The last article showed the technical side of the convoluted aging process and how it impacts us in such a way that our contribution to daily living equally affects the outcome of us growing old.
In this article, we’ll talk about death.
Death is inevitable, the same as the fathomable truth about our galaxy is being further away from other galaxies instantaneously. So our future humans might have to accept the situation that they are indeed alone in the universe, surrounded by complete darkness, assumably we would have been lucky enough to propel our technological advancement to the type 3 civilisation and beyond. They might not even know the universe was once shinning across the Milky Way if our preservation doesn’t handle properly with time. From the potentiality of civil war, space war to silence particular truth of something with fire and violence, there are many unknowns we can’t predict for the far future ahead of us. But the fact that the speed of each astronomical object is increasing and moving away from one another startles many, i mean why wouldn’t they?
If our universe has constructed in this way; explode and cease, explore then expand, collapse then reborn, our death seems to be more acceptable, perhaps.
But either way, immortality could be equally destructive as the death itself, in terms of humankind as a whole.
Imagine an immortal person, he can put every project off because, in theory, he can do them four centuries from now.
Life would have been unchallenged or even unsatisfied in a way that the motive of living organisms will probably die out comparing to many aspects of how we live and the idea of passing on our genes to secure our kinships will be unimportant in a sense.
It might be good to fantasize about the possibilities but I do believe that death has pushed our humankind to evolve to this day of age along with a lot of significant achievements. From the internet to skyscrapers, to landing on another planet with very sophisticated machines, as well as classical Beethoven’s symphonies in music, these accomplishments would not happen without the terminal element of death exists in the reality and its idea deeply rooted in our thoughts subconsciously.
Therefore, knowing we’ll one day die, it becomes less horror and rather, an encouragement for us to reflect upon. Death might be the ultimate force we can harvest to push our potential to achieve our set goals. Be like our ancestors like Beethoven, or whichever historical figure you admire.
The death might be invisible, but the reflection of death we can always feel around us which is the evolution of every living kind.
What we sometimes overlook the death in the overall picture though is that it’s like a phoenix, death is only a part of the process to give birth to something newer, something brighter, like generational waves. This cycle of death and reborn has been encircled since the existence of time. So, for whatever hardships you’re facing now, dare to stand up on both of your feet, stand up for yourself as no one else can do it for you. This death will breed something greater down the road. Our actions will determine the final outcome of our life since we’re gifted with free wills.
Taking care of our health is now more important than ever in this regard, as we want to extend our “good time” while being in the absence of sickness so we can enjoy our journey with ease.
What do you think about death? Share with me in the comments down below!
Growing old, is one of the scariest concepts that can inflate as vine inside our mind when we grow older. Trapping our mind at a fixed knot and creating invisible chains around our wrists and ankles, the longer we let the fears expand the bigger these chains can dictate our lives. Stepping out from our own perspective, aging is only a natural process that any organism will have to go through its cycle of birth, growth, and death.
So aging is more of a phenomenon like the water cycle; rains drop from the sky and stay on the ground. Till the sun comes out and they evaporate back to the sky, forming clouds again. But unlike rain, aging is something we can control with ourselves more or less. Through our conscious decisions making, consistent efforts, and a good understanding, we can keep our mind, body and heart young in one alignment.
Let’s look at the psychological aspect of aging first. If aging is indifferent to any kind, why do we fear it then?
Many of us fear what comes with aging, not aging itself. For example, from the mental and physical decline, to the increased vulnerability to disease and chronic pain or memory loss as an adult, and getting wrinkle with loose skin, or not being competitive in the dating/job market as they used to, it’s what comes with the term “aging” makes people scared of getting old.
While aging is inevitable among all of us, as well as all of the living beings on earth, we can slow down or even reverse the process by our positive mindset and taking decisive actions. We don’t want to wait till we’re finally reaching the age of 75 and then start looking for ways to reverse our beauty and youth.
FIRST OF ALL, HOW AGING WORKS?
Simply put, we’re just the collections of cells, albeit magnificent and really complicated collections that exist as animated thick blobs for a while in a hope of living long enough to reproduce. And when it gets too tough for ourselves to keep these masses together, we die.
After decades of researching on aging, scientists believe that inside our cell divisions, there is something at the end of each chromosome getting shorten each time when dividing, which is associated with our aging.
TELOMERES
The end of each chromosome that stores our genetic information inside our body has a protective cap around it, known as a telomere; A specific DNA sequence that is repeated thousands of times.
A telomere serves two purposes in its lifetime. The first purpose is to protect the coding region of the chromosomes and preventing them from being damaged, as if a protective and sacrificial watcher.
As each telomere forming a cap at the ends of our chromosomes, much like the plastic tip on shoelaces, they protect chromosomes from sticking with one another and sacrifice their sequences during each DNA replication. The shortening telomere phenomenon is termed “End Replication Problem” and it basically suggests that the ends of linear DNA, like ours, cannot be replicated completely because a short stretch of DNA doesn’t get covered by a new strand when the copying process reaching the end of the chromosome.
The RNA primer, like a printing machine, would fall beyond the chromosome end due to its linear structure, leaving a single-stranded overhang. Imagine over multiple rounds of cell divisions, the shortening will be very significant and potentially damage our DNA. So here is where telomeres come in. They are being at the end of the chromosome to sacrifice their repeated sequences each time to complete the DNA replication cycle. So a new DNA gets copied thoroughly. This also explains why telomeres are repeated sequences in nature as they are born ready to be cut away for the completion of DNA replication.
As telomeres consist simply of repeated code, they are easy to lengthen after being shortened by cell division through an enzyme called Telomerase. ***This video explains “End Replication Problem” and uses Telomerase at the end to fix that problem. However, this only happens in eggs, sperm, and most stem cells; regular cells, such as nerve cells, or skin cells do not get extended for what was lost or having limited capacity for regeneration. DNA repair mechanism can be triggered but not always. This means that in normal cells, the telomeres become shorter and shorter with each subsequent cell division.
***Notice that telomerase’s job will lengthen telomere for some additions, meanwhile, RNA primer can come in and complete the replication process.
Once telomeres reach a critically short length, the cell ceases to divide and enters what we called cellular senescence or apoptosis, so it can either remain metabolically active and be eliminated by the immune system later or cell suicide.
Whereas DNA damaged can vary, from environmental toxins to radiation, to viruses and reactive oxygen species (ROS). There are more to come, but once a chromosome is damaged, discontinuity often results in death.
The second purpose of telomeres is to act as the limitation in controlling the number of replications a cell can make. This limit on the human cell is known as the Hayflick limit and is named after its discoverer Dr. Leonard Hayflick. The reason why cancer cells are so powerful is that they can lengthen telomeres indefinitely with telomerase; under the hooray of forever dividing with no loss, leaving the suffering to humans.
The limitation of replication is the direct result of aging. Though all of us are born with a certain number of telomeres as based pairs, they dwindle as we age. Since many of them in the type of cells don’t get the lengthening treatment from telomerase, they die with no coming back. Naturally, the overall cell numbers will decline with time. At this point, we haven’t included the influences from the outside, such as excessive drinking.
I know. We probably don’t consider aging can be zoomed down to this very cellular level and yet, their livings are seriously impacting us tremendously.
Now, let’s take a look at how aging can impact our body before we talk about the cause of aging and in what ways we can slow down or reverse the aging process.
=====Part II: The Impacts Aging Could Bring=====
Aging Organs
How well organs function depends on how well the cells within them function. Eventually, older cells function less well and some cells die with no replacement so the overall number of cells decreases with time. This explains why older people tend to have abnormal problems with their organs, kidney failure for example.
Notice that not all organs lose a large number of cells. Our brain for example, healthy older people don’t lose many brain cells. Substantial losses occur mainly in people who have had a stroke or disorder that causes the progressive loss of nerve cells, like neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease.
Aging Skin
Being the largest body organ, our skin changes with age. Drier skin and having less supple, our skin becomes thinner and loses fat. The healing process in our skin from scratches and cuts also takes longer to complete. Not to mention the wrinkles that appear on the surface, that our skin transforms into less elastic due to the ultraviolet (UV) light from the sun, while gravity can cause the skin to sag and wrinkle too. Certain habits, like smoking, are also a part of the contribution to skin wrinkling.
