Career discussion (Part I)

Had my second session with my therapist today, the topic discussed relates to my undecisiveness to make a  career choice. After one hour, I don't have the feeling I've gained more insight. She mostly agreed with what I said or repeated what I've said in a different manner. For the price charged, I'm wondering when I'll experience the usefulness of the therapy. I will give it  another try. If things still remain the same I need to seek other possibilities. But I'm glad that I'm trying at least, though not knowing which means will help me to improve, I'm continuously seeking which provides more comfort than passively thinking about which action to take.
At the end, I handled over my strategic life plan to her, all noted down on just a quart of an A4 page. She told me she would like to have it as some input, let's see if I will gain some knowledge during the next session.

Personal change (Part I)

We are all cursed to live our lives. As a women, our general age would be around 80 years old. It's not long, in comparison with the existence of the universe, we only live a breeze, the moment it announces its presence is also the moment of its departure. We came as human, while what preceded us and what comes next will remain a mystery throughout the history of human kind.

Now that we're here any ways, why not live the best of it? Our life is short and our lives together offers an interesting mixture of the good and the ugly. So, could anyone give me an argument not to make the best of it? But how come most of us end up becoming depressed or living their lives as if time is standing still and they have an eternity ahead of them? How come most of us get bored and unhappy in our lives?

I admit it's scary to live, when things are going right we know we got to expect the worse to happen. But why will all this hold us back to live? Why do most people live according to a tight schedule all planned out in a standardized plan? Why am I one of them and why do I not understand the choices I've made for my life? That precious short period of time in which I'm here around, present in all my glory, but hiding myself, scared and anxious about the world, but so curious about what can happen that this curiosity triggers my imagination about my role here between the others.

We got to become passionated. We got to become passionated about living as it is short and we only have this one chance to live it with our identity. We all have dreams in which we become the most brilliant, or admired person the world would encounter. We dream because we need this acknowledgement about our own existence from others, we need the recognition about our contribution. Most of us are only limited in daydreaming, but we freeze when thinking about acting upon it, as suddenly we do not have the capacity any longer: "oh come on, I'm not pretty enough" "I'm not smart enough" etc. Most of us get blown away by benchmarking with our peers, or we get heart broken by one of two criticism.

I truly believe just like the way we all have developed this habit of under estimating ourselves, we all possess over the capacity to learn to trust our gutts and to go for it. Just like Buddhism states, it all starts from a thought.

They are a couple of known root causes of the fear which prevents us of becoming passionated:
1) Though we dream, we've learned to under estimate our own capacity, making us to turn away ofrom things we would like to try out, but too afraid of getting disappointed.
2) We're too sensitive towards other people's criticism which overwhelms us from listening to what we want to do or choose. We rather choose acceptence from others than to suffer short pain but to choose for what we want.
Probably they are not the only cause, but I'm sure most of us share these two in common.

It's sad but also hopeful to derive that the cause of both causes is  impacted by us: of what we think about ourselves and the value we give to the opinion of others. So it's not completely externalized, we have an impact to change our thoughts in order to reverse the wheel and see how our lives could change.

Step one would be to know what you want, and then just go straight to the action step: taking all the necessary actions in order to try out what you think you want. Skip the step of self pity and under estimation: it not only ansorbs time but it would not contribute any value.
For the second issue, yes it's hard to not feel hurt when the criticism is directed to us, people are social animals and we appreciate social recognition. But you got to realize that is this world, you will never succeed in being liked by everyone. Moreover, even if you manage to make most of your encounters appreciate you, you will probably invest most of your spare time to find out how to satisfy others instead of using the time to discover what you want. People who appreciate you will always be there, no matter in which stage you find yourselves in your life, and people who like you don't have the obligation to always like you. We got to learn to live with this unpredictability as we don't have the control over others. In short, learn to become thick skinned!

I'm not one of the few young enlighted creatures. However, I've reached a stage in my life where I've never been so clear about my potential to change my current situation: a miserable person who from the moment she wakes up desires to go back to sleep while during the day she pulls herself through the activities while being completely numb about things. I do not desire to look into the mirror too often as I do not like what I see, I hate my current life style as what I want is still not present in my life, I hate my character of being this soft and naive creature who just doesn't dare to stand up for her own, a person who has lived in this numb unhappiness for already several years while I had to change to decide for myself. In short, I pretty much dislike myself in all aspects. But what keeps me now going, is the realization that I have the capacity to change everything I dislike about myself. The only thing I need to do is to do something. It's always easy to live the role of a victime, to blame external factors for your destiny, but what do you achieve from it? A short living pity from others perhaps, but no one can withstand a person who is continuously complianing.

