David Stidston
Bio
My name is David Stidston, and I am a single father to my 8-year-old daughter Mia. We live in the beautiful city of Hobart in Tasmania, Australia. I am currently self-employed, working as a freelancer and casually in market research.
Stories (216)
Filter by community
10 Quotes To Remind Us Of Our Obligation To Help Others
Have you ever been through an extremely tough time in your life, one that you perhaps suffered severe financial hardship, or you were maybe overwhelmed with sorrow, or you were maybe struggling with a relationship/marriage breakdown, or you perhaps lost your job, or whatever the situation was, but you really just needed help and support desperately? If you answered no to that question, I think you would have to be kidding yourself. At some, in fact many times in our life, we are confronted with situations and circumstances that totally crush and devastate us, and we would so desperately love someone to reach out a helping hand, show us they care, and be there to support us and help guide us through such tough times. Sadly, many of us haven't had that blessing of receiving help and support when we needed it most, and we had to navigate through it on our own. People may have abandoned us, and left us to our own devices, and although it ultimately made us stronger, that knowledge of how people turned their backs on helping us, still undoubtedly stings us greatly. It perhaps gave us some true perspective, and helped us realize the importance of helping others, prompting us to promise ourselves never to treat people in the same manner, in their time of need. As much as we choose to deny it, we all need help and support at various stages in life, even just to encourage us and provide us with some mental and emotional motivation, just enough to give us an injection of positivity and hope for the future.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
10 Quotes To Encourage Us To Enjoy & Embrace The Journey
For most of us, there are goals in which we so desperately long to achieve in life. We know full well that achieving these goals will provide us with immense happiness, satisfaction, and accomplishment. Even just the thought of succeeding in reaching that goal often excites us and brings a little smirk to our face. We want that glory so much, and we want it now. As much as we want it now though, we also are fully aware that life doesn't work like that. We know that it will either take a miracle to achieve, or it will take forever to achieve, and this deflates us. To go from where we are now, to reaching the destination, which is our goal, is indeed a journey in itself. There's a lot that needs to take place before we can taste that success, and it's always a lot of the mundane, unenjoyable, strenuous, uncomfortable, and challenging, crap that stands in our way. The worst part is, it's very rarely just a few weeks, or even a few months, of this, it's quite often many years, definitely where the genuine life transforming goals are concerned anyway. It's a type of journey I'd compare with flying overseas for a holiday, just on a much longer scaled timeframe. Say the destination is Hawaii for me, for example. I'd have to drive to the airport, lug my suitcase a few hundred meters to the terminal, check the bag in, go through the security screening, wait for about an hour in the terminal staring at my phone, finally board the plane, then wait another 20 minutes for everyone else to board and the security demonstration to finish, then it's up in the air for 90 minutes just to get to Sydney, depart the plane, wait another 15 minutes for my bag to come out on the carousel, make my way to the train station, board the train to the international terminal, wait there for another handful of hours, go through the luggage check in and security stuff again, wait more in the terminal, board another plane, spend another 20 minutes on the tarmac waiting to depart, then spend the next 11 hours on the flight with my legs squashed and cramped, land in Honolulu, wait another 30 minutes at the arrivals/customs hall, collect my luggage, catch a shuttle bus to the hotel, and finally, the destination is reached. Urgh, I'm tired from just writing all of that.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
10 Quotes To Emphasize The Importance Of Our Focus
Okay, so today, I am going to talk about the "F" word. I think it's important we address it because it really does affect us greatly. If we are not careful, any incorrect use of the "F" word may lead us to great devastation, failure, and unhappiness. I'm not talking about the expletive "F" word here though, although that actually isn't exactly beneficial and helpful either, I'm talking about the "F" word that our mindset determines, and that is "focus". Focus is actually linked to another "F" word, which is "feelings", and the reason being is that whatever we focus on tends to determine our feelings. When we focus on negative things, and negative aspects of our life, naturally we are going to feel negative, upset, sad, hurt, and unhappy. It's no different in reverse though. When we focus on positive things, and positive aspects of our life, naturally we are going to feel happy, grateful, joyous, excited, and motivated. Let's be honest, life throws a lot of crap our way, and it's not exactly easy to continually think positive, and focus all on lollipops and rainbows. The problem is, when we start to allow these situations and circumstances to consume us, and we consistently focus on everything that is going wrong, everything we don't have, and everything that isn't going our way, then we are also going to consistently feel unhappy, unsatisfied, miserable, and upset. We begin to start feeling more and more sorry for ourselves, and before long, our life seems as if it just one big disappointment. Our mindset becomes totally influenced by negativity, and due to this, our life follows suit.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