Muscles
The amount of muscle tissue, known as muscle mass, and muscle strength tend to decrease in the early 30 and continuing throughout life. Although reasons are varied regarding the decrease, some are caused by physical inactivity and decreasing levels of growth hormone and testosterone, which stimulate muscle development. Besides that, when muscles can’t contract as quickly because more fast-contracting muscle fibers are lost than slow-contracting muscle fibers, muscle contraction also gets affected.
While we begin to lose muscle mass in a small percentage per decade when we enter the middle-age ground, we can rebuild the muscle mass by a plan, work, and dedication. In the absence of disease, loss in muscle mass is preventable with regular exercise to a higher extent. Usually, more severe muscle loss, like sarcopenia, results from disease or extreme inactivity, not from aging alone.
When it comes to excuses in preventing one from doing exercising, there are many. From environmental limitations to being too protective of themselves, afraid of getting hurt again physically, these are the mental blocks they being the protagonists in their lives have to go through. But after taking the initial action to start improving their physicality, they will as well develop the mental strength to endure bad excuses and many external negative circumstances.
4. Body Fat
Our total body weight fluctuates according to the calories we consume relative to how many we burn. For example, if we take in more than we burn off, we’ll gain weight over time. Our body can identify what is calories but it doesn’t just dispose of them. It stores extra calories as fat, rather than using it to fuel muscle. It’s a natural energy conversion in our body.
When this happens, the proportion of body weight we carry that is fat increases. One of the big misconceptions for many is that doing aerobic exercise, such as swimming, dancing, walking or cycling, doesn’t primarily have a major effect on our muscle mass, at least not compared to weight lifting. However, it’s very effective at burning calories. What scares people is too much fat stored in the cells and there isn’t a way for them to burn the fat off.
When we age, our loss of muscle mass shifts the dynamic of storing the intake of calories from muscle cells to now the fat cells. It’s because we now understand that our muscle cells will decrease with time, and our body still needs to handle the incoming calories. To prevent that? Keep yourself active!
*******A side note on: Fat Loss or Weight Loss?*******
Although it strays from our aging topic a bit, I would like to cover it here quickly with a paragraph to explain this commonly asked question.
If you simply reduce your calorie intake to lose weight, without exercising, you will probably lose muscle as well as fat. It’s because when we cut back on calories, our body is forced to find other sources of fuel. What else can be the idealistic fuel for our body to burn? Muscle protein. Even if you don’t see it that way, our body sees it that way, and that matters. So what is the solution? Cut down the calories as you would like but don’t skip meals, unless you’re really low at appetite, then there is something else to work on. Meanwhile, Do your favorite sport or exercise for improving muscle mass and strength. The bottom line is: think about fat loss, not weight loss.
Aging Bone and Joints
Bone is densely packed with flexible fibers, known as collagen fibers, hardened by calcium and phosphorous. They are built to withstand great stress from activities like walking, running, and jumping. Since bone is a living tissue that constantly renews itself, our skeleton is completely new every 7~10 years.
Bones constantly change through a process of resorption and formation called “remodeling” throughout our lifetime; removing the mature bone tissue and allowing new bone tissue to form. Any following injuries like fractures can be resolved by reshaping or replacement thanks to this remodeling process. However, as we age the balance between bone resorption and bone formation changes, due to the cells lost, resulting in a loss of bone tissue.
For example, the mineral content of bones decreases, making the bones less dense and more fragile. If this continues without proper care, likely osteoporosis develops. This symptom is marked by progressive bone loss. Osteoporosis is also responsible for almost all hip fractures in older men and women. But the good news is, osteoporotic bones are structurally different than healthy bone. That means we can all avoid this phenomenon by exercising regularly.
*Osteoporosis can also be interpreted as “porous bone” in the simplest term for easy imagination.
The chemistry of cartilage, which provides cushioning between bones, changes. With less water content, the cartilage becomes more susceptible to stress. As the cartilage degenerates, arthritis can develop. Ligaments, connective tissues between bones, become less elastic, reducing flexibility.
And what about our joints?
Joint motion becomes more restricted and declines in flexibility with age because of changes in tendons and ligaments. Some people might experience inflaming joints during the aging process if they didn’t take care of them when they were younger.
To improve our bone strength and flexibility overall, stretching is a must-to-go exercise we need to integrate into our modern busy schedules. Not only it will benefit you in physicality that lasts for a lifetime but also the freedom in mentality that can be obtained through practicing stretching.
So you see, although aging and exercising, stretching and everything else in between is sort of important and they kinda exist independently like options that we can choose where to focus on, their interconnections are deeply rooted to our health at cellular levels and without taking some times to look back into ourselves and process what we learnt, we might still ponder why certain health problems happen to us, especially when we age.
It could be very depressed at times for some, because most of the money they earn they spend on medical care for healing. Their worries keep them in loops and they knew it was a rabbit hole, but they just didn’t know how to get out of it.
Although there are more phenomenal body changes we can talk about, the above examples are good enough to give you insights on how aging can change our body and why precaution and prevention should be taken more seriously, in a light-hearted manner of course!
==== Part III: How To Slow Down, Prevent, Or Reverse Aging?====
As we now know our cells’ armies will decrease when we grow older. To keep us in check, our mentality of believing we are always young is first and foremost. Playfulness and lightheartedness should always be inside our hearts and be ready to take the wheel in our life. And then, we can explore the best ways to keep our cells living in prospect and longevity.
The toxicities we know of, such as tobacco and air pollution, all commonly have free radicals within and realising this is one of the main sources that can cause us aging, we should better know what a free radical is.
Free Radical
Think of it like a hat-less kid who likes to steal other children’s hats. Whenever a kid doesn’t have a hat on his head, he is a free radical that exists on a molecular level. Other kids nearby who have hats will be taken by this kid. Any kid who’s lost their hat will now be another free radical. So the stealing process continues until everybody has a hat.
Free radicals are highly reactive and unstable atoms or molecules. They can be oxygen molecules but not always. The unstable nature is derived from an unpaired electron. As a result of this imbalance, free radicals seek out and take electron(s) from other molecules to put themselves back stability, which oftentimes causes damage to the second molecule.
When a free radical does this, it’s called “oxidation.” A molecule that has had its electron “stolen” from a free radical, has been “oxidized.” Oxidized molecules are now transformed into free radicals themselves and seek to steal from another healthy molecule. This creates a vicious chain reaction of electron stealing in the body. When the body has undergone excessive oxidation, or more oxidation that can be combated, It’s said to be undergoing “oxidative stress.”
DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD; Free Radicals
There isn’t a need for putting a bad image on free radicals though. As free radicals chain reaction is significantly helpful in converting foods to energy in our body, they also lead the contractions of heart cells to become stronger and beats with greater force, paving the way to a better understanding of various types of heart deficiency among older people.
Like many things that occur in nature, free radicals are not only impossible to avoid but necessary for life. Free radicals help us fight infection, begin the inflammation process that helps repair tissue injury, and short-term oxidative stress may inhibit aging. At the same time, excessive amounts are harmful to humans.
Free radicals can be formed in the body in a number of ways:
Stress – Chemicals, cortisone and catecholamines released by mental stress can create free radicals.
Environmental exposure – The radiation from the sun, cigarette smoke, air and water pollution, pesticides, and herbicides in the food we eat for example can cause free radical formation in our bodies.
Exercise – While consistent moderate exercise has many positive benefits and can reduce the risk of catching cancer or diseases, excessive exercise or inconsistent but vigorous exercise uses a high amount of the body’s oxygen store and as a result, generates excessive free radicals.
Alcohol – Any kind of amount in consuming alcohol produces free radicals in the body.
Eat – Polyunsaturated fat, which exists in vegetable oils, is easily oxidized in the body and can create free radicals. To learn more about it here.
Our bodies – free radicals are the natural byproducts of metabolic processes. While cells use oxygen to generate energy, free radicals are created as a consequence of ATP ( adenosine triphosphate) production by mitochondria. Overtimes, accumulated and being leftover free radicals will try to fulfill their only purpose, which to find unpaired electrons to make them stable. This often causes damage to cells, proteins, and DNA.
Essentially, the only job for free radicals is to cause large chain reactions in any process, and these reactions are called oxidation. Excessive free radicals will fulfill their only purpose – take on other electron(s) from another atom or molecule – by causing chain reactions and such result is directly oxidized other molecules.
In order to witness the power of free radicals that takes part in the aging process in real time, let’s visualise the impact of oxidation first.
