Review on "Creating Your Own Destiny – How to Get Exactly What You Want Out of Life"

Introduction

In the introduction, the author mainly wants to persuade reader to follow this book and become success like he did. There are 8 quotes from famous people to support the author’s idea. He said anyone can take control of his/her life and reach ultimate goal. I don’t really agree with this saying. The reason I disagree is very simple. He, Patrick, overlooks the miner factors around people’s lives. Family situation, unexpected accident, sudden change in life, these are some elements that change our plan or even lead our lives to a completely different route. The author said this book is a record of his dream came true, and I do believe it is. However, not everyone is suitable and successful with the same strategies he used. Therefore, we should adjust some points in this book to the reality we live in.

First Chapter – Visualize Your Dream

Examples are raised just to illustrate that to achieve your dream, first you must know what you want to achieve. I totally agree on that point. I am ashamed that as a university student, I have not yet found what my dream job is. About future, I do not have a clear picture. In other word, I don’t know what I want to do. What’s worse, I don’t even know what I am capable to do. Basically, I just use lazy or tired as excuses to avoid myself from getting into hard work. In respond to this point, the author has shown that creating a plan is the first step to begin. In this chapter, the author said he had lost his football dream. However, he took this chance to dream even bigger and now is living a satisfactory life. It does encourage people to not feeling hopeless when they face deadlock. You can make an end to a dream into a new beginning of another dream. To reach out to your dream, personal mission statement is a good start. You simply write down what you want to be, and put it anywhere obvious for you to see. By doing this, you can be reminded about your goals. Moreover, it is a picture of an ideal person you want to be. When you can visualize your goals, you are more likely to achieve it. However, you have to take action in a daily basis rather than sitting and daydreaming.

Chapter 2 – Set And Prioritize Your Goals

I strongly agree with the author that to become success is to have your goals set. Goals define who you want to be. Moreover, it doesn’t only involved with your ultimate goal; short-term goals are supposed to be set and achieve before reaching out to the final goal. If not, you might be freaked out and even think that your dream is too big for you. Seeing your small goals succeed one-by-one is a motivation for you to move on to the ultimate one. One quote I really like is: Goals are not promises, but commitment. This statement simply shows that setting goals is not just writing down your goal, but real practice to  make change. Another thing is that, goal is purpose and direction. If you only have commitment but leave alone purpose and direction, you probably will not succeed anything big. By answering the 8 life-defining questions, you shall realize your dream. What I think is not appropriate is that, these questions should not answer at a time. It takes long times to consider about what you want to be, to do, to have, where you want to go, what your plan is to make your WANTS come true. The question where to live is not really important in my opinion. Once you have your dream job, you can’t really decide where to live. And if your dream house does not go along with your dream. Another choice is to sit back and let your destiny flow. This idea is only for lazy people. You can’t let your dream die before you actually try to achieve it. It may lead to regretting later in life, and for the rest of your life.

Chapter 3 – Create Your Game Plan

Plan your work and work your plan, a simple statement yet difficult to practice. For me, I am not a good planner. I usually do things without planning; in other word, I hate planning. This is because I find it hard to follow my plan when I am reaching to so many things at a time. Most of the time, I am distracted by things around me and could not focus on achieving one thing at a time. Therefore, I definitely will work on planning in a daily basis. Planning makes me work smarter. What I notice in Cambodian society is that, people do not usually have a long-term plan for their family. Often time, they only think of solving their current problems and practice solutions that hurt their prosperity in long term. Come back to our topic, to create a long term plan, all I need is a calendar book which records my daily goals and activities, even my small triumphs, flexible planning which prioritize tasks, and finally, habits that improve myself. Calendar book records to-do daily task which eventually lead us to achieve our ultimate goal. In other word, it is steps to our destiny. Flexible planning is to help us not to get lost on the way because if there are too many time-consuming tasks, I should do the ones which is the most urgent first. Good habits build up our personalities to the success road. Overall, creating daily plan is like a map to your treasure (ultimate goal). Without getting lost, I sure will spend less time and energy to reach my treasure.