This is the thing: though many external factors have played a role resulting in your current situation (in my case a miserable person), we all bear a portion of responsibility: we're reponsible for our lives. Only then we have a chance to change the situation in which we feel unhappy.

Love your career (part I)

I guess it's fair to assume that one day, every one of us has to find his/ her main financial resource. It might come from a heritage, or the rent you monthly receives from the houses you have, or like many others a job. It's also fair to assume that if you have a job, you'll mostly be occupied by it from Monday to Friday, 9 AM till 5 PM. It's also fair to assume that if you want to pursue a career and to succeed in it, your daily schedule would be much more between 8 AM till 8 PM, if not later, and probably some time in the weekends would be going to your job as well. Now, let's make a generic average 5 days (a week) * 10 h (a day) * 30 days (in a month) * 12 months (a year) = 18000h out of 60480h = some 30% of your year is invested in your career. You actually don't even have to go that far in the calculation to realize the portion your job absorbs of your daily 24h: if you have 24h - 7h (of sleep) - 10h (of work) - 2h (of eating) = 5h of free time per day. As most of us procrastinate, it leaves us about 3 to 4 hours a day to experience some personal freedom. If you have a family, probably your 4 hours of spare time will be invested in them.

What I'm trying to say is that you do spend about 40% of your day on your job. I guess this is already a quite good argument to love what you do. You got to find something that motivates you to wake up in the morning and be happy it's a brand new day. That job also needs to pull you through the day, as your working environment changes, you got to find an essence in your job, why you love it so much, in order to maintain your passion for your job always at a minimum level.

Most people will be happy about their job whenever they gain satisfaction from it, not only from its results, but also from the process to achieve the results, as this will slurp the largest chunk of your work time: working towards something.

My question towards myself is: "Which job will make you feel satisfied in what you do?". If the answer is easy to find, I probably wouldn't have started this post or let along this blog. It's because I don't know, that's why I needed to gain some structure in my own thinking in order to retrieve what I've forgotten or still need to learn. The issues causing this uncertainty are the following factors:
1) Information assymetry: there are countless different types of jobs, ranging from your local bakker to the Financial Times recognized CEO. However, most of us do not possess over the perfect information symmetry in order to know which types of jobs are available on the labor market.
2) Even if we know, we can only know whether we like the job or not by doing it. However, as most of us are considered to be worthless on the age of 45, it's not like we have sufficient time in order to try out all the types of jobs that we might like.
3) Most people don't know themselves sufficiently or they are too risk averse to trust their own interest which pushes us to follow the mainstream of the peer group. In my case, it's consulting. If you fear, you wouldn't act upon your gutts meaning your interest. If you don't know yourself, you would lack the capacity to filter out some jobs you might definitely not like. As you can derive, knowing yourself and to trust yourself is quite a core asset to have in your life.
4) The comfort of being numb. "Why going through all these hussle if my current situation is okay?"

I guess these four are the main factors that cause passivity in searching for the right job. At least making the assumption that the individual has the freedom of choice.

My quest now is to find a solution towards these four factors in order to have an overview on the different types of jobs I like and what they have in common. This way I wouldn't only find out about the jobs I like but also what motivates me to like them. You could perceive this self knowledge as the bonus of my quest.

My task for the upcoming days (or months) would thus consist of finding ways to overcome these four existing issues which are preventing me from finding what I love to do.

I got to find my career as:
1) I don't want to end up spending 40% of my daily time on something that makes me unhappy
2) The necessity of having a financial income.

Change: initialisation

I'll be leaving to Sri Lanka next week, for 18 days - 2 days in the plane. I still don't have a fixed plan yet on my future, and I don't have that much time left before changing the course of my life. I would likt to say "I'll make the plans when being somewhere exotic, when I have the time". Fact is I do have time, I just still don't know how to use it efficiently, still not after 24 years. Another fact is "De maniana" is not the best quote to follow when your life is at the peek of its chaos. But look at where I stand now, 24 years old, still not knowing what I want out of my life, following the comfortably numb stream of convenience, getting drifted apart from what I thnk I want every day just a little bit more. Here I stand, completely empty and numb. Knowing mentally I need to do something, but that thought has been there for several years. What has been changed in meantime? I grew older, my circumstances changed, but the same agony remained.

I'm not doing this alone, a close friend of mine is joining me for this route of personal dialectik, with a smoother angle. We made the promise to plan or act every day just a little towards what we want and how to achieve what we want. Though she's not facing my deadline, meaning I need to think more clear and with a faster pace than hers.

The fact I have the freedom to think change and act upon it is a great coincidental gift. But I have it, and I need to make use of it.