The Oxidized Apple
Have you seen how an apple being oxidized? When an apple is cut into pieces, the plant tissue is exposed to oxygen. The free radicals and all of the damage we have mentioned earlier in this article are demonstrating on this apple right now, with its color turning brown. This apple will naturally age, yes. But by exposing the tissue to the air, oxidation accelerates the aging process. That means oxidation can be the cause for speeding up aging. And imagine the same to our body. But rest assured, our body is stronger than an apple and through our practical approach, we can combat aging according to our wills.
The Oxidative Damage During Replicating Process
Here is a closed-up mind-blowing video on how oxidative damage on telomeres can eventually kill the daughter cells during the replicating process.
Is there any way to smoothen free radicals then?
Nature has its way. There is a counteract molecule called “Antioxidant.” An antioxidant provides extra electrons to neutralise the aggressive behavior of free radicals, bringing balance to our body. So if we have an excessive amount of free radicals in our body, we need a counteract measure. Going to a supermarket and spending some time to read drink labels, you will notice some drinks would contain antioxidants, green tea for instance. But keep in mind that too many of antioxidants also isn’t a good thing.
life is meant to be daring and endearing for whatever we have to experience. So take a deep breath by opening your lung and nostrils at the same time. Take a break, drink some water and come back! I know this article is quite heavy, but also liberating.
Since aging is a natural process, it means anything can influence it.
Let’s link everything together for a complete picture, shall we?
We’ve learnt about telomere, aging changes in our body, free radicals, and oxidation. With almost countless possible scenarios that can be taken place, I would pick the easy-to-follow, logical, both inside and outside situations for us to approach and contemplate. Keep in mind that we are excluded disease and other factors, so find your way to unlatch your health situation.
Internally speaking, as we can see there are several ways to trigger free radicals inside the body and the exceeded amounts will become oxidative stress. Uncontrolled oxidative stress tends to damage lipids, proteins, and DNA, eroding our vital tissues. Once oxidation has been made to the innocents, it takes time and more internal efforts to fix and repair. If it’s too severe, elimination of cells will be taken place. Over time, we might incidentally accelerate the natural aging process through our “Growth Path”.
And our self-created stress can also be a big contribution to aging too. Therefore, we need to maintain ourselves in better moods. If you don’t know how, please read others of my self-help articles or book a consultation with me.
Multiple external triggers induce oxidative stress that can negatively impact our body if we don’t take a better measure of balance. Air pollutants, tobacco smoke, or certain types of foods for example, all we need is to raise our awareness on these little details and develop ways to combat, avoid or replace the situations.
Honestly, it isn’t easy for many of us, due to the preconditions we have with our surroundings, and the circumstances we are facing. The difficulties lay under the maintenance on our health, while some of us are still trying to make an end meet, funding money for their kids to education, and many more. Whatever the hardships you have to go through, understand that step one to deal with all of the outside matters, is to recharge ourselves. Give yourself space and time to rest.
So, what are the solutions for aging?
Overall there are a few steps we can tackle aging:
Learn the knowledge
Develop a good healthy diet specifically for yourself
Doing physical hobbies or exercising
Rest up
Share your health view with others
When you reach to step 5, and continuously going on your health path, it’s an indication that you fundamentally change yourself within and help spreading this health element to the rest of the world too. Congrats! And keep up the good work. We need to reduce human sufferings because they are just too painful to so many.
*The term “reversing aging” in this article means identifying our old habits or patterns that can harm telomeres or cells. Replace them with new interests, hobbies, or new patterns of thinking even. That’s how we break the karmic cycle and ensure we don’t repeat the old. Without some sophisticated tools like Crispr to alter our genes, which somehow unnatural, through our basic changes in our lives we can still reverse the once pessimistic outlook on aging and ally with our trillions of cells in fighting any harmful substances or cells.
Our health is really the only ticket that allows us to be on this earth and being able to experience whatever we can experience right here right now; like taking a hot shower, having a chat with your loved one, resting on the couch. We want to be happy, healthy individuals and don’t want to get any sickness or disease just because we did’t pay attention to our body earlier in life, as we might just be too busy to focus on the external things in the meantime. So take rest and reserve our energy and strength.
Take your time to think, reflect, plan and act. Life is short, and because it’s so short, you don’t want to rush anything and then messed up later like what it used to be. As long as you do your best, there is no regret.
Be Strong you’ve got this. Be prepared and flexible mentally and physically as always, so you can deal with the external problems with ease.
This article is a bit longer than my usual, but I wanted to cover several points in one go so that it can display a complete picture by the end of it. Thanks for sticking around and I hope it’s helpful for you and letting you gaining another perspective on aging! :)
Living a life certainly isn’t easy! But also it’s worthwhile. It’s somehow all of the tastes, sweet and bitter, sour and hot, sometimes with no taste, like every little moments in between the collections of our life album, that making us feeling alive. So trust your intuition and dive into it for the life that you’ve always been dreaming about!
I’m hoping to share more health-related concepts, information, opinion and so on. Anything you want me to cover? Please let me know what you think in the comments down below or private message me. And as always, have a good day!
Photos by Heather Ford, Ian Schneider, Olia Nayda, Marian Kroell, Ben White, Caleb Jones, Ella Olsson from Unsplash
Simply put, self-belief synergises our thought and action towards the achievement we want in life.
It’s a fundamental source of self-consciousness to dictate our life direction. How to navigate our life direction? Change our belief. For example, we’ve got to believe we can get a straight A+ in school before it can really happen. Our belief is the direction for our efforts putting into.
Belief doesn’t cost us anything other than mental effort and complete trust. While belief is usually referring to religion, which is another great topic we can explore in the future, this article focuses on harnessing this belief power and apply it to any aspect of our life for the manifestation of whatever thing we wish to achieve.
For many, to believe that is possible is the most difficult thing in their lives.
“To believe I can make it through hardships, even I was being adopted, broke, bullied, and labeled as useless. Being treated like one of those low-lives. To believe I am the one who can make changes and overcome the difficult steps. To believe the dream and vision I set on my sight is right and that is the path towards my desired destination.”
What if LeBron James didn’t believe he could make it to State Champion, then National Champion and then playing his way to NBA? And What if Serena Williams didn’t believe the tennis skill could take her onto the tennis world stage and continue thriving even at the very top?
Everyone has different dreams and desires in this world. Some might realise them sooner and some others might realise their purposes a bit later but that’s not a complete disadvantage. Every experience is meant to grow us.
The truth is, there are a lot of distractions to wear our energy down, to make us forget what we truly want to accomplish, or the things we once set our vision at. Especially we now live in the modern age where technology is rapidly transforming our lives, making us forget our physical ability to achieve something far greater than the little screen in front of us, and the societies value more on economic interests rather than arts and humanities.
But so what? We come to earth with nothing but a ticket. If life is meant to be an experienced journey for us, what’s left we’re afraid to lose?
Imagine a lot of people have to sit at their work daily for salary. We’ve been running a lot, which makes us easily forget where we come from and our passions for something. Too many things going on in ones’ lives, so how can we expect people to mute the noises from the outside world and look into themselves, and find their true purpose, what they passionate about, and believe they can achieve their greatest potential.
We are easy to talk ourselves out of the impossible, and then we fixed the impossible to unreachable.
“There isn’t any opportunity you know….” “Sorry… I don’t have time for that.” “I’m too busy now.” “Phew! I’m tired.” “ Oh god, that’s too much of work…”
Where and when these occur? To re-experience this kind of voices again, simply take a look back at our new year resolution again in the past three years.
Some might want to lose weight, some others look for true love. Some crave traveling around the world, and some people wish to have abundant wealth. Some want a painless state of being, while some others want happiness.
Regardless of how abstract the wishes might be, we can all achieve the end goal because there are steps in-between every wish. (*Note that kids imagination wishes, like magics and sci-fi fastasy, can be translated into artworks like writing and such. So in a sense it’s still possible.)
Let’s take the abstract element ‘happiness’, as an illustration. Step 1) Find a piece of paper and pen to write 5 things down that would make you truly happy Step 2) How to get/achieve them? Ask yourself this and write down solution(s) Step 3) Connect the dots Step 4) Believe it, take action, enjoy the process and embrace the success Step 5) You’ll be happier than ever before, because that’s what you truly want.
It’s that simple. Our action is the driving force to take us closer to the end goal, but it’s our belief to give the direction along the way.
Reviewing our new year resolution from time to time, and visualising the progress bar again, and be appreciated just how far we have accomplished so far, our made-up mind evolves us to become the person we wanted to be. Every step counts, no matter how small.
