FOREWORD
What makes you happy? What do you want to achieve in your life? How do you feel about the direction you are on? Are you confident with your choices and pleased with your success every day? Do you aspire to grow and be the best that you can be?
Inside each of us are stored all the moods and feelings endogenous to our human nature as we collect them throughout life. Our brains record everything that happens to us, along with the emotions we feel the moment it occurs. By the manners in which we were raised, the dynamics of the households we grew up in, and all our experiences since our births, our matrices of feelings and emotions develop differently from those of other humans. In that process, we are all the same. Yet because of that process, we are all different. We are all special, unique.
We may not recall what happened in our early years. We may forget about events that led us to moments of great joy or great pain alike. However, these somehow bear on our emotions and our choices as our brains have them on file and are imprinted with our detailed lives’ histories and, more importantly, with the way the chapters of our lives made us feel as they unfolded.
Our beliefs, our tastes, and our attitudes form patterns that distinguish us from one another. We may not always be cognizant of why we react to certain situations in life the way that we do; nevertheless, those reasons exist, finding their roots somewhere in our pasts, stored in our gray matters, conscious or unconscious. Lumped together, personal histories, emotional matrices, and patterns of behavior draw a picture of the human complexity more distinguishable than a sequence of DNA and more unique than the geometry of a snowflake.
No exception to the rules, I had my ups and downs, good days and bad ones, victories and downfalls, laughter and cries, and feelings of elation and sorrow. We all have felt similar emotions, and through life’s cycles of positives and negatives, we experience the same. We are alike, you and I. All of us.
Consequently, if we are the product of our upbringing or the result of our environments, you may wonder, “Is it possible to improve the hands we were dealt?” Furthermore, if we believe that for “different folks, different strokes,” given that we have unique psyches, tastes, and life goals, is there a point to a book with a common formula to achieving greater success and happiness in our lives? The answers are revealed in that we are all gifted with the capacity to develop awareness, guide our actions with free will, and raise our potential. In that, we are all equal.
For some people, success, or great achievement, is credited to a distinct feature they possess known as an X factor. This characteristic is said to be hard to describe mainly because it is deeply tied to the unique temperaments, perspectives, and qualities of these people.
Yet we all have an X factor, without exceptions.
Through the years, I have pondered life’s questions at great length. I observed, studied, and read up on the circumstances that allow us to feel good about ourselves, to grow confident about our choices and goals, and to connect with the world in ways that give our lives purpose. In the process of my research, I learned many valuable things, both from others and through my own experiences. Yet I could never find an information resource that could guide us to be on track with our lives, a source of knowledge that could foster our confidence to fulfill our potentials and experience lasting happiness all at once. Hence, I gathered and distilled my discoveries to develop, with this written collection, such a resource for us all to use.
Our X Factor is on our paths to unleashing our awareness of our environments and ourselves. It is a guide for our actions in fulfilling our lives with greater success and happiness. As we take stock in our lives, we awaken with a sense of urgency to make the most of each day of the one life that we were given. Day after day, we can follow our path, live life to the fullest, grow into the best version of ourselves, and perform at the peak of our potential. On this journey, we develop a sense of purpose and connectedness, rise from the obscure recesses of our mind, and brighten our future and that of those around us.
INTRODUCTION
Our X Factor points us to the resources to live happily and be successful in everything that we do. It supports us in our search for answers about our lives and to gain insight about relationships and situations at work, home, or in the community. It is intended to help us work toward solutions and find the balance and serenity we need to grow, move forward, and achieve our goals with greater purpose and joy every day of our lives.
With a life expectancy of seventy years, each one of us disposes of 25,550 days (opportunities) to achieve something great. Each morning, as we wake up, we tune our compasses in a certain direction, and as a result of our actions, our day culminates as a good, a bad, or an average day. By nighttime, we go to bed feeling light, heavy, or oblivious—moods that, in all likelihood, influence the tone of our dispositions the next day.
To make every day a success, we must first become aware of how we feel. Our attitudes toward people and things, our moods, our ability to feel good and interact with others, and our actions must be in tune with the goals we want to achieve. The objectives covered in part 1 of Our X Factor, “Awareness,” provide us with opportunities to locate where we are currently situated on our life maps and where we actually want to find ourselves. Yet before establishing residence elsewhere, it is important that we acknowledge what is holding us back and what can propel us forward. That requires our awareness.
