Category: Life

Observations, Life Lessons and Personal Development

Personal Development


I know a lot of people who are very skeptical about self help books, people tend to think it’s common sense (i used to) and that they already know what they author is gonna talk about and yes, a lot of it may seem like common sense, but we now live in a world that seems to be lacking in common sense.

Self-help books focus on personal development, and though personal development may sound like nonsense, it is anything but. Everything we do to improve ourselves is personal development. Whether it’s taking a singing lesson, or working on your typing skills or taking time off everyday to think or meditate, they are all step, big or small, to improve oneself. To sharpen our skills, take us to the edge of our game. Personal development is nothing more than a normal part of life.

I am a big fan of self-help books. Tony Buzan, Robin Sharma, Dr. Schwartz and Sean Covey are some of the authors that I’ve read and even though i may not agree with all their ideas and points, I personally do feel that their books have helped me. Reading gives you an inside look into the minds of these people and it’s always good to learn new ways to better hone your abilities. There’s no shame is saying that you need help with living life, we all need help. Life’s complicated, messy and can get hard, so what’s wrong with getting some advice from highly recognised individuals who have made their own mistakes, learnt their own lessons and have formed their own thoughts.

I like mixing the philosophies of the books I read, it helps me form my own base and my own philosophies. Most importantly, these books help motivate me and make me aware of things that I may have been ignoring before such as bad habits I picked up or attitudes that are counter productive.

Most importantly, I find that a good self-help/personal development book helps motivate me and keep my spirit alive. To read about these great people, entrepreneurs and leaders who made their own mistakes, and persevered.

I highly recommend Richard Bransons “Screw it, Let’s do it”, Sean Covey’s ” 7 habits of highly effective teenagers” (the book that started it off for me), Robin Sharma’s ” The Greatness Guide”, and “The Magic of Thinking Big” by David Schwartz.

Please feel free to comment below.

Straight from the Heart,

Arkay6

Fear


 

Fear is other ultimate enemy of progress, of change, of the human race. As crazy as this sounds we must, as Robin Sharma says, run towards our fears instead of running away from them.

The fear to give a presentation or bid for a project is real, and it isn’t all bad, it makes us realise how important the task at hand is and in this scenario can help us, but a lot of the time fear causes us to run away from a task or delay or procrastinate because we don’t want to experience the feeling or we’re just scared of failing. But what people who succumb to fear don’t know, or forget, is that the more you give in to fear, the more power you give it and this will only be detrimental to your own growth and makes whatever potential you have, the potential you had.

Embrace the fear you have, acknowledge it, it’s real don’t pretend it isn’t, but instead of letting it win, you go ahead and stare that fear in the face and show it who’s boss.

Embrace the butterflies in stomach before a presentation and then go out there, just do it. Once you’ve already done all you can to prepare, all that’s left is to do it. Preparation is vital but doing the action is what really matters.

Doing what you most fear is the first step to annihilating that fear, yes you might fail but that’s better than living in the shadows of your fears, because you can always pick yourself up and try again.

Prepare, do your best work and then face you fears, because even if you fall, you’re one step closer to beating that fear and one step closer fulfilling your potential. We all want to be great at something, and facing fears is going inevitable in that pursuit.

Look at the Crazy Ones, they didn’t let fear paralyse them into inaction or turning back.

Straight from the Heart,

Arkay6

 

The Lack of Self-Belief and the Fear of Failure


 

Good morning people,

Again i know it’s been a while since i’ve posted and i apologize, i am working to make this a more regular thing.

Today I’m going to talk about Belief, not religious beliefs but Believing in yourself.

“Belief, strong belief, triggers the mind to figure out ways and means and how-to.”

The lack of self-belief is plaguing us.There are so many of us that are scared to exit our comfort zones, so afraid to leave it because you might fall or get scratched. All because society has tabooed mistakes & failure, (largely due to flawed fundamentals of education systems, but that’s for another day) making it seem that in order to be successful and live a good life, one cannot fail, one cannot make mistakes. This goes on to lead people into confining themselves to the “Known” so that they minimize the risk of failure. But what most people do not seem to understand is that we are human and we will make mistakes. Mistakes is the fundamental ingredient in success, progress and greatness.

Richard Branson. Steve Jobs. Thomas Edison.

What is life if you do not experiment and learn? Better yet, what would life be like if everyone confined themselves in their comfort zones? The human race would not be where it is now. BIll Gates and Steve Jobs would now have gone to form Microsoft and Apple. Henry Ford would not have mass manufactured the car. Slavery would still be a norm. Columbus would have never discovered the ‘New World’ and the list would go on. The conclusion being that we would have never progressed, that we would still be hunting animals and living in caves, if we would have even made it that far.