Not to mention opportunities are everywhere, it’s the same as happiness. They are infinite. Although we have been planted with the idea that things are finite. For example, from finite seats in a theatre to finite positions in a company, to finite billionaires in the world.
We can’t blame them, because life does appear this way like everything can be numbered. But in truth, things are infinite; as life is an endless cycle of the present. So they will repeat with variety, ultimately the same. Therefore, if you dare to demand the universe to give you a seat, regardless of the outcome or where it ends up, there will be a seat for you. The same as the opportunity, happiness or abundance, they are always infinite, though it requires one’s efforts and the awareness of infinite amounts in the existence.
Do you believe in yourself you can do it? Like absolute belief? How much do you believe in it?
Now, here is the solution when we don’t believe in ourselves we can actually accomplish. It’s very simple:
The action reaffirms our belief.
The reason why somebody achieves what they have today is their actions are aligned with their belief every single day.
LeBron James plays basketball resolutely. In the eyes of many, he is practicing. But without a doubt, he is reaffirming his belief that he is the greatest player of all time. He moves and sharpening his skill every day to make himself believe he is capable. He doesn’t just let the fantasy goes over his head, he puts it into work, and now we see the result from his hard work.
By going through the process of taking action to our passionated area(s) every time, we can strengthen our belief and reaffirming ourselves that, yes we can do it too. We’re capable. How simple is that?
We’re unstoppable. Remember our energy is abundant even after we leave this world (Our Legacy). There is nothing too late and nothing we cannot do it. it’s just about redistributing our energy and focus again. No regret, have faith, let’s make a new beginning.
So, what do you want to achieve this year? What is your dream? Tell me once again how to reaffirm your belief?
Thanks for reading this article. I hope it helps you in any way. What are your thoughts? I would love to hear them, so let me know in the comments :) And as always, Stay safe stay healthy.
Photos by Katrina Wright, Shane, Alysha Rosly, Lorenzo Lamonica, Marvin Meyer, Emma Matthews from Unsplash
Look at today To-Do list, and monthly To-Do list, and then yearly To-Do list, we always want more but pay very little attention to our capacity to complete the task we set out to.
To figure out why we’re often unmotivated in the first place, we need to look deeper into ourselves.
The biggest of all is our motive isn’t desperate and/or the task is too large for completion.
We all have been there. Very often, we feel overwhelmed by how big the project is or, our initial motive assigned to its task doesn’t make us tail the completion. So what we did instead?
We turn to something that requires far less our mental efforts, such as scrolling our phone mindlessly. While relaxation is needed for our brain and body to recharge, too much of its short-term gains lose our vision that set in the long term. This game of life isn’t just the next few hours, but a lifetime of one combination of all little moments. Therefore, we cannot ignore all of these little moments and letting them go by, as they are far impactful then we originally thought of.
As my blog is an advocate of being healthy and fit, I will use health as my example throughout this article. It’s such an essential element one shouldn’t overlook. Nonetheless, you can apply the concepts and the method below to every task or project you do.
First off, what is your motive in completing the task?
Motivation often comes down to what our motive is and how much we want that to happen. Laying down a solid fundamental block of our motive is the best way to build our significance. Notice that our purpose in life and our motive for one specific thing, are different, though they are overlapped and should be interconnected in some forms.
Usually, our motive needs to be bigger than ourselves, but not excluding ourselves. For example, I want to be able to do 20 pull-ups. This is a very personal development of course. But if we change our motive to “ I’m achieving 20 pull-ups because I can show to the people who I love that they can achieve something significant too.” Or ” If I improve my overall well-being, then I will have better energy for myself to focus on the work, that brings a bigger impact of the contribution to the society.”
The reasons for your motive are endless, so find one that suits you best. And through achieving its course, your daily transformation is noticeable. Once we make our motive more desperate and bigger than ourselves, we can easily tune ourselves into working on its task.
Now, health isn’t something we complete, and then we forget. Same as many things, health is continuous and transformative. But it’s the tangible relationship we have with our body that reminds us don’t forget our center self in this fast pacing world we live in. It’s such a blessing that we can always come back to our mind and body.
After figuring out what the motive is, we move on to what to do when a task is too large for completion.
Method for completing a task:
Since health is a continuous movement of transforming the current us to a better version of ourselves, we can then find the specific task to improve and complete under this health element. (Now, I’ll use a tennis player as an example to show how it’s done.)
Step 1) Make A Decision
Just decide (Preferably within one sentence or less.)
“ I will create my healthy training routine this year and follow-through, for my best performance in tennis, so I can win the championship.”
**People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things. **
Step 2) Be Specific
I’m focusing on improving my agility and counter-movements this year. Specifically, I’ll be in my fittest and run across the side < 1 second.
^ I will train my mind and heart to be calmed. I will train my speed in responding to the incoming ball. I will specifically train my mobility, my back muscles in handling my racket and countering the incoming ball. I develop strategies and I will stretch more in the tight areas of my body so I can move faster, and smoother.
Step 3) Planning and Learning
I plan out specific movements that I can train myself to become better, such as “Leg day”, ” energy control”, “reflective approach”, “power boost”, “partner day of work out” and so on.
I learn biology, anatomy, and sport science. With all of this knowledge, I can apply them to my body and skills. Letting my body be in the best condition possible.
Step 4) Take Action
Go to the training spot. Start training, no excuses.
In love with the process
Be conscious of every set I’ve done, take note if necessary.
Constantly feeling the body in action, and thrive to be my better self.
Listen to the body talking. When it needs to stop, stops.
Stay hydrated
Reflect the session, and then repeat (with variation perhaps)
Step 5) Stretch, Rest, Connect, and Remind
Stretching is the essential practice for every sport. Daily stretching is a must at this point. it’s also a great way to reconnect with my body in a softer sense.
Goodnights of sleep and allowing my body to achieve a complete resting stage whenever possible. In regard to mental health for example: walking, and letting the train of thoughts going pass by…. All of these can help my brain get into relaxed mode, which in turn, I’m more recharged. (No specific rules however. Any form of resting that allows my mind and body recover, that if I want to get back to “business” I can get my body to do so, is great.)
Connect. From communities – connecting with others who have the same or similar interests – to the ones who are doing tennis in videos. Any form of connection is fine, as long as it’s the element that helps me to stay on track.
Remind myself how to improve better, by taking notes of my training thoughts, is a great way to improve my skill and help me develop deeper in its subject academically.
Step 6) Give, Give and Give
Learn one, teach one
It’s the best feeling that what I learn can give back to others. Some might be just struggling like myself before.
Help the communities whenever I can. Even it’s not tennis-related.
Understand your true motive, and follow the steps from 1 to 6, you will complete the task you’ve set out to.
During the process of completing, we need two extra inputs to make the progress bar forward.
1) Be aware of Consistency and Discipline
These two important factors are the driving forces to complete any task. So, be consistent and outrageously disciplined.
As Eric Thomas puts it,
” The grind is not when the sun comes out and everybody sees you. The grind is when you’re in the dark and nobody sees you. “
2) Find ways to stay motivated
Whether it’s the talk you have with yourself, or friends, or listening to the podcast, or youtube motivational videos, anything that helps you stay grounded. Nevertheless, self-generated motivation is superlative.
The reason why motivational speech is so powerful is that they usually offer new insight into the problem you’re facing or encouragement for you not to give up. But they all come down to one aspect, stay hungry.
Now, let’s tackle some of the common unmotivated factors people usually experience:
1. pessimistic view on the task completion
It’s easy to get consumed by the enormous amount of works we will be putting in. we need a better mindset and aim for dicing down the task into smaller manageable amounts of pieces so we can complete them.
2. Setting unrealistic goals
Look into our calendar, and visualise the timeline of completion. Just how long will it take for us? it’s completely okay to have a longer time. That’s being realistic. The second part is to develop methods to tackle the in-between, so we can finish the task timely.
3. Forgetting the benefits and rewards
When we turn our back from the project or goal, it’s because of the short-term gain our brain loves to have. We need another perspective, like what about 3 years from now, when the project is succeeded? What about 5,8, 10 years from now? What are the impacts?
Looking at long-term gain helps us to see a bigger picture, and allowing ourselves to set the eyes on our map better.
4. Not realising the importance of mini habits
Habits shape who we are in the physical realm. It’s important to know that our initial thoughts are the determination, but our habits, especially the smaller ones, like the patterns of thinking, the patterns of walking, the patterns of brushing the teeth, to the patterns of what we put the foods to our body, are shaping the future us every single day. We need to identify what works, what doesn’t, and replace them with a healthier habit.