10 Quotes To Help Strengthen You To Overcome Depression
For anyone who knows me personally, they would know I am currently experiencing what has become the toughest time mentally and emotionally for me, in my entire life to date. This isn't the time or place to share the details about why I find myself in such a dark place right now, however I am not afraid to share with you about how I found myself back in a state of severe depression. It is just a tick over 10 years ago now that I first experienced depression. My life was just completely falling apart, at that point in time. My father had died only a couple of years prior, the relationship I was in was making me immensely unhappy, my financial situation was dire, I was isolated away from my friends and my family, I was surrounded by people who were detrimental to me, but the biggest factor of all was that my job was mentally destroying me. It was during this time I considered suicide, on several occasions. I actually planned out exactly how I was going to do it also. As it turned out, someone came into my life that helped and supported me so greatly, during that time, which ended up being the difference between me still being here, or me having followed through with my intentions. That person ended up becoming my wife. Despite the support she gave though, it wasn't up to her to turn my life around and help me rediscover happiness, that was always my responsibility, and this was the first lesson I learnt in overcoming depression. You have to make some bold decisions, and you have to make changes, otherwise nothing does change.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Psyche
10 Quotes To Encourage Us To Avoid Procrastination
We all want to find some sort of certainty and reassurance when it comes to making decisions, especially important ones. At all costs, we want to avoid making a decision that will lead us to failure, financial loss, embarrassment, and unnecessary judgement from others, and that's only natural, as none of these results are pleasant. As a result, we seek solace in the form of procrastination, just to delay rushing into anything that could have that negative impact on us. When we talk about these important decisions in life, ones that can result in a positive life transformation, goal achievement, success, prosperity, and even fulfillment and happiness, pretty much all the time, these decisions come with some form of risk, change, and awkwardness. It leaves us with having to weigh up the pros and cons, but because the human mindset is more reactive and receptive to negativity, due to our first form of instinct being about protecting our method of survival, we more often than not allow the cons to dictate our decision. Having said that, we also don't want to shut the door on that opportunity for a positive life transformation, goal achievement, success, prosperity, and even fulfillment and happiness, so our go to decision is to think about it. We want more time to really look over those pros and cons more carefully, we may want to do some research, we may want to gain advice from others, and we may go on the warpath to seek out more reassurance about proceeding. This would be more than understandable, because we don't want to foolishly rush into anything that is not beneficial for us, or perhaps may be a scam, but there are two issues with procrastination.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
10 Quotes To Encourage You To Remove Toxic People From Your Life
When we think of the word "toxic", we straight away think of something poisonous. Toxic entities can be something chemical, biological, physical, or radiation, any of which have the potential to cause us harm, sickness, disease, or potentially death. Whilst these entities can inflict such damage to us, they aren't the only things on this Earth that are toxic. In fact, we are exposed to toxicity every single day, and many of us aren't even aware of it. We only need to scroll further down on the definition of toxic, to reveal that it's also classed as something that is very harmful or unpleasant in a pervasive or insidious way. It's not hard to put two and two together to realize that this "something", that the definition refers to, that is very harmful or unpleasant in a pervasive or insidious way, is in fact humans themselves. That's correct, humans can indeed be toxic and poisonous, and sadly, many individuals around the world, indeed are. So what constitutes someone to be toxic? Are we perhaps toxic ourselves, and don't even realize it? A toxic person possesses many negative and morally destructive behaviors, characteristics, views, and qualities. They are perhaps abusive, unsupportive, intimidating, controlling, emotion sapping, envious, excessively defensive, unaccountable, gossipers, narcissistic, selfish, needy, intolerant, and pessimistic. You will often find these people love to play the victim in various circumstances and situations, to make themselves the center of attention, in a bid to seek sympathy from others. They never shoulder the responsibility for their actions or their mistakes, instead, they always seek to pass blame and make other people feel guilty instead. They delight in playing with people's emotions, with the intention to inflict some form of harm on them, be it physically or mentally, and then show no signs of remorse in doing so. They prey on the mindset of others, always attempting to manipulate and influence others to believe what they believe, and do what they want them to do. It's all these behaviors, characteristics, views, and qualities, that a toxic person possesses, which can have a devastating effect on our life. The worst part to this though, is that many of these toxic people are our own friends and loved ones.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