WD-40 stands for Water Displacement, 40th attempt, they failed the first 39 times.

Mistakes help us learn, failure makes us stronger, it weeds out the weak. The most successful amongst us are the ones who fail the most; the difference is that they didn’t let failure paralyze them into fear, they picked themselves up, dusted themselves off and kept going. These are the people who end up being great, the “Crazy Ones”. They aren’t afraid of falling in the mud, of entering new areas, they aren’t afraid to learn and push the boundaries of what they already know. The reason that they weren’t afraid is because they believed in themselves and what they were doing.

Persistence. Experimentation. Determination.

Self-belief is the most important factor in fighting fear of failure. People are afraid to make mistakes because they worry that they will not be able to overcome it. They do not believe that they can handle the potential curve ball that life has been known to throw. They do not believe that they will be able to pick themselves up after what could be a potentially bad fall. They lack the confidence to think that they can do it, and that’s the difference between achieving greatness and mediocrity. That’s the difference between winning and losing, and yea, you may not win all the time even though you believed in yourself but you’re not going to let the loss of one battle make you surrender the war.

“When looking at the most successful people and organizations, we often imagine geniuses with a smooth journey straight to the promised land. But when you really examine nearly every success story, they are filled with crushing defeats, near-death experiences, and countless setbacks.” – Josh Linkner, Fast Company.

Straight From the Heart,

Arkay6

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Patience, Balance, Focus & Hard Work.

 

Onward Ho!


 

Birds flying high, you know how i feel.

I’m actually feeling good this morning, woke up relatively early and stayed up… didn’t go back to bed even though i had nothing to do and was tired. I took a step forward, which brings me to my point today. Keep Moving Forward.

Coincidentally, as i was writing this, an old friend of mine, Somaiah, mentioned this quote to me (via the miracle that is FB)

Life’s like a bicycle, you got to keep moving to keep your balance.

Makes a whole lot of sense if you think about it. Thanks Soms.

I have mentioned one more than one occasion that life is tough, that it’s full of challenges, that it isn’t all Rainbows and Butterflies. This Growth can only happen at a point of resistance… if the human race never faced problems or challenges… we’d either be extinct or still in caves but anyway…

the most important thing when it comes to life is Taking Action, being Proactive, Trying…. if you do not try, you will never know if you can succeed.

Going on, one step at a time… you should have a long term picture but don’t rush or jump around, take it a step at a time… I have realized that patience is the key to achieving my goals and that there’s no point rushing if it’s all just gonna fall apart… just like the construction of a building i have to make sure the foundation is strong, more specifically, over the next few months i’m going to have to adjust my diet and build habits and routines to minimize symptoms and strengthen my body and mind. I need to restart my sleep cycle among other things.

The fact is, I need to Keep Moving Forward, I need to keep taking that one additional step, no matter how small, because if i do all the small things right, big things will happen. No matter how small I need to make sure that every day I take one step towards what i want to achieve “tomorrow” and not give up… because it’s just that much harder to beat someone who won’t give up.

At the end of the day, Being Challenged in Life is Inevitable but being Defeated is Optional

Till the Next Time,

May the Force be with you so that you May Live Long and Prosper,

Straight from the Heart,

Arkay6

normally, if lines are in Italics, means that they’re quotes that I read somewhere. 🙂 peace out

 

Mistakes


I was listening to one of Robin Sharma‘s podcast when I heard this line:

Good Judgement comes from Experience, Experience comes from Mistakes and Mistakes come from Bad Judgement.

We have become a society that is so afraid of making mistakes, so much so that mistakes have become a taboo. This taboo has been ingrained deep into our subconscious which leads to the mentality that mistakes are just plain bad; that no good can come from mistakes; that life is meant to be mistake free and flawless. Now that,is wrong.

Being human means to make mistakes, we aren’t perfect and life, for damn sure, isn’t perfect as well. Problems will arise, mistakes will be made and yes there will be consequences but isn’t that all part of life… growth through learning, growth by gaining experience. We aren’t born with the ability to make the right decisions, we learn to do this but unfortunately there has been “babying” of the younger generation whereby parents spoon feed the “right” answer to children in an attempt to protect them. This may seem like a good idea, but there will come a time when the  “kids” will be on their own and need to make their own choices… and this leads back to the quote above. How does one make Good Judgement if one has a lack of Experience due to the Fear and Protection from Mistakes which stems from a deficiency of Bad Judgement during the crucial years of growing-up. Yes parents need to protect their children from making bad calls that will scar them for life, but they cannot go on to insure that the Kids live a mistake free, “Perfect” life. On another note, i am not saying that we should all make mistakes intentionally but that we should make the best decisions we can and do our best and if it doesn’t work out, learn from it, move forward and try again… only then will you be able to succeed and live in a world that isn’t All Rainbows and Butterflies. Life is tough, but mistakes need to be made to build independence; mistakes need to be made to ensure growth; mistakes need to be made to build Better Judgement.