5. Doubting our talents and potentials
It’s a very common case among us because we simply don’t trust ourselves. To achieve a goal, one must fully believe in their potential and talent within them. If we have a desire for something, it means we already have the gene within us. All we need is to unlock their full potentials.
6. Not seizing opportunities or don’t know how to identify one
The opportunities can be referred to as connections of the outside, of course. But the opportunity that within our controllable frame, like how we use our times wisely, also matters. Slotting and rearranging the times we have in a day to prioritise what we want to achieve on that day helps us to complete the tasks we always wanted. Time passes regardless of what we do, so knowing how to get on the time train and be productive about it can make us feel less guilty and boost our confidence to achieve more.
7. Not connecting within ourselves
Whatever the project is, there’re always a few of us on the table. Our energy, brain, body, soul, and spirit. If we don’t align them all in one place, it’s difficult to complete a task.
And that’s it! Thank you for reading this article, I hope it helps you understand how motivation works and what approach you can take to stay driven. After all, we only have one goal, which is to complete the task in this case. So whatever works for you, take that and use it.
If you like this article, please gives it a like or share it with your friends. Sharing is caring. And subscribe if you haven’t. :) until then, work hard, stay safe, stay healthy.
Photos by Cristofer Jeshke, Manasivta, Johannes Plenio, Sven Hornburg, Ian Dooley from Unsplash
People tend to think of stress as a balloon filling or a formidable enemy, like a cause from the outside factor, they don’t know when it will explode. However, “stress is just a mechanical human response to challenging or dangerous situations.” Have you ever heard the term,” fight or flight?” That’s the stress response and they both are the same.
Let’s imagine when your brain senses a threat, either it’s a falling down piano toward you or inches away from a project deadline, it signals your sympathetic nervous system to release chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol into the bloodstream. We call them stress hormones, and once they are at work, they fire up our muscles, raise our heart rate, breathing speed, and replenish our energy for quick reaction to the situation. This helps us dodging a falling piano or working faster to meet the deadline of a project.
So, let’s remove the bad image of stress first. As our body perceives stress, our adrenal glands make and release the hormone “cortisol” into our bloodstream. Often called the “stress hormone,” cortisol causes an increase in our heart rate and blood pressure. It’s our natural “flight or fight” response that has kept humans alive since our very very first ancestors.
Normal levels of cortisol also are released when we wake up in the morning or exercise. These levels can help regulate our blood pressure and blood sugar levels and even strengthen our heart muscles. In small doses, the hormone can heighten memory, increase our immune system, and lower pain sensitivity. Simply put, we can’t survive without this mechanism inside our body.
What happens when we have adapted fast-paced culture and living in a large global network thanks to our existing technology, however, is that many of us are constantly in high-stress mode due to various reasons.
To understand the impact of stress, we need to know that there are two types of stress: Acute stress and chronic stress.
Acute stress is short-term stress. It refers to any stress you suffer from for a short time; like a traffic jam, an argument with your spouse, a high volume of workload, criticism from your boss, etc.
But if you’re a truck driver and get stuck in numerous traffic congestions every day, or you’re in a bad relationship and you argue with your spouse constantly, or the work environment you’re in is demanding and you work for a toxic boss, all of these examples of acute stress can turn into chronic stress.
With acute stress, our body is designed to recover quickly, as long as our body is young and/or healthy and in good shape. Because during this period, our eyes will dilate, blood pressure, heart, and breathing rate, levels of muscle tensions increase for a short while. Afterwards, such uneasy stress will return back to normal level.
Whereas chronic stress, the body isn’t good at handling it. Chronic stress gradually increases our resting heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, and levels of muscle tensions for example, so the body now has to work even harder when it’s at rest to keep us functioning normally.
The longer it happens, the sooner this “new normal” will eventually lead to a pool of health problems, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, chronic pain and depression.
So although stress is a normal bodily response, if we don’t try to reduce it, stress will become problematic and turn into long-term suffering. Notice that how chronic stress can creep behind our back when we don’t pay attention to it.
Chronic stress can cause a high number of enzymes release inside our brain, and they act like scissors, to cut the cell proteins in the hippocampus region that are responsible for adhering between two neurons. Overall, they are there to ensure the synaptic function properly, which associate with sociability, memory and understanding.
II)Lead to burn out.
When we experience stress for an extended period of time without being able to alter, change, or ameliorate it, we can begin to feel empty, numb, devoid of motivation, hopeless, and beyond caring. Burnout is a state of emotional and physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress.
III) Damage our DNA.
Stress can be linked to shorter telomeres, a chromosome component that’s been associated with cellular aging and risk for heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Telomeres are a protective case casing at the end of our DNA strands. Naturally, each time a cell divides, it loses a small percentage of telomeres. Fortunately, we have an enzyme called telomerase that can restore it. However, chronic stress and cortisol exposure can decrease our supply of telomerase. The loss of the ability to replenish our telomeres can set the aging process into motion, as well as associated health risks. As a result, individuals who experience chronic stress have telomeres that look significantly older than their stated age.
IV) Exacerbate physical illness
The most obvious ones are heart disease, obesity, and sleep dysfunction.
Heart disease
Stress can affect behaviors and factors that increase heart disease risk; high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, smoking, physical inactivity, and overeating. For example, some people may choose to drink too much alcohol or smoke cigarettes to “manage” their chronic stress, but these habits can increase blood pressure which can damage artery walls.
To look it closely, the high levels of cortisol (stress hormones) from long-term stress can increase blood cholesterol, triglycerides, blood sugar, and blood pressure. These are common risk factors for heart disease. chronic stress can also cause changes that promote the buildup of plaque deposits in the arteries.
Obesity
This one is interesting because, while it seems evident that stress is a cause of obesity, whether stress is also a consequence of obesity is still debatable in scientific fields.
Obesity is generally caused by eating too much and moving too little.
If you consume high amounts of energy, particularly fat and sugars, but do not burn off the energy through exercise and physical activity, much of the surplus energy will be stored by the body as fat.
But to note that obesity does not happen overnight. It develops gradually over time, as a result of poor diet and lifestyle choices, such as excessive alcohol consumption, too many sugary drinks, eating high large amounts of processed or fast food which are high in fat and sugar, or lack of physical activity due to their demanding work sitting at a desk for most of the day or the reliance of cars instead of walking or cycling.
For relaxation, many people tend to watch TV, browse the internet or play computer games, and rarely take regular exercise. All of these could be the triggers of stress in the first place, as it becomes obsessive. Therefore, it’s important to identify what causes the stress.
While obesity results may come from a combination of inherited factors, with the environment and personal diet and exercise choices, a simple modest weight loss can improve or prevent the health problems associated with obesity.
Sleep dysfunction
Continuously being in a heightened state of alertness can delay the onset of sleep and cause rapid, anxious thoughts to occur at night. As a result, insufficient sleep can then cause further stress. That’s how normally stress affects our sleeping patterns and cause us more health problems.
If someone already has sleep disorders, then stress and anxiety can exacerbate the existing problems. So although they’re two separate problems, they usually come hand in hand, and that’s what confuses many people about sleep disorder is stress and anxiety caused. A disrupted sleeping pattern can be the cause first.
One common sleep disorder is insomnia, which can be short-term or long-term on a person. Usually, people who have its condition experiencing difficulty falling asleep, hard to stay asleep, or causing the person to wake up too early and not be able to get back to sleep. Insomnia can sap not only our energy level and mood but also our health, work performance and quality of life. The last thing we want to have is sleeping deprivation, as it’s the main issue that induces many other health problems to come.
With all of these being said, we have our solutions to this trickster.
Whether it’s acute or chronic stress, we have our “built-in” tool to balance it.
Just as our sympathetic nervous system signals hormones to help us stay away from a potential threat, our parasympathetic nervous system can activate “rest and digest” mode to help us relax. Here are 4 steps to achieve it.
1) Identify what you’re feeling
Stress is often misunderstood with other emotional problems – anxiety or depression for example, while some other people are stressed without even knowing they’re stressed. It’s because stress elicits physical symptoms like an upset stomach, so people may misattribute the symptoms to something else (For instance: I must’ve eaten something bad.) Therefore, the first step in decreasing the stress level is to recognise it’s there.
Get a pen and piece of paper, and write down your feeling(s):
For your reference, here are examples:
Rapid heartbeat
Dizziness
Sweating
Muscle tension
Headache
Upset stomach
Sleep disturbances
difficulty breathing
Okay, but how to differentiate between stress and anxiety?
Generally speaking, stress is a response to external factors, such as delivering an important gift or completing the task that you’ve started, while anxiety causes internally due to the person’s preferred reaction to stress. But since both overlap a lot, either mentally or physiologically, so people may get confused. For more information.
2) Locate the source
After we know our discomfort feeling(s), we need to identify the stressors, as stress is always an external source.
Common examples are:
– Noisy environment
– Being underpaid
– Toxic people
– Disagreement with other(s)
– Taking on more responsibilities than you can handle
To pinpoint your stressor, be aware of the moments when you experience the physical symptoms of stress mentioned above, “ muscle tension, sweatiness, shortness of breath, etc”. When you realise those feelings, pause what you’re doing and conduct a quick scan of your surroundings.
3) Address the stressor
Once the source has been located, take a look at the possibility of eliminating or reducing this stressor.
For instance, if this is a communicating issue at work, consider looking for an alternative tool to direct the message, such as setting up a face to face meeting, video call, or email.
Regardless of what stressor is, you have some degrees of control over it. You might be able to eliminate the stressor or at least reduce it.
Though, workplace stressors sometimes cannot be modified easily. For example, a new fashion designer may feel stressed out by coming up with ideas for the next season’s clothing line, before the company meeting starts in one-week time. Since it’s an essential part of his job, there’s no way to eliminate the stressor, unless he quits.
In such cases, he needs to switch his stress response to the relaxation response.
4) Activate our relaxation response
The below five methods are for your reference to activate the relaxation response.
4.1) Deep breathing
It’s the same breathing technique from meditation, active deep breathing with eyes shut helps you quickly calm your mind and body down to a lower level, as it switches back to relaxation mode inside the brain. The important part of doing this though is to not thinking about any stressful event or, simply let it go for the time being.
There is a popular breathing technique you can try out, it’s called 4-7-8 breathing.
Inhale a breath for four seconds, hold the breath for seven seconds, and then exhale for eight seconds. A good thing about breathing technique is we can do it anywhere!
4.2) Physical Exercise
To understand why we need to do physical exercise to reduce stress, we need to look at the adrenaline. The stress response pumps adrenaline into the body for “fight or flight”. As workplace stressors typically don’t require us to physically fight off danger or run from a pursuing predator, this stress hormone builds up in our system with nowhere to go, leaving us shaky and irritable. This is also known as an adrenaline rush.
A good way to blow off the steam over our head after a surge of stress? Exercise! Our brain produces endorphins during exercise, which can make us feel good and help us fend off feelings of stress.
4.3) Meditation
This word is super trending in our modern age because many have turned themselves to this practice to find their inner peace or other reasons. The meditating practice is helpful because it helps bring one back to the present moment, for there to erase “what if”.
4.4) Progressive muscle relaxation
To counteract the tensed muscles, we need muscle relaxation. Here is a simple clip to help you kick start. It’s simple as you lie down on the floor with a mat and try to relax with some easy exercises.
4.5) Direct stress and anxiety elsewhere
Lend a hand to a relative or neighbor, or volunteer in our community. Helping others will take our minds off of our own anxiety and fears.
After all, it’s advised to seek professional help if you’re unsure about your stress level, or don’t know how to cope with these matters. Remember, stress is only the reaction of us reacting to the external world, so therefore, we can always take control of it.
Thank you for reading this article, is this article helpful? How do you deal with stress? Please let me know in the comments, I would love to hear yours! :)
photos by Victor Garcia, Max Böhme, Paweł Czerwiński, Bruno Aguirre, Omid Armin, Anders Jildén on Unsplash
Staying home can be exciting for some but boring for others. Watching TV, Browsing feeds, playing games, learning a skill or two or sleeping till the mattress rots itself out, they look for something to be entertained nevertheless. Or they might be working from home, adapting the new changing work environment.
Working, leisuring, gaming, learning, and resting are excellent ways to spend time, but have you considered building some small habits during the lockdown? These habits can reconstruct your neuron patterns and serve as worry-free minded to many things you might encounter in the future. If you start building it now, you can subconsciously do it as a normal routine by the time the self-isolation period is done. Pretty sweet right?
Here, I share six habits that they work very well for me and I hope these can help you too.
Preferably we are looking at 21 days of the consistency in building a habit.
– Self-Organise
There are apps, like Trello or ClickUp that will allow you to be well organised with many of your stuff that needed a better visualisation. Trello designs as a kanban board system that when you create a board, you can create cards under a slot. Click-up is also a great app for you to define any messy areas that you need to sort out visually.
They are great places to start and sort out your tasks and projects electronically. Supported from desktop to mobile devices, and with the mean of providing free versions, you can use them as a determination of achieving a better-organised person. You might find a better app for yourself through the internet, as long as it suits your preference.
How to build up? Take one of your small projects, divide them into sections. Under the sections, suggest tasks that need to be done. For 20 minutes a day. You will be amazed by the simple visualisation that helps your brain wiring tasks more effectively.
–Track your sleep
If you are anything like me, having irregular sleeping times, this is a good way to remind you to sleep early, and consistently. Here is how it works: have an app provides a feature of time tracking, before you go to sleep, press start. You turn it off when you get up the next morning. No stress. The main goal here is to visualise your sleeping hours and patterns, for analysis. So you can do something about it if you know it’s messy. I like to use Boosted mobile app because of its clean interference, and very easy to use. But if you’re an IOS user, simply pick one free in your app store.
How to build up? Create a task, track the time, press stop when you finish. Sleeping as we all do it daily, it’s a good way to build up this habit. Again, no stress about it.
– Set sizeable goals
Using a time tracker to set yourself 15-20 minutes in front of your desk, flowcharting your goals and break them down to sizeable ones. Goals are often overlapped between your works, your creative projects, your family, your finance and such. So, these 15-20 minutes are more of brainstorming and a calm session for you to get things off your chest. Have a blank paper ready, you can start drawing lines and putting your dreams and goals to it. Use mindmap format too as I find it very helpful. Nobody will see it unless you deliberately tape it in the living room, then OKAY DUH.
But as you put words and lines down on the paper, you will discover ways to connect dots. Make your goals achievable. If you want to become a world-class famous painter you don’t just circle the title and hope for the luck will hit your head one day. Break them down to even right now, you can do something to progress the goal. It’s about how well you know the in-and-out of your plan, like a bank heist and takes measurable actions.
How to build up? One session a day. When time is up, stop.
–Drink warm or hot drinks
I quit drinking cold drinks long ago. Think about it, humans are fragile in a sense because we are dependent on temperature basically for survival. Cold drinks to our stomach will change the temperature inside us. The volatile changes can be great if your body is weaker than the average. And only you can feel the sudden change.
In a short term, cold drinks will cause the blood vessels to tighten and your body compensates by spending the energy to regulate the temperature, which as we all know is about 37 degrees C. Diverting the energy which would have been sent to help the process of digestion and absorbing nutrients, your overall immune system is weaker until your temperature is restored to the normal level. Doing it regularly, it does more harm than good.
So you might feel hot outside thanks to the flow regulation, but your body is actually in a weaker state when you gulping down a cool drink. Don’t take my word for it though, see it for yourself. Monitor your body response next time when you drink a cold drink.
how to build up? If you drink water, drink warm or hot water instead, for 21 days.
– Do yoga
Especially during this quarantine period, we are subjected to certain poses throughout a day. Mobility is restricted so as our body, nobody wants to become a rigid old man. If you’re a female, in this case, a rigid old woman.
Joke aside though, doing yoga helps you meditate, releases muscle pains and reinforces the bone structure and circulation flow. Here is one of the thorough Youtubers, Janice Liou, demonstrating poses on how to do them better.
How to build up?Pick one pose ( or video) and start from scratch, for 21 days. This is a good time for you to listen to your body and take one step at a time. Don’t force and expect much when you’re a beginner.
– Read books
Even a page a day. It’s a good time to start reading, and don’t forget to make notes, it will further improve your understanding of the subject you’re reading. Pick your favorite category to kick start with.
How to build up?One page a day. For a month. When you look back, you will see how much you have achieved!
And there you have it. Six new, exciting habits for you to play with during this self-isolation. But wait, when to know that I have built a solid habit?
