with 10 hours. Still not too bad? We want some time spent with our partner and our children, even some time relaxing in front of the television after a long day, so we will take another 2 hours there. But wait, what about tidying up things around the house, making sure our children are catered for, and all those other little frustrating tasks that must get done? There's another hour. Now all of a sudden, we are left with just 7 hours, and that's barely enough time to get just enough sleep. Don't forget, this is based on an individual who works 10 hours a day, so can you imagine how little time those who work even longer hours have left over? Business owners come to mind here. Right there, our day is complete, and what have we actually achieved that's beneficial for our future? Not much really! We have done the basics of living a typical everyday life, yet haven't contributed anything towards the pursuit of our goals, or creating the lifestyle we desire. Not only that, but we have failed to make time for something that should never be sacrificed from our daily schedule, and that is exercise!
By David Stidston3 years ago in Longevity
Just Be Patient!
Goals, success, happiness, prosperity, and satisfaction. These are five rewards and blessings we all would love to achieve in life. I think it's common knowledge that each and every one of these rewards and blessings aren't easy to come by. For those who have had the courage, drive, and motivation to pursue these rewards and blessings, you would well know exactly how difficult this journey is to accomplish them. It's an extreme rarity that with just a snap of the fingers, these rewards and blessings can be achieved overnight, or even in just a short amount of time. Most of the time, and for most of us, the journey involves many setbacks, challenges, failures, rejections, adversities, and of course, a lengthy wait. There's a lot of sacrifice, hard work, effort, commitment, and dedication involved, which most of us can completely understand and accept. What most of us cannot understand and accept though, is just how long it takes to achieve these rewards and blessings. After a few weeks, even a few months, we can handle the constant failures, adversities, etc., but a few years, well that's a different story. Suffering through all that hardship, failure, rejection, criticism, and opposition for three, five, maybe even ten years, well it can really become torture for us. It's like playing a slot machine that never gives you any wins. We are feeding this machine, dollar after dollar, and getting absolutely no return, but instead, we are losing our funds hastily. When it comes to the journey towards achieving our goals, it's exactly the same theory. We are constantly putting the effort in to achieve them, and yet reaping no rewards along the way. There's no satisfaction, no enjoyment, to be had. There is a jackpot attached to each slot machine though. The thing is with a slot machine, you can keep playing, and playing, and playing, but still never hit that jackpot, because they are designed to lose. As for our goals pursuit though, if we keep persevering, and persevering, and persevering on that journey, we are bound to hit that jackpot at some point. To do so, we need to possess the right attitude and the right mindset, whilst remaining resilient, determined, driven, and patient.
By David Stidston3 years ago in Motivation
Put A Smile On Your Dial
One of the easiest, and even one of the most powerful, actions that we can do every day, is to smile. Sounds a bit silly doesn't it, and it's not surprising to think in such a way, because most of us don't really comprehend exactly how a smile can be of any great benefit to either ourselves or others? Sadly, everyday life consumes so many of us, as we plunge ourselves into constantly dealing with a great amount of stress, worry, concern, and anxiety, in a bid to meet our obligations, deadlines, and commitments. With all this pressure swirling through our mind, we often find it difficult to feel a sense of happiness and joy within our heart. All this stress, worry, anxiety, and concern that life seems to heave upon us, begins to develop a dour feeling of unhappiness within us, and even leads many of us into depression. We may experience bursts of satisfaction, happiness, and enjoyment when we are spending time with our friends, enjoying quality time with our family on the weekend, or engaging in one of our hobbies, but in general, we just cannot find that complete happiness, satisfaction, and fulfilment that we are looking for in life. Not surprisingly, over time, this leads us to become extremely frustrated and angry. When we have this constant build up of frustration and anger, that compounds the stress, anxiety, worry, and concern, we become like a volcano ready to erupt. We need an outlet to relieve ourselves of all this suffering and pressure, and unfortunately, many of us use others as that outlet. We criticize them, verbally abuse them, ridicule them, and blow up at them, perhaps just for something little they did, because that seems to give us reason to release all that anger, stress, and frustration. It could be our partner, our parents, our friends, a workmate, even just a stranger on the street or on social media, that bears the brunt of all this anger, stress, and frustration, and as a result, we can often cause emotionally wounding and hurt to these people. We walk around with a constant frown, when what we should be doing is turning that frown upside down.
