In commemoration of the African Union’s Day of the African Child and South Africa’s Youth Day, the Communications Team at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) hosted a youth-led virtual dialogue on 18 June 2025. Under the theme, “Being Young in Africa Today and Co-Creating Solutions,” the event brought together changemakers from across the continent, who are working within the youth space, to reflect on the past, critique the present, and imagine a more just future.

Observed annually on 16 June, South Africa’s Youth Day pays tribute to the 1976 Soweto Uprising, whereby thousands of Black students took to the streets in protest against the poor quality of education they were receiving. The Day of the African Child (DAC), launched by the African Union in 1991, similarly honours those students and now serves as a broader platform to raise awareness on the challenges African children face.

With nearly half of Africa’s population being under the age of 25, this dialogue provided a timely opportunity to centre the voices of young people who, despite facing systemic challenges, continue to lead transformative change across the continent.

The conversation opened with remarks from Ms Danielle Hoffmeester, Project Leader at the IJR, who reflected on her work within the Sustained Dialogues programme. Hoffmeester spoke to the complex emotions many young people navigate, noting that societal expectations often encourage the youth to suppress their feelings. “We are told to swallow our anger, and then wonder why we are choking,” she remarked, adding that such emotions often arise from a deep and sincere longing for a more just future.

Hoffmeester concluded her opening remarks by reflecting on the challenges faced by today’s youth, noting that although “the chains are harder to break,” there remains a strong sense of hope. “There is a hunger to learn, build, and create,” she affirmed.

Our guest speaker, Ms Opal Sibanda, Legal Researcher at the Secretariat of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (African Union), contextualised the significance of the Day of the African Child. She linked the day’s themes to the four areas explored during the dialogue:

Lived Realities of African Youth Today

The first panel discussion featured Ms Fadzai Nyamarebvu, Consultant at AfriEmerg Global, and Mr Ntsika Mzananda, Director at Project Youth SA and a Youth Advisory Board member for Moonshot Pirates. Nyamarebvu reflected on the structural inequalities across African countries, noting that while many nations have progressive policies on paper, there is little implementation of them in practice.

Mzananda continued the conversation, highlighting how the legacy of apartheid and existing socio-economic disparities shape the aspirations of South African youth today. He also shared compelling examples of youth-led innovation and the struggles youth continue to face. He noted how identity, particularly Black Consciousness, plays a critical role in shaping youth activism today, which was an ideal segue into the next theme.

Activism, Legacy and Identity

This segment featured Ms Stacey Fru, student, child author, rights activist, and founder of the Stacey Fru Foundation, who spoke about how youth activism has evolved. “Today’s activism is more creative,” she noted, attributing it to the rise of social media and digital platforms. Fru concluded her insights with a powerful statement; “youth are not just the future, they are the present.”

Touching on activism, legacy and identity, Ms Rosevitha Ndumbu, Research Associate at the Institute of Public Policy Research (Namibia) and Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI alumna), reflected on how youth across the continent have long resisted exclusion, expressing their anger and frustration at their “futures are being shaped without them.”

Mental Health and Wellbeing

The dialogue then turned to the importance of youth mental health and wellbeing. Ms Tamande Liabunya, Executive Director of Ukuthula Malawi, and Mr Washington Mumbamarwo, Executive Director of the Youth End Period Poverty Movement, highlighted the barriers youth face in accessing adequate mental and general healthcare. Liabunya, in particular, emphasised the impact of language and cultural stigma in a lack of diagnosis and misdiagnosing of mental health challenges in the African context.

Pan-African Youth Solidarity

Closing off the conversation, Ms Darla Rudakubana, a communications specialist, led an engaging discussion on the power of storytelling as a tool for solidarity and social change. She encouraged youth across the continent to share their stories and use their voices to connect movements and amplify impact.

While the event offered rich and inspiring dialogue, it became clear that more time was needed to fully unpack the issues raised. The stories and solutions shared reaffirmed that young people across Africa are not waiting to be invited to the table, they are already creating their own.

At the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, we remain committed to creating platforms like these, where young people are not simply participants but leaders, decision-makers, and visionaries shaping a just and peaceful Africa.

The post IJR Youth Dialogue June 2025 appeared first on SA Youth Dialogue.

Napoleon Hill’s 13 principles of success present a philosophy of achievement that is intended to be mulled over. This Think and Grow Rich summary will look at each of the 13 principles in turn. They are as follows:

1. Desire
2. Faith
3. Auto-suggestion
4. Specialized Knowledge
5. Imagination
6. Organized Planning
7. Decision
8. Persistence
9. The Power of the Master Mind
10. Sex Transmutation
11. The Subconscious Mind
12. The Brain
13. The Sixth Sense

Uniquely philosophical and, at times, veering on spiritual, Think and Grow Rich has become a seminal book for entrepreneurs, CEOs, and individual thinkers alike. By reading the key points from this Think and Grow Rich chapter summary, you’ll learn how to master your subconscious and command your destiny.