10 Quotes To Help Inspire Us To Deliver Excellence
Excellence is defined as possessing the quality of being outstanding, basically having a strong sense of determination to be constantly doing our best. Do we achieve our best every day? Absolutely not. But the quality of excellence isn't about actually achieving our best every day, it's about working hard, consistently at a high standard, with the intention to continually improve and better ourselves. Excellence is about ambition, an attitude of always striving to be better than we were the day prior. Why is excellence so important to us? It's because it determines the level of success we can obtain in life. Excellence can extend to all aspects of our life, be it career, relationships, personality, endeavor, finance, family, spirituality, health, or our goals. There's a key message in some of the quotes today, that I have listed below, when it comes to excellence. Many of these individuals have linked the ability to possess excellence, coming off the back of applying ourselves to something we are passionate about. Many of us aren't committing ourselves to something we are passionate about, and it's exactly where so many of us go wrong in life, especially when it comes to career. Because so many of us just head off to a job each day, not for the enjoyment or satisfaction of the work, but just for the paycheck, we seldom perform at our best, or even go to work with the intention to do our best. We just head there to do the minimum what's required of us, and then get the hell out of there. We don't enjoy the time there one iota, we are constantly thinking about the weekend, holidays, and retirement, and we only apply ourselves just enough for management to believe we should be retained as an employee. That's not excellence in any way, shape, or form, but we don't seem to care, because to most of us, that job is nothing more than an outlet to ensure we have food on the table, a roof over our head, and reassurance that our bills are being paid.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
10 Quotes To Encourage You To Seize Your Opportunities
Are you in a period of life where you feel like you're not getting anywhere, you have no real direction for the future, you're perhaps stuck in a rut, or you're basically unhappy, unsatisfied, and unfulfilled with your life? Do you feel like you never seem to be making much, or any, progression toward your goals? It would be fair to say that most of us feel in such a way. Life feels like it's just passing us by, especially when our work is constantly busy, and consuming much of our time. Then there's our family to look after, and other personal commitments to honor, making our whole life seem like there's never any time left over to be doing something for ourselves. Before we know it, life has passed us by, as we head into our senior years with very little achievement, success, and accomplishment, to speak of. We feel like we have wasted our life. By then, what once were our goals and aspirations, have become nothing more than missed opportunities, leaving us with a hollow feeling of regret. So why is this normality for so many people worldwide? Simple! It's a classic case of not having taken opportunities when they were there. We either seem to completely ignore the opportunities presented to us, because we are too wrapped up in our everyday life, or perhaps we are too blind to recognize the opportunities, or maybe we are too lazy to proceed with the opportunities, or it could be a case of being fearful of seizing the opportunities, because they perhaps involve risk, change, and/or stepping out of our comfort zone. We are solely responsible to blame for failing to take the opportunities when they were there to take, meaning that we are responsible for the unhappiness and dissatisfaction we are experiencing in life, no matter how much we like to pass the blame on other people, or circumstances.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
10 Quotes To Repel Those Trying To Change Or Manipulate Us
Each and every one of us have our own body, our own mind, our own heart, and obviously, our own life. We are in complete control of our attitude, our thoughts, our beliefs, our views, our mindset, our behaviors, our personality, and how we choose to live our life. It's funny though how others will do everything within their power and capability to try and change, control, and manipulate us to live our life to suit their own needs and agenda. The most disappointing aspect to this fact is that those who do try to change, control, and manipulate us, to suit their own needs and agenda, are quite often our own family, partner, friends, and other loved ones. It could be our parents trying to manipulate us to complete a university course, or enter into a career in which isn't our passion. It could be our partner asking us to change who we are, just to suit their needs and please them. It could be our friends emotionally blackmailing us, just so they can find their own enjoyment and satisfaction, by using us. Whatever the scenario, this manipulation and selfish attempt to control how we live our life, is real. If in any way, our decisions and actions inconvenience someone else, or if they wouldn't be decisions and actions that they would make personally, or if we don't have beliefs and opinions that they agree with, they will attempt to change and manipulate us to believe and do what they want. You will find that these people will go to extreme lengths to manipulate and control us, and the most common way to do so, is preying on emotion. They thrive on trying to make us feel guilty for our decisions and actions, perhaps threatening to abandon us, they withdraw their support for us, they even go as far as letting tears flow, so to make us feel bad and have us ultimately give in to their requests. This is classic emotional manipulation, and we need to be aware of it, because if we give in to pleasing others, and allow them to manipulate and control us, we are ultimately sacrificing our happiness and success for the future.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
10 Quotes To Help Us Remain Committed In Our Marriage
It's disturbing, and even upsetting, to think that 1 in every 2 marriages end in divorce nowadays. Granted there are various different circumstances and situations that warrant marriage breakdowns, such as domestic violence and infidelity, but sadly, many result purely from either one, or both partners, simply not wanting to apply themselves to the relationship. They get bored in their relationship, they get lazy, they get selfish, and they get complacent. Relationships always start off with us trying to impress and attract our partner to be, so naturally, we are committed and accountable to both them, and the relationship itself, but as time goes on, continuing to do so becomes a chore. It's like we have this attitude that we've already won them over, so we don't need to apply such effort anymore. As individuals, quite often our needs, goals, and even our mentality and attitude, change over time, so we find that the person we initially said "I do" to, becomes a little different, as indeed we do to them. Much of the time, the direction in which we want life to go in, becomes totally different to that of our partner, so this can create some friction. This friction is formed from three things, a lack of communication, a lack of understanding, and a lack of compromise. The longer we fail to understand and compromise with our partner about eachother's aspirations, combined with a lack of communication, which becomes all too common in so many marriages, it becomes a recipe for disaster. Disagreements increase, tensions escalate, and all of a sudden, a relationship that was once based on love and commitment, becomes riddled with arguments and criticism. All the good qualities, traits, and actions, that our partner possesses, are suddenly replaced with a heap of their negatives, their bad habits, and their inadequacies, in our mind. The fun and enjoyment that was once there, completely dissolves, and is instead replaced with stress, unhappiness, and resentment. Ultimately, people can only suffer through this unhappiness and tension for so long, before they pull the pin on the relationship. All this because of failing to understand, communicate, and compromise.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
10 Quotes To Inspire Us To Persevere
I think, as a human race, our thought process about the journey towards achieving the goals and aspirations we desire, is extremely complacent and naïve. We seem to completely underestimate just how tough, grueling, and challenging, such a journey really is. We have expectations that the journey certainly won't be easy, and we will have to work hard, and face barriers, to achieve success, but we don't seem to fully comprehend just exactly how difficult it will be, or what scale this adversity is really on. We have this impression that after maybe a couple of months, even 6 months, or even a year, that we will start seeing this rapid inclination of progress towards achieving our goal, and that success will be evident, only to fall well below the expectations we set. Often there will be no visual signs of the success we envisioned, nor will there be much in the line of results that suggest that we are nearing accomplishment, and this leaves us extremely disheartened and deflated. All we seem to face are constant setbacks, constant failures, constant criticism from others, constant rejections and constant challenges. It's hard to keep focused and motivated on the ultimate prize we seek, when we are continually faced with these roadblocks, especially when this keeps going on month after month. Most people view these constant challenges and setbacks to be a clear sign that success is just not going to eventuate, that we are fooling ourselves to believe such a dream will come true, and that we are simply wasting our time. So what happens? We give up! The thing is, how can success ever be achieved when we give up? There's no denying that the journey is brutal, and we will often be taking down to great depths of despair, stress, and emotion, but this is nothing more than normality. Any goal and dream, especially when a greater reward is on the line, is always going to take a great deal of patience, resilience, and perseverance. The beauty of the journey, which so many of us