After reading the below article, I have an epiphany: A life which has seen and experienced ups and downs; good and bad; and learnt that it is important to love and be loved, in equal parts; that it is gracious to be of use while living.
I may not have accomplished these but the act of trying to fulfill them makes me proud.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Mind Your Language
Life and Death are in the power of the tongue. The below is what I have read from somewhere so just food for thought:
While those of us who deem ourselves “not the superstitious type” may laugh at this, what we choose to say can have great bearing on what happens to us. I once heard of somebody who shared how she and her husband, during the first four years of their marriage, would tell parents, relatives and friends that they had no intention of ever having kids. When they drew close to the age of 30, the couple decided to start trying for kids. It took them 5 years to get pregnant with their 1st child. “It was really painful going thru all those years – we suffered every conceivable test and there was nothing wrong with either of us physically. We came this close to IVF and this close to adoption, when finally we conceived. There was no good reason for us not to have got pregnant earlier.
“It was my mother who pointed out to me that I had said for nearly 4 years that I wasn’t going to have a baby, and she said my body was listening and obeying. I don’t know if she’s right, but I do believe there is power in the words that we speak! When I told my fertility specialist she actually agreed with my mother’s theory!”
Great American write Nathaniel Hawthorne once said,
“Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.” Words of life…
Words are tools we use every day to communicate, inform, educate, and yes, to get what we want. Words can give life to a situation – saying the perfect word at an opportune moment can give hope to someone who is in a bad situation. Words can bring comfort, strength, stir up inspiration, determination. Words are a call to action. Wars have been won with words, and lives changed.
“A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words.. the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt,”
described write Mark Twain. But just as words can give life to people and situations, words can also kill. King Solomon once wrote that
“he who guards his lips guards his life, but he who speaks rashly will come to ruin.”
Programming your life…. In his book Awakening The Giant Within, Anthony Robbins dedicates a chapter to “The Vocabulary of Ultimate Success”. He describes the sort of language that the world’s most successful and influential man have used, including Winston Churchill.
“Realise now the power that your words command if you simply choose them wisely,”
he writes.
“Most of us don’t realize that the words you habitually choose also affect how you communicate with yourself and therefore what you experience.. people with an impoverished vocabulary live an impoverished emotional life.”
There is more than a modicum of truth to this statement. You can do a quick poll with your friends: notice how the happy, successful ones speak. Usually their speech is peppered with the positive and you can barely find a strand of negative. To them, there is always a bright side to every situation; they steadfastly refuse to focus on the problem. On the other hand, there are others who have a completely different vocabulary. They’re usually complaining about something, gossiping abought someone, and even when you point out something wonderful that they have in their lives, their reaction is something like “So what?” or “Yes but…”. You will notice, after a few years, that these “losers” never seem to change. Their lives remain exactly the same, or worse, deteriorate.
Robbins’ success in the self-help industry has pivoted on one thing: a technique he called “neural linguistic programming”. To put it simply, its using pleasure and pain to programme the mind into thinking positive, by changing the language it processes. Thoughts into Words… Our thoughts are what programmes our language. If someone is obsessed with money, her language will be filled with money-markers like “Money doesn’t grow on trees”, “I’m not doing this for free you know”, “You owe me”. If someone’s thoughts are filled with love, the kind of words that will come out from her lips will be “Are you okay?”, “You deserve something nice”, “How can I help?”.
Controlling our thoughts is the key to controlling our words, which in turn controls our actions. One book I have read many times over is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Its not just a book about getting money, it’s a valuable tome on how to harness your thoughts in such way that they serve you rather than enslave you.
“Success comes to those who become success-conscious. Failure comes to those who indifferently allow themselves to become failure-conscious”
is one of Hill’s gems. Its true: If your thought life is ill-disciplined, your words will be thoughtless. And the alarming fact is that the average person tends to think negatively rather than positively. As Hill puts it,
“[A] weakness found in altogether too many people is the habit of measuring everything and everyone, but their own impressions and beliefs. Some people.. will believe that they cannot think and grow rich because their thought habits have been steeped in poverty, want, misery, failure and defeat.”
