IMHO

What is self-esteem?

A lot of people associate self-esteem with being successful, doing a good job.  While that is certainly true, I submit that these people might have gotten the relationship turned around.  Yes, self-esteem is about feeling good, about feeling satisfied with yourself about your choices and actions, its about knowing you have given your best and that you are doing good.  More importantly, feeling good and self-esteem come from yourself, within you, regardless of the external environment, what is happening to you, and how others are treating you.  When you feel good about yourself, feeling confident, it means you have a high self-esteem, and it is the motivating factor that will drive you to achieve greater heights.  Thus, self-esteem is the route to achievements, not as a result of achievements.

A lot of times, people feel and see themselves through the eyes of others.  When they receive bad treatment or met with bad circumstances, they felt that there is no way they can be happy.  This is defeatist, everyone has the power and the right to feel good.  Everyone has the right and power to choose how they response to their circumstances.  Sure,  you are expected to feel down, most people actually do.  But you have a choice, you can choose how you want to feel.  How you feel comes from you, and you are the owner of you, you choose how you want to think, how you want to feel, how you want to react and response.

As you would have gotten the drift by now, everything starts from within you.  So, the most important thing for anyone who wants to help themselves, is that they must WANT TO help themselves.  To feel good, you must begin by wanting to feel good.  You have the right and the power to feel good.  Once you realise this, you are well on the way to feeling goo, regardless of the circumstances you are in.  RESPECT yourself! Treat yourself nicely; you deserve it, no matter what others might think and make you think.

Here is some ideas to get you started about feeling good:

• extend your respect to people around you.  When you start treating people properly, it will eventually reciprocate and be returned to you.  However, I am not saying you treat others well because you expect it in return.  No, you treat others well simply because that is THE RIGHT THING TO DO!  Period.  So, even if the kind act is not returned, its fine.  Just being honest and kind to others would in itself have generate a feel-good attitude already.  You will respect yourself more because of it.  And guess what, that is self-esteem.
• do your best in everything you do.  Let’s face it, you can cheat others, but you can never cheat yourself.  You will know if you have really done your best.  And when you did, pat yourself on your back.  Be realistic, good effort does not always mean good results.  That is not the expectation, and that is certainly not the rule. (if it were, life would have been so much simpler).   The result is sometimes out of your control, what is in your control is your action, and IT IS in your power to do your best.  When you do your best, you will know it, and you will respect yourself for it.  The results can take care of itself.
• Doing good and doing right.  Can you imagine doing mean things and be able to feel good about it? Sorry, I can’t.  Simple, you want to feel good, just do good.
• Confidence.  Self-esteem has a lot to do with self-confidence as well.  Its hard to say which come first.  But they reinforce each other, you really can’t have one without the other.  So build up your self-confidence.  Take small steps, go for the easy wins.  In time, you will feel better, and generate more self-confidence.

I have met a lot of nay-sayers.  Really, a lot of people just refuse to feel good about themselves.  Have you heard of the phrase “Its easier said than done”.  OMG, thats it then, let’s up give up.   Tell me something I don’t already know.  But think about it, is have you heard of anything that is easier done than said?  Geez.  EVERYTHING is easier said than done.  So, let’s just get over it, and start doing then.   Delving on that is self-defeating.   Come on, If You Think You Can, You Can!  If you Think You Can’t, … well, OKAY then!  Its your choice.
Get it? Its YOUR CHOICE.

I don’t particularly place a lot of  importance on birthdays and anniversaries, …etc.  In fact, I frequently “conveniently forget” the passage of these.

If we were to truly live in the NOW, why so much emphasis on celebrating the anniversaries of THEN?

The event in itself is a whole lot more important than the many anniversaries that is surely to come.  Everyday after the event, (especially for birthdays, weddings, ..etc),  would be cause enough for celebrations, not just on the anniversaries.

So, celebrate with me, everyday that we have in this life.
Be happy everyday, no matter if it was a good day or a bad day.
Be thankful everyday, that we still have friends that value us, have food to place on the table, have eyes and ears to record the beauty that surely lies all around us, waiting for us to appreciate it.

Live, all my friends, and anyone who chances upon this.
Live each Day to the Fullest.

“I am only one, but still I am one.
I cannot do everything, but still I can do something;
and because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do something that I can do.”

- Hellen Keller (American author and educator who was blind and deaf, 1880 - 1968 )

“I am only one, but I am one.
I can’t do everything, but I can do something.
The something I ought to do, I can do.
And by the grace of God, I will.”

- Edward Everett Hale (American clergyman and Writer, 1822 - 1909 )

Sometimes we are despaired that the effort we put in is so miniscule that it doesn’t seem to count for much; and everything seem so futile. At moments like these, I hope you remember these words from these great personalities, and this camp fire song that some of us might have sung in our youth,

It only takes a spark, to get a fire growing
And soon all those around, can warm up in its glowing

Such is the power of action, with faith and perseverance, even water can wear down a hard stone. No action is too small, compared to taking no action at all.

To all my friends, whether I know you or not, who fight for a worthy cause, may you have faith, and continue believing. May your little spark, kindles a great fire, and bring peace, hope and warmth to all mankind.

“We don’t know who we are until we see what we can do.”