And now, the more personal bit… what should I do?

I’ve made plenty of mistakes, and during the course of dealing with the FM i have;t made all the right calls, but I’m learning. I accepted that I need help and now I’ve got it. I stopped denying that I have a problem and I am going to face it, after all, facing problems is a part of life isn’t it. I learnt this by having to drop out of summer school, i made a call  of going to summer school, it didn’t turn out the way I planed  but at least it made me realize that I have to take a break and concentrate on fighting the FM. This whole situation could have been way worse… what if my parents didn’t understand? what if I didn’t have the mental strength to deal with all the BS over the years? What if i didn’t have the financial ability to deal with the problem? I guess there are ways that this could’ve been worse, but that doesn’t mean that my problem is any less of a problem, it just means it could have been worse?

So, this is a post from the Dr. Jekyll side. A little more Light side than Dark Side.

May the Force be with you so that you May Live Long and Prosper,

Straight from the Heart,

Arkay6

part of me feel that i may have lost track of what i was talking about…. comments anyone?

The Imagination is the Gateway to the Mind


 

This is the essay that i wrote for a class.

ISU Rough Draft

November 2, 2010

The Imagination is the gateway to the mind

The world through the eyes of young children is different from that of teenagers, young adults and adults. Young children have yet to be heavily influenced by societal norms, mainstream media and reason unlike the mind of ‘normal’ adults, who have conformed to the wider and more society accepted version of the world. A child’s mind is more innocent, more creative in its thinking and unbiased, as its entire world revolves around it. Both novels, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis are stories of fantastic, un-real worlds that have been created via the power and creativity of a child’s mind. Based upon these two novels I will demonstrate that one needs to understand imagination to comprehend a child’s mind by utilizing Alice from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Lucy from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

Both girls have similar backgrounds. They are both English and are presumably about the same age and seem to be the youngest in their families. There are suggestions that Alice has a more distant relationship with her parents, unlike Lucy, which was common during the Victorian era as children during this era spend most of their time with nannies, tutors and governesses (Victorian). As for timelines Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland occur during Victorian times and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is set during World War 2, which is the reason Lucy and her older siblings are sent away to avoid the bomb runs in the city. There are differences in the overall styles of Wonderland and Narnia, which depicts that Alice has a more dynamic, unique and exposed imagination where as Lucy, is more innocent, simple and normal as compared to other young girls.

Wonderland is a representation of Alice’s mind through her imagination and in conjunction with her exposure to the world through reading, as was suggested by the books lined on the shelves as Alice fell down the rabbit-hole (Carroll 2). Her readings have exposed to new and unique things such as the proceedings of a Court of Law as is stated by the narrator, “Alice had never been to a court of justice before, but she had read about them in books,” (Carroll 106) and hookahs. This merger between the power of a child’s imagination and ideas and facts obtained through reading is the foundation of Wonderland, the reason that logic still has a place in this nonsensical world. Thus it can be said that Alice’s mind is in a state of confusion, partly due to logical fallacies that she incorporates in her thinking. A perfect example of these fallacies is Alice’s conclusion that if she falls into the sea, she could easily go back by railway (Carroll 15). This conclusion is based upon her premises that during her only visit to the seaside she had noticed a railway station there, and then assumed that anywhere on the English coast, a railway station would be present (Carroll 15). David S. Brown, in his essay “Reasoning Down the Rabbit Hole: Logical Lessons in Wonderland”, quotes G.K. Chesterton saying, “Wonderland is a country populated by insane mathematicians,” and “Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense,” (Davis 79). These two statements support the issue of Alice’s mind being confused and nonsensical yet there are roots in common sense and logic.

As for Narnia, I do not believe it exists in contrary to the surface story of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. It is a figment of Lucy’s imagination, the representation of her mind, as a result of being away from her parents, more importantly her father; whom I believe is her preferred parent. Narnia varies from Wonderland in the sense that it is more of a fairy tale scenario with a very direct good-versus-evil plot. Narnia’s influences probably stem from stories that were told or read to her by her father. Lucy being the youngest of four children was probably shown more affection, which is a typical scenario in most families. The lost of this affection coupled with the fear caused by the war and the unconscious shock of being taken to a new environment is the reason that Narnia is formed, to help keep her safe and help her deal or avoid the fact of being away from her parents. It is her minds defense mechanism, which according to psychoanalytical theory, the Ego utilizes in order to protect Lucy from the anxiety stated above (Nye 27). Defense mechanisms hold a vital role, as without a way to filter and protect one from anxiety, unpleasant thoughts experiences, sanity and functionality would be a rare thing to come by (Garrett). These are done unconsciously by Lucy, and as depicted by the creation of Narnia, to mask the reality of a situation via modification or falsification of reality (Nye 27).

