Why Just Thinking Positive is Not Enough and Why You Must Always Take the Right Action on Time

I am feeling so so sucky right now that I cannot put my sentiments into words. Why is that? Because I just got eliminated from the Selfie Contest running on Steemit these days by @papa-pepper. Aaahhh, I have cried several times since the past 3 hours and I am probably going to cry some more, but eventually I will feel alright. I always do feel better after going through an undesirable experience and I am positive enough to fight back so it is alright if I am upset right now.

I know I may sound extremely silly to many of you right now and many of you may think I am making a mountain out of a molehill and it’s okay if anyone feels that. I am extremely emotional and whenever I am elated or depressed, I express myself a lot and by a lot I actually mean a lot. I was tired of crying on this setback and I feel better writing, and because this is my blog so I decided to do a post on my feelings and most importantly the lesson I learned today. Yes, I learned an incredibly important lesson today which I am going to hold dear to myself for life and one which I am sure will help me become better in every aspect of my life. So here’s what happened, how I feel and what I learned from today.

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The Selfie Contest has been going on for 15 days and I was doing quite fine in it till the 14th day or 14th round as I call it to myself. Today, when I woke up around 7am, I started my routine chores and as I was preparing my son’s lunch for school, I quickly fired up my laptop and checked the selfie requirement for the 14th day. In this round, the participants had to a post a selfie with both fire and water in it. The requirement wasn’t difficult and I knew I could do it so I thought to take one after returning home from dropping my kid off to school and then my morning walk and exercise.

While I was exiting the park I walk and do yoga in, I thought about the selfie contest and came up with a cool idea. I didn’t have the required candles for it but my mother has them so I thought to borrow them from her. When I went home around 9am PST, I dropped the idea of borrowing the candles because I feared it would delay me and decided to take a photo right away. However, I got caught up in other stuff. I again thought about taking a selfie when I had returned home with my son after picking him off from school around 1pm PST, but I got occupied with giving food to him and my husband so that task again slipped out of my mind.

I remembered of it around 6:15pm PST and just as I was about to click a selfie, I checked the remaining time for the round and was so dismayed and shocked to find out that the 15th round had started and my name shone bright in the ‘eliminated participants’ category. I cannot describe how I felt at that time. I felt as if I was losing my sanity. The world started orbiting around me and I swear I couldn’t feel my legs. I am not exaggerating. It is how I feel when I lose something I become really attached to.

I gained some composure and went home because I was at a relative’s house at that time. When I went home, I immediately called my husband and started crying over the phone. He laughed a little but calmed me down and told me to perceive it as a bygone. And yes, he did bring my attention to my biggest mistake- not taking account of the time of the round and not doing that task on time.

I cried for a few minutes but then my son got upset so I quickly cheered up my mood, fed him dinner and put him to bed. I resumed my crying mode when my husband returned home and jumped here and there as I cried. Lol, I am honestly describing everything just the way it happened and I know I am coming off as silly but that’s alright. Not shy anymore of being who I am.

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After about an hour of crying, I started going over my mistakes and found out where I went wrong. When I checked out the post of day 14, I didn’t check the time left to post our selfies. The previous round was a bit longer since @papa-pepper wanted to give more players around the globe a chance to win the quick draw. Somehow I assumed that this round was going to be longer than usual too. Again, I made the mistake of not reading the post word by word.

Since I wasn’t aware of the time left to submit my entry, I miscalculated it and ended up being eliminated from the contest. The other mistake I made was not doing that task on time. I am usually not a procrastinator and always do my important tasks on time but I don’t know how and why I deferred this task and ended up repenting.

The reason I am feeling too bad about losing the contest is because I had made plans for when I’d win the contest and the gorgeous amount of SBD that came with it. Call me silly again but all of us do think ahead of time and if we see money coming from anywhere, we do make plans about how to use it. So I had planned to buy a geyser for my home so I could easily have access to warm water in the winters. Currently, I boil water to have access to warm water when the weather is cold and it has been like that for the past 15 years of my life so I am used to it but convenience is always nice. Also, since my sister who is settled and married in the U.S. is planning on visiting us December this year and I plan to host her and her husband so it would have been nice to have a water geyser then.