- Martha Grimes (American author of detective fiction, 1931 - )

What can I say, I am learning about myself every single day and in every thing I do.  Sometimes, I surprise even myself with the decisions I make.  Anyway, have an open mind, just do it.  You will never know what can be accomplished if you don’t even give it a try.

In was a long time ago, in “The Fisher King”, when Jack Lucas is trying to break into a castle in New York, he commented

“Thank God nobody looks up in this town“.

The line struck a chord with me, and I remembered it ever since.

Why don’t people look up anymore? Or for that matter, look at anything around us? To me, everybody seems to be in a rush from point A to point B. All they see is straight ahead, no wondering eyes to take in their surroundings.

I was just reading Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman Volume Five “A Game of You”. In chapter three, this homeless woman observed that the moon has disappeared for a short while, and then reappeared again. But nobody else noticed it (because they never looked up). Hence she commented that

“Nobody Looks Up in the Sky Anymore.”

And I am sure there are many instances of similar comments everywhere.

I have always enjoyed looking up, looking at:

• the leaves in the trees directly overhead;
• how the sky-scrappers, aka concrete jungle, reaches out to the sky;
• the amazing every-changing patterns formed by the clouds against the blue sky;
• the stars, oh, the beautiful stars and the constellations;
• the colourful sky, especially at dawn and dusk.

Back to my pet topic, there is beauty all around us, all we have to do is to open our eyes, and really take the time to SEE. The beauty is in the things we took for granted, that we passes by each day, looking without seeing. We were so oblivious to the beauty around us, we learned to appreciate the little things in life that makes life so beautiful and wonderful.

This life is ours to live, its not a long time, fifty, seventy, maybe eighty, and if we are really lucky and vigilant, we might live to be one hundred. But if we don’t know how to appreciate beauty, if we don’t know how to enjoy living, what does it matter how long we live? We would be a living dead.

Simplicity, courage to live and to love, to be free; if we don’t have these, wouldn’t life be empty, wouldn’t we be just marking time, waiting to die?

Go on, look up some time.

We are currently in transition to a knowledge economy. Ever since the conception of the internet in the early 1990s, there is an ever-increasing proliferation of information and content. Not only are companies and organisations putting up more information about themselves, their products and services, media companies are putting up more content and information, even individuals are contributing to the growth of content on the internet.

With so much information at our finger tips, have we become more informed? Were we able to make better decisions? Sadly, I am afraid the contrary is true. While we were being bombarded from all sides with data and information, our capability to discern valid information from misinformation have not increase. Our abilities to make good decisions has in fact diminished as a result.

We are constantly being bombarded with information that our attention span has shortened to the extent that we are no longer focus on an issue long enough to understand it, and find a long term viable solution. Instead we are quickly and easily distracted when the next big news break out somewhere.

Furthermore, we have also ignored many important information, choosing instead to indulge in mindless content at You-tube, dating sites, social networking sites, gossip columns and what-not.

So, in the golden age of information abundance, we are faced with two delimmas. First, do not have the proper tools to sift out the real truth; second, we are not spending sufficient time to find the real truth.

Because we cannot see it or touch it, does it prove that something does not exist?

It takes quite a leap of faith to belief. But we do have to belief that there is something greater than us; there simply must be.

Once we believe, we are open to possibilities, and we can begin to notice things and understand things. Things begin to reveal themselves. More than once, the moment I became aware of something, I started noticing things that were previously there but hidden from me. Hidden in plain sight.

Belief is a powerful thing.

I left my previous post hanging incomplete. Well, I stopped myself before I go into preaching mode, hahaha.

Anyway, the next day, I was listening to a podcast about security, and this person mentioned that how we ignore problems very much like what an ostrich did, by sticking its head in the sand.

If you cannot see it, then its not there, right?

We see this everywhere, we try to ignore something hoping it would just go away. But it never did, does it? Until finally it grew and blew up in our face, and we have to deal with a much bigger mess.

So, its back to responsibilities. Its your life, you determine and control how it turn out. But you are not living on an island, everything you do has consequences. Take an interest in the neighbourhood you live in, the community, the precinct, the country, earth, …

I was reading this book War of the Flowers by Tad Williams, and came across this

<three people> who had left so little behind to mark their existence,who had disappeared into death like stones thrown into a river, the ripples gone within moments.

Everybody starts out as somebody. Then it slips away.

The character was thinking of his family, how little he could recall of them, how they had became NoBody.

What would your loved ones/friends/enemies remember about you when you are gone?

Whether we are know it or not, we are all endowed with great responsibilities. Most importantly, we have the responsibilities over our own lives; secondly, we have responsibilities over the environment we live in.

How true the words are, we are always holding people up to some preconceived models of behaviour, and when they are deviate from it, we laugh, we become indignant.

In a group, we tend to adopt the behaviour and mannerism of the group;
in making choices, we tend to flock to where the majority are;
we group think, we defer to the group, we follow the herd like lemmings.

In thinking of conformity, my thoughts returned to Dead Poet Society, to the scene where the students were walking in the courtyard, each starting in their own pace and stride, then slowly they starting marching and clapping in unison.

There is nothing wrong with finding safety in numbers, in remaining anonymous in a group. Standing out is a lonely business, and certainly not for anybody.

For those who try to be themselves, in a society that rewards conformity, I follow in Mr Keating’s example, and give you this quote: