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)
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20 Quotes To Encourage You To Believe In Yourself
Self-belief is defined as a person's belief in their ability to complete tasks and to achieve their goals. Without it, success becomes near impossible. If one doesn't have faith in their own abilities, potential, and talent, then how can one honestly expect to ever achieve success, or even a life filled with happiness, prosperity, and fulfillment, for that matter? It's actually quite surprising, saddening, and disappointing, that so many people fail to believe in themselves, and lack that trust in what they are capable of achieving, because within each and every one of us lies a mountain of potential, ability, and talent, just waiting to be unearthed. I talk a lot in my blog entries about the purchasing lottery tickets, and how so many people are happy to invest money into playing lotto each week, despite the fact they have a 1 in 8 million chance of actually winning that division 1 prize, but yet they wont invest money into achieving their own goals, because they perceive that as being a risk. Go figure! I suppose that comes back to laziness, because even despite the odds, they still have that minute chance of winning a significant amount of money, without barely having to lift a finger to do so, whilst on the flip side, working towards achieving their goals takes time, effort, and hard work. What I find interesting about this though is that, not only does it highlight the massive number of lazy people who go about seeking wealth without working hard for it, but also the massive number of people who believe in the odds of 1 in 8 million, over believing in themselves and their own abilities to create their own wealth, off the back of their talent and potential. I know that laziness is one of the driving factors behind why people don't make a concerted effort to pursue their goals, and why they don't strive to design a future enriched with happiness, satisfaction, and prosperity for themselves, but we can't dismiss the two biggest factors and success killers as the reasons either, being fear and doubt.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Inspire You To Take Risks
The pathway to achieving our goals, success, happiness, satisfaction, and prosperity, in life is a damn challenging one. It's extremely rare to achieve such rewards in life without first enduring years of hard work, failures, rejections, setbacks, adversities, and wholehearted commitment. It's also about maintaining those characteristics I often talk about, being perseverance, patience, resilience, drive, and determination, throughout the entire journey. One other characteristic that's of vital importance, is that of courage. Now it's strange to think that courage can in any way be required just to chase after something we desire, because it's not as if we are going about risking our lives to get it, not usually anyway. Courage isn't all about risking our life however, it's also about risking our way of life, our method of survival, our assets, our relationships, our friendships, our finances, our lifestyle, our reputation, and so forth. I spoke yesterday about how so many of us refuse to step out of our little box that is our comfort zone, because we feel in control, we feel knowledgeable, we feel safe, and we feel routined. For some people, stepping out of their comfort zone is easy, and has become natural, whilst for most people though, this takes incredible willpower and yes, even courage. It's unfortunate that most people also lack that willpower and courage to do so, and that again comes back to fear and doubt. It's that fear of doing something awkward and uncomfortable, leading themselves into a position where they lose that control, knowledge, and safety, they are so accustomed to. The truth is though, it's mandatory to step out of our comfort zone and to be taking risks, if we are genuine about achieving our goals, success, happiness, satisfaction, and prosperity, that we desire.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Inspire You To Strive For Excellence
I'm going to start today with a blunt reality check for the majority of people worldwide, and that is you have not achieved the goals you have aspired to achieve in life, or are not in the process of striving for them, evident by the actions you are currently taking, then you are living a life of mediocrity! You are not only wasting your life away, but you are also wasting away your potential! Now this may sound harsh, but unfortunately for you, it's also the truth. What is the point in living life without purpose, without direction, without satisfaction, and without happiness? That's not living whatsoever, that's merely existing! Within each and every one of us lies greatness and excellence, the problem is that very few are prepared to showcase their talent, skill, and potential, all because they live their life in fear and doubt. Most people want to find comfort and solace, to find that particular zone and routine in which they feel knowledgeable, accepted, respected, and in control. Even despite the fact they feel unsatisfied, unhappy, and unfulfilled, and continue to be starved of success and accomplishment in their life, they find safety and reassurance in this zone of comfort and solace. They don't want to disrupt themselves from this comfort and solace, because that means they will need to venture out into the unknown, exposing themselves to risk, to a lack of knowledge, a surrender of control, and the potential for others to be judging them and ridiculing them. It's what we all know as the "comfort zone". Wikipedia describes the comfort zone as "a psychological state in which things feel familiar to a person and they are at ease and (perceive they are) in control of their environment, experiencing low levels of anxiety and stress. In this zone, a steady level of performance is possible." Personally, I would eliminate the detail about experiencing low levels of anxiety and stress, because in living within our comfort zone, we are often constantly feeling unhappy, unsatisfied, and unfulfilled, and that starts to create a real unease and discomfort, which does lead to stress and anxiety. Life will continue to make things uncomfortable for us if we continue to refrain from stepping out of our comfort zone, in order to grow, which actually will only heighten that anxiety and stress. Having said that, when we do step out of our comfort zone, and strive towards achieving our goals, those challenges and adversities do intensify.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Encourage You To Pursue Your Passion
