5 Dec 2010
1) Everyone has their own hobbies and interests ~ who are we to judge what is right or wrong; good or bad; One man’s medicine is another man’s poison? (not sure what the correct phrase is)
2) I’m beginning to like the idea of minimalist living – the more I read those blogs on minimalist living, the greater the urge to purge all the unnecessary clutter and things I have in my room, in my cupboard, in my drawers. The only thing I need now is the strength of my will power to start the momentum and get it going. It’s the first time in a long time that I have the slightest visualisation of what life will be like for us if we were to start going the minimalistic way. There was this air of free-ness and freedom that I could almost feel inside me even when I think about it.
3) Now to think about it, it wasn’t so much that I am not the organised kind of person – with a lack of sorting and organising and management skills. It was more of an issue of having WAY too much. Too much of the “stocking up” and “just in case I’ll need it”. Anyone would have difficulty, unless we are managing with less.
4) On the topic of “perfection” (I read a very interesting blog just 1 or 2 days ago, will link it when I find that article again). I think I can become the classic example of how the idea of trying to get everything perfect hinders the progress and greatness I could have achieved without this perfectionistic ideals. There is a lot THAT is going on in my life. For one, at work, I seem to be on a look out for the perfect “organisation” system, the correct way of doing things, taking reference from my colleagues and how they do things. In doing that, I have overlooked that it is never about how correct or how good that “system” is, regardless whether it is for filing, for reference materials, or for how I organise the things around my workstation. Somehow or another, my colleagues’ way of filing and organising stuff seems to always be better. And I would try to mimic that. Not realising that there is no perfect way of doing things. It is more about finding that “fit” or “match” and the balance, whichever suits ME best. My silly obsession with perfection in this area has resulted in me not observing and taking in a closer look at what is best for myself, and what works.
5) I’ve been somewhat thinking about what my instructor at a recent workshop has briefing analysed and told me about – my insecurities and “unsureness” that springs from my experiences in childhood, and hence the need to know what is right or wrong, and the need to do what people think is right, instead of what I feel is right. Wow, and now the “judgement” thing seems to come in now.
6) What is my dream? What are my dreams? Do I have a dream? If I do have “a dream”, is that dream really mine? I’m now beginning to see a tiny bit of connection of how my perfectionistic ideals, my insecurities as well as the fear or judgement together hinders my ability to dream and to dream about what I might have been able to achieve.
7) I realised that if I reduce my obsession with getting my “system” right, I may be able to produce work better.
8) Also, when we reduce our obsession with things for just a little bit, and take a closer observation at ourselves, we may discover a lot more about ourselves, starting from the outside to the inside. The human body is a really intelligent piece of machine. It is able to detect problem areas and sends out signals in the form of “symptoms” for us to do something about it. The only problem now is our lack of ability to identify and finding ways to rectify.
– i started to notice that my nails seems to have gotten thinner and my toe nails seems to be more easily cracked then ever. Signs of the lack of calcium or the loss of calcium?
– I started to notice that the skin on my hands and my legs are really dry and withered – signs of the overuse of airconditioning, lack of fresh air and lack of water (I drink way too little water) – To my understanding, the best way to drink is to sip slowly, so that our cells may absorb the water better. I realize that to a certain extent, because that is relatively hard to achieve in an office environment, I somehow end up drinking tea instead. Can’t see the direct link, but the amount of water I drink a day is shockingly baffling.
– Caffeine after 5pm is a bad idea. It affects my ability to fall asleep easily and the quality of my sleep even if I fall asleep
9) The other day, I read about how we should reduce the amount of stimuli we are exposed to before we sleep, so that we may get a better sleep, e.g. avoiding our computers and mobile devices 2-3 hours before bedtime. For the 2 days that KS & I managed to shut down our devices at 10pm, it felt really good. We managed to do bits and pieces of heart to heart talk after the lights were switched off, and we were lying in our beds, and eventually drifted off to sleep together. I think KS liked that feeling. Me too.
10) One of the purpose I wanted to start this blog over again was that I wanted to journal mine and our learning progress of the little things in life. I must say I was inspired by the minimalist living blogs once again, that I visualised doing a blog update on my decluttering progress with pictures and all. We shall see about that.
11) The other day in the bathroom, when I was thinking about goals setting and how it may give me a stronger motivation and clearer direction of how to live our lives. I was reflecting on the many occasions where we tried to do goal setting for our home business, when it suddenly struck me that we were doing goals setting for many different aspects of our lives, but we were treating them separately, instead of looking at them as a whole picture and how each of them may impact each other. As such, we were subconsciously using each of the goals as excuses why we were not achieving them. No wonder there is little progress in our lives. No wonder I feel so little about myself and become easily envious of other people.
11) The kind of promise that would make you feel the worst for breaking it, is the promise to ourselves. This statement is so true. That greatly explains why I am always so depressed on the weekends, especially when we fail to wake up early and do the things that we have planned to do, and always having to find excuses to make up for the lack of action. Check the number of things I have on my personal to-do list nicely written down in the 2Do app in the iPad and iPhone and now I really really understand why I feel lousy on most weekends. (Further reflection about this showed that on weekends when we were rushing from appointments and managing to do many things on the to do lists, I felt good about myself, and was indeed happier.)
12) The few things I would very much like to implement in my lifestyle
– to wake up at the same time everyday, regardless of the time I go to bed
– to do yoga in the weekend mornings
– to drink plenty of water each day
– to visit the pool with KS for hydrotherapy to strengthen his back (this is quite tough to implement due to my fear of the hassle for visiting the pool)