Chapter 5 – Know For Whom You Work

You don’t work for your boss, but your family. The reason why you are trying to earn more income is to support your beloved family. Never hesitate to increase your income for your family. Your boss is you, yourself. Spending time with your children is like an investment. The more time you put in them, the greater the return will be. When you feel like working is tiring for you, just think of your family and your beloved children and you will have the power to accomplish your job. Another thing is that, salary you get is not worth enough but your own business. The most important thing about financing is that the more you earn, the more you spend. Controlling your expense is necessary. If your expense keeps increasing, no matter how much money you earn, the money is never enough for you.

Chapter 6 – Conquer Addictions and Overcome Adversity

Two main things here are addiction and adversity. To reach out to your ultimate goal, you mustn’t let your addiction or bad habits to be in your way. Addiction is very dangerous; it might seems small and you might think it is just nothing. However, it influences your daily life a lot or distracts you from achieving your daily goals which eventually lead to your destiny. Therefore, forbidding yourself from those addictions is very important. It will change your attitude in a daily basis. Adversity is something that will happen in your life despite big or small events. When something bad happens, you can’t just think about the bad effect. What you must do is get out of the self-pity zone and come up with a solution which bring the situation to positive route. Instead of wasting your time feeling depressed, you must cheer up because you have so many other good things in hand. We all know that adversity can’t be controlled, but we can take control after it occurred and make it right again. This reminds me of a saying: When life gives you hundreds of reasons to cry, show life that you have thousands of reasons to smile. Never be defeated by a tiny unpredictable event, you must learn to appreciate what you have and don’t take it for granted.

Chapter 7: Put Your Fear Aside And GO!

When all plans are set, you must go for it and do as what you planned. One more thing hinders you is fear. You may fear that you won’t make it happen and this is stupid. Because you will bury your dream forever and probably regret for the rest of your life. To have courage to move on to your dream, you must first of all believe in yourself. Self-confident is very important. If you don’t have faith in your own self, then who else will ever trust you? Secondly, of course, see the reality between your ability and your dream. There’s a saying: Nothing is impossible. Unless your dream is truly unreachable, you should not hold back your ambition. You only live once! So make it counts. Don’t just day dreaming about your future, taking actual steps is necessary. You won’t be satisfied by just imaging. You don’t want to go on your life and keep blaming yourself for not being able to succeed your dream.

Chapter 8: Knows the One Who Molded You

Before you became who you are now, there must be somebody who inspired you or encouraged you. There could be many people who made the one you are now. Your friends are often the ones. You spend a lot of quality times with them and they often share common interest with you. Your family and you friends involve very much in your growing up. Therefore, you must not forget them. You don’t want to shut down your world and focus on your dream. That way when you eventually make your dream comes true, there won’t be anyone there to share the joy with you. Being lonely is very scary in this world. Imagine when you have all the things, but everybody turns his/her back at you, that would not be a pleasure and all your hard work will suddenly looks stupid. Another point is that, you will need help from others on your way to success, so treat everyone around you nicely. They are the source of your inspiration, courage, and consultant. Moreover, you will want to be the one to inspire others just like those who inspired you. To your children, your youngsters, you will want to be a hero for them to admire.

Chapter 9: Execute Your Plan Daily

When you have your plans set, it's time to execute it daily. Develop good habits a daily basis so that you are aware of what you are going to achieve every second of your every day. The author suggested to minimize your leisure time and dedicate it to dream chasing related activity. This is not making much sense to me . Although we eager to make our dream come true, life without relaxation is simply unbearable. People will be stress out very soon. A better solution is balancing both. People are lazy; that's why we need a planner to remind our goals every time. Willingness to take risk is very important as well. Remember: nothing is impossible. Even impossible itself says I'mpossible. Never afraid f taking risk. Or you will be regret later on about not having gut to try before giving up.

Chapter 10: Develop Your Higher Calling

In this last chapter, the author wants us to contribute something we define as higher calling back to the world. It simply means that after we being success, we should do something to give back to the world. Higher calling is differ from individual. Some of us may not know what our higher calling is yet. It is more than just give away money for those who are in need. You can help improve your family , community or even the world by:

• Spending more time at home with your family
• Volunteering for community service
• Becoming involved in a world-wide "cause"
• Coaching or teaching children
• Donating food to food banks

There are many definitions for the word "success". It depends on us who are the ones to defines it. "If each day of your life represents a sparkle of light, at your life's end, you will have illuminated the world." For me, my definition of success is to live a happy life with my family, my beloved ones, and make the world a better place for the next generation to live in.