One of the strongest beliefs that society has created is that work is not supposed to be enjoyable, and it's merely a means of generating money legally, in order to survive. How many people do you hear around you who regularly count down the days until the weekend, or they love bitching about how much their job sucks, or they continually refer to how much they are looking forward to retirement? Perhaps you, yourself, are one of these people? It's quite funny, when I think back on my nightclubbing days, to when the DJ would play Blink 182's song "All The Small Things", and the crowd there would yell the words "work sucks" at the top of their voices, whenever that lyric came on. It's a perfect summary of exactly how mainstream society perceives their respective jobs, and the work they do. I've mentioned this statistic a lot in my blog entries, but nearly 9 out of every 10 workers in the world, actually hate or dislike their job or business. Yep, so basically nearly 9 out of 10 people are merely living for the weekend, annual leave, and retirement, because everything else around these three times, actually sucks. Considering that one third of the time between the ages of 18 and 65 is spent working in a job or a business, that also means that nearly 9 out of every 10 people spend one third of these 47 years feeling unhappy and miserable. That's a damn huge amount of time to be wasting away life feeling sad, unhappy, and miserable, all because of a job or a business. So then it comes back to "well what the hell are we meant to do about it, because we need an income after all?". There is something else I mention quite a lot of in my blog entries also, and they are three words that read "pursue your passion", and it's these three words that actually answer the above question.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Lead You Towards True Maturity
Many people believe that maturity is nothing more than the transition from adolescence to adulthood, or perhaps the time in which we reach seniority. Many people will also use the word against someone else, when they believe that particular individual is behaving in a childish manner, as their actions, reactions, or language, is deemed to be at the level of a minor, and lacking in sophistication, sensibility, and practicality. Maturity is defined as being "fully developed physically, fully grown, and having reached a stage of mental or emotional development characteristic of an adult." Personally, I believe the definition is very grey, because it allows anyone to draw their own conclusion to exactly what maturity is. There's no set age mentioned, nor is there an exact level we can truly determine the mental or emotional development characteristic of an adult has been reached. So how do we know when we have matured as a person, or how do we know when we have reached maturity itself? Let's hone in on two particular words in that definition to begin with, them being "fully grown". Straight away, many of us would automatically think that being fully grown is when we have reached our maximum height. We simply can't grow any taller, therefore we believe we are fully grown. The first component to the definition though, which states "fully developed physically", refers to the physical sense of the definition, and then it refers to growth thereafter. As we can see, "fully developed physically" doesn't complete the full definition. Our physical development, which includes our height, is only one aspect of maturity. Growth relates to all components of the body, and when we think of the body, in typical human fashion, we naturally think of the physical side of it, whilst totally forgetting that there is a mental component to the body also, being our mind and brain. One thing is for sure, walking out those school or college gates for the last time, doesn't mean we are walking out educated, wise, knowledgeable, and mature, by any means. In fact, the day we take that step out of our school education days, becomes the day we actually begin our true education in life, being life itself.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Help You Thrive From Failure
That dreaded "F" word that people are so fearful and scared of; failure! The thought of failing sends waves of discomfort and concern through the minds of so many individuals worldwide, but the big question is why? Why is failure deemed to be so terrible? I don't want to completely sugar coat failure though, because I know full well that it's usually unpleasant, demoralizing, and heartbreaking, but on the flip side, it's also not the end of the world. We want to be successful, we want to thrive, we want to prosper, and we want to accomplish the various tasks and actions set before us, but we also need to face facts that not on every occasion are we going to succeed, especially not the first time around. Many of my blog entries focus around our goals and aspirations, and that's exactly what I want to focus on again today, regarding failure and success. The road to achieving our goals is a journey in itself. Let's start right at the beginning of this journey. We start by identifying exactly what we want to achieve, what we deem as success in our future, and what will undoubtedly bring us great satisfaction and happiness, whilst even achieving our purpose in life. We need to be clear and concise on exactly what this goal is, and we also should be setting ourselves a goal that is life transforming. Once we have that clarity, and a powerful reason as to why that goal is so important for us to achieve, that's when the action begins. Now some of us may be completely naïve when it comes to the difficulty of the journey, and we underestimate just how challenging it really is. The greater the reward, the greater the challenges! This journey often takes a handful of years also, so we need to enter it with extreme patience and understanding. The journey is then riddled with challenges, setbacks, rejections, adversities, and of course, failures. We trial so many actions that we believe would bring about success, only to witness them fail, and with each failure, the test becomes greater on our resilience and perseverance. Only those who dare to persevere and remain resilient, go on to achieve success, and in order to go on and achieve this success, it means they need to continually conquer and overcome failure. They never allow failure to defeat them, nor allow failure to become finality.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Help Inject You With Willpower
