Religious holidays..

There is a bloodshed in the neighbouring apartment's backyard and I'm feeling nauseated.

More quotes..

Such a great night for soul searching and I just would like to share this quote with you. What I wanted to say has already been said before. In the most elaborate yet simple way it could ever be done.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
-Ghandi

Quotations from Chi

Those who claim to need others the least are the cowardest of all.

-Chi

...then comes the realisation that Chi is not capable of building proper grammatical sentences while making up her very own self acclaimed quotations...

...which was followed by a bittersweet realisation that she has accummulated a heavy emotional baggage by taking coward people's shit and trusting them more than she did herself. They're not worth it. Better recognized late than never.

Okay, okay, okay, okay. I'm not gonna write in third person anymore.

Your New Year's Present

Some of you will hate me after seeing this, but here is your new year's present. I was looking for something a bit more classy but youtube did not live up to my expectations. I still like the song and the message it conveys. Have fun!

Happy Holidays

Last night, I dreamt that I was back in Chicago, sitting in my room. I heard my friend speak to another friend in the hallway so I went out just to see her with her newborn baby. She let me hold her baby. He was very very tiny, and as I was trying so hard to see what he looked like, my other friend said:

"You are just like the baby. So young and gracious and beautiful".

Wow, what a dream! That just made my...er...night.

Merry Christmas everyone!! Your cheesy Christmas present is coming to this blog very soon.

About blaming other things/people as an excuse for retiring from life

What about it?

well,

you shouldn't do it.

beecaaauuuse,

When you tell someone that they are the reason of your sadness/procrastination etc. you're actually saying that the person is in control your life. It's like turning yourself into a victim. If they're on a good day and happen to be nice to you, then you can be happy with their consent. If they do something you don't like, you end up feeling exactly the opposite. It's also very unrealistic to be so demanding from your environment. Everything is obligated to happen a certain way to ensure your happiness. Taking responsibilty for our actions is taking back the control of our lives. Other people don't make us the way we are. Only ourselves are responsible for our actions. We should know better than to beg happiness from others because most of the time we cannot change or prevent other people's actions.

I love Einstein! (and myself?)

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
-Albert Einstein

It seems like I'm one step ahead of my "meditation club" teachings, for today we have talked about harmful "paradigms" which, in this context, translate as our irrational beliefs. The lecturer gave some examples of harmful paradigms we might have with regards to ourselves, others, and the world, then asked us to write our own. Here is what I wrote:

About myself:
1. People do not want to hang out with me because I'm not attractive enough.
2. I need to be beautiful in order to be loved.

About other people:
All people are motivated by self interest.
(This was the first thing I learned when I walked into college, although now I realize I might have interpreted the whole thing incorrectly, or taken it to the extreme, just like many others do. As an alternative study, I recommend this.)

Anyhow. I, now, would like to apply Einstein's legendary approach to my own problems. I obviously cannot deal with them by waiting to get pretty or screwing other people over because they are egotistical bastards and they deserve it if it serves my self interest. The next level of thinking, is recognizing that the above statements are false and replacing them with paradigms that are...er...not so false.

So here we go:

1. 99% of who I am cannot be seen or touched. I do not consist of how I look.
2. I shouldn't wait for other people's approval to feel loved. I can start NOW, by loving myself. I'm not a child anymore and I no longer have to turn to other people to give myself the care I need.
3. I want to help other people, love them, do something that will make them happy. Then why should I think that I'm the one-of-a-kind human specimen? If I think this way, there must be millions of people out there who do not act solely out of self-interest. It is, however, unrealistic to expect our loved ones to be there for us on every occasion since they may have some limitations or they simply might make mistakes.

Just as the darkness is the absence of light, pessimism is the absence of optimism. We need to let the lightness in and uproot our irrational beliefs.

On Depression & Letting Go of Old Habits

If you are feeling depressed, your body is telling you that there is something wrong with the way you're treating it. Depression is the symptom, not the cause, of the disease. I think that depression stems from the irrational beliefs you might have, usually regarding what you're supposed to be, as opposed to what you currently are.
Those irrational beliefs may follow many different patterns, but here is some of them:

• People treat me like [the way they do] because I'm ....(insert derogatory word here).... If I were more .......... then I would be successful and loved.
• I'm never good enough at what I'm doing. I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing anyway. Thus, I have nothing to offer to other people and I understand if they don't want to be around me or make fun of me. I need to be more ........... to deserve other people's love and attention.
  
• I'm actually intelligent, funny and fun to be around but I cannot really show my true self because I'm .....(insert derogatory word here).... If I can manage to .....(insert obsession here).... then I will be able to show my radiant, true self.
  

It's not always easy to change those irrational beliefs, or let go of them, because you have internalized them as your premises on which your every value judgment is based. They have accompanied you all your life, became your friends, and you cannot predict what your life would be like without them. That's why it's so hard to let go of bad habits and old thinking patterns. You fear the change; you fear the prospect of success and happiness for a change.
You make yourself vulnerable without an excuse to hide behind after every assumed failure. You open yourself to risks, remove the shield that protects you from the vicissitudes of life. You start living again, in the world, as opposed to in your head.

I'm in favor of maintaining a positive attitude when dealing with this however. I believe that it is possible to make your new beliefs and thinking patterns habitual just like the same way you have made yourself accustomed to thinking irrationally. This process may not make you gain money, power or reputation, but it will certainly make you gain strength and peace of mind.

What would make me really happy right now is learning how to post book links with pictures on this blog, for a change...

Coping

Whenever you think you've hit the rock bottom you have to realize a few things:

1.There are people who love you and who want to help you.
2. There is always a way out.
3. True hapiness lies in the small things of life, like watching the ducks on a sunny morning (and feeling that you're a part of this divine beauty).
4. You have to be patient, no change is quick and easy.

My mind seems to be blocked now, what else?

News Alert..

Turns out I didn't get the job because I told them the truth, namely that I wanted to get a masters degree in the next 2-5 years. My inexperienced, naive inner child thought that honesty wouldn't create a problem, but it turns out, somewhat justifiably, that the companies don't want to lose the staff that they've "invested" on for a couple years. And that's how it goes, at least here. So today I learned that I should lie the next time, despite what my intentions for the future may be, and so should you!!

I'm really in a great mood before my drivers licence test, which by the way is earlier than I thought it was. Both news indicate that I'll be doomed to taking "minibus"es for the rest of my life.

On Trust and Love

I may be diverging from my aforementioned agenda a little bit but I've just had an inspirational moment when I just got struck by an idea: We would be trusting people if our sense of self is not founded upon what other people think of us. Let me explain. If we feel that we're not getting enough love from people around us, then we probably feel betrayed when others let us down or don't live up to our expectations and we start thinking thoughts like "nobody cares about me", "I got ditched again", "I don't have any real friends", "Nobody understands me"... You get the idea. We all have different ways of interpreting and articulating it, depending on the person and situation.

What if we thought that people actually loved us and cared about us? What if we made ourselves believe that whoever let us down actually values us and likes spending time with us? We wouldn't be focusing on small things that much. We wouldn't be taking things personally as frequently as we did. We would trust people when they say something and not look for hidden subtext beneath the words.

For instance, the person who loves me the most is my mother. I think that she loves me more than anything else in the world and I'm really grateful for this. However, she sometimes says things that makes me sad, does something that pisses me off. This doesn't change the fact that she loves me. It just shows that nobody is perfect. People are humans and they're not infallible. Even the person who loves you the most cannot be there every single time you need it. Even the person who loves you the most may inadvertently say things that hurt you without realising it. I know my mother loves me because she is my mother. But the same thing should be true for everyone. We should just give people some credit, just to make it a little easier for both sides.

There are vicious and virtuous cycles in life (like in ecomomics). A vicious cycle starts with a negative thought and gets amplified with increased effort to seek for negative things. You start watching out for things that would bring you down and interpret them accordingly to reach your goal of self demeaning. This naturally affects your feelings about yourself and in turn increases your negative thoughts.
A virtuous cycle is basically the same except that your starting point is an optimistic, if not a positive, thought. If you focus on the times when you have enjoyed yourself, when you have done something nice for somebody else or somebody else has done something nice for you, then you will have a lesser tendency to think that others are trying to hurt you. Just by focusing on a different thing you your increase your self respect and give your soul what it needs. You'd be less likely to be pissed off, and take things personally when something unexpected happens. I'm saying unexpected because you wouldn't interpret it as "unpleasant" anymore.

If you change the belief that "nobody likes you" to the belief that "you deserve to be loved", then first and foremost you would start liking yourself. In that case, even if somebody really screws you over, you wouldn't worry about it that much anymore because you wouldn't be basing your personality on what others think of you or what others do to you. The only person from whom you need love is yourself. If you can't give yourself this, then you're going to have to beg for love from other people and you know that you're not always going to get it.

You get what you radiate. If you radiate love and positivity then it's impossible for others not to honor this with love and positivity in return. This can only happen if you look for love within yourself.