1. Desire: The Starting Point of All Achievement

Hill states that the key to success is to define a goal and to pour all of your energy, power, and effort into achieving it. It may take many years before you are successful, but if you hold onto your desire, you will eventually attain what you seek. 

Merely wishing for money will get you nowhere. However, to desire riches by way of an obsessive goal, a meticulous plan, and not accepting failure as an option, you’ll become rich. To help you do so, Hill presents the Think and Grow Rich six6 steps:

1. Decide exactly how much money you wish to make, to the dollar.
2. Determine what you are willing to give to receive this amount of money.
3. Choose a date by which you want to have amassed this amount of money.
4. Create a plan of how to achieve your goal and begin at once, whether you feel ready or not.
5. Write all of the above down in a clear statement.
6. Read this written statement aloud, twice a day – first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Visualize your life as if you already own this amount of money.

While being able to visualize yourself as rich may seem challenging at first, it’s only those individuals who are “money conscious” that become successful. To be money conscious is to see yourself in possession of great wealth before you attain it. You will only become rich if you possess a deep desire for money, and you stop at nothing to get it.

2. Faith: Visualization of and Belief in Attainment of Desire

Faith is a state of mind that you must learn to cultivate. Through repeating affirmations and instructions, a state of faith is created in the subconscious thanks to the process of auto-suggestion. Any impulse of thought that is continuously repeated and entered into the subconscious mind eventually becomes a continuous loop of thought.

However, this can also have negative consequences. In addition to positive thought patterns, we can also enforce negative ones that can result in us believing that we are unworthy, doomed, or a failure. Hill, therefore, argues that it’s our beliefs alone that determine the nature of our subconscious. By repeating affirmations, you can reprogram your mind to visualize and, thus, to feel and believe that your success is guaranteed. 

The mind takes on the nature of the influences that guide it. A positive mind is more fertile to faith, and faith is the starting point for all success. The greatest factor holding you back from success? A lack of self-confidence. Hill suggests this five-fold Think and Grow Rich affirmation exercise to repeat in writing and then learn by memory to increase your self-confidence:

1. Know that you are capable of achieving your goal, and you must promise to be persistent in pursuit of this endeavor.
2. The dominating thoughts of your mind will result in physical action and change your reality. You must, therefore, spend 30 minutes each day thinking about the type of person you want to become.
3. For ten minutes each day, focus on increasing your sense of self-confidence.
4. Write down a description of your goal, and don’t stop reaching for it until it’s attained.
5. Come to realize that you cannot have enduring success if you attained it through immoral means. Therefore, make a promise to only engage in a transaction if it benefits all that are involved. A negative attitude towards humanity will never bring you success.

Commit this method to memory, and repeat it aloud once a day to become successful.

3. Auto-Suggestion: The Medium for Influencing the Subconscious Mind

Auto-suggestion is synonymous with self-suggestion. It’s the bridge between the conscious and the subconscious mind. Merely reading words aloud will have no impact. You have to attach emotion to the words. When reciting your affirmations, as laid out in the previous chapter, you must encourage your desire to consume you. Your subconscious will only act upon thoughts that are felt.

Therefore, Hill recommends adding the following to the Think and Grow Rich six steps previously laid out in the chapter on desire:

1. Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed, and repeat aloud your written statement. As you do so, visualize having that money.
2. Repeat this morning and night until you have a clear image in your mind of all the money you wish to make.
3. Place this written statement where you can see it first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Read it until you have committed it to memory. 

4. Specialized Knowledge: Personal Experiences or Observations

There are two types of knowledge: Specialized and general. General knowledge is of little use when attempting to accumulate wealth. Knowledge only generates money when organized and specifically directed to a definite end. To become successful, you must require specific knowledge in the area in which you intend to make your fortune. 

If the amount of knowledge required exceeds your capacities, Hill recommends creating a “Master Mind” group. This group should consist of individuals who have the knowledge you seek and who you can manage to help attain your goal.

5. Imagination: The Workshop of the Mind

Within your imagination is where all plans are created and formed. The only limitation you face depends on how much you develop your imagination. According to Hill, there are two types of imagination: synthetic and creative.

Through synthetic imagination, you reformulate existing concepts, ideas, and plans into new forms. Nothing is created in this form of imagination because it works with existing mental material. Creative imagination is what springs forth from hunches and inspiration. Within it, new ideas are formed. This type of imagination can only be reached when your conscious mind is being stimulated through desire. It’s a muscle that must be trained.

