Author Archives: Guus

Just believe

Last night I was very sick and I was alone as my partner had left for a business trip for a few days. Actually I had already been coughing for a few weeks, and the night before I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t breath properly when I was lying down. So somehow I already considered to go to a doctor, as it seemed my body was not capable to deal with what was going on by itself. And I know ‘weeks’ may sound strange and very long, but I have quite a history of allergy type problems, so even though I was a bit concerned already, I tried to see if my body could cope with this by itself, as it mostly does, at least after I decided that I didn’t want those millions of medicines that Philippine doctors tend to prescribe, contrary to what is common in The Netherlands, where I grew up.

Anyhow, to make a long story short, last night turned out to be too much and I was really scared. And at first I tried to calm my mind, tried to ‘vibrate differently’ as per ideas of Abraham Hicks. This didn’t work, no matter how I tried, but of course i was trying too much. And somehow, somewhere I turned to prayer, praying to God if he would help as I didn’t know anymore and was even scared to die. Which also was basically okay as a few months ago I really wanted to die and that thought is also still with me, even though I have turned that thought around in something like ‘if things go better I would be happy to live longer’. So I thought I might have gotten what I wanted, but everything in me said something like ‘not this way, not suffering like my dad in his last weeks’, as the thought of lung cancer came to me, the thing my father died from in the end.

Somehow I forgot about the prayer, and in the end I decided to call my partner, suggesting that he may want to come back, as he already asked many times before he left if it was okay to go. And believe me, that was not easy for me to do, as I had to swallow all my pride, admitting I had made a big mistake, misjudging my illness. And like what he often calls ‘not being honest’. As of course, looking back, I should have visited a doctor earlier because apparently this illness did not go away by itself.

And while writing now I realize that it is not easy for me to ask for help, at least not in the right way. Somehow I am too proud or too independent to surrender when I don’t know anymore. And I need to be very gentle now with myself, as I know this is not a pride that is my fault, something I often feel when trying to get things from people. And the reason is that I often just choose the wrong way for asking for help. And the reason for that is that I somehow never learned how to do that. And I know some possible reasons like my character, how I am built, or maybe how I grew up or maybe because I am gay, which I am quite sure enhanced some of the strangeness in me in a very awkward or bad way. So I am thinking about the movie Good Will Hunting, which is about something similar and where to me the main phrase is “it’s not your fault”. And that is what I still need to learn, that it is not my fault where I am, how I still consider myself a complete failure, consider myself completely useless (to the world, to my partner, to my mother, to ???). And I see that confirmed constantly, as I still don’t have enough work, or don’t ‘earn’ enough money. And I still don’t have friends (here). And my relationship still has some major issue to solve, an issue that is behind most of my unhappiness, behind most of what I seem to transmit (and what other people feel and react to). Indeed, some kind of vibration, and I know what it is and I know what it causes, but I don’t know how to solve it (ask for help maybe?).

So somehow, somewhere, early, I gave up, I gave in. And called my partner, indicating that I didn’t know anymore, that I was scared. And I didn’t know what I expect, as often my partner starts blaming me for all kinds of things if I want something, need something. So yes, that’s a big thing for me, making a phone call like that, after my partner had already asked several times if it was really okay to go and where he indicated he was on the boat already.

But somehow he wasn’t angry, just a bit annoyed I guess. And I don’t remember what we exactly discussed in that first phone call, but shortly after he called me back and said that Charlyn, our helper, Sally Grace, a good friend of us, and his mother were on the way to our house, to Cagayan de Oro City. And I felt embarrassed, as I don’t feel entitled to so much attention, to so much care. As I don’t deserve it, as I don’t ‘earn’ enough, as I can’t take care of myself financially right now, and for quite some time towards the past also, if not ever. But I knew I couldn’t do anything, I knew I needed help and that I had to accept all of this, even though I felt embarrassed.

And here I will make some jump in time, as a few hours later I found myself in the hospital, in the emergency room and not with my family doctor. And of course my first thoughts about people putting me in an emergency room bed were about how much this all would be going to cost, something that is really a big thing right now, as I don’t really have a lot of paid work at the moment and we only have the cash for one or two months of living, better called surviving. And I have no clue what is going to be next and I don’t know how I am going to pay my health insurance somewhere the very beginning of next year. And please bear in mind, these are thoughts that are kind of unbearable for me, as this is not the way how I grew up, this is not the way how I want to live, this is not the way how I believe life is supposed to be. I believe life is to be enjoyed, lived, not being just experienced, not being ‘survived’.