Moreover, I wanted to give a certain amount of that money to a lady I know who isn’t financially sound and has had a heart surgery recently. I couldn’t help her at the time of the surgery and have been feeling bad about it so I wished to give some money to her. Other than that I wanted to go on a little vacation my siblings and I have been planning for when my sister and her husband visit us. It has been about 10 years since I went on a vacation so that would have been nice.

When I lost that contest, all these plans shattered instantly. It is natural to feel hurt and upset when your plans shatter and when you cannot see yourself doing things you imagined to do so that’s what upset me the most. That being said, I am extremely happy and calm right now because this one experience has taught me sooo many lessons and I will forever be grateful for it.

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The Lessons I Learned
The very first lesson that I learned from this experience was that it is fantastic to be positive and completely believe that you will achieve something but it is more important to take meaningful action that complements your positive beliefs so you can actually yield the desired results.

In my case, I was quite hopeful, in fact I believed I’d win it and I was so sure of it that I forgot to take the right action on time. This is what many of us do in our actual lives. We keep thinking of winning and doing great but sometimes we become so involved in our thoughts that we forget to take the right, meaningful action and that too on time.

So this experience made me realize that I need to be positive for sure to achieve my goals in life, but I also need to keep taking consistent action. For instance, my happiness related goal is to enjoy each moment with my loved ones and live in the moment, so for that to happen, I need to keep taking action consistently too. I cannot just think of being happy and do nothing. Similarly, I plan to become a motivational speaker and a recognized writer and for that to happen, I just cannot visualize myself doing that. I need to get to action as well.

Another important thing that I learned from the experience is to pay full attention to the different rules, information and any important element involved in the fulfillment of your goal. Whatever it is that you wish to achieve, you must pay full attention to everything related to it. You must not perceive any element as trivial and ignore it because it may end up being the cause of your loss.

I also learned that taking action on time is extremely important. I always make sure to do my important tasks on time but sometimes I procrastinate as well. If I really want to achieve my professional and personal goals in life, I need to start being more focused and productive.

In addition, I also learned to be more grateful, accountable and mindful of the present. When I found out I lost, I felt like blaming everyone around me for that setback. Lol, I told you I am overly sentimental. However, I didn’t do that. I tried blaming Steemit for some time but that didn’t help. I tried focusing on the negatives in life and that didn’t help either. I am quite a grateful person but in upsetting times, I tend to ignore my blessings. However, somehow I recalled of the #gratefulvibes curriculum started by @paradise-found and thought to think of my blessings. Honestly, in about 2 minutes, I was smiling and feeling much better than before.

From this day onwards, whenever I face a setback I am going to instantly thank the universe for that experience and think of my blessings quickly so I can return to my senses and make most of the present.

I also learned to be more accountable for my actions and to focus on the present instead of lamenting on the past. Now I am thinking of ways to earn all the money I need to fulfill the plans I stated earlier so I can have a water geyser, help that lady, go on a vacation with my family and keep some savings aside for my son. I am more focused than before on the present and am going to make the best use of it. This is how I am feeling now :)

So this one simple contest and the loss I just faced taught me so many lessons that I am now more grateful for the loss than I was a few hours back. Yayy, I am back to my sane and positive self and going to work harder than before. Wish me luck and thank you oh-so-very much for bearing with this exceptionally long post.

Before I forget, now that I am no longer a part of the Selfie Contest, I am rooting for the following players and want any of them to win it:
• @ecoinstant and @ecoinstante- I have been in touch with @ecoinstant for a while and have found him to be one of the most amazing and inspirational people ever. @ecoinstate is his wife and I wish her lots of luck too.
• @topkpop- Jenny is an absolute angel. She is helpful and extremely cool and I really wish for her to win and get all the happiness in the world.
• @tattoedjay- This man is brilliant and so is Bahbara and I would love to see them both win the contest.
• @mariannewest- She is a gem of a person and talking to her always brighten me up so I want her to win too.

There cannot be four winners but I cannot choose any one of these 4 brilliant people so whoever of them wins, I’ll feel as if I won. And even though I am out of the contest, I will still be visiting the daily challenges and interacting with people cos I enjoyed a lot doing that. 

Before finishing off this post, please please don’t think of this post as a means to earn sympathies in any way. I love expressing myself and Steemit has given me that platform so I chose it to be open about how I feel so this post is just about the lessons I learned and not any means to get any sort of favors.

Love and light (stole this beautiful signature from @ecoinstant),

Sharoon.

If you wish to read some amazing content, head over to the @ecotrain.