Learn to forgive

A few weeks ago I gave a public talk on forgiveness. To be honest, this is the topic that I had avoided for so long. But I decided to take this topic to share to people. I decided to put the tittle ‘learn to forgive’ instead of ‘forgiveness’. To forgive is something I need to learn.

I heard from many people around me saying ‘God is forgiving. Why do we not forgive?’
I have the conviction that God never gets hurt. He doesn’t take sorrow from anyone’s behavior nor wrong doing in the first place. He doesn’t take time to forgive and also to forget it. His intellect is always accurate, He doesn’t keep any waste thoughts. His heart is always clean and pure. Nothing or no one can ever hurt Him. So He is definitely forgiving. But human beings are not God. We never become God. Our hearts easily get hurt probably because our hearts are so weak. We have lost so much power. We take a process to forgive, it means we take time. and it is OK, just keep taking the process. So we need to learn to forgive, and also forget.

My friend said that to forget someone’s mistake (probably also our own mistake) is the highest level of forgiveness. We need to do something to forgive, but I don’t think that we need to do something to forget. When you forget something happened in the past, you can not recall it anymore. It doesn’t exist anymore in your memory track. When the memory is too strong (probably also strongly hurt), usually the memory stays for a long time. And we can not forget it. If something reminds you of a situation that brings hurt, your emotion might get triggered. The whole story might come up on the screen of your mind. If you have got healed, the emotion won’t get triggered even if someone tries to remind you. You remember the situation, the memory is still there, but you no longer get triggered. I think it is also another level of forgiveness, before we forget it completely.

Now look at your heart. Ask your heart if you have completely forgiven everybody or you still learn to forgive. If you are still processing it, you still learn to forgive, you might need to forgive yourself first for this. Don’t put more burden on yourself by disliking yourself for still not being able to forgive others.

A forgiving heart

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.

A lesson from nature

I have been having grass jelly plant in my garden since long time ago. I remember I bought this plant more than 15 years ago in a flora exhibition. This is a climbing plant. It climbs up trees nearby and also the fence. It gives a lot of leafs from which we can make grass jelly drink. I think it is a natural and healthy drink with a lot of chlorophyll in it. I think it is an eternal plant. The gardener who cleaned up my garden had cut it many times and I thought it might had died but it has grown again and again. Probably its root was not completely pulled out from the ground. It is now growing so well with a lot of leafs. I just realized that it has been crawling the gate now. I am sure it will cover the whole gate very soon.

This grass jelly plant is eternal.

I learn one thing from this plant that nature never becomes corrupted. Plant is part of the nature. How wildly it grows, it is not corrupted. It takes nutrition and water from the grown and also light from the sun to grow, not more than it needs. Even when it grows ‘wildly’, it is not called a corruption. A plant grows not for itself.  They give leaf, flower or even fruit, but those are not for themselves. Plant, like animal they don’t develop any greed. They are not selfish either. It is human being who develop selfishness and greed. It is human being who exploit nature out of greed. No wonder that nature has a very good energy or vibration. It heals. No wonder that many people like being in nature. It gives really nice and fresh feeling. It is healing our souls.

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.”

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.

My Cassava

I don’t have enough time to clean the garden from the grass. I usually ask a gardener to come for the cleaning once a month. I don’t have enough patience to do gardening actually. I don’t have enough time also to take care for my plants. So I decided to get someone to plant cassava in my little garden, thinking that I didn’t need to take care for this. Cassava is very easy to grow here. As soon as it was planted, in only a few days I saw the green new leaves coming up. I was happy looking at their new leaves. They grew so well. In a few months they grew so tall. And the grass didn’t grow around the cassava trees.

A few days ago, we had the crops. Again I asked the same gardener to unplug the trees. It was amazing to see the cassava. I thanked to the Mother Earth who grew the cassava. I cooked the cassava as my menu for a few days. I realized how much I was grateful for the Mother Earth for giving me this cassava. I just boiled it and put some salt into it. And enjoyed it. What I noticed was more on the feelings in me while I was enjoying the cooked cassava. It didn’t taste extraordinary, but the feeling was special. There was gratefulness there. I understand it is because I put so much patience and love for seven months. I didn’t take it for granted. I appreciated more.

Thanks to the mother earth!

Because I put so much patience and love into it for seven months, it tasted so good.

Many times I have left over veggies and fruits in my fridge. And I didn’t feel guilty in throwing them away. I realized that I just took it for granted. There was not much appreciation for foods I had. But for this cassava, I really took a good care, I had so much appreciation and so much love. I didn’t throw any piece away. I shared some to a colleague too. She was surprised seeing how big piece the cassava was. I was so happy when she said that she had that cassava for her breakfast one morning. she also enjoyed it.

Listening to God

I was discussing with a friend for an online workshop we were going to have. We worked on the topic on fear. I was the one who would deliver the topic and he would become the MC for the program. We discussed on how to deal with fear. We had a few tips for this and one of the tips was to listen to God. My friend said ‘We need to be silent to listen to God.’ This words struck me so deeply.

