think, think, think again

Just a thought, to think on. When I hear, I listen, I consider, I retaliate, I justify, I look at the angle, I look at the potential blind spots, that which ii don't know and that which I do, I look for the response and the timing and the effect thereof, and all this, within the recess of my mind. Impulsiveness isn't a strong suit of my mind, as I feel I'm like a procrastinator and spend too much time thinking on things. At the same time, I've learnt to detach myself from things that help me differentiate between concerns and stress. Just been thinking on this this morning as I consistently am trying to figure out a way to get people to use reasoning and "clear-mindedness" rather than assuming things unconsciously and going along with that opinion. In the pursuit of understanding, I have come to find myself many times just thinking and pondering as described in the opening sentence, and very rarely take to an actual response. Is this a way to help people use rationalizing and self-reflection techniques to put aside emotions and bring meaningful decisions/opinions. anyway, my thoughts are what I value most and that why I write so that I can recall and capture some of those. What im scared of is that indirectly these thoughts come out as just selfish and prejudiced to another way of thinking... Think think think think think think...

Humble pie

Firstly, its been a while since i wrote here, over a year ago i suppose, though the time does fly by and i always think about writing, but get so caught up with life that i rarely find time to sit and write down my thoughts. That said, i read a lot of my older posts when i want to remember what i think and the way i came to those thoughts... so here i was thinking about something that i feel like i spoke about though not specifically. Being humble in my opinion is likened to what we call a wise person. Why i say that, is because being humble, means that you care less for something that will profit your thoughts or opinions as opposed to others. Its broader than that too, though I'm not trying to define the word, but what i feel with it. I feel that Ive realised that Ive been selfish and self conscious for a lot of my youth, since i felt that i was better than people when i got thoughts first, and further i felt that i could really do a lot more than i was. I felt that i was where i was because of other people holding me back in a way. These, however were totally innocent feelings, as i really feel that i was ignorant then and know a bit better now. Why did i feel like that or expect that air of superiority. I know that the way we are brought up, are being the center of our parents lives since we are from them and they care and love us. They of-course want the best for us and make us feel special and the best thing to them since ever. Now, in all these good intentions and us feeling great about ourselves, how does a person transcend into being someone that looks down on others and feel superior. Where's the turning point, and how do we rein it back? I always aspired to be the best person my parents wanted me to be, not because i felt obliged, but because they believed in me to have the potential i put my mind to. This brings me to the realisation and where humbleness comes into the solution. From the first experience of failing at something (eg. walking and falling down)we realise the pain in falling and the freedom of walking. We are humbled by the fact that we will fall if we loose balance, and as a small child, instinctively we would try our best not to fall. Even without realising it, we find a sort of "fear" from falling or getting hurt, and this is like the building blocks of what being humble is. Progressing, if we think of moving from the physical aspect, to the more psychological aspect of being humble, like towards a persons feelings or towards taking advantage of a person, the same principles apply. We grow up expecting things from our parents who most of the time let us get away with, and thus without knowing it, we learn to take advantage of them and their moods/attitudes etc. We then take this way of dealing with people to people around us. When someone breaks your heart in school, you feel devastated and realise you would never want to do that to someone else, which makes you a better person for your next relationship, and thus we progress in life learning about numerous things that we could come out humble and wise to in the future. How many people out there haven't had the opportunity to learn in life these thing to treat people properly before hurting them? What do so many people that are humble to our exploitations make it easier to handle? What my point is, to skip a few steps, is the realisation that we could be taking advantage of someone or a situation. We can be better people by just knowing that the way we act could be unfair, and proper thought be put into something before actually carrying it out. i always think in my mind .... "what if i was in his/her shoes, what would it look like"