By David Stidston3 years ago in Motivation
Tired And Exhausted
How often do we experience that feeling of exhaustion, fatigue, and complete tiredness? When I was working in the corporate world, along with the constant feeling of unhappiness and depression, the feeling of being tired and exhausted was all I ever seemed to experience. 6 hour sleeps each night, combined with early mornings, was not a very good routine for my health whatsoever. After a long day at work, by the time I arrived home, had dinner, washed the dishes, and did some exercise, there was barely an hour or two remaining for me to actually have some time to myself, or with my partner, doing something more desirable. We all need this time for ourselves, just to momentarily escape from the constant demand and pressure of work, especially when we spend so many hours working a job we totally dislike. The problem is, of course, that those spare couple of hours are deducted from our sleep time, as we cannot find any other time of the day to deduct it from. The result, a lack of sleep. What then does a lack of sleep result in? Tiredness, fatigue, and exhaustion, of course. So I'd go to bed at midnight each weeknight, and get up at 6am the following day, and such was my tiredness and exhaustion, by the time Friday came around, I slept from midnight to midday on the weekend days, just to try and rejuvenate and recharge myself. I felt more refreshed by Sunday afternoon, but that feeling would be short lived, as by Tuesday, it was back to feeling tired and exhausted again. I don't miss those days in the slightest. Sadly, such a routine isn't uncommon for many people. Long work days, minimal sleep, minimal time for themselves and their family, and the constant feeling of tiredness and exhaustion.
By David Stidston3 years ago in Motivation
Healing, Not Hatred
I don't think there would be any one of us that could possibly say that we haven't been hurt deeply by another person, or several people, in our life. This could be either a case of being physically hurt, mentally hurt, or even both. Sadly, there are many people in the world who have absolutely no regard for the feelings and wellbeing of others. As long as they relieve themselves of the hurt, bitterness, resentment, anger, and frustration within themselves, these type individuals do not care one iota about who they hurt in the process. They will tread over whoever they have to, just to get their own way, and to feel good about themselves. Quite often, inflicting mental pain on others can be just as hurtful as physical pain. The latter reveals scars that are evident for all to see, but the former inflicts scars on the inside of people, to which others aren't even aware of. When people aren't aware of these internal issues that others are dealing with, then they don't offer any compassion or support. Many of us can't exactly sit here and claim to be angels either. Many times we have perhaps caused great internal pain to others also, be it intentionally, or unintentionally. For the sake of our own happiness, goals, and future, we indeed have to make decisions, and execute actions that are in our own best interest, which may potentially inconvenience others, or maybe even cause them anger and frustration, but for that we shouldn't harbour any regret. We need to be creating the life of our own design, after all, just as everyone else is entitled to do with their own life. It's the rudeness, lack of compassion, disrespect, hurtfulness, and nastiness that we commit, which is unnecessary, and can create a significant amount of mental scarring to others. Why would we have the urge to hurt others in any way? What would prompt us to be so nasty to others, and be wanting bad things to happen to them? One word, hatred!
By David Stidston3 years ago in Motivation
Such A Difference
Unfortunately, we live in a world in which we are surrounded by negative minded and pessimistic people. So many individuals spend their days whinging and moaning about how life is so unfair, how much their job sucks, how they are constantly a victim of circumstance, how they are always struggling financially, how they don't have such nice assets as others, how their partner has bad habits, and so on. They are constantly in our ear, giving us advice about how we shouldn't do this, and how we shouldn't do that, rather than being focused on their own life. As much as they live their life in hope and faith, they will quite often dismiss any possibilities of anything good coming their way, and at the same token, they will also quash our ambitions, and the ambitions of others, as they don't want to see others succeed and thrive, if they can't do so themselves. They will often criticize and belittle us, they will gossip about us behind our back, and they will always try to act in superiority to us, believing that they know better about everything. They will very rarely, if ever, admit to their mistakes, wrongdoings, and faults also. There's no real polite way of summing up these type of individuals, other than stating that they are toxic! The problem for us is that we can't exactly run and hide from them, because they are nearly always around us, such as in the shops, in our workplace, and sadly, even within our own home. What this means is that we are getting constant exposure to all this negativity and pessimism, as our mind is constantly absorbing what we are hearing. The human mind acts like a magnet. The more it hears this same information over and over, the more it starts to believe it, and relate to it. If we are hearing negativity, then our mindset will adapt to that exact environment, ultimately falling into a negative zone of thinking also. What happens when we operate from a negative mindset? Well, we get angry, we get frustrated, we become bitter, we become resentful, we become ungrateful, we become agitated, we become hurtful, we become sad, we become pessimistic, and we can become depressed. The worst part though is when we make decisions and take action whilst in this negative mindset. Such decisions and actions, more often than not, lead to failure, regret, hardship, adversity, conflict, and even more unhappiness.
