Staying motivated is a struggle — our drive is constantly assaulted by negative thoughts and anxiety about the future. Everyone faces doubt and depression. What separates the highly successful is the ability to keep moving forward.

There is no simple solution for a lack of motivation. Even after beating it, the problem reappears at the first sign of failure. The key is understanding your thoughts and how they drive your emotions. By learning how to nurture motivating thoughts, neutralize negative ones, and focus on the task at hand, you can pull yourself out of a slump before it gains momentum.

Reasons We Lose Motivation

There are 3 primary reasons we lose motivation.

1. Lack of confidence – If you don’t believe you can succeed, what’s the point in trying?

2. Lack of focus – If you don’t know what you want, do you really want anything?

3. Lack of direction – If you don’t know what to do, how can you be motivated to do it?

How to Boost Confidence

The first motivation killer is a lack of confidence. When this happens to me, it’s usually because I’m focusing entirely on what I want and neglecting what I already have. When you only think about what you want, your mind creates explanations for why you aren’t getting it. This creates negative thoughts. Past failures, bad breaks, and personal weaknesses dominate your mind. You become jealous of your competitors and start making excuses for why you can’t succeed. In this state, you tend to make a bad impression, assume the worst about others, and lose self confidence.

The way to get out of this thought pattern is to focus on gratitude. Set aside time to focus on everything positive in your life. Make a mental list of your strengths, past successes, and current advantages. We tend to take our strengths for granted and dwell on our failures. By making an effort to feel grateful, you’ll realize how competent and successful you already are. This will rejuvenate your confidence and get you motivated to build on your current success.

It might sound strange that repeating things you already know can improve your mindset, but it’s amazingly effective. The mind distorts reality to confirm what it wants to believe. The more negatively you think, the more examples your mind will discover to confirm that belief. When you truly believe that you deserve success, your mind will generate ways to achieve it. The best way to bring success to yourself is to genuinely desire to create value for the rest of the world.

Developing Tangible Focus

The second motivation killer is a lack of focus. How often do you focus on what you don’t want, rather than on a concrete goal? We normally think in terms of fear. I’m afraid of being poor. I’m afraid no one will respect me. I’m afraid of being alone. The problem with this type of thinking is that fear alone isn’t actionable. Instead of doing something about our fear, it feeds on itself and drains our motivation.

If you’re caught up in fear based thinking, the first step is focusing that energy on a well defined goal. By defining a goal, you automatically define a set of actions. If you have a fear of poverty, create a plan to increase your income. It could be going back to school, obtaining a higher paying job, or developing a profitable website. The key is moving from an intangible desire to concrete, measurable steps.

By focusing your mind on a positive goal instead of an ambiguous fear, you put your brain to work. It instantly begins devising a plan for success. Instead of worrying about the future you start to do something about it. This is the first step in motivating yourself to take action. When know what you want, you become motivated to take action.

Developing Direction

The final piece in the motivational puzzle is direction. If focus means having an ultimate goal, direction is having a day-to-day strategy to achieve it. A lack of direction kills motivation because without an obvious next action we succumb to procrastination. An example of this is a person who wants to have a popular blog, but who spends more time reading posts about blogging than actually writing articles.

The key to finding direction is identifying the activities that lead to success. For every goal, there are activities that pay off and those that don’t. Make a list of all your activities and arrange them based on results. Then make a make an action plan that focuses on the activities that lead to big returns. To continue the example from above, a blogger’s list would look something like this:

1. Write content

2. Research relevant topics

3. Network with other bloggers

4. Optimize design and ad placements

5. Answer comments and email

6. Read other blogs

Keeping track of your most important tasks will direct your energy towards success. Without a constant reminder, it’s easy to waste entire days on filler activities like reading RSS feeds, email, and random web surfing.

When my motivation starts to wane, I regain direction by creating a plan that contains two positive actions. The first one should be a small task you’ve been meaning to do, while the second should be a long-term goal. I immediately do the smaller task. This creates positive momentum. After that I take the first step towards achieving the long-term goal. Doing this periodically is great for getting out of a slump, creating positive reinforcement, and getting long-term plans moving.

It’s inevitable that you’ll encounter periods of low energy, bad luck, and even the occasional failure. If you don’t discipline your mind, these minor speed bumps can turn into mental monsters. By being on guard against the top 3 motivation killers you can preserve your motivation and propel yourself to success.

Two virus filtering options are available, havp and dansguardian. Due to issues with dansguardian and servers not restarting I am not going to demonstrate how to set up dansguardian.

The following setup is for a squid havp “sandwich” configuration, where scanning occurs pre and post caching of files.

Groundwork on the squid havp proxy

• Debian etch installed.
• HAVP needs compiling, so we apt-get install build-essential
• squid and clamav are needed apt-get install squid clamav-daemon clamav-freshclam libclamav-dev

Obtain HAVP, compile and install.

HAVP is available from here

cd /usr/src
there may be a newer version
wget http://www.server-side.de/download/havp-0.88.tar.gz
tar zxf havp-0.88.tar.gz
cd havp-0.88
./configure
make
make install

Because its good to read the documentation, read the documentation and adjust the permissions required in various places.

vi INSTALL

Next, a filesystem with mandatory locks is needed.  Debian has a few issues with ramdisks, and thats not a good way to go. Lets make a loopback filesystem instead.

#create a file for the loopback filesystem
dd if=/dev/zero of=/havpfs bs=1024 count=30720
#check of /dev/loop0 is free then use it.. if its in use, try loop1, loop2 etc..
losetup /dev/loop0
#attach the virtual filesystem to the loopback device
losetup /dev/loop0 /havpfs
#check the attaching worked ok.
losetup /dev/loop0
#make a filesystem on the loopback device
mkfs.ext3 -m -1 -v /dev/loop0
#make a dir to mount the filesystem
mkdir /mnt/havp
#mount the filesystem
mount -t ext3 /dev/loop0 /mnt/havp -o mand

now to configure squid acl’s for the havp sandwich.

/etc/squid/squid.conf looks like this

visible_hostname proxy.yourdomain.com.au
#debug_options ALL,1 33,2
http_port 3128 transparent
http_port 127.0.0.2:8090
acl from_havp myport 8090
# Size of cache (4 Gigs)
cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid 4096 16 256
#dont cache some sites
acl cacheDenyAclName dstdomain .somedomain.com.au
acl cacheDenyAclName dstdomain .someotherdomain.com.au
#you need change this line to your local area network range
acl localnet src 192.168.32.0/255.255.240.0

acl all src 0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0
acl manager proto cache_object
acl localhost src 127.0.0.1/255.255.255.255
acl localhost src 127.0.0.2/255.255.255.255
acl to_localhost dst 127.0.0.0/8
acl SSL_ports port 443 563 10000
acl Safe_ports port 80 21 443 563 1025-65535
acl CONNECT method CONNECT
acl Proto_HTTPS proto HTTPS
acl NOSCAN dstdomain adomainnottoscan.com 

http_access allow manager localhost
http_access deny manager
http_access deny !Safe_ports
http_access deny CONNECT !SSL_ports
http_access allow localhost
http_access allow localnet
http_access deny all

redirector_access deny from_havp
cache_peer 127.0.0.1 parent 8100 0 no-query no-digest no-netdb-exchange
cache_peer 127.0.0.2 parent 3128 0 no-query no-digest no-netdb-exchange  proxy-only
prefer_direct off
always_direct allow localhost
always_direct allow from_havp
always_direct allow CONNECT
never_direct allow all
cache_peer_access 127.0.0.1 deny NOSCAN
cache_peer_access 127.0.0.2 allow from_havp
cache_peer_access 127.0.0.1 allow all
redirector_access deny from_havp
redirector_access allow all
#follow_x_forwarded_for allow localhost
#forwarded_for on
http_reply_access allow all
icp_port 0
icp_access deny all
hierarchy_stoplist cgi-bin ?
acl QUERY urlpath_regex cgi-bin \?
no_cache deny QUERY
refresh_pattern ^ftp:           1440    20%     10080
refresh_pattern ^gopher:        1440    0%      1440
refresh_pattern .               0       20%     4320
coredump_dir /var/spool/squid
header_access Via deny all
log_access deny from_havp
access_log /var/log/squid/access.log squid

now to edit the havp configuration file.
vi /usr/local/etc/havp/havp.config 
changes to make throughout the file

USER clamav
GROUP clamav
SCANTEMPFILE /mnt/havp/havp/havp-XXXXXX
PARENTPROXY 127.0.0.2
PARENTPORT 8090
PORT 8100
ENABLECLAMD true
CLAMDSOCKET /var/run/clamav/clamd.ctl

One change I made to the havp start script (/etc/init.d/havp) was to chown
the mandatory lock partition, and mount it, as the owner was not persistant across reboots, and the poolback device unmounts on reboot.

        start)
                echo "Starting HAVP ..."
                if [ ! -f $HAVP_BIN ]; then
                        echo "Error: $HAVP_BIN not found"
                        exit 5
                fi

losetup /dev/loop0 /havpfs

mount -t ext3 /dev/loop0 /havp -o mand

mkdir /mnt/havp/havp

chown -R clamav /mnt/havp/havp

                $HAVP_BIN -c $HAVP_CONFIG
                exit $?
                ;;

Thats about it. Start squid and havp, check the log files if it doesnt work.  You may need to chown the log folder.
if you want transparent proxy then use iptables like this.

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 3128

Usage Reporting with squint
apt-get install apache
Obtain the squint package, unpack and follow instructions
http://www.ledge.co.za/software/squint/squint.tar.gz
squid logs are at /var/log/squid/access.log
http location is /var/www/squint (http://hostname/squint)

Blocking Malicious Websites with DNS

Using bind we can block malicious websites.
apt-get install bind9
vi /etc/resolv.conf
make localhost your name server
vi /etc/bind/named.conf.options
set up your dns forwarders (usually ISP DNS servers)

vi /etc/bind/named.conf.local
add the line
include "/etc/bind/spywaredomains.zones";
vi /etc/namedb/blockeddomain.hosts

; This zone will kill all traffic to a listed domain
; Replace xxxnameserver.net with your nameserver
;

$TTL 86400 ; one day

@ IN SOA ns1.yourdomain.com. yourdomain.com. (
1
28800 ; refresh 8 hours
7200 ; retry 2 hours
864000 ; expire 10 days
86400 ) ; min ttl 1 day
NS ns1.yourdomain.com
A 127.0.0.1

* IN A 127.0.0.1

 vi /root/update-spyware-domains.sh

#!/bin/sh

cd /etc/bind
wget -O spywaredomains.zones.new http://www.malwaredomains.com/files/spywaredomains.zones
ERROR=$?
if [ "$ERROR" -eq "0" ]; then
/etc/init.d/bind9 stop
mv spywaredomains.zones spywaredomains.zones.old
mv spywaredomains.zones.new spywaredomains.zones
sleep 15
/etc/init.d/bind9 start
else
echo “problem with wget error’”. $ERROR .”‘”

fi

make the script execute, run it…

chmod 700 /root/update-spyware-domains.sh
/root/update-spyware-domains.sh

add it to the cron, for updates

crontab -e

40 22 * * 1-5 /root/update-spyware-domains.sh

source: http://versa.net.au

I fear
No fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
No world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
And it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
And whatever a sun will always sing is you

Here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
And this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)”

(EE Cumming 1894-1962)

I heard this poem for the first time when watching a movie entitled “In Her Shoes”. It touched my deepest heart when Maggie (recited by Cameron Diaz) reading this poem presented for her lovely sister at the wedding party and it really made me moved.

And then i’m interested to read this poem from the beginning. I found that this poem has beauty words and has so profound of a deepest meaning of a true love (pardon me if i’m too exaggerate, no i mean much more exaggerate ). I’m my selft still unable to define what the true love is. I just realize that love is not just words. It needs to be proofed. It comes from your deep hard feeling just like a stream flowing down into the real action. No matter how much u need to give, no matter how far you need to reach, no matter how much the tears will drip, no matter how pain it is, the only you want is hoping your beloved one get a happiness. Because, you carry your dear in your heart.

When we felt sleepy while we’re working it means our body wants to have a rest. But don’t keep this moment getting longer. Sleepy at work is really bad habit. That’s not our body mistake but that’s our failure in managing our health of body. It can be caused by the lack of nutrition foods for our body. Drinking water sufficiently (at least 2 littres a day) can provide best intake to our body.

huhh, I’m my self so tired telling this because it just makes my self felt disappointed. So why would i wanna write this all? I realize that i’m not alone. I’m not the people suffering from this weakness. And then i hope i can get my mind cleared well after by sharing my thought.

However, I really don’t want to keep this condition get worst day by day. No matter what to do, I should throw this bad mood out of my mind. I should wake up and do everything i need to do just now. But before all, i need toclean up my mind with pray devoutly to my GOD.

I wanna get back to the state where i can do everything confidently.