Another name for the future..perhaps

Take a step back, close your eyes, and clear your mind. Now focus only on yourself. Where you are, how you got there, the things that define you, the things that have an effect on you. Was this all predetermined, or was this just a spate of coincidence?
A word or an idea we know from stories and tales of hero's and saviours. They had what could be seen as great detinies. what is this destiny?
Is it a predetermined planned path for our lives and choices?Is it just an excuse, scape goat for blame, meaningless alternative? Perhaps it is just a way we describe where we are, because in essence, we dont really have any idea.
For an athlete who worked hard at accomplishment, would it be right to say it was their destiny to succeed? Would it be different if he never worked as hard? YES! Then, building on that, why can we all not feel that we can have a hand in our destiny to work hard and get results that fit?
"What is meant for you, will come to you" This is not concise to say if whats meant for you being dependant on what effort you make for it , and I feel, that though we get whats meant for us, we cannot understand it fully. Somethings are unfair, what do we know truly of the hearts of others?
As ive stated previously, i feel that we are beings who have understanding and free will, but there is a finite limit to outr understanding. Maybe destiny exists, maybe it doesnt in our understanding of it, but i dont think we have the capacity for all of that comprehension.
By acting on what we do know, if we want something, we should work for it. If we get it or not, we could say it is destiny to our understanding. But what should matter is how we deal with it thereafter. Appreciation of who we are and where we are in our lives is as much of a realisation of destiny that i can think of.
"Your Destiny is to DIE, but it's what you do inbetween in LIFE that matters."

what we hold on to, what we let go off

As the seconds flutter by, the minutes stroll past, the hours melt away and so on, we find ourselves living our lives and being who we are with the type of lifestyles we have come to accept, whether by choice or by circumstance, we are there. We are all looking for our perfect way of living life and the right way to do things, but we rarely would know as we only get one shot realistically at living life. With this in mind i feel that we really are born with a basic instinct as to how we live life. Sure our ancestors didn't live the same way as us because of what we call knowledge and learning. Our ancestors learnt from their ancestors as we do from them, and in essence, we understand more things than they did, only because we have access to what they didn't. We could call that learning from experience on a macro scale. In life as humans, we have the ability to learn and then progress. Because we have learned how to efficiently stay alive with minimal effort, we then started learning to develop with things that caught out curiosities, and hence we know a wide variety of things because of experiments and research. With this learning and developing, i can come to my point which is that we still however have one life to live and we aspire to the best we can. With this realization, i went down a road of further thought on the things that affect us and the weight of it on our lives. We find that we can be emotionally affected by people who have a place in our lives. Even though we may have previously lived perfectly fine with our dreams and aspirations, when we find a person that we become friends with and subsequently more, we connect on a certain level, and then we feel that we cannot live our lives again without that person after that. Our ability to learn is directly effected by our emotions, since we shall learn and progress when we really want to. The reason i feel that we hold onto people and things that bring about some change in our lives is that they appeal to our emotional side of living the perfect life, and hence we feel that henceforth without those special things or people, we shall never have the same quality of life. I understand that as human we cannot simply let go, because that is what we define as someone that cares, but i also think that because we care, we should have the ability to let go of everything. A bit cryptic perhaps, but a bit more significant for me as i feel that when we can control our emotions to allow us to learn that a perfect life isn't one that really obtained, but rather a realistic life is what we get, then we would actually be closer to live a life which is more fulfilling. It maybe quite subjective, but i know that it makes a whole lot of sense, as people change, and people are different. We may not know what someone is truly about, or we may when its a bit too late. To close, id just like to share "In the process of letting go you will lose many things from the past, but you will find yourself." – Deepak Chopra

The effect of consistency

There seems to always come a time when we are drawn into our lives and have a monotonous lifestyle doing things the same way everyday. Sometimes, this may seem as a good thing as doing good continuously adds up and shows good progress, though how do we know that what we are doing is actually improving our lives or doing the opposite? The reason i have this on my mind is that a few weeks ago, i decided that what i was doing wasn't enough, and to be more productive and have a better quality of life, i will need to work harder for longer now. During this beginning phase i ask myself a whole lot of questions which helps me understand if i am doing too much and heading for a burnout, or am i actually doing what i was supposed to be doing in the first place. The idea of making the most of ones time comes up a lot in everyone's life when they take the time to reflect and put things into perspective. I get amazed quite often at what kind of goals i set myself when after a while i try to take the route where i do much more than i think i can handle and it actually goes along well without any problems. Let me give you an example. Ive been trying to go to gym from the time i was in school to keep fit and lead a healthy lifestyle, and part of going to gym, is the consistency as well as intensity. Generally we should go to gym 3-4 time a week to lead a fruitful healthy lifestyle with moderate intensity. Ive been doing this generally on and off and see minimal results, and a couple months ago i decided to up the ante and try and go to gym on average 5 times a week, and not only that but with a high intensity. The difference is that when working consistently you will find a more fruitful outcome than working hard for a short while. Our only draw back would be our minds since we have a limited amount of concentration to give. so, to me, i feel that if i can increase my concentration, i can earn a better quality of life getting the most i can get done!