By David Stidston3 years ago in Motivation
Until......
There is a time for everything. A time for birth, and a time for death. A time to laugh, and a time to cry. A time to keep something, and a time to throw it away. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, too many of us abuse the likes of time though, or we just simply take it for granted. For some strange reason, we adopt this belief that we have an abundance of time, and there will always be that "right time" in the future to make a certain decision, or to do a certain task or action. We sit back and wait for that "right time", continuing to hold off until we find this complete sense of certainty, comfort, and reassurance. Maybe we just hold back until we have no other option but to complete the task at hand? The funny thing is, we then use time as our excuse to justify why we can't undertake a certain task or action immediately, insisting that we are too busy at present, or there is too much going on right now. The act of refraining from making a decision, or proceeding with a task or action, we better know as being procrastination. Perhaps what we don't know is that procrastination is the thief of time, but if not, we do now! How often do we find ourselves in the position where we have a list of tasks to do, be it at work or just some odd jobs around the home, and that one task that is the least enjoyable of the lot, the most difficult, or the one that takes the longest amount of time, we always leave until last? This particular task may be extremely important, and needs our immediate attention, but because it is a task that isn't much fun, or is mundane and arduous, or just consumes so much time, we refrain from doing it until we absolutely have to. It's a classic case of procrastination, and an overwhelming majority of us are guilty of having taken this approach to tasks and actions at some stage of our life.
By David Stidston3 years ago in Motivation
An Entrepreneur
Taking on the role of a business owner is one of the most challenging things that we could ever do. None of that rocking up to our workplace, doing the minimum amount of work our boss requires of us, working set hours, packing up and going home, and receiving a guaranteed pay check at the end of each week, like in the corporate world. Entrepreneurship is about complete dedication, sacrifice, commitment, patience, perseverance, long hours, accountability, responsibility, adaptability, creativity, and ownership. It generally takes years to build a successful business, and during those years, there is a great amount of time, money, and effort that goes into it, in order to make it successful. Not only that, but we can't forget about the number of rejections, setbacks, and failures that we encounter during that time of establishing and growing the business. Building a successful business is a goal in itself, and we all know just how difficult that road to achieving our goals can be. It can be brutal and demoralizing, testing our character and our will to their absolute limit. That business becomes our livelihood, so the importance of generating success is paramount. There may be many months though where even the likes of generating a profit, and an income for ourselves, both seem like a distant dream. Such challenges, hardships, and adversities don't exactly make entrepreneurship an attractive proposition, do they, worsened by the fact that society has created the belief that businesses only end up failing? The funny thing is though, entrepreneurship may just be the answer to the wishes and prayers of so many people, as far as career is concerned.
