Don’t we all have the feeling that a lot of things in life is out of our control, especially when we are younger? I say yes to that. Back in my “unaware” days, that’s what I thought. Here, I ask that you also ask yourself the same question and if your answer is yes, please accept my sincere request that you take a few minutes to read what I have to say.

Here is my bold statement – the idea that “most things in life are not in our control” is bull, wrong, and misleading. I will even say, “We often give up that control ourselves.” Sound silly? Here is my reasoning.

We give up control because we are scared. We are afraid of responsibility. Because, IF we do think that we are in complete control, it implies that whatever happen to ourselves, success or failure, is of our own doing. And who wants failure. In this society, we have come to think of failure as a bad thing. When we fail, we ourselves become failure and stuck a failure, which is not true. Consequently, if we are in control, our sense of security and identify can easily undergo scruitny. It is just easier for us to justify ourselves when we claim not to be in control and not responsible. If anything bad happens to us, it is not our fault and just blame other things and people, which is why we complain and frequently hear complaints. The obvious easy way out.

There are factors and human traits like sheer laziness that keeps us from making any change and leads to us giving up control over life. We could doing it “sub-consciously” and that is exactly why we must make a conscious effort to NOT give up that control and make things happen in life. In order to do that, we must first begin to adopt the mentality – we are 100% responsible for our own reality, who we are and what happen to us are the direct results of our own thoughts and actions.

Other things that will help to take control of our own lives:

• Becoming aware
• Keeping an open mind
• Conquering fear
• Keeping a calm and still mind
• Learn how to change ourselves

I hope this is helpful!

Something happened in the morning today that I think is really amazing. Here’s the background of the story…

Last week Thursday, my manager inquired if I want to attend a conference happening next week for a day. What an opportunity to see what’s out there, so of course I said yes. I quickly faxed in the registration materials on Thursday, and we all know where this is heading… Indeed! They did not receive the registration in time, so I had to re-register. I re-did the paperwork and was waiting for this elderly female rep. to tinker on the computer but were having some “technical issues” here and there… When she finally finished, here is the conversation:

Lady: Hmmm, do you medidate?
Piggy: Uh…not really… I practice…
Lady: Practice?
Piggy: Practice to stay calm.
Lady: Are you married?
Piggy: No…
Lady: You know what, your wife is gonna be a happy wife cuz you stay so calm.
Piggy: *smile*

This is the conversation literally word for word, that I jotted down immediately when I got the chance because I think this is amazing. Why amazing? It is amazing because the other person can sense that I’m very calm (sense it enough that she wants to point it out), and that is exactly what I try to consistently do – having a calm and still mind. And this also proves, what’s inside of us will create the image and impression that others have of ourselves.

I think this is a great personal victory :)

From most of the personal bloggers’ perspectives, eating out is a waste of money. I don’t disagree with that, but here is my take on the topic of eating out.

Just like everything, it has its pluses and minuses and let me state the immediate ones.

Pluses:

• Convinenience and time saving (no preparing, no doing dishes)
• Good tasting (I am a decent cook, but there are just better things out there…)

Minuses:

• Health concern
• Usually cost more money

After stating the pluses and minuses, now we can make a decision. Personally, I value my time very much and along with laziness, I just don’t want to deal with all the chores concerning cooking. My day is so heavily packed that I simply decided that it’s better for me to eat out most of the time. I concluded that grocery shopping, preparing ingredients, cooking, and then doing dishes will just end up taking so much of my time and energy.

Another thing I have going for me is that I do not have a family yet. I believe once you have a family, cooking and dining at home will become a much more cost-saving option simply because of the economy of scale and people to split the chores with. I actually used to cook when I was living with another family member, ah, the joy of being a chef. That was a great motivation…

With more people, buying is bulk is also very feasible without meeting the result of spoiling excessive food, which I hate when happens because of how it is just such a waste of food, and we all know that there are people starving at different parts of the globe out there.

So in conclusion, one must judge their own situation to decide if eating out is more benefical option based on some of the variables stated above.

In the past two years as I learned fitness/exercise/gym as a habit, one thing that is very pertinent in life is that – If you don’t use it, you lose it.

One doesn’t have to be a kinesiology major to understand that. My experience has been that even if it has just been a week of inactivity, I notice a deline in my weight training (very obvious) or cardiovascular performance. How do I tell? The answer is the amount of soreness I can feel. Even more obvious is the immense soreness + pain whenever I start some new training. And hence, the need for us to emphasize on consistency of exercise. To avoid the benefits that we have worked so hard to archieve, it’s best to continue to do something at least, even just to maintain a moderate level of the benefits. In addition…

The idea of “If you don’t use it, you lose it” does not only apply to fitness and health. On my path of exploring and learning singing myself, I continuously discovered that many of the causes for my difficulty to produce more beautiful tone are muscular apathy of head/facial area muscles. It is over time when I consciously practice these muscles that I am able to improve.

Actually, not only is this the problem for people trying to learn how to sing, but this is the problem for people between ethnic group learning a foreign tongue. Certain languages only require us to use certain facial muscles. It is one of the many reasons that when we try to learn a new language that we have difficulty with announciation. What we need to do is to practice using all the muscles on our face :)

Well, another thing is that us humans have a tendency to be lazy and use less, or just enough, muscle to perform a certain task. That is exactly why we need to re-learn deep breathing for our health, and also exercise our mind to maintain our mental sharpness, and of course, exercise our body to make sure we don’t lose those muscle.

In fact, I would go as far to say that everything in our body is governed by this concept of “If you don’t use it, you lose it”. Therefore, everyday we need to consciously use every part of our body and push it to improve, expand, and realize our potentials!

Picture this scenario:
My friend D is a big muscular guy, 5′ 9″ and 200+ lbs while I am 5′ 5” and 130~ lbs. If D tells me, “Dude, go lift 300 lbs, it’s good for you.” and then forces me to do it. What would happen?

Before answering, let us jump to the conversation I had with my good friend, D, the other day at lunch, where we touched on the subject of the on-going war in Iraq. I would like to bring it up because I think that some comments from D are insightful and they go something like this…

D’s comments (paraphrased and with some of my interpretation):

Can’t we just leave those people alone? We are trying to help them but do they even appreciate it? They hate us. Why are we trying to help when they don’t want the help? It is just another form of bullying. We should just get out of there and leave them alone. What gives us the right to go in there and just slap on a democratic goverment when they had no idea what the heck democracy is in the first place? Let them evolve at their own pace.

My response:

Exactly, that is exactly what the problem is. They went in Iraq and enforced a democratic goverment out of no where. People had no idea what it is, and how are they suppose to make use of it? We would serve them better if we educate them critical thinking for themselves and their own society, and THEN freely choosing upon those thoughts, which are some of the most basic elements of democrary. (but at this point, I also think, hmmmm, look at America these days, Americans aren’t even thinking very clearly these days… anyways…)

This is exactly the problem! Now let’s go back to the scenario I told at the beginning and answer the question. If D does force me to lift 300 lbs, small guy as I am, I will certainly just break my back and hate him forever. THAT, I think, is a suitable analogy to what’s happening in Iraq.

With that said, we are led to the very thing that we should remember in personal development. The idea is to take small steps toward improvement everyday, which is what we should advocate and educate, instead of using shortcuts to propel to immediate success, which either will likely not work or just end up taking longer. Life is an evolution. Healthy changes need to be steady and continuous. Now I may not lift 300 lbs today, but if I work toward it everyday doing weight training, I will be able to do that. Whether I want to is another story :P

PS. This article has the naive assumption that US is still in Iraq to secure safety for the people there, not for the oil, not for any unspoken political reasons.