The change that I desire is to become more happy. A generic aspiration for most of us. The hard thing now is to define that happiness, what it means to me and what are the steps I need to take in order to achieve it.

So my small contribution towards my change today is I've defined what I want, namely to become a more happy person. I also know that in order to reach it I need to work on four main areas in life and find a way to balance them:
1) Career
2) Hobbies
3) Personal
4) Love

I think if you have the perfect balance of these four elements, your life shouldn't be all too bad. My responsiblity is to draw a plan to reach the balance and to act upon the plan till I'm pretty close to my own defined happiness. How to assess my achievement? By the amount of daily sustained happiness I feel.

Wish me good luck.

Karma hotel

Yesterday seemed to start off as any Sundays, going slow while realizing it was the last day of the week.  However, things changed when I got informed that my mother was hospitalized. Being unprepared, it took me almost a day to realize that she has been operated and requires at least a half year to recover. Mental pain point: the same day we had a fight where the discussion basically drills down to me not only being nog appreciative towards her, but also to hold an inner friction towards some events which took place in my past and where a link could be found between her and the cause of the event. It was the first time she cried during our discussions. That moment I knew the verbal battle broke her heart. The instant guilt I felt as till now, it is only the second time I saw my mum crying for personal matters.

The consequences of the accident not only holds an impact on her health, but also on my life. As she would not be able to stand properly for the coming months or year, it means that a large portion of her daily choires will fall on my shoulders.

My life for the coming months will consist of my own professional career from 9h till 18h (I'm now obliged to put a maximum on 18h30 as otherwise my other tasks would not be done), work in the restaurant from 19h till 21h (I'm glad that I'll be supported by a friend of my father, meaning that during the weekdays, my evenings wouldn't be all to hectic, and the weekends will be more bearable), in the meantime make sure my mum gets what she needs; taking care of the required household tasks; trying to work on my personal goals (or at least plan it); get some sleep and hopefully next morning have the motivation to go to the gym (as I still pay the monthly fee, need to make use of it asap!).

It sounds hectic and it is. Yesterday and today, I got a glimpse of how my mum's life has been. Having the personal experience, I realized the hard work she has put into maintaining the only source of income of this family for the past 18 years, while taking care of the household and me.

Now the roles have reversed. This is also the main reason behind the title of the blog post: it seems what happened isn't a coincidence: the day I made my mother so sad by being not appreciative towards her, is the same day that changes my life as of now on I'm obliged to take care of her while taking over the majority of her tasks.

I'm happy. I really see this event that both of us required to make a switch. What mother has to learn out of this experience is not only take better care of her symptoms and be more cautious, but she is now forced to let others do her choires, something she never wanted to share. She is now forced to be taken care of. She is now forced to slow down her pace and regain the sleep she lost.
From my side, learning by doing, I have to truly and fully realize what my mother went through the past 18 years is not evident and should certainly not be dilluted. At the same time, I will learn how to contribute to the family. I will have to increase my organisational capacity as I also want to work on my perosnal goals.

I have already learned the flexibility of one's character: people often complain how litlle time they have, but by increasing the activities, the same amount of complaints would remain, while extra activities are being achieved. Meaning, we often think we utilize every minute of our day efficiently, but by increasing the number of activities, more things are getting done, leading to a higher efficiency than before.

Promise

The last few months have put me into thinking about my current position and the place I want to be in. In Todd's words, my perfect life. The life that I want, though with its imperfections, would be created through the choices I'll consciously make and strive for. What is more beautiful than building your own life? However, the assessment of the gap between AS IS and TO BE is significant, and in all honesty, I still need to figure out the how to.

The first step I have taken, is to formulate all the goals I want to achieve in life into an excel sheet. "How the hell can someone's dreams be compressed into a freaking excel sheet??" It does sounds not all to romantic, but it provides me with an overview of all the things I want to do and what I already can do in order to get start with it. Also, I'm aware that this will be a continuous process.

Now its correlation with my blog:  the blog will be used to learn how to live more consciously, every day. I've learned that by putting things you've experienced into words, you not only have a mean to trace back time for the future, but it's also a way to sit back and reflect upon what has been going on in your life for the present. Something I need in order to re-gain the overview on where I stand? am I going into the right direction? what still needs to be done?

Thus, starting from today, I will regularly though not daily (Mon-Fri full dedication to my work, read: no personal time whatsover except for eating and sleeping) update my blog, try to figure out how to make it more lively and use this technology tool as a tracking tool for my life. As starting from now, I've made the decision to live my life step by step, with every step that I'll take to be the one I've choosen for.