Like any journey, in life we must accept that each step precedes another. We need a road map that helps us stay the course, fuel that keeps our engines roaring (or purring for those who are more comfortable cruising at a gentler pace), and a compass that indicates the direction in which we are going. Those metaphors are analogous to the objectives of “Making It Happen,” part 2 of the book, which direct us on our chosen path and teach us how to reveal and engage our X factor to maximize our value chain of success and happiness. To steer our lives in a desired direction and achieve results, we are accountable for learning about the controls that guide our lives and responsible for operating them effectively every day. We make it happen.
Finally, if we are determined to take stock in our lives, we need to know how to collect dividends. We need a measure for our success. Some people want to be entrepreneurs or business owners, others choose to pursue corporate careers, some want to be artists or advocates, and others still wish to settle and raise a family. Although these are laudable goals, they do not guarantee happiness, success in life, or daily feelings of joy. In part 3 of Our X Factor, “Making It Count,” the focus turns toward discovering appropriate benchmarks for our success and happiness. Here, the objectives are to learn to discern the things that matter to us, develop behaviors that lead to greater success and happiness, and track our daily progress thereof. In this critical part, we are reminded that we have only so many opportunities (days) left to make good on the single lives we were granted. Let’s make the most of each one and make it count!
This book is not a biography, but it references scenes of people’s lives or stereotypes observed in society. However, much of what inspired me to write Our X Factor stems from my own experiences. Hence, in fairness to you, I wish to introduce myself and provide you some context and background information such that you can distinguish any bias I may have introduced.
This book is not a biography, but it references scenes of people’s lives or stereotypes observed in society. However, much of what inspired me to write Our X Factor stems from my own experiences. Hence, in fairness to you, I wish to introduce myself and provide you some context and background information such that you can distinguish any bias I may have introduced.
(...)
The introduction (biographical part) is continued in the tab ABOUT THE AUTHOR
What makes you happy? What do you want to achieve in your life? How do you feel about the direction you are on? Are you confident with your choices and pleased with your success every day? Do you aspire to grow and be the best that you can be?
Inside each of us are stored all the moods and feelings endogenous to our human nature as we collect them throughout life. Our brains record everything that happens to us, along with the emotions we feel the moment it occurs. By the manners in which we were raised, the dynamics of the households we grew up in, and all our experiences since our births, our matrices of feelings and emotions develop differently from those of other humans. In that process, we are all the same. Yet because of that process, we are all different. We are all special, unique.
We may not recall what happened in our early years. We may forget about events that led us to moments of great joy or great pain alike. However, these somehow bear on our emotions and our choices as our brains have them on file and are imprinted with our detailed lives’ histories and, more importantly, with the way the chapters of our lives made us feel as they unfolded.
Our beliefs, our tastes, and our attitudes form patterns that distinguish us from one another. We may not always be cognizant of why we react to certain situations in life the way that we do; nevertheless, those reasons exist, finding their roots somewhere in our pasts, stored in our gray matters, conscious or unconscious. Lumped together, personal histories, emotional matrices, and patterns of behavior draw a picture of the human complexity more distinguishable than a sequence of DNA and more unique than the geometry of a snowflake.
No exception to the rules, I had my ups and downs, good days and bad ones, victories and downfalls, laughter and cries, and feelings of elation and sorrow. We all have felt similar emotions, and through life’s cycles of positives and negatives, we experience the same. We are alike, you and I. All of us.
Consequently, if we are the product of our upbringing or the result of our environments, you may wonder, “Is it possible to improve the hands we were dealt?” Furthermore, if we believe that for “different folks, different strokes,” given that we have unique psyches, tastes, and life goals, is there a point to a book with a common formula to achieving greater success and happiness in our lives? The answers are revealed in that we are all gifted with the capacity to develop awareness, guide our actions with free will, and raise our potential. In that, we are all equal.
For some people, success, or great achievement, is credited to a distinct feature they possess known as an X factor. This characteristic is said to be hard to describe mainly because it is deeply tied to the unique temperaments, perspectives, and qualities of these people.
