Tag Archives: Have to

Being flexible

It was not really easy to skip my posts and the sending of my daily quote and the update of my gratitude diary yesterday. Or maybe it was, as I just did it, especially keeping myself from sending the daily quote yesterday, which I could have relatively easily done. And behind it is still fear I think, fear of letting go of the routine of ‘planning the work and working the plan‘. But somehow I have the feeling that I am overdoing things, that I am too rigid in following my plan, my daily to-do list. And what triggered me thinking that was a remark a few weeks ago of a friend of mine, something like that he would leave me behind, let me alone if I really wanted to push through with meeting someone who skipped a meeting we had planned because he was sick. And yes, that was the first time or one of the first times that I really didn’t make my daily planning, really could not check an item on my list as ‘done’. And no, I don’t think it hurt me in my discipline really, maybe even the opposite, although I’m not fully sure. As somehow I continued making my daily plan and doing the things I planned for the day, maybe even more conscious than before. Actually it made me think a lot about being rigid or flexible and somehow it gave me more options, more choices.

And yes, somehow it still makes me scared that I am now able to indeed decide NOT to finish my daily to-do list. As I did yesterday, as I had decided to attend a funeral, meaning I left Wednesday end of the afternoon and returned today, Friday morning, as I had to travel for around eight hours to the city where the family lives,where I spent most of yesterday attending the funeral, including preparations and aftermath.

So maybe it did or does take courage NOT to do things, like not to send my daily quote yesterday and not to write my posts and not to update my gratitude diary. And yes, it still makes me feel a bit scared, as I no have given myself the option to NOT finish my daily to-do list.

But even while scared, scared of falling back to not doing things anyhow, no matter whether I planned them or not, somehow I have the feeling I gained some flexibility, lost some of my rigid thinking by indeed allowing me to be flexible, even where the cost is NOT doing the things I planned, so not working the plan.

But it made me more human, as being a human being you can’t control everything. And you certainly need to take the time to be with family, friends, to share a loss like the death of a loved one.

Fun things

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So I learned how to plan and how to be (more) disciplined. But what I probably have to learn is to plan fun things, things that make me happy, things that I enjoy. As I see more and more that I just seem to see life as a list of things I have to do. And yes, I have learned to see that everything a human being does is a choice, so I know I choose to do those things, to put so much obligations onto myself.

And again I think of my mother, like yesterday or so. As she also always or mostly seems to focus on others, on helping and supporting others. Meaning she feels like she has nothing for herself and indeed also doesn’t have anything for herself.

So what happened to me, as I did have my part of fun things. But the last few years, when the money was gone, I didn’t feel like doing fun things anymore, as I just can’t afford. And the stupid thing is that I basically gave everything to my partner, gave in to all the demands and wishes of my partner. And yes, of course I enjoy the TV and the new refrigerator. But I would have never bought those myself, I would have spent my money differently, spending less on a TV and less on a refrigerator, and more on, yes, on what? Yes, travel I guess. And maybe renovating the house. And a new motorcycle.

And yes, when you have given everything away you feel drained and indeed are no fun to be with anymore. But I also still don’t see why I wouldn’t give my partner everything he wants. As that is also what I would like to happen. And they say something like you reap what you sow, so somehow I sowed something else than I thought.

So what did I sow? And how can I sow better? And what did you sow? And are you happy with what you are reaping?

Patience?

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Actually I wanted to write about this yesterday, but somehow the other idea took charge, so what happened to me last Saturday or so needed to wait.

And it wasn’t that special what happened last Saturday, but somehow it also was. And it’s worth thinking about I guess, it’s worth contemplating.

And you may or not know, but for quite a while I have been trying to start with the tools section in this website. Tools like helping you create a desire document or helping you get more clarity on your goals and how to reach them. And me being me I want to build that part of the site in my own way, according to the standards of Active Discovery Designs. As I believe building it in WordPress, according to the WordPress standards, will be too complicated and too time consuming. And next to that I don’t want to depend on the way WordPress is going as I don’t have good experience with Open Source systems when you have to support them, want to maintain them, want to expand them. And don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Open Source systems as e.g. most of the web servers on the internet are even running on Open Source systems like LInux, PHP and mySQL. And until now this whole site has been built with WordPress according to the WordPress standards.

Anyhow, I didn’t want to talk about Open Source systems and such, but about my experience with something that had been bothering me for weeks already, maybe even months. As I was looking for a way to create a simple signup procedure where you only have to enter your e-mail address and a password to either sign in to this site or to register. And yes, at the same time go to my own, much simpler, way of programming a website, a web application. But I got stuck.

And getting stuck when writing software is quite a common thing, at least for me. Sometimes you ‘just don’t see it’ and you get stuck in some very weird process where you just can’t find the bug, can’t find the error, can’t find why something doesn’t work. And it can keep you busy for days, where in the end the solution is often just one or two lines of code or some very stupid simple programming error. So I got stuck in the problem of automatically logging the user in after signing up, after entering a new e-mail address. And no, this website is not a full time job or something, especially the programming part, but I did spend quite some hours spent over a few weeks to solve this problem. And I couldn’t find it, I just couldn’t find why it didn’t work. And last Saturday I did one small search in Google and suddenly I found the solution as also other people had experienced the same thing. And indeed, also this time the solution took like fifteen minutes or less to implement. And it will take me probably hours to take out all the ‘debugging code’ that I have added to find the problem. But again, I don’t want to talk about software development.

