Be ever ready

When I was giving an idea to a friend of having a hiking, she started browsing the place on instagram. It looked so cool on the instagram. As everyone might agree with me that everything put on instagram is suppossed to be instagramable enough. Only then it will attrack viewers.

My friend was  very excited, having her impression and also imagination of what she saw on instagram. She wanted to find the spot where the picture was taken. She actually didnt tell me about it until we finished our hike.

I was not fully recovered from covid-19 at that time. My body was not fully ready for a hike actually. I brought with me a trekking stick and I found it so useful. I walked slowly. I asked her to walk ahead of me and leave me as I needed to stop several times for a little bit of rest and also to enjoy the scenery and the morning breeze. She went ahead. She wanted to find the spot.

Take a pause, breath and enjoy…..

I didn’t reach the end of the trek. She made it but she couldn’t find the spot where the picture was taken. She just missed it. At the end of the trek, she said there was a restaurant. She told someone at the restaurant that she didn’t see the spot she was looking for showing the picture on instagra. It might have changed a bit, probably the grass or the trees had grown up taller or just trimmed or cut down. So she didn’t notice.

I think she was too focused on the goal and didn’t make herself ready for the outcome. Similarly in life we have to be ever ready for the outcome life may bring to us and not to be so attached to our goal. Take time to pause, breath and enjoy……

How creative are you?

Do you consider yourself as a creative person? To be creative person means to become one who creates artwork. To be honest I am not. I am aware I am not good at creating any artwork. I think I don’t  have that talent. I can spend hours putting my thoughts in writing, but it is not an artwork. It is not a poem nor an essay. It is just a journal. There is no beauty in it, probably a clarity.

I have a friend who is very talented in drawing. Her drawing is just amazing. It looks like a 3D object. It looks so real. Below is one of her drawings.

This made me speechless.

Another friend is very good at patchwork. She made dolls, pillows, masks, cloth bags etc. She is just amazing at it. Another friend is very passionate in making cookies and cakes. Another friend is very good at playing classical piano. She even teaches piano to kids. I have tried all of that but none was good. I think I don’t have the talent.

I remember we were preparing a public program and a friend who was very good at decoration she was making flowers arrangement. I always enjoy flowers. I thought I wanted to help her. I had no sense at all in this. I helped cutting the stems for her. I didn’t dare to put them into the vase. I just gave her an assistance.

A few weeks ago we were having a long holiday. I thought I would learn something during the holiday. I just chose to learn flower arrangement. Below is my first flower arrangement after knowing the technique of clustering and layering the flowers. It doesn’t look so bad. At least now I know a bit of how to arrange flowers in a vase.

My first flowers arragement

This is what is called life

A long time friend has just visited me. She is married with two children. They have grown up, so when I offered her to come to my house and spend the night during weekend just for something different, she quickly agreed. She said that the children didn’t mind at all.

Are you a morning person or an evening person?

We spent every morning going in the botanical garden near my place for enjoying the nature. I think everyone agrees that nature is a quick mood booster at least both of us found it true.

She is an evening person, it means that she really likes enjoying evening. She wanted to spend the evening sitting in my veranda and said “Evening is very short. It will turn into dark very soon.” I was smiling in fact listening to her reasoning. I think I am a more morning person. I enjoy morning time more than any other time during the day. Morning time is my most productive time, ideas seem to flow in my mind, sometimes best decision I made in the morning. I don’t want to miss my morning time. It is my precious time, my valuable treasure more than anything else. We can not buy time.

As a morning person and almost everyday spend the evening working at office, I could not understand the beauty of evening time. I rarely enjoyed my evening relaxing, being in nature. I also don’t understand some people enjoy sun gazing in the evening. It is the moment of sunset. I think the sunrise in the morning is more beautiful.

When I joined my friend sitting next to her enjoying the evening, she said “This is what is called life.” I looked at her and feel amazed.

This is what has led me to journaling

Very recently I was invited to give a sharing session by a company for their managers. It has become a regular event in the company as development program for their employees. I talked to the general manager of the company and asked about the topic they wanted me to share. In corporates, the most popular topic is related to soft competencies like leadership, communication, decision making, coaching etc. I am aware that many people out there are probably better than me in delivering those topics. I reluctantly offered the general manager if I could share on dealing emotions through journaling. I think it is not a popular topic in corporate, at least here. Somebody said to me that writing is not popular in most Asian countries. Surprisingly he was interested to this topic.

I said to myself “from now on, I need to know each and every expectation I have created”

I was very excited preparing the presentation. I focused on the audiences, what they might need relating to deal with emotions in their day-to-day life in office. No one is free from negative emotions. Ussully the trigger is the people they work with, either their co-workers, subordinates, bosses or even customers and clients.

I remember what has brought me to journaling was also from a situation in office. In fact I have to thank to my co-worker who had taken a credit from me in a meeting and it triggered my emotion. I realized I was feeling very uncomfortable and low. I also remember I said to myself “I need to do something”. Surely not paying back to her, but dealing the feeling inside. and I didn’t know what to do at that time. Similar situation might be reoccurring in office and I don’t like the feeling. The situation in the meeting and the feeling have led me to a book on how to deal with negative emotion. This book said that the reason of each and every negative emotion is an expectation. This was just the book I needed to read. Probably God has arranged it for me and given me a way.

I said to myself “Okay, from now on I need to know each and every expectation I created that had triggered my emotion”. And not only knowing it, but also writing it. Since then I have been processing my emotions and expectation in writing.

Jazz up your life

When I was sharing on dealing emotions through journaling, I shared the reasons for an emotion to be created. I think there are two reasons that causes an emotion. It is what may push your hot button. Your emotional button.

Firstly is expectation. It is an automatic process for many of us. We expect something to turn out as per what we have created in our mind. Many of us probably consider it to be natural to have an expectation of thing or a situation. But the more we repeat it in our mind, the more we think of it over and over again, we actually create a mental attachment to the output we want. And if it doesn’t turn out as per our expectation, we become annoyed or even frustrated. Then anger is created. Anger is very common emotion in our day to day life.

Jazz up your life!

Secondly is the awareness of mine or a sense of owning something. Again this sense also creates mental attachment. I remember I owned a Honda Jazz long time ago. Around the year of 2005 up to 2008 Honda Jazz was very popular especially among young people. It was probably segmented for young people. and I also remember it’s tagline was “Jazz up your life”. This tagline not only communicated, but also hypnotized people’s subconscious mind really well. A very powerful tagline. The perception created about this car was being young and energetic. I had been so attached to this perception for a long time.

Until one day I was taking a ride with friends in someone’s car and hearing them talking about how good the car was. A different brand from what I owned. Noone said that Honda Jazz was not good in fact. Not at all! But I felt a bit disturbed by that conversation and I knew it was because I was still carrying mental attachment of owning that car or that perception of that car in my head, although I had sold the car at that time. I didn’t own that car anymore. The awarness of “my car”, or “my perception of that car” was still carried.

The challenge of being single

A friend of mine visited me and stayed with me during weekend in my house. We hadn’t been in a contact for the last few years even before the pandemic. When I offered her a visit and stay with me during the weekend, she quickly agreed. She said “next weekend”. She was so excited. I was also excited to meet her again.
Understanding her situation being married and having two kids, I asked “Would it be okay with your husband and kids?” apparently her kids have now grown up. They are no longer kids. The first child is now a university student and her daughter is now at grade 12. They have that much understanding for  their mom. 

During her stay with me, both of us enjoyed our weekend together. We spent time together, chatting, going for an outdoor yoga, going for a morning walk and also cooking. I have been living alone in my little house.  She shared a lot about challenges she has been going through as a married woman and as a mother. I think spending sometime away from the family was quite a break for her.

She might have been observing me during her stay. She might be seeing the contrast between a marriage life and life of a single. I don’t see it. This observation might have led her to ask this question  ”What is the challenge of being single?”
To be honest I never thought about this. I didn’t know to response this question. When you never see any contrast of two different things, you won’t be questioning. You will consider everything happens in your life is what is supposed to happen and that is what you have to deal with. No questioning. With this attitude, you develop acceptance more quickly. When there is acceptance, you won’t consider something to be a challenge. A challenge means a problem to be solved. You will start focusing on solution, instead of problem.

Tennis Indoor

I have to be honest that I was so scared of having an injection. Before I got my covid vaccine last year, actually I needed to prepare myself emotionally. I was telling someone who helped me getting the vaccine that If possible the schedule would be after two weeks, thinking that two weeks was enough for me to prepare myself mentally. Only in the evening I got informed to get my vaccine the following morning, it was arranged by the office. I had no time to prepare myself.

To be frank with you I was so nervous. I was not prepared. But finally decided to get the earlier schedule thinking I would be with some colleagues, if something happened then I had my colleagues with me in the venue. The vaccine was held in the national sport complex, in the middle of the city, in tennis indoor building. A huge and very well maintained building. 10.000 people from many different companies in financial business were invited for this vaccine.

In fact I was very impressed by how the organizer organizing the people maintaining social distancing. It was just so impressive. Though it is much easier than organizing a concert event or musical festival. It was very well organized. The building is very much in the middle of the whole complex, so we had to walk quite far. But I enjoyed the walk. I loved the pedestrian. A lot of trees. I felt a bit like a picnic. The way they organized the people in the hall was also impressive. The whole experience was not scary, included when I was having my jab.

This gave me a feeling of a picnic.

A few weeks ago I got my booster vaccine. My colleague asked me “are you happy with your vaccine?” I replied “not really.” My booster vaccine was in a hospital. It was a different experience, a hospital experience not a tennis indoor experience. If you are a customer and your customer experience was excellent, you were satisfied with the product or service you bought, you might tend to put that excellent service as your standard for your future buying. It was exactly what happened to me.

How they were organizing the event was impressive.

My colleague then asked “why?” I then started telling her about how I was so happy with the vaccine in tennis indoor last year, as if she was not there with me, getting our vaccine.

So, the venue matters. She then smiled and said “I think it is very easy to make you happy.”

Sakura season has begun

A friend just sent me this picture below with a caption ‘Sakura season has begun’. He shared happiness, not just a picture. This picture was taken not very far from where he lives. The season is in April every year and only next week will be April. It has never missed.

Nature keeps giving beauty.
It remains unaffected by the pandemic, war nor crisis.

Nature, including tree always keeps its promise. It obeys its season. It is not affected by anything happens in the world, not by the pandemic, war nor financial crisis. It keeps giving flowers. It keeps showing its beauty. It keeps giving happiness. My friend said that they bloom only for two weeks.

I thank to him that he remembered me loving flowers, any kind of flowers especially when it is massively blooming during its season. I said to him ‘it is like showing its beauty in a full force.’ I feel like my heart is quickly blooming with them, filled with happiness.

He has always sent me pictures of Sakura every Sakura season, knowing that I will like it. I really want to go to Japan during Sakura season.

Someone gave me seeds of this type of tree. It’s flower is just similar to Sakura. Beautiful! Thinking not having ‘a green thumb’ as people say, I gave the seeds to 3 different friends for them to grow. I was just not confident growing it myself. Small saplings are delicate, they require special care. After a few months one of them gave me back a sapling of the tree. I really thanked to her mom who took a very good care of it. It grew so well in her care. She must have a green thumb. Now it has grown so big but hasn’t given any flower yet. Probably I have to be very patient to wait to see its flowers. I know only when it has grown years and years and it has become really big, it will give flowers.

When the war doesn’t stop

No one likes war. Many people are suffering due to a war. Thousands people have left their homes for safety. Thousands people become refugees.

Only a few days after the invasion someone shared to me an invitation for a global meditation for Ukraine. The program was organized from Kyiv. It was a non-stop program for a few days where everybody from all corners of the globe could share their good feelings to souls who were suffering. Being in that ZOOM meeting I felt that we are one big family. We are brothers. The globe is one big house for all of us. We could feel the suffering. We were empowering them with our good wishes and pure feelings. A world map with Ukraine in a spotlight was being shared on the screen during the session. Many of us might never been in this country, we might have no idea where Ukraine is, but in soul level I could feel the connection. I could feel the vibration. We still can share our pure feelings and vibration to the souls there. Your contribution will never miss. No physical power can stop this giving and taking. Not guns nor missile. So keep sending. Keep giving.

Can you feel that you are sharing the same feeling with them?

The other day when I just opened my mobile phone the first message in that day I received was from my good friend. It said “I truly hope that we can hear war stop news today.” He might have been reading news about the war a lot. Many of us can not stop the war. Only a few people can do it, if they have the intention.

The war is still going on till today, more and more people are suffering. Don’t lose hope, there is still something we can do – keep sending good wishes for everybody. Although we are miles away from one another but we can still share the same thought.

International Women’s Day

Today is 8th March. It is International Women’s Day. Starbucks has a special offer for its member of 50% off for 2 beverages purchase, only for women. I thought it would be a very good deal.

I said to my colleague that I needed a mood booster to start the day. And my mood booster is hot chocolate. I went to the nearest Starbuck store with a colleague.

When I was making a payment at the cashier, I said to the cashier to put a special note on the cups. And the note is “You are a great woman“.

You are a great woman

I think this note leaves a smile on the face of whoever reads it or heard my conversation with the cashier. It might be a reminder for my colleagues too that they are great women.