Photo by Anis Shaikh

“It’s easy to stand in the crowd but it takes courage to stand alone.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

I’ve started, what has now become, a series about life lessons and what I’ve learned as a young adult in this fast pace, ever changing world we live in. The first post titled Keep Your Head Held High set the precedent for this so called “series” that I now refer to these posts as. I also posted Words of Encouragement: A Journey That Never Ends, which I received a lot of positive feedback …

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Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.
Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.
-Henry Ford

Disclaimer: I began writing this in August of 2011. Finally finished it up and decided to publish it!
This post is a follow up to Keep Your Head Held High where I share important lessons I’ve learned these past few years.
When I’m annoyed, angry, or stressed out sometimes I feel the need to write to get away from everything. …

To let you know how far I’ve come, let me tell you where I’ve been.

Not that long ago, there were nights I went to sleep in strange places praying I wouldn’t wake up. After another night of bad decisions, I’d lie down with my heart speeding inside my chest like it was about to burst through the skin. My thinking was clouded, and my talent was one day closer to being totally wasted.

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Photo by 500px user Olga Skrund

Time goes by fast. Real fast. It has been just about a year since moving out to Huntington Beach, California and boy have I learned a lot–personally and professionally. Overcoming adversity has been something I’ve been used to growing up. Challenges motivate me and push me to go the extra mile…when I set my mind to it. Failures disappoint me, but I’ve learned to pick myself back up. I absolutely hate failing and will not accept failure as an option.

“Why do we fall sir? So …

Photo by 500px user Bogdan Nicolae

There’s been a part of my sub-conscious lately that, for some odd reason, keeps letting doubt creep into my mind! I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. Let me repeat that just one more time. I hate it! Now that that’s out we’ll move on. Many of you have probably read some of my previous posts so I’m sure you’ve been able to make your own assessment of what kind of person I am (hopefully it’s good). For that reason I’ll save both …

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I’ve probably put this quote in previous posts, but doing some morning reflection on my drive to work made me think of it some more. One of my favorite quotes is by George Seaton, “Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to.” When most people look, read, or hear that quote they don’t know how to interpret it. Myself included. It seems pretty simple to understand, but actually applying it in your life is a whole other story.
My interpretation of the quote …

Photo by DeviantArt user Darkness-in-the-lens

“The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live.”
-Joan Borysenko

This will be short and sweet.
My view and philosophy on life goes as follows. We only live once. We have one life to make the most of everything, literally everything. I don’t want to live my life and look back when I’m older asking myself “what if” saying I could have done that or I should have done that. I want to look back on my life and tell my friends, family, and …

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There’s a part of me that wants to drop everything I’m doing on a daily basis, give it up, and do something that truly makes me happy (or that I think will make me happy). I want to forget about the past and everything that has happened and start a clean slate. As much as I want to do that today; start fresh and pretend like it’s a whole new life, I won’t. Why? Because there’s doubt running through my head. Then I start thinking about …

“Some famous guy once said, ‘To travel is better than to arrive‘. and I was like ‘What!?’ Well, because I used to think that there was only one path to take to where you wanna get to be in life. But if you choose that one path, that doesn’t mean you have to abandon all the others. I realized that it’s actually what happens along the way….that counts. The stumbles or the falls. The friendships. It’s the journey. Not the destination. You just gotta -I guess- trust the future will …