Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Margaret Thatcher



"Watch your thoughts for they become words. Watch your words for they become actions. Watch your actions for they become…habits. Watch your habits, for they become your character. And watch your character, for it becomes your destiny! What we think we become.” — Margaret Thatcher

May her rest in peace!

Friday, April 5, 2013

Think and change


Being a family man, a city dweller, and a person with a full time job, 24 hours are all we have, it is always difficult to allocate my conscious hours properly to optimize its usage on a consistent basis.

It is not easy to self-motivate to step back and think what should be done, how to do things more efficient and effective, and really do it! The catch-22 situation is that we often try to make things work smoothly to a point that we can do them on a 'cruise control', things become routine. However, environment around us is actually changing all the time which should demand our reaction to change accordingly in order to adapt. Changes take effort and very few of us would make them voluntarily as we usually enjoy the routine way of doing things. As such, the result is, few of us will not make change at all and ultimately fail. Some of us will be forced to make adjustment when our routine way will not work anymore as the environment has just changed so much. Few of us will make adjustment a bit earlier than those but still would do that most likely as a reaction to the changes in the surrounding, kinda adapting the environment so as to make the change less painful. Only very few of us would have the vision to make self-adjustment on voluntarily basis at the same pace with the environmental changes or even a step ahead of them. The cream of the crop would be those who can do that on a consistent basis. 

Even though I understand that it is always better to aim high, as a discount of that would still be sizable achievement. However, we adult often get caught or grounded by the harsh reality. Have a dream is one thing, realizing a dream is marvelous, but we know that the probability of that is low, the cost is high, so it would be better to be more practical to have so called 'reachable' goals than 'dreams'. It is sad, but I still can't get myself pass that. 

Today, I just feel like I need to make small changes, nothing grand, just small changes that would make myself better, maybe it is because I feel kinda down or bored and would like to do something to make myself happy. If I can make certain things better, I should be happy, that's simple! Well, I know that there are other things that bring joy to me, like my kids and my wife. Nevertheless, I also enjoy to do something for myself, by myself, that would cheer myself up. I don't know if it makes any sense to others, cuz happiness to me can be categorized. Like tasty foods could be hot, cold, salty or sweet. Happiness for me is similar, I can't put exact words to describe them as foods, but the situation is similar.

So, what I think I need is to find time to think, to brainstorm! Sound crazy to some people, but with a fully-packed daily schedule, spare time is hard to come by. Come to think of it, how sad it is! I'm talking about finding time to think freely!? Yes, I can think anytime anywhere, but quality output would need quality input in a quality environment. I'm not asking for having a full massage, with cocktail and buffet, in an incense-burning parlor with chill-out music. I just need a quiet hour, perhaps walking in my own pace in a park with trees and being uninterrupted. Again, it is sad that I don't think I can do that until sometimes next week! So, to me, a realization of self-motivated changes and actually executing them to generate good results on a consistent basis is absolutely a dream to me.