Furthermore, child-parent relationships of both girls can be analyzed through the fantasy worlds via the support of the Oedipus complex. From the point of view of Lucy in context to Narnia and Alice in context to Wonderland, there are characters that could be representations of their parents. An average child, especially a young child, associate parents with power and authority, as no one is held in higher regard from their perspectives, and within Narnia there are two influential figures that hold power, Aslan the Lion and the White Witch. Aslan is presented as brave, kind, fierce-looking yet caring and good. In the novel, Mr. Beaver speaks very highly of him declaring that, “Aslan is a lion – the Lion, the great Lion,” (Lewis 76). Aslan could be the representation of Lucy’s father in her fantasy, as the Hero who inspires them to victory. This in a vast contrast from the depiction of the White Witch, which could be the representation of her mother, who is cold, evil, manipulative and selfish, the opposite of Aslan. Lucy mentions that, “she is a perfectly terrible person,” (Lewis 43). This is in line with the Oedipus complex that suggests that a daughter holds an unconscious resentment against the mother for all the attention given to her by the father, and wants to displace her (Nye 22). This of course would place the father in better light as compared to the mother as demonstrated in Narnia.

A similar situation occurs in Wonderland, the King and Queen of Hearts are the most powerful characters in the story and have command and control over all the other characters, with the exception of Alice. I believe that the King is a representation of her father and the Red Queen that of her mother. The Queen is portrayed negatively as being hot-tempered, demanding and unreasonable while the King is more sensible (than the Queen) and calm. This again ties in with the Oedipus complex as the characters are profiled in a manner that favors the representation of the father. This makes sense, as both Narnia and Wonderland are creations of the imaginations of Lucy and Alice respectively, hence the manner of depictions of the characters mentioned.

Through the fantasy worlds, I have observed a major factor in the workings of the mind, representations of the Id and Ego. As Dr. Nye states, this is a concept of Freud that allows us to look at significant constituents of the framework of the personality as it experiences a dynamic process of development through childhood as well as during adulthood, when it is in a more stable state (19). Furthermore, he goes on to mention that it can be hard to pinpoint the difference between the id and the ego in an infant and that only after significant efforts to deal with the environment will it become more clearly distinguished (20). Thus it can be said that differentiating the components of Freud’s structural model of the personality on the actively developing minds of Alice and Lucy might not be definitive.

In the world of Narnia, the biggest battle is between the White witch and Aslan, could this be the representation of the Id versus Ego? The Id is described as more primitively hostile and the Ego as the component used to satisfy our needs as we relate to our physical and social world, as to ensure the Id is controlled (Nye 21). Therefore it can be observed that the White Witch is the Id and the Ego is Aslan. The witch is more primitively hostile while in contrast Aslan is only hostile in order to defeat the witch in order to regain control over Narnia, Lucy’s mind. The best evidence of this is the scene in which Aslan surrenders himself to the White Witch; she humiliates him and then kills him in cold blood (Lewis 143). Aslan, like the ego, acts only when the White Witch tries to completely establish her control or otherwise when Narnia needs him (Lewis 75), as does the Ego to protect the mind or control the Id. The irony in symbolism of the Ego and Id, the Ego being a ferocious lion and the Id bearing resemblance to a human, could be due to the before mentioned fact that the Id and Ego may not be clearly differentiated, yet, in a child’s mind.

As for Wonderland and Alice, it can be easily observed that the Red Queen is the representation of the Id and the Red King is that of the Ego. In this scenario, in contrast to Narnia, they are not in conflict, which could define a controlled Id or a weak Ego, but they are married. The Id is able to act freely as the Ego takes an active role in cleaning up its messes, which demonstrates that the Ego is in fact doing what is needed, to maintain whatever little order there is Wonderland, Alice’s mind. This is clearly displayed during the croquet match in which, the Queen sentences everyone there, except for Alice, to death by decapitation (Carroll 88). The King later sorts this out by pardoning everyone who was sentenced (Carroll 88).