a determined mind

The feeling of waking up in the morning, realizing the state you are in and making a promise to yourself to change everything that you do to change and get to a happier place in life. I'm sure that many of us can agree to this kind of scenario since we all have goals in life although at times it may seem to be in the furthest recesses of our minds just kept away so we don't realize what we are doing or what we are allowing ourselves to be put through. The realization that we have other choices and the determination of following through with those decisions are what make us determined. This can be seen mainly with people who are over weight and wake up one day realizing that they are indeed much fatter and unhealthy than they need to be, and thus make up their minds to change. This change in the way people treat themselves are triggered by a motivation to attain a better quality of life. Not everyone can find this determination in their lives , but from the few success stories that we do fine, we can see that it is possible to change. For me, this shows that although as humans we get beaten down, trod on in terms of literal and superficial issues, even issues of the mind and our beliefs, we can find a motivation to make ourselves determined to find the truth or to find a better way to live in essence. For a person to appreciate the value of living a "normal" life, they have to be subjected to living a life off those more unfortunate. in many ways, a hungry person find more satisfaction from a cup of water than a spoilt rich person who only drinks designer beverages. However, we don't have to put ourselves through every agony to acquire the humbleness and the appreciating of what we have and where we are. I feel that although i may not have lived in the slums or fought against an army, i still appreciate what it would be like and take choices in my life to be better than that and not go down the same path. To know the limits of your mind, you do need to push it however, but you will be surprised for how much you can do with it when you really try.

time for reflection

The last day of this year and I'm here at work in my office not being as productive as i should be, looking for every excuse as not to do so as well, i remembered my blog which i have been away from for way too long. Perhaps no new thoughts that came to mind, or really nothing to share, but i guess there are times when one finds themselves sitting and thinking about things. Just sitting here, i am wondering about the year that has passed and what progress i made in my life. I have spoken previously about making the most of our time, yet i feel that that has been easier said than done. I feel that although sometimes we feel that we do not progress in life and find ourselves in the same place we were when we left, there are things about a person that changes and things a person realizes and feels differently about. Looking back specifically on this year 2012, so much has happen and so many things change. We see things differently as we did last year this time, though sometimes we feel stuck and in the same place. I know that personally i felt as if the year just flew by, though i also know that i have done quite a bit in this time as well. What this leads me onto thinking about is that although we spend the time and do the things, we do to really appreciate the passage of time. I could have a full weekend from Friday evening all the way to Sunday afternoon, and still get up on Monday morning and complain to everyone at work that the weekend was too short! A person has the capacity to deal with a specific amount of things at any point in their life. There are some people who like to do so much more and are always looking for different things to occupy themselves with. I feel i am one of these kind of people and hence i also feel like there are so many things that are interesting and that i do not do. Listening to a CD on the Life of Prophet Mohammed (SAW), i came upon a section where they mention that as Muslims we should not busy ourselves in things which have no value to add. The type of of activities that he proposed from that time are activities such as swimming (as they were Arabs from the desert, they didn't know how to swim, so learning how to swim would be advantageous to them), marksmanship and even horse riding. To me, these kind of activities are only some of the thing we can do in the times we live in today to make our selves better people, and although i know i wouldn't be able to do everything, i will endeavor to learn a few and do my best to be good at it. A happy new year to everyone, and may 2013 bring plenty happiness and joy to your life!