Any sign when you feel like you’re craving for that habit, as if you’ve got to do it otherwise you feeling not right. That’s a good craving, like an addict but a good addict! All you need to do is enlarging that feeling by working harder and spending more time on that habit, and stick to the schedule you’ve made, so it will become second nature in your life. Rules can be broken so no sweat. Do it as you flow.
Sometimes, our plate can only contain so much before it collapses.
Although when we come to this world, we didn’t have anything with us, the once naked baby is troubled by the discoveries of this world have to offer.
Ideas and thoughts sprout out from nothingness inhabiting on our plate. It’s as if a train cargo but only without the possible sight of seeing the end. We want this, we want that. Because there are so many things we want to have on our plate, so If we don’t know how to reduce or eliminate them, it will be fairly difficult for us to gain the focus on achieving our goals.
As we passing through the college, pieces of stuff are piling up at an unforeseeable rate. Clothing, books, gifts, favorite little things, or ostentatious decorations, they live up some parts of our memory and we thought they deserve a place to stay. There is no trouble until one day you have to do the house moving, or start living on your own. It’s no easy task for you to decide which ones to keep or give them away for good.
Stuff taking space is one thing, which can easily be solved by determination and action taken. The mental platter, on the other hand, requires additional effort and self-awareness to tickle.
There are millions of things we want to do if we have unlimited energy and being financially free. But the same as stuff taking up our space, very soon we forget what is important to us and what things can be giving away. When we lose focus, we lose sight to aim things we want to achieve. In school, we might try to catch up but can’t wrap our heads around the contexts we missed paying attention to. Some are lucky to have their parents assist or able to hire a private tutor, others are not very so.
Repetitive works numb our senses, and in return, we don’t know how to divide things no more. Like at work, continuous never-ending orders seem to wait for the moment to crash our excitement, the curiosity of exploration. If you let it slips, soon you will find yourself like all the other people, following the orders and letting things pass by. The animated figure lives for being entertained.
Certainly, there is nothing wrong with it. This world offers every conceivable string you could imagine and everybody has a different lifestyle to live on.
By a simple walk from your home to the nearest coffee shop, you have generated a dozen thoughts and they might occupy you for the rest of the day. Most of them are mindless but give you a window of hope of something, though they remain very far away. Nevertheless, they tend to add up to your platter, taking very little space that you don’t realise till there are too many trivial thoughts you can take it no more.
The problem is not we have too many things on the plate, the problem is we don’t know how to divide them.
Like we do with our math homework, a sequence of numbers we need to divide, so we use an operation to help. But unlike our math homework, nobody is going to mark you which is correct, which is not. There will be no final score given by others but yourself.
So how to divide them: 1. List them out. 2. Do all of them. (As long as it takes) That’s it.
If it’s travel, do it.
If it’s the skill, start building up a habit.
If it’s a course, take it.
It will never be wasting your time. IT WILL NEVER. Those are the things you wanted to do so do them.
Through doing all that, you will gain incredible life experience that you will appreciate yourself years down the road. It’s your mind and the fear blocking you from getting things done.
It’s only by trying them out, you can truly know what works what doesn’t, so you can let them go one by one. Some are best for you some just don’t. You will not regret because you did take action and try your best regardless of the outcome.
For instance, you want to do a backflip? Look around your locals and get connected with those who are experienced, professional. Attend classes and be ready for it. This is a plain example for you to grasp how simple, but determined it can be.
As you go on with all of your crazy plan, you start to divide them into different groups and sections, reducing the numbers as you go along, till a point that some groups will be forced to get out of the way. The speed of dividing depends on your ability. But you’re not competing with anyone else, so don’t worry.
It can be as simple as giving a hug to your family. The point of dividing all the mindless things inside your head, and turn them into action, is to take things off your chest.
If you never try you never know.
The true passionate things in you will stretch beyond times, believe it or not. There will be things you keep on doing in high and low times throughout your life and you still love doing them. Following your heart is the key to happiness and it doesn’t matter what that is, listen and it will tell.
While testing them out, be aware of your thoughts in the future, so you can regulate them nicely. Soon enough, your plate will reduce to only a few things you care the most, whether it’s the family, the work or your loved ones or else, you will be very happy about your efforts and enjoy the things on this irreplaceable platter and cherish till it lasts.
Photos by Pixabay, Steve Johnson, Medhat Ayad from Pexels
We might not realise but it’s so easy for our mind accessing back the memory that attached to our negative emotions.
The route is possibly irresistible to some because we’ve been doing it since we learnt the bitterness feeling towards any unpleasant events. The more we go back to its loop, the deeper clutching hands we grasp onto them. We might think everybody else does that too. Well, most of them. There are methods we can train ourselves to avoid these ‘cliché’ memories we keep accessing.
Our childhood experiences transforming to memories determine a set of our attitudes and behaviours toward any future events while secretly constructing an iron wall around its castle. Through time, we become more intelligent in reading and enacting our surroundings to prevent any hurtful events creeping onto our back. We close our heart gate the longer we live. At this point, unpleasant memory actually helps us grow and prevent us from getting hurt again, serving as a major fortified defender. Although we could alter the attitudinal and behavioural set of ours, the ego and fear of trusting would be the working magic against the alteration from the outside.
Nevertheless, too much of negative emotions circulating our brain does more harm than good.
For example, if you had been called out being stupid in front of a class, chances are the embarrassment weaving with that particular moment, forming as a scene storing inside your memory fountain. The memory would automatically associate with any trigger tags, from the word – stupid, brainless, to familiar faces – whoever called you out, or the witnesses in the scene, to school uniform, etc. Our brain is very good at finding the association to match with the emotional attachments of memories we have, particularly the sadder, miserable ones. The most depressing memory our brain loves to recall them time after time as if it doesn’t get enough over our state of depression.
Sometimes we would work with the brain, alter the scene inside the memory to justify our reasons. It gives a green light for ourselves to grow more hatred over time, so when we share the story with others, we’re the most innocent one. In any case, when we look back on our past, we tend to look for the emotional attachments, but leaning to more negative sides.
Though being sad costs energy and time.
It does. The tear rolling or thoughts of being treated unfairly will make you go into deeper its sad cycle. While the feeling might be somewhat enjoyable to some, there will be no solution in ending the cycle itself. When you spend time grumbling the bad rather than consoling yourself, you begin going deeper with the thoughts of bad events, it will lead you sadder by minutes. And then, products like alcohol will numb your pains, with the friends who listen to your tales releasing the stress. But they are not the solution. They are merely the temporary shoulders for you to hang on.
A lot of times, music provokes our memories too.
Be aware of this musical magic. It might be pleasurable to revisit the past, feeling how you experience the situation all over again, but the endless sad looping cycle will eventually change the way of what you think toward certain things. Change the music if it’s sadder enough.
There are three ways we can tickle this. This article does not oppose you to think of negative events, but rather, offering some other ways to use this memory accessing skill in making your life more delightful and memorable.
Let go of them.
Truly letting it go is the only way to deal with the negative past we’d experienced. To know if you’re truly letting it go, ask yourself this, can I face the cause if it happens again? Take the previous example, the person who called you stupid, can you face to him/her with zero hatred feeling, that you’ll be neutral to the person and situation if it ever happens again? Surely this is a simple example, as everyone has different hurdles needed to face, and is bigger than being called dumb. Letting it go involves forgiveness, mindfulness, allowing the negative emotions to flow and self-love. It’s often messier than looking at it on the paper and it may take a lot of effort for some people. But as you progressing these necessary stages to the end, nothing you cannot conquer because inner fears are all there is.
Think of your achievements.
This practice is very undervalued and underestimated by the people, and yet, we all have our milestones and every single one of them is significant. Take simple hiking for instance, spending a day outdoor, trekking in the countryside makes you refreshing. For a moment, it might just be another exercise you took to keep fit, but if you think deeper, it’s a journey you have accomplished in your to-do list. You’re not competing with anyone else, you simply put effort into something you wanted to achieve. That’s remarkable. Achievement can be small or big. Frankly, as you live through today, there is already an achievement that can be celebrated!
Reflect the biggest five accomplishments in your life often and what have you done for a day at nights will improve your moods and motivate you to take on a bigger step, while deviating from thinking negative events in the past.
Think of pleasant moments.
If neurochemicals trigger by our thoughts of thinking, our enacting to the surroundings, then why don’t we decide to think of good moments instead of the bad ones? Accessing to the pleasant moments will increase our gratitude, a necessary ingredient to living a life. We aren’t lying to ourselves and ignore the distressing moments, we consciously know they are there and they do not need our attention. Through the practice of letting things go, you’ll soon enough abandon the pain and unnecessary questions, instead, redistributing your energy to better use.