Freud’s psychoanalysis work has been heavily scrutinized in recent history but nevertheless is still able to provide readers a different approach to obtaining deeper understanding of works of literature. The imagination whether it is expressed through dreams or fantasy worlds is able to provide insight in to a person mental state. Alice is a very dynamic and independent little girl where as Lucy is more innocent and is undergoing a lot of anxiety during this time in new surroundings. The issue of understanding oneself is taken for granted as people assume they know the entirety of their personalities at their fingertips when it is not so. This theory that one needs to understand the imagination to comprehend the mind is not limited to just children but can be applied to everyone as a way to understand ourselves in more depth so as to discover the reasons behind our actions, such as that is used by law enforcement profilers. The reasons behind our personalities lie deep within the unconscious mind, and extracting the information is no easy task.

Works Cited

Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. London: Harper Press, 2010, Print.

Davis, Richard Brian. Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2010.

Garrett M.D., Floyd P. “Addiction and Its Mechanisms of Defense.” Psychiatry and Wellness. Behavioral Medicine Associates. 2009. Web. 31 October 2010.

Lewis, C.S. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. London: Collins, 1998, Print.

Nye, Robert D. Three Psychologies. Canada: Wadsworth, 2000, Print.

“Victorian Family Life” Nettlesworth Primary School. n.d. Web. 31 October 2010.

 

Potential


“Don’t get caught up in wasted potential from years past. Potential is all we ever have”

I guess the biggest “asset” that all of us have is our potential. Unfortunately it has been this “asset” that’s been causing me to be less-than-happy over the past few months. It’s caused me to be frustrated, angry and at times depressed. Why you ask?

For most of my life i’ve always been told about how well i’ll do in “life”, all the things i’ll do, all the places i’ll see, the impact i’ll have. They always talk about my potential. This always encouraged me, it helped me believe in myself and helped build confidence. And as it would turn out, I did achieve things and make little impacts here and there.

Unfortunately all this also inflated my Ego.

So as life moved on, it seemed as though i was heading towards the goals that I had set for myself. Become Head Prefect, Ace SPM, go to UWC and this is where it… paused, i unfortunately couldn’t take the next step and reach my next goal, studying in the States. When my health deteriorated i still held on to my dreams, but as time passed it seemed that it was moving further and further away and that day-by-day my “potential” was diminishing due to health problems that never seemed to leave me be. The hardest part was accepting that a lot of my “dreams” are not going to come through, and for the most part it is due to factors beyond my control, but my Ego has been having a hard time swallowing this… that the “potential” that people used to say I had, might never see the light of day.

 But then, i read the quote above, the one right at the top, and it made me think. Why should i fret about the potential that has already gone to waste? Potential is something I will always have, something that WE will always have. Because as long as I am breathing, there’s potential for something, it may not be the same “Potential” and  I may need to re-adjust where I want to go in “Life”, but isn’t that Life? Plans are important but life has a tendency to throw a wrench in the works, we just need to learn to adapt, and i guess I’m going to have to learn that if i want to be happy, cause isn’t that what we all strive for…. to be Happy.

I still haven’t dealt with this issue and I struggle with it everyday, wanting to reach the stars but my current state isn’t exactly ideal, but it’s a Work In Progress, and one day i’ll except that it may take longer or that I just won’t reach the stars, but hey… I’m sure the clouds ain’t too bad either.

at this point i am so very tempted to put some sort of Gossip Girl influenced catch phrase (yes i watch GG, i just started, curiosity got the better of me) but can’t think of anything… yet.

To Be or Not To Be


 

Probably one of the best written lines in all of literature, and yet so simple. “To be or not to be,” is the first line to Hamlets soliloquy in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet“. I personally regard this line as the best of any that I have either read, heard, seen or telepathically sensed.
This is the most important yet basic question of life, whether to live or not live. “Be” is in reference to being “here” or existing, so directly translated, it is “to exists or not to exist.” I think.

So is it worth it to continue living on and face the challenges that are expected in living or to just exit, stage right. It is though that everybody thinks about but not many talk about. Life is hard, it’s no walk in the park and, to quote Rocky, “it’ll beat you to your knees and leave you there permanently if you let it.” So why don’t we let it? i guess it’s human instinct, survival. It’s hard wired into us and that’s why most of us fight. At the end of the day, we want to be remembered as winners, we don’t want to be remembered as the person who gave up. So isn’t that peer pressure? (I am in no way promoting giving up, I’m just on a random thought trail.) But I guess without peer pressure there would be no competition, hence no advancement and we’d still be stuck in caves if not worst.

So why is it we choose to “be”? Survival? Peer pressure? Love? Optimism? i guess to each their own, or as my friend Warren likes to put it.

“User Preference.”