Ideas are the starting point for all fortunes, and they are the product of the imagination. It can be useful to look at some of the most successful companies of all time, such as Coca-Cola, and remind yourself that it once began as a single idea. Indeed, a truly wise salesperson will know that ideas can be traded where tangible merchandise cannot. Nearly all considerable fortunes begin when an individual with a great idea meets an individual who sells ideas. When matched with desire, ideas are unstoppable forces. They are more powerful than the brains that created them. Thus, you must listen, cultivate, and develop a desire to see them through.

6. Organized Planning: The Crystallization of Desire Into Action

To put your plan into action, Hill recommends following these four Think and Grow Rich steps:

1. Ally yourself with a Master Mind group that consists of people who will help you carry out your plan. 
2. However, before assembling the group, be sure to ascertain what it is you can offer each of the members in return for their work.
3. Meet with the group at least twice a week, or more if possible, until a solid plan has been created.
4. Maintain good relations between you and the group at all times.

To obtain your fortune, you will need to collaborate with others. No individual can make it entirely on their own. If your plans fail, go back to the drawing board and keep trying until a plan works. Thomas Edison made 10,000 failed plans before he perfected the incandescent light bulb. His key to success was that he never gave up and kept formulating new plans when the previous ones had failed. To plan intelligently is the key to securing your fortune.

7. Decision: The Mastery of Procrastination

After analyzing the data accrued from interviewing more than 25,000 men and women, Hill came to the conclusion that a lack of decision, e.g., procrastination, was one of the leading causes for failure. The most successful people make decisions quickly and definitely. Those who struggle to make a decision are often easily persuaded by the opinions of others. 

However, Hill states that to be easily persuadable means that you lack desire and, therefore, will not reach your goals. Learn to trust yourself, and if you need information, only get it from trusted sources. Those who make decisions quickly know what they want and how to get it. The world bends to those whose actions and words indicate that they know where they are going. To decide requires courage. It’s only the bold who go on to achieve great fortunes.

8. Persistence: The Sustained Effort Necessary to Induce Faith

Persistence is built upon strength of will. When desire is combined with willpower, little can stop you from reaching your goals. Most give up the minute things get too challenging. To persist in the face of adversity is the only way to advance. 

If you find yourself struggling with a lack of persistence, by putting in some concerted effort, you can overcome this hurdle. How easily you’ll be able to persist depends exclusively on how intense your desire to reach your goals is. Here, Hill suggests reminding yourself of your daily affirmations. Further, if you have carefully assembled your Master Mind group, they can prove beneficial in encouraging you to stay on track. 

Hill puts forward an eight-stage Think and Grow Rich action plan to cultivate persistence. It goes as follows:

1. Definiteness of purpose: Knowing exactly what you want.
2. Desire: Becoming obsessed with amassing your monetary fortune.
3. Self-reliance: Belief that you can follow your plan increases your persistence.
4. Definiteness of plans: Organized, thorough plans guide you forward.
5. Accurate knowledge: Ensuring that your plans are based on fact.
6. Co-operation: Members of your Master Mind can encourage you to persist.
7. Willpower: Concentrating your attention on seeing your plans through to completion.
8. Habit: Persistence is the direct result of habit. What you do daily becomes who you are. By repeatedly acting courageously, fear can be overcome.

9. Power of the Master Mind: The Driving Force

To accumulate money, you must have power. Without power, you cannot put your plans into action. Hill states there are three ways of accumulating power, and they are:

1. Infinite intelligence
2. Accumulated experience
3. Experiment and research

Knowledge is converted into power by organizing it into definite plans. However, knowledge cannot be acquired alone. If your plans are thorough, then they will require the knowledge of others. By using the knowledge of the members of your Master Mind group, you can generate power. Cooperative alliances underpin nearly every great fortune ever amassed. A collection of minds produces results far greater than the sum of their parts.

10. The Mystery of Sex Transmutation: The Tenth Step Towards Riches

The word to “transmute” means to transform one element or form of energy into another. Hill argues that sex is our most primal and powerful drive. So strong is this desire that individuals often put their life and reputation on the line to indulge in it. However, Hill argues that, when this sexual energy is redirected into other pursuits, it can have a far more potent effect. While this takes a significant amount of willpower, he maintains that the effort is worth it.

Nonetheless, Hill is quick to point out that he isn’t advocating that the sexual drive be repressed, it should simply be given alternative outlets that can enrich the mind, body, and soul. A transmuted sexual drive results in phenomenal creative ability. Creative imagination, Hill states, is humankind’s sixth sense. Creativity originates within us, but it isn’t guided by us. All of the best artists become great because they are adept at listening to the “still small voice” that speaks from within. The same can be said of all successful people, artists, and CEOs alike.

11. The Subconscious Mind: The Connecting Link

While you cannot control your subconscious mind, you can suggest it mulls over specific plans, desires, or goals that you wish to achieve. However, the subconscious can only be voluntarily directed through the process of habit. As your subconscious functions 24/7, you must be wary of the types of negative thought patterns and unproductive habits you are feeding into it. You must act to move away from such negative influences and move towards cultivating more positive, desire-driven states of mind.