No, I wanted to talk about that sometimes, or even mostly, solutions just ‘come to you’. And that is maybe also what the teachings of Abraham Hicks are trying to tell us. That all the pushing and shoving and hammering that we often do when things don’t work, when we want to put something into place, are not needed or even can have a negative impact. As when I would have just searched in a relaxed way in Google instead of trying and trying and trying to solve this problem I would have saved a lot of time, effort, energy and annoyance. So yes, often stopping and thinking works better than just ‘work, work, work’.

And I remember another sample of a similar situation. As I was on the way to the wake of a friend of mine who had died. And I didn’t know exactly where it was, but the name of the funeral home made me think it was somewhere near a subdivision with the same name. And that subdivision is something like six kilometers away from the city center, the city center where I started my search. And it took me I think even hours to find out I was in the wrong place. While if I would have just asked someone in the city center, where I was, close to the funeral home, I would have saved a lot of time and effort and even money. But no, I just had a wrong perception and was too, well, maybe preoccupied, with what I thought was right, to consider asking.

So better think and ask first, before doing a lot of effort.

Fear

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I am often scared to open my e-mail. Or maybe I should write I often was, as I’m not as scared anymore as before. But yesterday and today I was. As I had sent an e-mail two days ago I expected a reply to. And somehow I was scared of the reply. But I had planned for today to check my e-mail and indeed the answer was there. And the answer was not really what I expected or hoped for, as it was kind of a politically correct answer where I had hoped for a bit more. But it was also certainly not a negative answer, even though I would have liked it a bit more, well, to my liking, getting what I want.

But this whole thing made me think what it is or was that I am actually afraid of. And today’s quote of course was about fear. And it was a duplicate quote probably as it was not stored in the database, so I must have liked it before. And the quote was

“What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.” from Jiddu Krishnamurti.

And it made me think and it seems I am often trying to escape the fear. As I did yesterday and actually today most of the day: not opening my e-mail. Or sometimes postponing reading my e-mail. And it made me think further about what could be behind this fear, this fear of reading e-mails. And of course I thought of my father, as he,or actually his behavior, seems to be behind all this fear. And thinking of what I wrote yesterday, I see my father as a dictator, as he always made me do what he wanted, forced me to, used his power to make me do things. And yes, somehow I grew up and went my own way. But somehow my father is still there, telling me what to do, where I have no option but to follow.

And this again makes me think how important it is what a father does. Or does not do. Or says. Or does not say. As being a father makes that you have a natural power over a child, your child. And I think my father abused that. And yes, I know he meant it all well, I know even some of his reasons. So he is not to blame, even though I still blame him.

And this is where I remember discussing this father thing with a visitor last week, the thing that I still blame my father, that I still feel like a victim. And he had a nice exercise for that. And the exercise is done in groups of two. And one person is telling the story where he felt being a victim to the other person. And the other person just has to listen. And of course in most or all cases the listener will sympathize with the person telling the story. But there is a second part of the exercise. And in the second part of the exercise the person telling his story must tell the story taking responsibility. And of course then the whole story changes, the feelings change.

Although while writing this I remember thinking about that exercise that it doesn’t apply to when a father exercises power over a child. As at certain ages a child cannot take responsibility like opposing or ignoring what the father wants. So then there is a victim. And of course there are many more situations where that is the case, situations when e.g. violence is used.

And yes, then, being a victim, you can only take responsibility for how to deal with the situation or how to deal with the aftermath of the situation.

Still, no real answer yet about my victim issues. But it seems I’m getting closer to letting go of some things, some things it seems I still play the victim where it is probably better to let go and go on with my life.

What about you? Do you have anything where you still feel the victim, even when the actual thing has long passed?

Planning and discipline

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Implementing the Principles of Success or at least working on planning and discipline seem to start to pay off as even today, when I started kind of late and had the feeling I had planned too much for the day I still managed to do everything I planned,even though, again, I ended very late. Like right now it’s almost 2 am, so actually time to relax and sleep.

And maybe the most important thing I am doing the last few days is NOT doing things. Like I was very much affected with what Globe and Smart, my Internet Service Providers and the two biggest. and in many areas basically only, Internet Service Providers in The Philippines are doing. And it kind of ruled my life, like everywhere. When doing work, when doing private things on the internet,when reading my IFS e-mails, when reading and writing in Facebook.

And it still kind of does, as right now I am too scared to open my IFS e-mail and I am too scared to open my Facebook account. As I know I am easily carried away with this stuff, unorganized writing and complaining. So yes, I am not opening it from fear, but maybe even more to make sure I won’t be carried away with it and ending up being very emotional about it.

So I am planning my actions more about it. And other actions. And I started to plan further in the future. Like the last one and a half year I have kind of been living from day to day, planning from day to day, too scared or whatever to look in the future, towards the future. But yes, I organized my days through the segment intending and daily to-do lists. And a few weeks ago, somehow in a kind of natural way, I started to look further ahead. Plan things a few days away. And actually it is starting to work out fine, as now I just plan things, things I like and things I don’t like. Like I didn’t feel like writing my second letter to Mr. Cu of Globe and Mr. Nazareno of Smart. But I planned some things around it, like creating a draft a week ago or so and an updated draft two days ago and today I had planned something like to finish it. And I just did, even though I didn’t feel like it anymore.

So yes, I need to plan reading my IFS e-mail and my Facebook. But not NOW, just tomorrow or Sunday or Monday. And I am more careful what to plan, what to write on my to-do list for a day. And how to write it, like often I write also things like ‘maybe do this’ or ‘if it fits my schedule’. So I won’t pressure myself into ‘impossible’ plannings. And yes, sometimes I just skip things, don’t do things I planned. But not so often anymore. And it’s a good feeling.

So yes, I’m on the way, on a better way.