We have control over our decisions and this game isn’t over yet. Tomorrow is a new day the past has already happened and we’re just in the middle of the line regardless of the age. If we can differentiate what is painful what is joyful for us, why don’t we create a lot of good moments from now on? With friends and families. Living our life to the fullest. So when we have to think back in the past, we have something worth remembering.
Pictures by Kumiko SHIMIZU, Aaron Burden, David Clode, Allef Vinicius from unsplash
Although the name is long; Don’t Worry Make Money: Spiritual And Practical Ways to Create Abundance and More Fun in Your Life, it’s short and simple in each chapter. A book that crammed with life concepts will improve your life quality by following them. It’s a personal-growth, finance, non-fiction book that can redirect your visions and goals. Unfortunately, the author, Richard Carlson, died from pulmonary embolism in late 2006. However, his inspirational advice and belief will long live for the generations to come.
Simply put, the book is all about how living right will make you a happier person and bring more abundance to your life.
While the title acts as spiritual guidance, it stresses the importance of eliminating worry and fear in our thinking. One of the obstacles to most of us is be delighted in the success of others, especially the person we don’t really like. We might grow self-pity in thinking we haven’t deserved the righteous recognition, why he/she has it all? However, a quote from the book “ it’s critical to know that there is plenty of success to go around. In fact, as people achieve their goals, the pie gets even bigger for the rest of us.”, immediately tells us how we should not be worried too much of our internal thought and be happy about other people success.
The reason why the book hasn’t been labeled as a business book officially is that the content does not provide those complex mathematics formulas nor an intricate saving plan for your next ten years. In fact, it treats as misleading to some people as it’s not about making money but rather, not to stress about Money. It provides life advice that inspires you resetting the ways of thinking, your behaviour, goal and how these would lead to living an abundant life but having almost no tips on how to actually make money.
Despite not having the Making money part, it indicates that flowing money in your pocket isn’t overly complicated, it’s just about knowing and doing. Another quote from the book, “Money is “circulation.” It needs to flow. When you are frightened, selfish, or when you hoard everything for yourself, you literally stop the circulation. You create “ clogged pipes,” making it difficult to keep money flowing back in your direction. Any success you have is despite your lack of giving, not because of it. The way to get the flow going again is to start giving.”
Without a doubt, this book is targeting self-employed people, like business/start-up owners or people who are running side projects. Many of his advice are the necessity of entrepreneur characteristics.
With 100 tips in the book, the author shows us how to spend most of our work time on the ‘critical inch’ of a business, abandon worry and fear. Instead, listening to our inner wisdom and get the practicality out of reflection. It also acts as a motivational book that describes we can make excuses, or we can make money, but we can’t do both.
Abundance is about all aspects of one’s life quality rather than only money, though. Apparently, it’s a good marketing strategy to state ‘Make Money’ on the cover to attract more readers, including me, to pick up the book. In each chapter, he provides one concept with how-to achieve and examples, such as Find a Mentor, Sell the Sizzle Not the steak, Just Once, Try Something Different.
Some of the concepts I believe we already have known of but forgotten. Or we are unsure where to use them, neither we aware of the benefits behind. Carlson tells us the ways that we can practically use them and explain the benefits of each. Although some examples the author mentioned sound unrealistic to me, I understand that it’s the core value, the spirit of the concept matters.
The book has also mentioned inner wisdom. To anyone who doesn’t know what it is, my understanding of inner wisdom is the answer that you get when you’re quiet, preferably alone, which has a sense of calmness within. It serves as a life tutor I suppose. If you ask a life-related question for example, ‘what if I’m a butterfly now, what would I do?’ The answer returns to your question will open a new door for your thinking.
To me it was ‘ I disconnect with human society, meaning that I don’t live by their definition of time, their drama, and their knowledge, even their understanding of life. I may simply reproduce.’
It needn’t be profound but it certainly widens your thinking, deepening your inner knowledge. If I add emotional mechanisms to the butterfly, there will be more unexpected questions manifest. The inner wisdom will respond to your questions regardless of how absurd, and I think this is really one of our greatest achievements as a human species.
Anyway, bullet points to take away from the book are:
– Believe in yourself
– Be aware of your thinking
– Eliminate fear and worry
– Be grateful for what you have, by having genuine appreciation each day
– Have fun!
I personally don’t follow all of the advice but many of them serve as great reminders when sometimes I need to make a decision or get stuck in thoughts. This is your book if you’re looking for a clear direction to life or improvement on personal growth.
Many believe that happiness manifests from our heart purely when the right moment kicks in, while this is not wrong, that right moment is depended on when you think it is.
At youth, we thought we always knew what it means to be happy. The times when we spent on our close companions, singing silly songs together or playing a fun game at somebody’s house, we could so easily erase all the ‘problems’ from the back of our head for a while. This attitude subsided when we passed the legal age of maturity. You started to realise there was a different world out there, a larger social system that was much aggressive and estranged.
Often, we get drowned by the system. We’d seen many unfair treatments, heard negative comments, and gradually our subconscious believes that we have to be sad like everybody else to fit in. Due to this fact, our mind starts to save up bad images, like frustration, deception, killings, and bloods, missing to notice the blue sky, the joy of regular people in the park, or the sounds of your own laugh.
In this materialistic world, no matter how valuable an item you own, if it doesn’t give you constant contentment within, it only means the numbers of its value displayed in the market. The world is shaped by your vision and emotion rather than what have been there.
Happiness does not depend upon the outer force, or we might never be truly happy again. We use our energy to make it happen, it’s coming within.
So how do we do it?
First ask yourself, what makes you happy, really?
Write down on a piece of paper. Take my list for example:
– drink water
– whenever is practicing, writing, dancing
– quiet
– having a clear goal and really following it
– procrastinate
– catching up with friends
– shower
Keep your list short and simple. Whatever comes to your mind, kindly put it down, believe in your heart. After clearly knowing what makes you happy, be with the listed items, experiment your state of being while doing it, you will gain more joy and carefree from them, which will trigger your deeper state of creativity. You’re becoming more outgoing, positive person who knows how to put their energy into good use, benefiting your mental and physical health. It’s okay to stop all the negativity coming into your life right now. You have a choice to be happy.
Stop taking things too personally or seriously.
In the end, we only live once in this life. Taking things too personal or serious prevent you from enjoying the process. What matter most is your well-being, other than the perfectionism of everything, other people perspectives, problems or pleasing everyone else. Once you decide to lighten up and let go all the old habits of thinking toward others and things you encounter, two new magical paths will emerge in your vision. First, the people who have always been getting in your way will start to disappear. Second, you become the ones who bring joys to the world, instead of looking for joys elsewhere.
Be aware of your negative thoughts, let them go gently and firmly. In a day, we have thousands of thoughts floating in our head, more than you ever realised. Many negative thoughts created by our pre-judgemental instinct, while it helps us function as a species, sometimes we want to take control of it. Imagine this instinct is a monkey taking control of the sailing wheel, the monkey doesn’t know your destination, it only responds to what it sees at the instance.
For examples, people with tattoos aren’t necessarily bad people; There must be a reason if a waiting line is long, it doesn’t only mean the workers are slow. Many live situations repeat again and again daily in our regular basis but our brain is too capable at judging something without a pause thinking deeply. Don’t worry though, it’s very easy to fix up. The next time you have a bad thought, simply let it manifests, then say to yourself, ‘is this thought doing any good to me?’, ‘If no, then I don’t need you.’
By allowing, not repressing, the bad thoughts flow naturally, they will dissipate gradually and out of your brain completely very soon.
Knowing that joy comes from your heart, not by only thinking about that word. It comes naturally as you want joy comes in your life. Imagine joy, these three letters now are not up into your head, but it places under your chin, behind the chest, inside your heart. You now officially owns its word. As you own the word, it’s up to you to decide if you put the joy outside your heart, letting people and the world to see it, or bury it so other people will react to you the same way as it always did. If you think you’re not ready, it’s the fear making you think that way again.
You will quickly realise how happiness can bring joy and wealth to you when you start changing your patterns to life itself right now.
Thanks for reading this article. It is the end of my self-help collection on the issue of mental health( the one, and two). I hope you enjoy and find it helpful as much as I write them. I may write more in related self-help topic in the future. But let me know your story, I’d like to know all about them!
Photo by Skitterphoto, pixabay, Bekka Mongeau from Pexels
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