The subconscious is more receptive to thoughts that come accompanied by an emotion. Hill states that it’s only emotionalized thoughts that translate into action. It is, therefore, worthwhile familiarizing yourself with what constitutes as a negative or a positive emotion. Hill uses the metaphor that emotions attached to thought are like yeast in a loaf of bread; they encourage action, e.g., they make the bread rise. Depending on whether the emotion is positive or negative will result in either a remarkable or disastrous loaf of bread.

12. The Brain: A Broadcasting and Receiving Station for Thought

Hill firmly believed that the brain was capable of picking up the thought vibrations of other brains. However, he put forward that it’s only thoughts that have been “stepped up” to an exceedingly high rate of vibration that carry between minds. Hill argues that if one is engaging in sex transmutation, then their thoughts will vibrate with a greater frequency. 

To operate your mental “broadcasting” abilities to the optimum, Hill suggests that you focus on cultivating your subconscious and your creative imagination thanks to the art of auto-suggestion.

13. The Sixth Sense: The Door to the Temple of Wisdom

Hill believed in an “Infinite Intelligence” that could be tapped into when the subconscious was vibrating at a particularly high, positive frequency. However, he also states that it is possible for the Infinite Intelligence to communicate to an individual without them having cultivated a suitable mental state beforehand. Hill refers to the creative imagination as the sixth sense. What people call “flashes of inspiration,” or “hunches,” Hill believed were messages from the Infinite Intelligence. The sixth sense is, therefore, a combination of the mental and the spiritual.

When you learn to listen to the messages of your sixth sense, you will know when to avoid dangers and when to seize opportunities. It acts as a guardian angel of sorts. Hill argues that if you have accepted the previous chapters of his book, you will now be ready to accept this notion of the sixth sense without skepticism. The ability to listen to this power happens gradually while the other principles are being realized.

How to Outwit the Six Ghosts of Fear

Before you are ready to integrate the philosophy laid out in this book, Hill states that you must ensure that you aren’t being held back by any of what he refers to as “the six basic fears.” The six fears are as follows:

1. The fear of poverty, embodied by indifference, indecision, doubt, worry, over-caution, and procrastination.
2. The fear of criticism, embodied by self-consciousness, lack of poise, an inferiority complex, extravagance, lack of initiative, and lack of ambition.
3. The fear of ill health, embodied by hypochondria, poor exercise, susceptibility, self-coddling, and intemperance.
4. The fear of the loss of someone’s love, embodied by jealousy, fault finding, and gambling.
5. The fear of old age, embodied by slowing down and developing an inferiority complex around the age of 40, referring to oneself apologetically as “being old,” and killing off the habits of initiative, imagination, and self-reliance.
6. The fear of death, embodied by focusing on dying rather than living, lack of purpose, and lack of suitable occupation.

Hill states that all fears can be grouped into one of these headings. As all emotionalized thoughts translate into physical action, all thoughts attached to fear can never result in acts of significant financial gain. However, fear is nothing but a state of mind, and the mind can be directed. Therefore, you can control your fate by controlling your mind and, thus, overcome fear and accumulate all of your desired riches.

Source

The post What Are the 13 Principles of Think and Grow Rich? appeared first on SA Youth Dialogue.

1. Scrap the permission-based mindset.

Waiting for permission is the fastest way to surrender your personal freedom and autonomy. You don’t need someone to say something is okay. If you know it’s right, based on examination and reflection, then go and do it.

You don’t need someone’s accreditation to launch into the professional world. Build a pitch deck and a value prop and start putting yourself in front of businesses. Don’t wait for someone to hire you to start working for them. If you’re excited about what they do, start creating value for free.

Waiting for other people’s okay is a surrender of your own power. It puts them in the driver’s seat, not you. The fastest way to build the life you want is to go and start building it, regardless of what anyone else has to say about it.

2. Don’t do things just because someone tells you you should.

Do things because you sincerely believe in them.

I seriously considered going to college because people told me I should. In the end, I realized I sincerely believed in forging my own path and being successful without college, and that was the conviction upon which I made my decision.

Don’t go to college just because society tells you to go to college, or because your peers or parents tell you it’s necessary. Don’t follow a standard career track just because someone told you it’s the fast track to success.

3. Understand what’s valuable and what isn’t.

Value is the underlying driving force in society — it’s what all human systems are built upon. Throughout human history, the foundation of networks has been exchange — the trade of goods and services, i.e. value.

To be a free, competent entity within this human system (in which we’re all living), you must understand value. Study what’s valuable — to employers, to businesses, to consumers, to your peers, to the people you want the freedom to interact with. Learn it. Internalize it. Learn how to shape your work around it.

