Kind of silly, but it means a lot to me:
I have the ability to make my goals a reality. That is to say, if I want to accomplish some personal goal, it never is limited to being a pipe dream. Typically most of the things that I want to accomplish (heck, maybe all of them) are within the realm of my abilities. The only limitation is whether or not I’m willing to see things through.
When I was in elementary school/middle school, my dad believed he could help my grades by offering me big rewards for grades. I’m sure a lot of kids’ parents did this. Money, video games, parties, etc all could be mine if I only could get straight A’s. However, I needed more help in some subjects than most students, and was too embarassed about my shortcomings to seek it. So the end result was that I never got the ‘reward’. After 6 years of these empty promises, I started to get jaded. I thought my dad was just mocking me with these rewards because I believed i could never accomplish what he wanted. Good grades and in general just sucess in life were out of my reach. As such I didn’t try very hard in High School. I certainly could have done much, MUCH better if my attitude was a little more positive. People thought I was a nerd WITHOUT even having the good grades, so its not like doing well in school would have had some social downside.
In college I started making little improvements. I still did mediocre (I graduated with a lukewarm 2.5 GPA 
) and finally in my last semester I really started applying myself. I set a goal, I would try to get straight A’s that semester. I didn’t accomplish that goal but I had a lot of fun trying, and I wound up getting a lot of B’s in classes I thought I’d never get anything beter than a C-. I also got a lot of “3 points shy of getting an A-” B’s, so even though there were no A’s there, I definitely saw the progress.
Near the end of the semester, they were holding auditions for “The Bacchae”. I was very excited about this; I had been studying Greek Theatre earlier in the semester and was very interested in the play. However, I wasn’t a Theatre Arts major, plus I was supposed to be finished with college by the time rehearsals started. How would I possibly get cast? And if I did, how the hell would I have time for a play? I hemmed and hawed about it for a bit, then put my foot down. I’d audition anyway. Besides, if I sucked so bad, I wouldn’t get cast and therefore I wouldn’t have to worry about working in rehearsals into my schedule. Well, it turns out I did get cast, which was a huge surprise for me :eek: Even still, the part I was cast in was not the part I was seeking. I played a very bit part and at this point reconsidered for a second. Was I willing to put my career on hold, spent money out of my own pocket just to say half a dozen sentences and stand on stage for five minutes? I decided to go for it, since I wouldn’t have an opportunity like this in a long time. Sure enough, a lot of people thought I was nuts to do it. However, some of the cast took the other road, and quit over having a small part that they would have to invest 2 months of their life into. This only helped me work my way to a better part…who knows, the guy with the part that I wanted might quit or something and I could have it all along 
I had been single for a really long time. I had a few brief, unpleasant relationships that never went anywhere. I had also tried some dating sites for short amounts of time but became frustrated at a lack of inquiries. Then back in December, I tried Okcupid.com and gave it a go again. After about a month of updating my pictures and profile, I was able to go on some dates through the site (a first! ) and on one of those dates I met my girlfriend, a woman who had seen my pictures, thought I looked handsome, read my profile and thought I was funny and interesting, and we really hit it off.
I really think that because both of these examples were things that fell into place very quickly for me, it suggests to me that they were things I could have accomplished for quite some time now, just waiting for me to have the confidence to take that first terrifying step. Persistence and confidence definitely helped me to accomplish these things, and I really thing it is helping shape me into a new, improved Incubus
