Just Begin, and Nothing is Impossible

You’ve probably heard them all: “Boldly ventured is half won.” “Well begun is half done,” and a common one, “He who has begun, has half done.” —Horace’s. These are proverbs about the importance of taking action or pursuing your calling now, sayings that were probably mouthed by your past professors in the battle against procrastination. And they’re all true—whether you are bogged down by mundane paperwork in a cubicle, or by a hesitance towards your lofty dreams, action is the only way forward.

Millions of people conjecture and analyze, but how many people put their thoughts into concrete action? Everyday, you probably witness this phenomenon: people thinking vs people doing. Perhaps, you can categorize your friends or family into one or the other. The truth is, the doer often intrigues and excites.

Remember Steve Jobs?

This is because we are judged by what we accomplish, not by what we plan to accomplish, or would like to accomplish. The moments in which we ponder or articulate ideas are typically moments of dreamy eyes and attentive ears – cheap moments. Conversely, simply starting or acting on whatever it is we want to do is high-priced and traditionally difficult, not just on a personal and local level, but also on a global, historical level.

For instance, the space exploration community is enthused at the prospect of life on Mars.  Experts and media speculators alike predict that by the year 2020, humans will begin to set up a base on the planet. Yet, how much of this talk will actually result in concrete action?  What nation, what organization, what individual will take the necessary steps towards legitimately colonizing Mars, rather than merely analyzing how it can be done?

A mission as such takes years and years of planning, to be sure. However, NASA or a competing organization could very well choose to today take that first crucial step towards a successful mission; perhaps it already has.

Hopefully, because this will need a lot of work…

The great news for you is, by adhering to a strict philosophy of beginning your project, or taking the first step towards your lofty aspirations, you can literally achieve anything. With this attitude and initiative, what appeared to be impossible will soon appear very much possible.

Speaking of space travel, who would have assumed in the first half of the 20^th century (and for all time before) that man would set foot on the moon? Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong symbolically and literally took that first step, a step that represented, for the men themselves, a culmination of a career.

Undoubtedly, somewhere along their journey, Aldrin and Armstrong each took their own “first step” towards becoming world-class astronauts. This process involved initial research, networking, schooling, intense study, concentrated training and lifestyle adjustment and, of course, eventual experience with NASA.

Whatever your dreams are, you can begin to pursue those dreams today by boldly taking that first step. But courage is not the only ingredient here; intelligence and awareness are important. You need to know which organizations or individuals to contact and how to contact them; you need to know which skills to acquire and how to acquire them; you need to assemble a plan for all of this, as well as a budget that will be useful in reaching your goal. Fortunately, you don’t have to do this alone because in the modern digital age, help is always available.

We call them Giggrabbers

Giggrabbers was founded on this premise: that skilled and talented people who can help make your dreams a reality should be readily available. Giggrabbers is an interactive project and gig space that allows users to introduce their ideas or projects and hire individuals that can help achieve them.

You can create your own “dream team” for your own mission to Mars (or to anywhere else) and you can compensate your team members safely and securely through Giggrabbers’ platform. You will also have easy communication with your team through Giggrabbers’ exclusive “gig room” along with payment tools to safely reward your new partners.

If you are on the fence about moving forward with this type of format to achieve your project’s goals or accomplish your dreams, be careful not to give up before taking that first step! Just begin, and nothing is impossible.

 

By Colin Keane

 

 

In the New Year

Happy New Year!

Our new year celebrations commemorate a specific physical occurrence. Namely, the planet Earth has returned to the same spot, relative to the sun, where it was 365 days ago. For a lot of us, our lives seem to have taken a parallel course. It’s been 365 days, and we’re still stuck in the same place. But we needed those days.

Last year, we made resolutions and didn’t keep them. We promised ourselves that we would quit McDonald’s and smoking. We said we’d drink less, but we knew that was a lie. Some of us resolved to be nicer, and on some days we were. We felt like queens and kings for a few seconds, raining down grace on our loyal subjects, until the day someone let you hold the door for them and didn’t say thank you and all that grace went right out the window. And that was on January 18th.

Some of us were supposed to get more exercise, cut down on video games, work less, and save more money. A few of us swore up and down that we would say “no”, more. Some of us should have said “yes”, more. We resolved to be happy. We resolved to be more eloquent and more independent. We resolved to have a bit more resolve. Be more industrious, gregarious, more present, more punctual, more spontaneous, and to walk more.

We were going to practice guitar, bass, piano, drums, violin, trumpet, sitar, and bagpipes more this year. Our credit card/student loan/borrowed time would have been paid down this year, but we splurged one day in April and never looked back. There’s a day marked on your calendar, the day you were to audition for a role in your community theater’s production of Li’l Shop of Horrors, but that day came and went without you noticing, and actually, you stopped turning the pages on the calendar back in June.

We were going to chase our dreams. But our day jobs got in the way. Or we couldn’t manage to juggle family time and our passion. Or we were too tired. Or it occurred to us that we might be too old.

Last year was to be the year that we started our catering business, our event planning service, or started production on the script that’s been steadily gathering dust on top of the bookshelf.

Writing an amazing script wasn’t enough, it turned out. You needed to find a great cast and crew who can work on a shoestring budget. You needed someone who knows the ins and outs of shooting in New York City. You needed an amazing cinematographer and an editor, and eventually, someone to market it. And in the face of all the things you needed and didn’t have, you gave up.

But last year wasn’t a failure. We needed those days. The days when we wondered what we were doing with our lives. The days we felt regret and beat ourselves up for never doing the thing we wanted to do more than anything else. The memories of those days can be transmuted into one of two things: the snacks at an existential pity party or the karmic fuel you need to make your dream a reality, THIS YEAR.