If you can communicate in terms of value, and if you can provide value to people, you can create opportunities for yourself anywhere.

4. Make yourself a valuable entity.

This is a basic principle of economics — the more valuable something is, the more people desire it.

Don’t just understand what’s valuable to people — become valuable. Do things that increase your own professional and personal worth. Learn skills that increase your earning potential, and increase the range of problems you’re able to solve. Broadcast that worth by developing a website, a blog, or a podcast and building social proof. Learn how to build interesting things. Learn how to make systems more efficient. Develop assets you can use to boost your innate value.

5. Take ownership of your actions and your decisions.

With freedom comes responsibility. In every choice you make, you must both reap the rewards and own the consequences. If you mess up, say so. If you’re in a situation that you don’t like, don’t play the victim card. You aren’t a victim. You’re a free agent that made the decisions that brought you here, and even if you didn’t choose the outcome, you’re free to make choices in how you move forward.

6. Hold yourself accountable. Don’t let yourself make excuses.

It’s very easy to make excuses to other people when you mess something up or make a poor decision. It’s also easy to make an excuse to yourself.

Some days you’re tired, and you have two options before you: you can watch Netflix until you fall asleep, or you can write a blog post before you go to bed. You choose Netflix. You feel guilty, later, when you’re getting ready for bed without having written your blog post. You can make excuses to yourself as you turn out the light — “I was tired,” “I didn’t have any good ideas,” “I needed a creative recharge,” etc. These might all be valid points — balance is important — but you’re letting yourself off the hook when you brush over that guilty feeling without examining it first. You’re enabling your own passivity by rationalizing it.

This is true in both the macro and the micro — big life decisions and little, everyday things.

Excuses pave and polish the path to mediocrity. Eradicate them.

7. Don’t accept failure as a possibility.

When you’re not waiting for permission to do things and you’re taking responsibility for your actions, there are going to be bumps in the road. You have to be resilient.

In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill has a passage about the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In that passage, he makes a very poignant point — those 56 men were signing not only a proclamation of freedom, but a document that could very well have become their death warrant. If the British were victorious and their revolution failed, each one of those men very likely would have been hanged for treason.

In their minds, there was no possibility of failure. The only viable option was success, and they would not — now could not — give up until they’d obtained it.

The road to freedom — and to success of any kind — is messy. There will be many failures along the way, and many false endings that result in defeat. If you want to take autonomy in your decisions and your life path, you must not accept failure as a possible outcome. Failure is a step in the process, not a destination. The only possibility is success.

8. Be relentless in your pursuit of self-betterment.

Victory does not come to the passive. It is granted to those who fought the hardest — and the smartest. Track your wins. Examine your losses.

Be intentional about where you’re going — set regular goals — but also trust the process. Take opportunities that make you better, even if they don’t lead you directly to where you want to end up. Have clear intentions for growth, but know that those intentions can be fulfilled in unexpected places.

9. Know yourself.

Out of all of these points, this may be the hardest. It certainly runs deepest. To truly have freedom, you must understand why you make the decisions that you do. We’re the slaves of our own minds and our own habits. We make choices all the time that seem involuntary. We often don’t know why we end up in the relationships we do, make the mistakes we do, have the mental blocks we do.Practice constant self-reflection and examination. Ask yourself ‘why’ — why do I value this? Where does this value come from? What do I fear?

Knowledge is power. The better you know yourself, the better you can take control of your actions. Rather than being reactive, you can become proactive.

10. Don’t rest on your laurels. Freedom is not only hard-earned, it’s hard-kept.

We live in a world filled with people who are more than happy to take your freedom away if you get tired of holding it — systems that allow you to follow the conveyor belt without ever having to make a critical decision more difficult than whether you want to go to state school or a liberal arts college. Maintaining your personal freedom and autonomy is much harder. It’s a constant upward path. Audit your successes the same way you audit your failures — examine them, see what you can learn and apply in the future, then file all of that away and keep moving forward.

Source

The post 10 Ways to Develop Personal Freedom as a Young Adult appeared first on SA Youth Dialogue.

A positive mental attitude is a ‘must’ for all who wish to make life pay off on their own terms. Nothing great was ever achieved without a positive mental attitude.
 
Recognize that your mental attitude is the one and only thing over which you, and you alone, have complete control, and exercise the privilege of taking possession of and directing your mind with a positive mental attitude.
 
Realize, and prove to your own satisfaction, that every adversity, failure, defeat, sorrow and unpleasant circumstance, whether of your own making or otherwise, carries with it the seed of an equivalent benefit which may be transmuted into a blessing of great proportions.
 
Learn to close the door of your mind on all the failures and unpleasant circumstances of the past, and clear your mind so that it can operate in a positive mental attitude.
 