Yet we all have an X factor, without exceptions.
Through the years, I have pondered life’s questions at great length. I observed, studied, and read up on the circumstances that allow us to feel good about ourselves, to grow confident about our choices and goals, and to connect with the world in ways that give our lives purpose. In the process of my research, I learned many valuable things, both from others and through my own experiences. Yet I could never find an information resource that could guide us to be on track with our lives, a source of knowledge that could foster our confidence to fulfill our potentials and experience lasting happiness all at once. Hence, I gathered and distilled my discoveries to develop, with this written collection, such a resource for us all to use.
Our X Factor is on our paths to unleashing our awareness of our environments and ourselves. It is a guide for our actions in fulfilling our lives with greater success and happiness. As we take stock in our lives, we awaken with a sense of urgency to make the most of each day of the one life that we were given. Day after day, we can follow our path, live life to the fullest, grow into the best version of ourselves, and perform at the peak of our potential. On this journey, we develop a sense of purpose and connectedness, rise from the obscure recesses of our mind, and brighten our future and that of those around us.
INTRODUCTION
Our X Factor points us to the resources to live happily and be successful in everything that we do. It supports us in our search for answers about our lives and to gain insight about relationships and situations at work, home, or in the community. It is intended to help us work toward solutions and find the balance and serenity we need to grow, move forward, and achieve our goals with greater purpose and joy every day of our lives.
With a life expectancy of seventy years, each one of us disposes of 25,550 days (opportunities) to achieve something great. Each morning, as we wake up, we tune our compasses in a certain direction, and as a result of our actions, our day culminates as a good, a bad, or an average day. By nighttime, we go to bed feeling light, heavy, or oblivious—moods that, in all likelihood, influence the tone of our dispositions the next day.
To make every day a success, we must first become aware of how we feel. Our attitudes toward people and things, our moods, our ability to feel good and interact with others, and our actions must be in tune with the goals we want to achieve. The objectives covered in part 1 of Our X Factor, “Awareness,” provide us with opportunities to locate where we are currently situated on our life maps and where we actually want to find ourselves. Yet before establishing residence elsewhere, it is important that we acknowledge what is holding us back and what can propel us forward. That requires our awareness.
Like any journey, in life we must accept that each step precedes another. We need a road map that helps us stay the course, fuel that keeps our engines roaring (or purring for those who are more comfortable cruising at a gentler pace), and a compass that indicates the direction in which we are going. Those metaphors are analogous to the objectives of “Making It Happen,” part 2 of the book, which direct us on our chosen path and teach us how to reveal and engage our X factor to maximize our value chain of success and happiness. To steer our lives in a desired direction and achieve results, we are accountable for learning about the controls that guide our lives and responsible for operating them effectively every day. We make it happen.
Finally, if we are determined to take stock in our lives, we need to know how to collect dividends. We need a measure for our success. Some people want to be entrepreneurs or business owners, others choose to pursue corporate careers, some want to be artists or advocates, and others still wish to settle and raise a family. Although these are laudable goals, they do not guarantee happiness, success in life, or daily feelings of joy. In part 3 of Our X Factor, “Making It Count,” the focus turns toward discovering appropriate benchmarks for our success and happiness. Here, the objectives are to learn to discern the things that matter to us, develop behaviors that lead to greater success and happiness, and track our daily progress thereof. In this critical part, we are reminded that we have only so many opportunities (days) left to make good on the single lives we were granted. Let’s make the most of each one and make it count!
This book is not a biography, but it references scenes of people’s lives or stereotypes observed in society. However, much of what inspired me to write Our X Factor stems from my own experiences. Hence, in fairness to you, I wish to introduce myself and provide you some context and background information such that you can distinguish any bias I may have introduced.
This book is not a biography, but it references scenes of people’s lives or stereotypes observed in society. However, much of what inspired me to write Our X Factor stems from my own experiences. Hence, in fairness to you, I wish to introduce myself and provide you some context and background information such that you can distinguish any bias I may have introduced.
(...)
The introduction (biographical part) is continued in the tab ABOUT THE AUTHOR