By David Stidston3 years ago in Motivation
The Better You Become
Whilst action is an absolutely crucial component in the bid for one to achieve their goals, it's also only the one piece of the success pie. There's other aspects necessary for success also, such as attitude, behaviour, and strategy. To achieve one's goals and success, action is indeed a non-negotiable, because making the decision to journey towards one's goals without any subsequent action, or actions, to support the decision, means that nothing is achieved, nor is there any forward movement or progress. The action aspect is basically the physical side to the journey. It's the "doing", and it's the engaging in the hard work. Many people tend to completely overlook the fact there is also a mental aspect behind achieving success also. We can apply ourselves to all the hard work we want, and be trying our butt off to generate results through the actions we execute, but it's like going into battle without a sword or shield. We enter the battlefield believing that we can take down the enemy forces, and yet we have no sword to attack them with, and no shield to defend ourselves with, exposing us to being quickly overcome and defeated. The same theory applies when it comes to pursuing our goals. We may believe we have the work ethic and capability to conquer our goals, but without the right mindset tools and mental preparation, we can often find ourselves overwhelmed when we encounter the likes of challenges, failures, rejections, and adversities along the journey. Many of us completely underestimate just how challenging and brutal that journey towards our goals really is. The greater the goal and reward, the more difficult the challenge. That's why we need to understand, that in order to achieve the best for ourselves, we have to in fact better ourselves first.
By David Stidston3 years ago in Motivation
Something's Got To Change
Take this opportunity to assess your life, as it stands. Ask yourself, are you honestly happy with where you are at in life? Ask yourself, are you honestly happy with the direction in which your life is headed? Ask yourself, are you genuinely satisfied and fulfilled in everything you do, and the lifestyle you live? Ask yourself, are you truly achieving success, your goals, and prosperity? If you have answered "yes" to each of these questions, and with complete honesty, then I have to commend you, and I have great deal of admiration for you, because the truth is that only a small percentage of people worldwide are at a stage in life where they can honestly say they feel happy, satisfied, fulfilled, successful, and prosperous, and they have achieved their goals. For the majority of people in the world, they are living their life well below expectations to their desires. Many will put on a brave face in an attempt to keep up appearances, to showcase to everyone they are happy and satisfied with their life, perhaps even with the motive to encourage envy and attraction towards them, but deep down, they are far from happy and satisfied. Most people live a life that resembles groundhog day, at least for five days of the week anyway. Wake up early, work, commute, eat, pay bills, view social media, watch television, go to bed. Finally, when the weekend comes around, then there's a bit more flexibility to do some of the more leisurely and fun stuff in life, such as shopping, hanging out with the friends, drinking, or going out visiting various attractions. Basically, it's a life where one truly lives for 2 days of the week, but then merely exists for the other 5. At least there's the odd couple of weeks of annual leave throughout the year, to offer some respite and variation also, which brings a great deal of happiness and satisfaction. Is this really the life you always dreamed of?
By David Stidston3 years ago in Motivation
Belief System
The human brain is an amazing organ. The amount of information it can absorb, retain, and process is unbelievable. Imagine what life would be like if we didn't have a brain though. We wouldn't be able to experience thoughts or emotions, we wouldn't be able to walk or talk, we wouldn't be able to see, hear, touch, or smell, nor would we be able to make decisions or retain memories. Not surprisingly, we wouldn't be able to live at all, because the brain is, of course, a vital organ. Like the rest of our body, our brain requirements nourishment. Our body relies on food and water to survive, and we know that remaining committed to a diet that is rich in fruit and vegetables, whilst drinking plenty of clean water, is paramount to ensuring we keep our body healthy and in good shape. Our brain operates on exactly the same principal. We need to remain committed to feeding our brain with information that is positive, encouraging, and educational, to ensure it is also healthy and in good shape. It's what we know as looking after our mental health, of course. The more we feed our mind with positive thoughts, positive beliefs, encouragement, hope, and faith, the happier and more fulfilled we become. Easier said that done though. There is an unlimited amount of information within this world to process. From the moment we open our eyes at birth, our brain becomes overloaded with information. Our parents teach us things, we learn from watching television, we learn things from other children, and our brain starts clicking into gear about what we should believe. Even from a young age, sadly we are educated and influenced to believe information that isn't even true. Yep, I am sorry to break it to you, but Father Christmas isn't real. Santa Claus may not exactly be a harmful lie to us, more so just an innocent fantasy for children to believe in, but Santa isn't the only lie, mistruth, and false belief we relay to our children. Unfortunately, we fill them up with information that becomes extremely detrimental to them in their adult life, and it's all because we influence and manipulate them to believe such things, even though we really don't know the truth either. We base such information on what others have told us, about what we have personally learned, and what we assume to be the truth.
By David Stidston3 years ago in Motivation