Find out what you want most in life and begin getting it, right where you now stand, by helping others to acquire similar benefits, thus putting into action that magic success principle: the habit of going the extra mile.
 
Select the person who, in your opinion, is the finest person in all the world, past or present, and make that person your pacemaker for the remainder of your life, emulating him or her in every possible way.
 
Determine how great a supply of material riches you require, set up a plan for acquiring it, and then adopt the principle of not too much, not too little by which to govern your future ambition for material things. Greed for an overabundance of material things has destroyed more people
than any other cause.
 
Form the habit of saying or doing something every day which will make another person, or persons feel better. You can do this by a phone call, a kind word in passing, dropping a postal card, or by doing some other kindness for another. A good inspirational book placed in the hand of one who needs it could, for example, work wonders in the life of that person.

Source

The post Positive Mental Attitude by Napoleon Hill appeared first on SA Youth Dialogue.

Procrastination – the action of delaying or postponing something: your first tip is to avoid procrastination.

Who would have thought that after decades of struggle with procrastination, the dictionary, of all places, would hold the solution.

Avoid procrastination. So elegant in its simplicity.

While we’re here, let’s make sure obese people avoid overeating, depressed people avoid apathy, and someone please tell beached whales that they should avoid being out of the ocean.

No, “avoid procrastination” is only good advice for fake procrastinators—those people that are like, “I totally go on Facebook a few times every day at work—I’m such a procrastinator!” The same people that will say to a real procrastinator something like, “Just don’t procrastinate and you’ll be fine.”

The thing that neither the dictionary nor fake procrastinators understand is that for a real procrastinator, procrastination isn’t optional—it’s something they don’t know how to not do.

In college, the sudden unbridled personal freedom was a disaster for me—I did nothing, ever, for any reason. The one exception was that I had to hand in papers from time to time. I would do those the night before, until I realized I could just do them through the night, and I did that until I realized I could actually start them in the early morning on the day they were due. This behavior reached caricature levels when I was unable to start writing my 90-page senior thesis until 72 hours before it was due, an experience that ended with me in the campus doctor’s office learning that lack of blood sugar was the reason my hands had gone numb and curled up against my will. (I did get the thesis in—no, it was not good.)

Even this post took much longer than it should have, because I spent a bunch of hours doing things like seeing this picture sitting on my desktop from a previous post, opening it, looking at it for a long time thinking about how easily he could beat me in a fight, then wondering if he could beat a tiger in a fight, then wondering who would win between a lion and a tiger, and then googling that and reading about it for a while (the tiger would win). I have problems.

To understand why procrastinators procrastinate so much, let’s start by understanding a non-procrastinator’s brain:

Pretty normal, right? Now, let’s look at a procrastinator’s brain:

Notice anything different?

It seems the Rational Decision-Maker in the procrastinator’s brain is coexisting with a pet—the Instant Gratification Monkey.

This would be fine—cute, even—if the Rational Decision-Maker knew the first thing about how to own a monkey. But unfortunately, it wasn’t a part of his training and he’s left completely helpless as the monkey makes it impossible for him to do his job.

The fact is, the Instant Gratification Monkey is the last creature who should be in charge of decisions—he thinks only about the present, ignoring lessons from the past and disregarding the future altogether, and he concerns himself entirely with maximizing the ease and pleasure of the current moment. He doesn’t understand the Rational Decision-Maker any better than the Rational Decision-Maker understands him—why would we continue doing this jog, he thinks, when we could stop, which would feel better. Why would we practice that instrument when it’s not fun? Why would we ever use a computer for work when the internet is sitting right there waiting to be played with? He thinks humans are insane.

In the monkey world, he’s got it all figured out—if you eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired, and don’t do anything difficult, you’re a pretty successful monkey. The problem for the procrastinator is that he happens to live in the human world, making the Instant Gratification Monkey a highly unqualified navigator. Meanwhile, the Rational Decision-Maker, who was trained to make rational decisions, not to deal with competition over the controls, doesn’t know how to put up an effective fight—he just feels worse and worse about himself the more he fails and the more the suffering procrastinator whose head he’s in berates him.

It’s a mess. And with the monkey in charge, the procrastinator finds himself spending a lot of time in a place called the Dark Playground.

The Dark Playground is a place every procrastinator knows well. It’s a place where leisure activities happen at times when leisure activities are not supposed to be happening. The fun you have in the Dark Playground isn’t actually fun because it’s completely unearned and the air is filled with guilt, anxiety, self-hatred, and dread. Sometimes the Rational Decision-Maker puts his foot down and refuses to let you waste time doing normal leisure things, and since the Instant Gratification Monkey sure as hell isn’t gonna let you work, you find yourself in a bizarre purgatory of weird activities where everyone loses.

And the poor Rational Decision-Maker just mopes, trying to figure out how he let the human he’s supposed to be in charge of end up here again.

