Tag Archives: goal habits

Dedication Rewarded

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Having trouble sticking with your goals?

Sorry, no more excuses!

Gac Filipaj, a 52-year-old immigrant, came to the U.S. from war-torn Yugoslavia in 1992 barely speaking a word of English. He garnered a job as a janitor at Columbia University in New York City, a job that allowed him to earn enough money to send needed funds back to his family in the former Yugoslavia. Oh, and so that he could achieve a goal, by hopefully taking advantage of the school’s tuition-exemption benefit program that allows employees to enroll in classes for free …after he learned to speak English, of course.

After entering Columbia’s open-enrollment School of General Studies in 2000, having spent seven years first learning our language, he chose to major in the classics, where he would also have to learn ancient Greek and Latin to graduate. He attended classes at Columbia in the morning and worked his cleaning job at Columbia in the evening, often until 11 p.m. at night.

After Sunday, May 13, 2012, Columbia University won’t just be his employer, it will also be his alma mater. He will be an Ivy League graduate, with a degree in the Classics from Columbia University. A degree he earned “with honors.”

The accomplishment has not gone unnoticed by the deans of Columbia. “The key is he was in class with every other undergraduate at Columbia and competing with them,” Professor Peter Awn, dean of the School of General Studies, told the TV station. Filipaj told New York’s Daily News that he grew accustomed to seeing the surprised faces of his classmates as they came across him sweeping floors in the hallways of the school.

And after getting such a fancy degree, he remains focused on education. “I want to try, if I can, to get my master’s,” he told CBS New York. “I’d rather clean bathrooms two or three more years and get the master’s than get a lot more money and get a better job and stuff like that.”

An ivy league diploma may not be your goal, but are you employing the same amount of discipline, drive, determination, dedication, and stick-to-itiveness to achieve your goals as Gac Filipaj did to achieve his? It’s never too late to get started now. And the rewards can sometimes be …life altering.

Congratulations, Mr. Gac Filipaj, A.B.

Click HERE to see the inspiring MSNBC piece depicted above.
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Enjoy today.
Achieve today.
Tomorrow is promised to no one!

Related articles

Discipline

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Goal Achievement Quote 1/7/12

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“Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to cut all sources of retreat. Only by doing so can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win that is essential to success.” —Napoleon Hill

Enjoy today.
Achieve today.
Tomorrow is promised to no one!

Goal Achievement Quote 1/6/12

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“The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.” —Denis Waitley

Enjoy today.
Achieve today.
Tomorrow is promised to no one!

Goal Achievement Quote 1/5/12

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“When you develop habits that guide you to goal achievement, you’ll be joining the ranks of the successful. Goal habits are success habits. When you set and achieve your goals, you are defining and achieving success.
—Paul Mark Sutherland

Enjoy today.
Achieve today.
Tomorrow is promised to no one!

*Would You Still Set Goals If You Were Dying?

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If you knew you were going to die in one month, would you still set goals? How about six months? Would you still pursue your already established goals? Would there be goals that you would regret not having already achieved? Or, would there just be a list of last minute tasks and sad goodbyes?

One of the greatest catalysts for conquering goal achievement inertia is the emotional acknowledgment of our own mortality. Intellectually, we already acknowledge our mortality. We are all quite aware that there is no one alive who is not going to die sooner or later, including, sadly, ourself. But, the emotional acceptance that our life might end sooner than we care to think about…well, that’s just not something we care to think about.

Here is the beginning of an article written by Bronnie Ware, an Australian musician who worked with the dying for many years. This short article might help you answer some of the above questions.

“For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.

 People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learnt never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.

 When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common…”

You can read the rest of Bronnie’s article HERE, on her blog, and I recommend you do.

BTW, how do you know that you aren’t going to die in one month…or two, or six, or twelve? Or even sooner?

Answer; you don’t.

Enjoy today.
Achieve today.
Tomorrow is promised to no one!
 


PS:  If you haven’t seen the movie “The Bucket List,” get it and watch it soon. You’ll get to see how two dying old codgers played by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman meet and journey together on a final excursion with a bucket full of goals in hand. It’s both comical and poignant.