And then, somewhere at the beginning of all of this, this being put in a hospital bed (instead of being just listened to by my family doctor), this being pampered, this being taken care of, I realized that my prayer was answered, the prayer I sent to God earlier this morning, the prayer that I didn’t know anymore, the prayer that I needed help, that I really needed help. And that my prayer was being answered in a way that was way beyond anything that I had ever asked for in that short moment I sent it to God, to the Universe. And I realized that indeed the accepting seems to be the hard part, the accepting of all the good things that come to us. I realized that I didn’t even remembered having sent such a prayer, so how could I ever be ready for the answer, any answer. And somehow I know prayers are being answered, even though I don’t pray that often, and that often would mostly imply some emergency, something I want, mostly not even something I need, like in this case. So I realized I needed to accept what was going on, what was given to me. And that I was given way, way, way more than I could have ever imagined when I sent this little cry of help up, to God, to the Universe a few hours earlier. As my partner was not angry, maybe even happy as I had given in to what my body had been telling me for quite a while, that it needed help to deal with some stuff it wasn’t able to deal with. And the people coming to me, being with me were probably just happy helping me, happy to see me needing help, as I don’t show my needs often to other people, or show it in a very bad, demanding way. So the help was just given, freely, happily, and not something like me being a hassle to other people, something I often feel.

And of course on the background there was still some noise about the ‘money thing’, that I couldn’t afford this when I was being pampered with all kinds of tests and x-rays and medicines prescribed, an overdose in my opinion, coming from another culture, and again, expensive. But somehow I started to realize, to feel that I needed this pampering, that I needed this attention, that it was a good thing, that things were coming to me, that I needed to accept. And that this was indeed the answer to the little prayer I sent out earlier. And that the answer was much bigger than I could have ever imagined. And that my only job was to just listen to the answer and receive it. And just believe.

And that many things are just a matter of perception, of how you think about situations and things. Like focusing on the attention or the money (being taken care of in an emergency room or just by your family doctor). Or focusing on the abundance or the shortage (the medicines in this case).

So thank you, all people being there for me, when I was really in need, even though it’s sometimes still hard to accept. And thank you, Lord, for listening to my prayer, and answering it in a way, way bigger way than I ever would dare to ask for.

Who am I writing to or for

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I am still subsribed to zenhabits.net and today I found an interesting post about blogging, about writing onine, as I do here, in this site, today, now. And it made me think that I am not really writing to someone, except that my writing is still focused on people who are looking for success, like I still do. And going back to the history of my writing, of the history of this site and why I am writing every day maybe it is useful to analyze a bit more, as I have already been planning, how to continue with this site, with my writing every day.

Anyhow, the first thing that came up while thinking who am I writing for is that my original idea was that all my writing would start making sense if and when I have achieved the success I am looking for. As from that position you could read all my complaints and defeats and maybe failures and whatever I wrote, to see that no matter what, no matter how you feel, no matter where you stand, you can still get where you want to be, you can still achieve the success you are looking for.

But what is success anyhow, as somehow I still put myself down that I didn’t achieve success yet. But that is only by my own measurement, by relating everything to what I have defined as success and everything that I have defined as failure or defeat to where I stand, to what I have achieved. And yes, looking at my desire document I am not successful by measuring to the ultimate goals I have written in there. But somehow I am living my desire document and somehow I achieved major milestones in relation to my ultimate goals. As you may or may not know, when I wrote my desire document, virtually everything in there was impossible, literally impossible. But looking back, soon after I wrote it, my one and only major goal turned into something like very likely or very probable, And slowly, over the last two years, my desire document became my life, as everything in there now somehow is at least possible, where I can even say that everything that is happening in my life right now is somehow related to the desires and goals that are written down there.

And I can’t really explain how that exactly works, but it is somehow logical looking back, and all gets back to the six steps as written down by Napoleon Hill. And somehow I made large progress on where I want to be and who I want to be and how I want to live, because at least I have turned my life around in a way that related to e.g. the financial debts I have, I at least stopped borrowing extra money and started paying some things again, even though my debt still is going up because of unpaid interest and such. But I did make a turn, and I guess you could call that a success.

Some other successes that are worth mentioning is that since I started making my bed, our bed every day, I literally never skipped one day doing that, although there were some circumstances like sleeping elsewhere or not sleeping at all or having some weird schedule. Basically the only thing is that I sometimes have done it late at night, just before going to bed, but I still did it. Another thing I did was putting one peso every day in a box, no matter how little money I had. And again, I started that habit when I had no money at all and didn’t even know how to buy food or feed the dogs one week from the day I started. And the weird thing with that habit is that one day I decided to put five peso in that box instead of one, as at that time I was not that tight on money anymore. And one or two months ago I decided to increase the daily amount to twenty peso and also with this habit I never failed. And there are more things I improved, turned around, like making a daily planning and executing that planning every day, even though the last few weeks I didn’t really make a planning on paper. But I still did it, even when not written down. And not to forget my daily sending of an inspirational quote, my daily writing of a post in this site, my daily update of my online gratitude diary and my almost daily writing of a post in my Dutch blog. As I hardly ever skipped any of those things, except my daily writing in my Dutch blog, but that is also something I gave myself some leeway like ‘only when it feels good’, so also here I have been pretty successful, I guess I could even say very successful..

