Hi Steemit! 

My name is Raz and I’m here to share my thoughts on life, commitment, passion, perseverance, motivation and hard work. 

I feel lazy. 

I don’t want to do anything. 

I feel lonely. I feel like I don’t want to do anything. 

There is a weight that I feel. It feels like guilt. Guilt for not being more active and productive. When I try to break out of it the weight gets heavier. 

Why? 

I know that I won’t get anywhere or accomplish anything if I don’t lift that weight. Even if it gets heavier the more I try to lift it. 

Why don’t I have faith in myself? 

What is the catalyst that I need? 

I’ve read books and blogs, listened to podcasts and audiobooks and watched videos about this. They all help but only in the moment. They all say something along the lines of “it is within you, you are the only one who can find it”. 

Still, there is a part of me that won’t budge. I need to make more money because I am uncomfortable knowing that I won’t have enough money in case of an emergency. I want to travel. I want to make my girlfriend happy. I want to be happy and I want to be successful. Not for attention or popularity, but for the sense of stability. 

I feel like I can’t accomplish anything. 

Everything that I have ever accomplished feels forced. Whenever I had a task at hand, no matter how minor or how important, there has always been a part of me that kept saying: “don’t do it, see what happens”. Example: don’t pay your rent, see what happens. Don’t do your homework, life will still go on. 

I feel stuck and hopeless. 

source: Giphy

I should learn more every day. I should read more. The person I want to be is confident, he is successful, he takes risks, he makes well-planned decisions. He is not worried about failing. He takes care of his body and mind. He surrounds himself with happy and successful people. I feel like there is something that I am missing. I wish I were more assertive. 

I feel like I don’t have a stable foundation and I don’t know what’s missing. I have never been afraid of anything, but I am afraid of my own laziness.

So through all of this frustration I learned a lot. The most important thing that I’ve learned is this:

"Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal." - Earl Nightingale

Success is not just making it. Success it working towards your goals and aspirations and putting in your best effort every single day. I learned that motivation is not what I need in order to succeed. 

Motivation is just the spark. 

You have to take action. You have to bring the fuel. 

Think of a lighter. There is the flint and spark wheel mechanism. This is like motivation, it produces a spark. The spark is nothing without fuel. The gas in the lighter is the fuel. This is your consistency, perseverance, and commitment. Put these two elements together and you have your road to success. 

But it’s not easy.

source: Giphy

Writing right now makes my mind start discouraging me. It says “Why are you writing this?” or “Who cares anyway?”, “This does not accomplish anything”. To that I say “Shut Up!” I am becoming a stronger version of myself through commitment, discipline and perseverance. I commit to waking up at 6 AM every single morning. I commit to going to the gym in the morning and pushing myself hard every single day, I commit to doing everything I can to reaching my goals and aspirations. So, dear mind, Fuck your excuses. I don’t give a fuck if you’re having doubts.

Of course you’re having doubts. Becoming better means discomfort.

When you’re trying to accomplish something and your mind goes: “You can’t do it”. You gotta stand up inside yourself and say: “SHUT UP!"

I WANT TO BE UNCOMFORTABLE. I WANT TO BE AFRAID.

A little bit about what I do when I'm not fighting my laziness

As a software engineer, there are two main questions I find myself asking: 

Why is this thing not working? 

and... 

Why is this working? 

These are the questions that keep me intrigued and always make me want to learn more. I enjoy working with leading edge technologies and adapting to the constant changes in today’s technologically dependent world. 

So how did it all start? 

Going back a few years, I wanted to be able to control the lights in my house from my cell phone... 

So I bought a bunch of microchips, electronics and a soldering kit and I started reading, soldering, learning, programming, failing and, in the end succeeding. I had learned the basics of embedded development, electronics and wireless communication. 

I was able to text my house things like “Turn off the kitchen lights” or “set the ac to 72” from anywhere in the world. 

Then I kept learning. I learned Arduino, C, C#, Java and C++ and started making robots. As I got better at it I started making tutorials and uploaded them on YouTube and Instructables.com. 

At this point people started noticing my work and showing their appreciation. I got chosen to be the Technical Reviewer of a book called Learn Electronics with Arduino published by Apress. Soon after I became a freelancer as an embedded programmer working with microcontrollers like Arduino and RaspberryPi. 

I had also started teaching programming in high school and founded the Electronics and Programming clubs. I was also the President of the Physics Club and the Engineering Club. In college I started teaching programming and physics. I became a physics TA and double-majored in Physics and Computer Engineering. 

The pace of the college courses was not quite what I was expecting and the University did not offer an accelerated program. This pushed me to continue learning on my own and I ended up getting a job as an embedded developer. 

As my career developed I have shifted my focus to Front End Web development. Today I can proudly say that I am an experienced front end web developer who loves working with the latest technologies including Angular, Angular 2, ES2015, HTML5, CSS3, Google Material Design and many others. 

Each day I push myself to learn new things, sometimes failing, but always growing.

So, Steemers, thank you for being such a warm and welcoming community! This feels like it will be my new home for a long time to come. I’m really excited to share my thoughts with you and hopefully give people the motivation they need to accomplish their goals.

Peace, guys!