Giggrabbers is an interactive gig and project management portal. It allows users to present their idea, hire the people that will make their big dream a reality, and transfer money, safely and securely. People who have a vision to share with the world no longer have to let their dream languish, while they search high and low for missing puzzle pieces; now the pieces are at your fingertips. And Giggrabbers is the only platform that provides a “gig room”, a convenient way to stay in contact with your Dream Team.

Giggrabbers was built specifically with the success of your life-changing undertaking in mind, and it’s FREE.

The future is now. We have the fuel that we need to push through the difficult and rewarding days ahead, and in Giggrabbers, an invaluable tool that will help us to make this year the year that our dreams came true. Don’t put off for another year, the dream that you could live today. Charge Giggrabbers with what you want, now.

 

By Michael Koene

 

 

The Pursuit of Happiness

In 1943, the noted behavioral psychologist Abraham Maslow released a paper in Psychological Review detailing the things which everyone needs in life to achieve happiness and fulfillment. This framework is known as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

According to Maslow, there are 5 levels of need. Each individual requires certain basic needs like food and clothing to be met before they can begin to focus on the next rung in the hierarchy, safety. Once an individual has achieved some level of safety and security he can begin to spend more time focusing on less tangible needs like social acceptance and the need for love. Those who succeed in fulfilling their social and emotional needs will in turn strive to fulfill the need for self-esteem or respect in their chosen career or life path. Only after the fulfillment of each of these needs will the individual be in the position to reach for the ultimate human need, self-actualization.

While the levels of need near the bottom of the pyramid may be interchangeable at times (as evidenced by anyone who’s ever thrown caution to the wind and jeopardized their own safety in a bid for acceptance), each of these needs must be met before a person can aspire to self-actualization.

What is self-actualization? One who is self-actualized has discovered her/his purpose in society and the world and follows that path without fear or regret. A person who is self-actualized has a bird’s eye view of the world’s events and the events in her/his own life and understands their place and significance within the bigger picture. A person who is self-actualized accepts constructive criticism with grace and curiosity as opposed to fear and defensiveness. Those who have attained self-actualization exude confidence and calm. They also understand that failure doesn’t exist; each perceived failure is an opportunity to learn, as well as a potentially important chapter in a grand story. To the complete human, the world isn’t a scary place at all. Every day is an adventure full of things to learn and solutions to uncover. Put simply, one who is self-actualized has achieved HAPPINESS.

If you’re happy and you know it, slow down bullets!

If you’re reading this on a computer screen from the comfort of your living room, chances are your physiological needs and need for safety are being met to a practical extent. For our purposes, we’ll assume that your social needs are being met as well. You have a place to live, you have ample food and clothing, and you have close friends and family who love you and would love to see you succeed. You have all of these things, yet… something is missing.

Perhaps there’s a dream sleeping inside of you that you’ve neglected for too long. Why has it been neglected?  Maybe you have a “good job.” Maybe pursuing your passion in earnest would mean relocating to a different city, but you’re loathe to move. Why chase an impractical dream now that you have so much to lose? Well, the short answer is: your life-long happiness depends on it.

The poet Langston Hughes explored this dilemma to great effect when he asked, “What happens to a dream deferred?” In the poem, Hughes illustrates perfectly the urgency and the need for us to do everything in our power to make our dreams reality. A dream deferred is akin to a cancer of the soul, destined to shrivel up or explode chaotically with the desire to be. Dreams that emerge from confinement in this way are gnarled and twisted and often bear little resemblance to the bright dreams of youth. These dreams turned nightmares emerge ugly, angry and full of resentment.

Very much like this gentleman…

So, there is a clear connection between the pursuit of one’s dream and the pursuit of happiness. Some might even say they are identical. It is telling that in one of our nation’s bedrock documents, The Declaration of Independence, an implicit distinction is made between “happiness” and “the pursuit of happiness.” Should we be striving for a stagnant, impotent happiness or a happiness that is constantly shifting and changing, evolving, and discovering new things about itself?  We need a happiness that is alive and growing, the antithesis of stagnation. In this light, happiness is not an end in and of itself but rather a life-long journey to be entered upon joyously, without fear. And what better road to travel down in this timeless pursuit than the road that only your dreams can plow? Our dreams are not secret diadems glistening far off in the future. They are vehicles that exist here and now, just waiting for us to drive them off into the never-ending horizon of self-actualization.

Sounds easy, right?

The truth is, following your dream is never easy. Many people seem to think that happiness and hard work are mutually exclusive. In fact, the opposite is true. Your dream will sit and gather dust and rust until the moment you get back behind the wheel and drive it into the future; but whenever that moment arrives, it will be a joyous one.

Whether you want to renovate the home of your dreams, open a record store, or make a movie, the first step to making your big dream a reality is the realization that you will probably need help. The beautiful thing is that there are talented and highly-skilled people all around you who are traveling on their own path to self-actualization. They are production designers, programmers, hair stylists, personal assistants, and writers, all looking for the opportunity to realize their dreams, and in the process, help to realize yours. Giggrabbers is a free, interactive online platform that helps bring your dreams to a reality. You tell the platform what you need, along with a budget that works for you, find and hire the right people you need to get things moving, and pay them securely all on one user-friendly platform. It’s the only platform that provides this much creative space under one roof, specifically with the success of your dream in mind. We can’t let our big ideas whither on the vine. No, we owe it to our family, ourselves, and the world to make them a reality.

Join Giggrabbers today to take one step closer to self-actualization or to help someone else get there. It’s free.

By Michael Koene