Given this predicament, how does the procrastinator ever manage to accomplish anything?

As it turns out, there’s one thing that scares the shit out of the Instant Gratification Monkey:

The Panic Monster is dormant most of the time, but he suddenly wakes up when a deadline gets too close or when there’s danger of public embarrassment, a career disaster, or some other scary consequence.

The Instant Gratification Monkey, normally unshakable, is terrified of the Panic Monster. How else could you explain the same person who can’t write a paper’s introductory sentence over a two-week span suddenly having the ability to stay up all night, fighting exhaustion, and write eight pages? Why else would an extraordinarily lazy person begin a rigorous workout routine other than a Panic Monster freakout about becoming less attractive?

And these are the lucky procrastinators—there are some who don’t even respond to the Panic Monster, and in the most desperate moments they end up running up the tree with the monkey, entering a state of self-annihilating shutdown.

Quite a crowd we are.

Of course, this is no way to live. Even for the procrastinator who does manage to eventually get things done and remain a competent member of society, something has to change. Here are the main reasons why:

1) It’s unpleasant. Far too much of the procrastinator’s precious time is spent toiling in the Dark Playground, time that could have been spent enjoying satisfying, well-earned leisure if things had been done on a more logical schedule. And panic isn’t fun for anyone.

2) The procrastinator ultimately sells himself short. He ends up underachieving and fails to reach his potential, which eats away at him over time and fills him with regret and self-loathing.

3) The Have-To-Dos may happen, but not the Want-To-Dos. Even if the procrastinator is in the type of career where the Panic Monster is regularly present and he’s able to be fulfilled at work, the other things in life that are important to him—getting in shape, cooking elaborate meals, learning to play the guitar, writing a book, reading, or even making a bold career switch—never happen because the Panic Monster doesn’t usually get involved with those things. Undertakings like those expand our experiences, make our lives richer, and bring us a lot of happiness—and for most procrastinators, they get left in the dust.

Source

The post Why Procrastinators Procrastinate by Tim Urban appeared first on SA Youth Dialogue.

First, forget about finding your passion.

Follow your priorities. Instead of asking yourself ‘what would I do if money were no object’ ask ‘what am I willing to do in spite of the fact that money actually is an object?’

What are you willing to pay for? What are you willing to sacrifice for? What are you willing to do even when it’s not fun anymore? What means that much to you?

Do that.

Your passion is going to change. Or maybe it doesn’t exist yet. Or maybe you haven’t figured it out yet, or you won’t know until you try a lot of stuff.

Being passionate about something is not a prerequisite to doing something. It’s actually a byproduct of taking action. Passion is the direct result of trying a lot of things and not doing stuff you hate.

Trying to make your family proud is a huge distraction.

Most people have no idea what you’re fully capable of. They have an idea of how they want to see you live, but most people don’t sit around thinking about how far your potential reaches.

People can’t demand something from you when they have no idea what to expect. That means you must push yourself to be, do, and have things that nobody expects before they see you do them. If you focus on making your family proud, you’re going to limit the actualization of your potential to things that you think will please them based on what they already know about you and what you already know about them. That’s a disservice to yourself.

Instead of focusing on making your family proud, focus on making yourself proud. Focus on being the kind of person who can look at yourself in the mirror everyday with self respect and a clear conscience knowing that you live as you believe. Your family, if they are decent people, will be proud of you if you are living true to who you are. Their pride should not be the object of your desires.

If you need people to like what you do to badly, it has the reverse effect. People are proud of someone who takes ownership of their own lives. People are most likely to respect someone who doesn’t have that neediness to be respected.

Forget about everyone else and do the stuff that you believe in.

Source

The post How do I find my passion and make my family proud? appeared first on SA Youth Dialogue.

One of the deadliest mistakes in a young person’s career is the absence of goals. Goals give you something to work towards, something to measure your success against, and something to give you structure. Setting goals is a brilliant catalyst for action.

For example, let’s take two cases. In the first case, you get up on a Saturday morning and you make a to-do list – your goals for the day. Your list may look something like “clean my room, do the laundry, read three chapters of Zero to One, go grocery shopping.”

In the second case, you get up on a Saturday morning and you don’t make a to-do list. You may be aware that your room is dirty, or that you’re low on food in the fridge, but you don’t consciously think about needing to do them. You may be vaguely aware that your time would be well-spent if you did some reading, but you don’t have any particular objective

In the first scenario (example A), you’re much more likely to be productive and make tangible progress towards your goals.
Once you set goals, it’s entirely within your power to execute on them. You want to be a professional writer? You can make that happen. Do you want to start a marketing agency? A drop-shipping business? Become top in a fast-growing startup in the sales department? All of these things are attainable. But you need to put in the work to make them happen. There are three key components this requires:

• A plan.
• A vision
• Discipline

Most people’s goals remain as goals and never become achievements because they’re not executing in one (or more) of these three areas. They either lack focus in what they want, or they don’t have a plan to execute, or they lack the discipline to actually put in the work.