Willpower is having a strong resistance against impulses, temptations, and enticements, whilst having the motivation and determination to do something, or to complete a task. I think we need to be honest and admit, that as human beings, we would much prefer to be engaging in activities that are stress free, enjoyable, leisurely, and effortless, than those that push our bodies to the limit, are energy sapping, are tedious, or that require effort. I mean, how nice is it to be staying in bed and sleeping for a bit longer, or resting on the couch scrolling through social media, or perhaps sitting back to watch some television or Netflix, or heading out for a casual drinking session with our mates? Perhaps when it comes to enticement, temptation, and impulse, we may talk about the lure of junk food, and how much nicer those delicious cakes, those yummy McDonalds meals, those scrumptious ice creams, and those savory chips are, in comparison to having to force down the likes of peas, beans, and other vegetables, or the unsatisfying consumption of various fruits? Temptation is not an easy thing to resist, in any aspect of life. Right in front of us, we have something that we know would taste so much nicer, or would be great to experience, or would be much more enjoyable to do, or would deliver us a boost of happiness and satisfaction, yet we also know that it's bad for us, or the wrong thing to do. Because of the attractiveness of this temptation, too often, we become its victim. I think of relationships, and how many of us are in a steady and decent relationship, but we encounter a situation where we meet a very attractive, even flirtatious, person who entices us to get intimate with them. Sadly, the temptation of this person defeats us to the point we end up cheating on our partner. Because of that excitement of experiencing something different, and someone different, our resistance fails us all too often, and as a result, we end up losing our partner, who is truly faithful, dedicated, supportive, and loving towards us. Our lack of willpower in resisting the temptation costs us our relationship.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Motivate Us To Take Action
Wishing, praying, hoping, yearning, and dreaming; five things we can never be accused of not doing enough, as humans. In fact, when it comes to achieving our goals and the future we long for, we've got these five things down pat. Although most people lack real structure, clarity, and solidity in their goals, it's fair to say that people at least have a fairly clear picture of how they envision their life would be if they were completely happy, satisfied, and successful. It's sad that most people place money as the centre of their goals, but it's an unfortunate fact that we do live in a world dominated by greed and selfishness. What's also sad and unfortunate is that the majority of people also invest their time into wishing, praying, hoping, yearning, and dreaming, but yet they invest no time into turning these thoughts of what they desire, into reality. It's the good old saying "all talk, no action". You will always hear people constantly go on about how they wish for this, and how they dream of having that, and how they hope they can achieve such and such one day, and how they pray to become a millionaire. Not only do these type of people invest so much time into wishing, praying, hoping, yearning, and dreaming, but they also invest so much time into complaining, whinging, ranting, and playing the victim in life also. They do so because all their wishes, dreams, and the like, never seem to come to fruition, and naturally, it agitates, annoys, and frustrates them. Therefore, the way they vent is to whinge and complain to other people, they play the victim of their circumstances, placing blame on everyone and everything else but themselves, and they even take their anger and frustration out on others. The truth is, we are solely responsible for achieving our own goals, and the decisions we have made in the past, and continue to make today, have led us to where we are currently.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Help You Remove Toxic People From Your Life
How is it that talking about negative minded, pessimistic, and toxic people, can possibly be in any way motivational or inspirational? The truth is, it's not! Such people don't deserve the attention, or the time of day, but in order to have that happiness, satisfaction, motivation, inspiration, fulfillment, success, and prosperity, in our life, we also need to have the awareness of what prevents us from achieving such blessings. It wasn't until I actually had this awareness myself, that I realized, not only about the number of toxic people that I was surrounding myself with, but also how destructive they were to my ambitions, mindset, and mental health. From family members, to friends, and even to my now former partner, these individuals were gossiping about me, they were constantly criticizing me for my decisions and actions, they were being pessimistic about my ambitions, they were unsupportive, they were discouraging, they were regularly guilt tripping me, and they were constantly negative minded. These very people that I loved and cared for deeply, and even still do, all trying to label me as being selfish, foolish, and uncaring, all because I am striving to achieve happiness and my goals in life, all because my decisions and actions didn't fit their agenda or they were inconvenient to them. We should never let anyone, no matter who they are, ever discourage us from achieving our goals, or prevent us from striving for happiness, or belittle and criticize us for the decisions we make, and the actions we take, that are from our heart and leading us to the life we desire. Every individual on this planet is responsible for their own happiness and success, and everyone has the right to create a future of their own design, whether that pisses others off or not!
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Inspire Us To Persevere
Let's face it, no one wants to fail at anything! I mean, why would anyone want to feel the disappointment, heartbreak, dejection, loss, and even pain, of having failed at something they were so desperate to achieve success from? I talked yesterday of success, of what actually constitutes it, and how it is defined. Of course, success is viewed differently to each and every one of us, whilst failure is actually viewed in pretty much the same manner. What some constitute as being a failure, others constitute it as being nothing more than opportunity, and a reason to pivot or change. What some people perceive as failure in life, other people see as a blessing. Failure is simply determined by our perception and mindset. Once again, I think we first need to determine what success looks like for us though, and reiterating my views from yesterday, I believe achieving success is when we have achieved happiness and satisfaction in something. Whether that be in our relationship, and the fact that we are truly in love, we are honest, we are faithful, we are supportive, we are committed, we openly communicate, and we compromise, with our partner. If we achieve this, and we are genuinely happy and satisfied in our relationship, to me, that is success. It could be a personal goal, perhaps where we are competing in a sporting event, and we want to win. We may end up not winning, yet we qualify to compete in the first place, and we achieve a personal best, that is still success, and something we should feel proud, happy, and satisfied about, despite the result. It could be in our job, where we truly have a passion for the work we do, and we progress up through the ranks of the company we work for. That is success! It could be our finances, where we are constantly struggling and facing hardship, yet we become proactive in tightening our budget, and we make the effort to research and transition to a different line of work that generates a higher means of income. That is success! Success covers a plethora of different things. Inside ourselves, we know what success looks like, but what's the secret to reaching it?
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Help Drive Us To Succeed
What does it feel like to succeed in life? What does it feel like to achieve our dreams and goals? What does it feel like to accomplish a task or a purpose? What does it feel like to experience achievement? Success is merely defined as "the accomplishment of an aim or purpose, or the attainment of fame, wealth, or social status". There is nothing definitive about exactly what success is though, and the reason being is that success is different to every single one of us. We each have our own definition of what success looks like. Success may be something simple like completing a 30 minute run in the morning, prior to heading off to work. Success may be having the best family life we could envision. Success may be a long lasting loving relationship. Success may be earning a promotion at work. Success may be possessing $1 million worth of wealth in our bank account. Success has no limits or boundaries. It's actually ourselves who define what success is. Personally, I believe success is just another word for happiness. Success naturally generates the emotions and feelings of happiness, joy, satisfaction, and fulfillment, because we have accomplished something, so it's fair to say when we have achieved something that has brought us happiness, that is success. The next question though is what level of success are we happy with? The example above of completing a 30 minute run before work in the morning, I wouldn't class as a high level of success. I would say it's more so something to proud of, in the fact we had the energy and willpower to get off our butt and be exercising. I class it as low level success, because it's an achievement that brings us temporary happiness and satisfaction, rather than ongoing. The happiness, satisfaction, and fulfillment I'm referring to, when it comes to success, is indefinite.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Encourage Us To Think Positively
It's intriguing to note the difference in how various individuals react and respond to times of hardship, adversity, and challenge. Some curl up into a ball, feeling sorry for themselves, and try to hide away from the world. Some opt to whinge and complain about their circumstances, before taking their frustrations and anger out on others. Then there are those who take it in their stride, understanding that life is filled with such adversity, so they go about being proactive, and begin working towards resolving their issues. In telling someone who is facing such circumstances, to keep strong and to think positive, you will find their reaction to us would be on par with how they responded to the actual adversity itself. You will quite often hear the good old "how can I possibly think positive when there is nothing to think positive about right now?". Speaking as someone who has depression, I can sure say I've been guilty of both saying and thinking in such a manner, in the past. When it feels like the world is falling apart around us, and everything seems to be going against us, it's extremely hard but to not think anything but negative thoughts. We feel stressed, we feel angry, we feel anxious, we feel overwhelmed, and we feel extremely worried about the future. Such a circumstance or event, or maybe even a string of circumstances and events, have led us into this dark place of worry, uncertainty, pain, and suffering, and it can often have us feeling like there's no way out. Something has completely turned our world upside down, and the future begins to look grim for us. For someone to then turn around and tell us to keep strong and positive, how can we even do that? We are hurting bad, and yet we are told to think positive. Really? Absolutely! We should always be identifying the positives in life, no matter our circumstances, because there are more positives in our life than we ever give appreciation and acknowledgement for.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