What do we do when we are praying? We are speaking to God. We are telling God. We tell God to do one thing or another for us, to fulfill our desire, to agree with us, to support us, to manifest our dreams etc etc. We want Him to listen to our prayer. And what do we do then? Our prayers have become full of our wants and needs. When our mind is full of desires, it is definitely not silent. It is very busy. So we can not listen. We even do not give a chance to God to response to our prayer. I think God knows what we need and desire. He also knows what is best for us, but we are too busy with our own stuff thinking as if we knew everything. God knows everything, even before we put it in our prayer, so it might be the time now we listen to Him more. Let Him tell us. Let Him give a response. For this let the mind silent.

We tell God our needs and wants in our prayer.

I don’t think it is a coincidence, that the words of LISTEN and SILENT have same letters.

My broccoli lesson

Today I did my grocery shopping at the nearest supermarket. I decided to go there in the morning, because I do not like to queue at the cashier counter. I think more people like going to supermarket in the afternoon, especially during weekend. I was right. The queue was not long.

There were only two people in front of me in the queue. I was there with my trolley. And only one person behind me. I checked my shopping list to know if I forgot something to buy. I needed to get milk in carton. I saw they were displayed on my right side, very close from where I was standing. So I went there to get the milk, I left my trolley. When I got back to my trolley, I realized that the lady who stood behind me had skipped me. Very quickly I was feeling bad. ‘It is not fair. Don’t you know how to queue? hey.. this is a public place. Do you know how to behave in a public place?’ These thoughts were playing in my head.

I knew I tried to make myself calm inside. A soft voice in my head said ‘Tini, look at her trolley! Not really much stuff. She wouldn’t take a long time for the payment. It’s OK if you get delayed for one or two minutes for her.’

The other voice said ‘Yes, but it is not fair.’ This voice was louder. I pushed my trolley very slowly towards that lady. I hoped that lady noticed it. And of course, she didn’t dare to look at me. She might realize that what she did to me was not right. I then planned to give her a lesson when I have made my payment. I would like to say to her ‘Next time, please do not skip the queue.’ This was the thought in my head.

This broccoli lesson is for me!

I was shocked when the cashier handed me the receipt of my payment. It cost more than I thought. There must have been something wrong, I thought. I then checked the list of the price of each purchased item on the receipt. Usually I never check any receipt of a payment. My eyes fall on to ‘broccoli’. It said 10 dollars for 269 grams of broccoli. It should have been only 1 dollar instead, as printed on its price tag. Then I talked to the cashier for this and she asked me to go to the information desk. The young man at the information desk apologized for the mistake. He took the receipt and the broccoli from me and revised it. He returned to me with some money. I was still feeling bad about that lady actually. I do not like keeping that kind of feeling in my heart, I always like sharing it to people. This is the way I let my emotion out and not keep it in me. It gives me feeling of a release after doing it.  And I shared it to this young man. I told my little story of the lady in the queue and also my plan of giving her a lesson. But I had to deal with the mistake of the broccoli’s price, so I didn’t execute my plan.

I could see the benefit of being skipped. I learned a lesson. This lesson was for me, not for the lady.

Making a new year resolution that works!

Use the SMART formula. This is th same formula you can use for a goal setting. Anyway a resolution is also a goal. You set the goal and then achieve it. SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bond.

It has to be very very clear!

You need to include your subconscious mind in manifesting what you want. And only when you make it specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bond your subconscious mind will understand what you want. It is your subconscious mind (conscience) that will guide you to achieve that goal. It knows the way to achieve it. So by setting your goal or your resolution in a very clear way, are actually communicate what you want to your conscience in a better way.

When I conducted a workshop on this topic, some audiences shared more ‘qualitative’ resolution like ‘I want to become a kind person’ ‘I don’t want to take sorrow from anybody’. To this qualitative goals, you can’t use the same formula but you definitely still need to make it clear to your self (your subconscious mind). Don’t just leave it there like that, you need to define the goal more detailed. How? Ask yourself, what do you mean by being a kind person? Why do you want to become one? How would you know that you are becoming a kinder person day by day? And the most important question is ‘What would you do everyday to make you this?’ This is a question for an action plan. A regular action that you are committed to take everyday. A resolution without an action would remain a wish or a dream. It won’t become a reality. A commitment is really essential for a successful resolution.

What do you mean by not taking sorrow from anybody? Why do you think you need to do this? How would you check yourself everyday that you are not taking sorrow from anyone? What are you going to do if you take sorrow with no intention? How would you deal with it? What would you say to yourself? How would you do for a self-check?

The clearer your resolution, the easier your subconscious mind will help you to manifest it. This is really the key!

I remember I made a resolution of becoming a more minimalist. And that meant to me to be less acquiring stuff. I made it very specific for clothings. Maximum 5 new clothes for one year. It is measurable. I was not a shopaholics but I thought I needed to do this. I did the same thing with shoes and bags. No new bag and no new shoes during that one year. I shared this resolution to a friend only a few months after January. And I confessed to her that I had bought more than ten clothes. And she said ‘You have failed already.’ I didn’t want to take her comment on me being a failure personally. I knew it would weaken me mentally. I said to my self instead ‘I will keep doing with this resolution. I don’t want to quit.’ I wanted to know myself how far I could go with my resolution by the end of the year. I could measure my failure at end of the year.

If you fail in making your resolution, don’t stop and start thinking that you are a failure, and feeling bad about yourself. No, you are a learner. You keep learning from the failure and you become better. Don’t listen to anybody.