Thoughts that niggle...

Sometime I find myself trapped in a thought… and the thought keeps occurring at random times. As much as I have chosen to release it, and to not be bothered by it, it comes back, and it niggles. This is how I usually decide I need to do something about it.

These days, I’m sick of such thoughts. Does everything have to be dealt with just because it makes me uncomfortable? Or are some things meant to exist whether we like it or not? I am constantly in fear of ruining relationships and causing loss of confidence. I tend to think that dealing with issues and talking about them helps build my confidence, but I am somehow coming to think that by doing so, I may inadvertently cause others to lose their confidence in making me happy.

I don’t know how to tell them, “It’s not you who is making me unhappy. It’s the situation we’re in that causes me to feel uneasy. And this uneasiness, I feel, is avoidable.” But in any case, there is no other way to resolve it other than the opposite party reacting and ‘fixing’ the situation in a way that will allow me to be able to accept it. I feel remorseful sometimes, that people have to go out of their comfort zones to console me, but I have not learned to not be bothered by the situations that I cannot accept. Hence, I will always need others to be considerate when it comes to how I feel.

Perhaps, people don’t understand because they have not felt a pain similar to mine. Honestly, no one understands how we feel. We can do our best and try to describe it, but there is a limit to the completeness of the picture we can paint. No one knows our pain as much as we do, and even if they are been through a similar pain, the operative word will be ‘similar’. One can try to relate, but one cannot truly understand.

So I try my best now, to always understand how others might feel. I try my best to accept that there are things I cannot and possibly need not try to change. But if it hurts too much, I will try my best to let people know that I am in pain, and I need them to understand and try not to aggravate, if not alleviate my pain. I can only hope the people who love me understand how hurt I am, and that they care enough to want to stop me from getting hurt.

Faith vs Fear

I never knew how debilitating fear was, until I took a good look at how it has affected my life. I grew up in fear, and I am pretty sure most of us did to…

Fear that my parents would be displeased with me or punish me.
Fear of ghosts, and all things scary.
Fear I would not pass my exams.
Fear I will not have a good career.
Fear I will not find a good husband.
Fear I wasn’t attractive or intelligent enough.
Fear of being alone.
Fear of death.

All these things, one way or the other, have been dictating the way I lived life. They made me so insecure and fearful that I have lived life without conviction and confidence. People have always told me that I looked like a secure and confident person, but I would be honest now and say… that was a front, and when I did speak with confidence and conviction, it was mostly false bravado. Sad, isn’t it?

Other than reading Don Miguel Ruiz and Gary Chapman, I have recently been introduced to a new source of inspiration. It would be pretty radical for me to start calling him a source of inspiration because I come from a family of staunch Taoists, but Joel Osteen, a pastor, is now like a life mentor to me. Call it Fate, but I believe his messages came to me at the right time. They spoke directly to me.

“When you agree with fear, you are giving what you are fearing the right to come to pass,” Joel said in his message, Activate Faith, Not Fear.

I agree wholeheartedly. Pretty much, when we agree with a particular fear, our thinking and actions will begin to react in a way that may eventually cause that fear to come true. Some call it the ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. When we continuously worry about something, we are going to start reacting to ‘prevent’ it from happening, not even knowing if it was going to happen in the first place, and eventually, our actions may cause it to not only happen, but to be blown out of proportion at the same time. I have definitely seen that happen to myself before.

So if you are worried about something you know you have no control of, or fearing something you know, deep inside, is irrational… STOP! Do not agree with the fear. Have faith!

Faith is the exact opposite of fear, because it is about believing that good things will happen to us. So… rather than believing that something bad is about to happen, wouldn't we rather believe that good things will come to us, and subconsciously act to enable them to happen? If I had known to turn all my fears to faith long ago, I am sure I would now be a happier, more confident and secure woman with a brighter future ahead of me. But it's never too late to start today, so let’s take all my earlier fears, and turn them into faith!

My parents love me and are proud of me.
There’s no reason to be afraid of ghosts for I have done nothing to offend them.
I will pass all of my exams because I do my best.
I will have an awesome career because I am intelligent and capable.
I will find a man who will love and cherish me for the rest of my life.
I am beautiful and exceptionally intelligent and talented.
I am never alone because I have awesome friends.
There is no reason to fear death if I have lived my life to the fullest, to the best of my abilities.

I am certain if we all believed in the good things in ourselves, good things will start happening to us. Try it today, and let me know if you feel more and more awesome as time passes :)

To be impeccable...

I completed Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements in one day, and I’m reading it all over again. This book has really struck a chord with me, and it has really spoken to me. As the title suggests, there are 4 agreements that make up the structure of the key message of this book.

The Four Agreements are:

1. Be Impeccable with your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the Word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your Word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don’t Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

Perhaps it is because of the book’s philosophical nature and also because it was written in a way where I felt as if the book was speaking to me. I sat up and paid attention, page after page. But most of all, from the moment I started reading it, I began to feel different.

The first thing I noticed was the way my body and mind started to feel calm. As I read on, and further understood what the book was trying to convey, I began to relate each idea with my life. I realised how much injustice I had been doing myself all this time. I had been reliving my past mistakes, judging myself all over again for each and every one of them, and punishing myself over and over again.

The worst thing is that the way I have been treating my loved ones have stemmed from my self-condemnation and fear. My fear that I would be loved less for being me caused me to behave the way I did; insecure, fearful and small. I belittled the person I was, and the person I could become, and I allowed negative comments from people, whether or not they were meant out of good or harm, to affect me greatly; sometimes without even considering if they were indeed true.

I also chanced upon a site ( http://www.toltecspirit.com/ ) by Gary van Warmerdam, and in his article “Be Impeccable with Your Word”, he said:

“To live with existing fears in your mind doesn’t fall into the category of being impeccable. Maintaining fears of public speaking, asking someone out on a date, or a fear of failing is not in the direction of love for your self. Keeping your self in fear is an ongoing expression in your own mind that causes you to hold back in your actions of love for your self and others. Fear is at the heart of NOT being impeccable.”

I had not been impeccable all this time, for I had not been able to free myself from the fears that stemmed from guilt and self-condemnation.

Moving forward, I will probably be working on a few pieces that I have been avoiding all this time. They involve telling the story of my pain; pain that I had been unwilling to put on paper because I was afraid that it could hurt me again… even if they were just words on paper. But I believe that if I can take the step to face the pain, I will sooner be able to release it, and move on with my life. Once I free myself from this past, I will be on my way to a brighter future.

The message I would like to bring across to those who are reading today is that I hope each person can come to truly appreciate themselves as they are, and be confident that they are worthy of ‘living in heaven’, i.e. to be happy. If you truly think you can improve yourself, go ahead and make that improvement. Do your best! Whatever you become, or whatever you remain as, could probably be the person you were meant to be. When you reach that checkpoint, tell yourself:

“This is the best I can be now, and I am happy because I performed to the best of my ability.”

Only you know who you really are and whether or not you are doing your very best to be true to yourself. If we learn to come to terms with our natural and true selves, at some point, we will come to realise that we become so happy and at peace with ourselves, that even if we were experiencing extreme fatigue, all we want to do is SMILE :)