So looking at the above I guess I can just say that I have become much more successful in many things after starting with reading Think and Grow Rich and working from it. And I think the most important thing here is that I have programmed myself for success, or at least have programmed myself to be more successful than before. And another major thing is that my outlook in life, my outlook towards the future fully changed. As right now I am much, much more determined to achieve the things that I have decided to achieve, no matter what. And again, also here the Principle of Success ‘decision‘, comes in handy, As I basically don’t change any decisions anymore, even though I have no clue where that goes, as over time things change, so also somehow goals needs to change, e.g. when you reach a goal. But somehow I didn’t encounter that ‘problem’ yet, so there doesn’t seem to be a problem.

So have I become successful, have I achieved success? Well, not really to my own standards, to the goals that I have set, as I didn’t achieve any of them fully. But looking at the above I guess I can consider myself pretty successful. So I guess I have some right now to write about success, to write about how to achieve things, as I am certainly on the right way.

So going back to the original question of who I am writing for, or maybe who I have been writing for, I have the feeling I have been writing to myself mostly until now. But in the background I have also been writing to people who are in a similar situation as I was when writing a particular post. And yes, today I have certainly been writing to myself, as in between the lines I read a lot of perfectionism, meaning that I am way too hard on myself.

So looking at the above I guess I can change my outlook on my blogging here now, as I can consider myself much more successful than I was before, and I guess even more successful than most people. So next thing is what to write about from now, or how to write, and maybe most important, for or to whom, as I think the suggestion of Leo Babauta of keeping your audience in mind is a very good suggestion.

Going to the moon

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Today I discussed my draft presentation for the internet city project with someone, and yes, I compare my project with something like flying to the moon. As when John F. Kennedy set the goal of going to the moon there was no budget, no technical capability, not enough knowledge, no experience and not enough time (target ‘this decade’). But that didn’t stop us from going to the moon, on schedule. So the idea that grew slowly in my mind over the last two years or so may be similar to something like flying to the moon, read ‘impossible’, but with the right mindset I believe it can certainly be done.

And maybe I should study a bit more how he did it, how it was prepared, like similar to my project, it would probably be announced by the Mayor of Cagayan de Oro City and not by me, and it would probably be attached to him, not to me. So let’s try to figure out what was all behind that simple statement of intending to go to the moon by John F. Kennedy.

Well, found some background on the moon program on Wikipedia.

Top inspirational sites

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Well, it seems my page top inspirational sites scores quite high in Google. Or many people are searching for something like that relatively a lot. So maybe I should work a bit more on that to promote this site, as the inspirational, motivational and success stuff doesn’t really seem to work yet.

And still, not sure why I can’t find people to make something work. The last few days, weeks I hardly even got any further progress with my current large project, the largest project I have ever worked on. And recently hardly any new customers or work from current customers. And as I just wrote in my Dutch blog I am more and more amazed and annoyed how the world works, like paying spammers a lot and paying people trying to do an honest job not so much. Or is that just me?

And yes, the more I think about it, it seems large companies with their policies and procedures seem to be in power at the moment, as today I had several experiences with e.g. bank procedures that are not really customer friendly, human friendly.

And still struggling with the current financial system, e.g. that ‘everything’ seems to be paid by advertising, not by paying for work that people actually do.

So well, maybe spend some time on the top inspirational sites stuff as I could use some inspiration myself right now.

Shell tax evasion Philippines

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So it seems I have a new cause next to my quest about Globe hacking websites as last week I met a former customs officer who was very concerned about an issue that smells like tax evasion, or more probably just fraud, by Shell Philippines. And the concern was not only about Shell, but also about the government not following up or allowing Shell to get away with it, costing The Philippines billions of pesos, so tens of millions of US dollars.

So I was given a webpage (Shell tax free) about the issue, but being a bit knowledgeable about internet I think that site/page is not enough to make known to the world what has been going on here and is probably still going on, partly because it is partly in Tagalog. So related to my Globe cause I think I’ll make a similar page related to the Shell issue in this site, stating e.g. some facts in chronological order. Maybe let’s start with some referrals to other pages about the subject doing some Google search: