You Can't Use What You Don't Have

“You can’t use what you don’t have” is a great sentence or saying I learned from “Hitch” a movie starred my Will Smith one of my favorite actors. The saying is highly simple, yet it has had a huge impact on me. The following are some life improvements I have made thanks to the saying.

In 2009, I started an educational company EdNICHE with just some money saved over a period of time. It was an extremely small company seen as a small office on the third floor of an old office-rental building. Because I was short of investment to enlarge the space or improve the decoration inside the office, I was many times depressed seeing the office so small and old.

I could be seen as unhappily quiet despite the fact that I still worked hard to get EdNICHE known and recognized of its quality services including English Language Training, Public Speaking Training, and Students Learning Assistance Program called Outstanding Student Network. I was many times sad because  I had so many ideas in my head but I did not have enough capital to get those ideas implemented.

At the time, instead of putting my all-in efforts into EdNICHE I was so much into dreaming about what I did not have, which I could not use. In other words, instead of living in the reality that I did not have much capital, I kept imagining a lot about what I did not have, which I could use. I thought if I had had more money, I would have done this or that to make my office better and etc.

If compared, today I still do not have much capital to grow EdNICHE the way I want it to. But, I am not sad because I know there is nothing I can do about it to make things better if I keep thinking about this having no money and imagining what I would do if I were given more capital.

However, I changed my philosophy to stick to WHAT I HAVE NOW that I can use NOW. This shift in philosophy helps me a lot in motivating myself to move on and taking myself back from imagination to reality. The difference in perceiving the challenge and taking a positive approach “I CAN USE WHAT I HAVE” leads me to use everything that I have exhaustively so that it gives me more benefits. For instance, instead of waiting of having a lot of money to expand my office to accommodate more students’ presence at a time, I divide my students in different time slots. I believe it makes me a bit tired now to do so, but it’s much better than whining about what I don’t have.

What do you do about your life now? 

Are you crying over spilled milk? Or are you looking for something else to drink?

Are you crying for new shoes that you are not able to buy? Or are you thinking of what you can DO NOW to buy those shoes?

A lot of people especially teens are spending their life demanding this and that, which they usually can’t have in reality, at least of the moment of demanding. They waste a lot of time dreaming instead of doing, wishing instead of acting.

This is a negative mental thinking process. We can’t get what we want by just crying for it. It won’t come to us just because we cry or just because we have the so-called Power of The Laws of Attraction, which says if we keep thinking of good things, good things will come to us.

However, I believe things, bad or good, come to us because of our ACTION, and action is something about REALITY, not dream or imagination.

So, take action to do something that we can with what we have NOW so that we will get what we want. If we don’t have a car now, we had better use our motor bike or bicycle to work as much as we can. Soon we will have a car.