completely overlook, is that these challenges and failures are the perfect opportunity for us to learn, grow, and develop, in life. Not weeks, nor months, but several years of hard work, sacrifice, and commitment, is what's needed to achieve success. It's funny, but after a few years without having produced any results, or seeing any evidence of success, quite often, it only needs one action, and one slight adjustment to our action plan, and all of a sudden, the damn wall busts open, and success is created. The problem is, too many of us are impatient, and we want the success fast, without having to work hard, commit, and sacrifice, for it. Life doesn't work that way! Perseverance is the key to success. No matter how dire things become, no matter how bleak the outlook may appear, no matter how far it may seem we are away from accomplishment, we need to just keep going. We need to continually be creative, whilst also being adaptable in making changes to actions that aren't working. We need to continually believe in ourselves, we need to keep visualizing the accomplishment of that goal in our head, we need to keep positive, and we just simply need to remain focused. Let that goal drive you, as you understand in your mind exactly how desperate you really are to achieve it. It should always emotionally push you, and be powerful enough to install resilience within you to continually overcome adversity. Genuine success only comes to those who are willing to keep going, who push through all adversities, who are patient, and who are perseverant and determined to achieve what they desire. Here are 10 quotes to inspire you to never give up, and instead, remain perseverant in the pursuit of your goals.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
10 Quotes To Inspire You To Make Positive Changes
One aspect to the definition of change is to make something different, to alter, or modify. For most people, when it comes to life in general, change generates fear and apprehension. Although many of us, more so the younger generation, are receptive to any form of technology that makes our life more convenient and efficient, many of us prefer just to keep to what we know. It works for us, we have knowledge about it, we feel in control, and we feel no need to change. Basically, whatever offers us comfort, security, and reassurance, we stick to. Overall, we are a very routined species, who each form our own pattern of survival and structure, and if that pattern is anyway disturbed or impacted, or has the potential to be disturbed or impacted, we become concerned and uncomfortable. What if it impacts us financially? How will it inconvenience us? What if we make a fool of ourselves? What if this change leads to failure? What if we won't know what we are doing? Will other people judge us? These are some of the questions that swirl through our head with any potential change in life. What we fail to remember though is that change is progress, and change is growth. We simply can't remain stagnant, and avoid change, because the world is constantly evolving around us. If we decline change, we will simply get left behind. Not all changes are necessarily good, and work out to how we envision, however change is always necessary. Sometimes we need to make several changes, in order to create the outcome we desire. One thing is for sure, we need to continually be making changes, so we too can evolve, learn, mature, and develop. Change enhances the probability for success. I mentioned one aspect to the definition of change at the start, but it's funny that so many of us fear change, when another aspect of the definition states that change is a "new or refreshingly different experience". Why would we fear something refreshing and different? It's all because change drags us out of our comfort zone, but what we don't realize is that when we step out of our comfort zone, and embrace something new and different, that adjustment soon becomes comfortable to us after a while anyway. What we initially feared, regularly ends up being something that enhances our life, that makes our life more efficient, that improves our life, and perhaps makes our life more flexible and convenient. Change is actually exciting, it just totally depends on which mindset you choose to take into it. The simple rule in life is, if you're not happy with certain aspects, situations, or circumstances, in your life, then make some changes. Whether it be you're unhappy in your career, unhappy in your relationship, unhappy with your financial situation, unhappy with your family life, unhappy with your appearance, whatever it may be, if you're unhappy, miserable, or depressed, then do something about it! Things don't just automatically turn around for the better for us, we need to instigate change, through making some decisions, and taking action. These decisions and actions may scare us, they may come with risk, and they may feel uncomfortable, but they are imperative to transforming our situation and circumstances. The question you need to ask yourself is, "is what I'm doing right now bringing me success, happiness, satisfaction, and fulfillment"? If the answer is no, to any aspect of your life, then there's your passport awaiting for you to make changes. Don't fear change, embrace it! Change leads to betterment! Here are 10 quotes to encourage you to identify the various areas in your life that are making you unhappy and depressed, and to inspire you then to make changes, through bold decisions and actions.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