A small note: don’t be terrified by the word “goals.” It’s synonymous neither with “commitment” nor “trapped.” Your goals don’t limit you. By setting goals, you aren’t building a cage around yourself and hemming yourself in.

Step 1: A Vision

You must always begin by clearly defining what you want.

For example: you may start out with the goal of becoming a well-known author on Medium, only to find as you gain more writing experience that you’re fascinated by copywriting. Because you already have lots of writing practice under your belt, making the transition to copywriting is easy, and you only discovered you liked copywriting in the first place because you were exposed to it by researching one of your Medium articles.

Clearly Identify What the Goal Is. One of the biggest killers of achievement is ambiguity. I hear young people make ambiguous statements all the time — “I want to be a marketer,” or “I want to be a writer.” These are good first steps, but they aren’t enough.

Be Very Specific. Let’s say you’re a young person with a writing dream. Great. What specifically does that mean? Are there benchmarks you can measure success against — perhaps the work of other writers you admire, or the publication standards of a magazine you respect? What specific types of content do you want to create?

Again, don’t feel hemmed in by these specifications. It’s okay to change them later. Your focus will evolve as you move through the process – that’s normal.

Step 2: A Plan

Once you’ve clearly defined what you want, you need to make a plan for making it happen. The more tangible you can make this part, the better.

Don’t Overplan. Adhere to all of the above steps, but don’t get lost in the process. This is an easy place to get stuck in an endless feedback loop of planning and re-planning – i.e., procrastination. Don’t. Try setting a time limit while you make your plan, and force yourself to move on when you hit it. You can always make changes later. Right now, you need to launch very quickly from planning to action.

Make a Timeline. Nearly as deadly as not having a goal at all is having a goal that doesn’t have a specific target date. “I want to be a marketer . . . someday.” There’s zero incentive to move towards that goal in any specific time frame, and this makes procrastination incredibly easy. “I’ll do it tomorrow. That’s not failing to achieve my goal.”

Go back to the goal you’ve set and add at the end a target date. “I want to be x by x time.” Now your goal is finite, and now you’ve added another dimension to your measure of success — the measure of time.

Break Your Timeline into Segments. This is especially important for bigger goals. Breaking your plan into bite-sized chunks is important, because realistically, you can only focus on one piece at a time.

Make a Schedule. Google Calendar is great for this (and it’s a tool I’d recommend every young person familiarize themselves with. Knowing how to use Google Calendar is imperative for scheduling professional meetings, and it’s immensely valuable for organizing your own time).

Block off time on your schedule each day to work. Google Calendar has a great feature that allows you to set reminder notifications to tell you when events and time blocks are coming up. Use it.

Step 3: Discipline

Even if you’ve successfully made it through steps one and two, you’re far from being home free. This last step is where the work actually happens, and it’s also where it’s easiest to get bogged down and lose the game.

Discipline is hard. It requires showing up again, and again, and again – relentlessly hammering away at your goals until you form them in the shape you desire. And as Steven Pressfield discusses in The War of Art, resistance – the force standing in the way of you doing the things you want to do – is strong. Even the laws of physics can be applied – do you remember learning about inertia in high school? A body at rest stays at rest.

To attain your goals – or, if you want to sound heroic, to battle the laws of physics – you must practice discipline.

• Adhere to Your Schedule. Making your schedule is not enough. You must stick to it. Make breaking your commitments a non-negotiable in your mind – it is not an option, ever. If you have 2-5 blocked off on your calendar every day to practice your writing, then from 2-5 you entertain no other possibilities but to write.

• Make Yourself Publicly Accountable. This is a good trick to force yourself into action. Tell people what you’re working on. The higher the external stakes, the harder it is for you to cop out. Far more than we hate failing in front of ourselves, we hate failing in front of others.

• Find an Accountability Partner. This one is huge (and it’s one of my favorites). See the above, about failing in front of others. You can always tell yourself “I’ll do it tomorrow” – your own self completely understands why you’d much rather go finish binge watching the last season of Westworld and save your work for later. It’s much harder to make those same excuses to someone else. You don’t want to come up short when someone else is watching, and you don’t want to let them down.

Make the above-mentioned schedule and send it to your accountability partner.

Bonus Step 4: Maintain Your Focus

I.e. refer to steps 1-3 regularly.
It’s easy when you’re in the middle of the process to lose focus. Make sure you’re regularly checking back on your vision, and make sure you’re touching base with (and tweaking, if necessary) your schedule. Keep all of these things where they’re easy to reference, and refer to them often.

Source

The post How to Set Goals and Achieve Them appeared first on SA Youth Dialogue.