Good words, great year…. Begin the year with a prayer list. Write them down and tape the sheet to the mirror. Each day pray through the list – speaking out words that that were written, and believing for them to come true. Amazingly, about 80 percent of them will come to pass, especially those that would have been inconceivable two years ago. They could be desires for your marriage to improve, for your children to develop well, for greater finances, – whatever your desires are, put them into words, then open your mouth and speak them out. And then get ready to have a great 2006.
While those of us who deem ourselves “not the superstitious type” may laugh at this, what we choose to say can have great bearing on what happens to us. I once heard of somebody who shared how she and her husband, during the first four years of their marriage, would tell parents, relatives and friends that they had no intention of ever having kids. When they drew close to the age of 30, the couple decided to start trying for kids. It took them 5 years to get pregnant with their 1st child. “It was really painful going thru all those years – we suffered every conceivable test and there was nothing wrong with either of us physically. We came this close to IVF and this close to adoption, when finally we conceived. There was no good reason for us not to have got pregnant earlier.
“It was my mother who pointed out to me that I had said for nearly 4 years that I wasn’t going to have a baby, and she said my body was listening and obeying. I don’t know if she’s right, but I do believe there is power in the words that we speak! When I told my fertility specialist she actually agreed with my mother’s theory!”
Great American write Nathaniel Hawthorne once said,
“Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.” Words of life…
Words are tools we use every day to communicate, inform, educate, and yes, to get what we want. Words can give life to a situation – saying the perfect word at an opportune moment can give hope to someone who is in a bad situation. Words can bring comfort, strength, stir up inspiration, determination. Words are a call to action. Wars have been won with words, and lives changed.
“A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words.. the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt,”
described write Mark Twain. But just as words can give life to people and situations, words can also kill. King Solomon once wrote that
“he who guards his lips guards his life, but he who speaks rashly will come to ruin.”
Programming your life…. In his book Awakening The Giant Within, Anthony Robbins dedicates a chapter to “The Vocabulary of Ultimate Success”. He describes the sort of language that the world’s most successful and influential man have used, including Winston Churchill.
“Realise now the power that your words command if you simply choose them wisely,”
he writes.
“Most of us don’t realize that the words you habitually choose also affect how you communicate with yourself and therefore what you experience.. people with an impoverished vocabulary live an impoverished emotional life.”
There is more than a modicum of truth to this statement. You can do a quick poll with your friends: notice how the happy, successful ones speak. Usually their speech is peppered with the positive and you can barely find a strand of negative. To them, there is always a bright side to every situation; they steadfastly refuse to focus on the problem. On the other hand, there are others who have a completely different vocabulary. They’re usually complaining about something, gossiping abought someone, and even when you point out something wonderful that they have in their lives, their reaction is something like “So what?” or “Yes but…”. You will notice, after a few years, that these “losers” never seem to change. Their lives remain exactly the same, or worse, deteriorate.
Robbins’ success in the self-help industry has pivoted on one thing: a technique he called “neural linguistic programming”. To put it simply, its using pleasure and pain to programme the mind into thinking positive, by changing the language it processes. Thoughts into Words… Our thoughts are what programmes our language. If someone is obsessed with money, her language will be filled with money-markers like “Money doesn’t grow on trees”, “I’m not doing this for free you know”, “You owe me”. If someone’s thoughts are filled with love, the kind of words that will come out from her lips will be “Are you okay?”, “You deserve something nice”, “How can I help?”.
Controlling our thoughts is the key to controlling our words, which in turn controls our actions. One book I have read many times over is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Its not just a book about getting money, it’s a valuable tome on how to harness your thoughts in such way that they serve you rather than enslave you.
“Success comes to those who become success-conscious. Failure comes to those who indifferently allow themselves to become failure-conscious”
is one of Hill’s gems. Its true: If your thought life is ill-disciplined, your words will be thoughtless. And the alarming fact is that the average person tends to think negatively rather than positively. As Hill puts it,
“[A] weakness found in altogether too many people is the habit of measuring everything and everyone, but their own impressions and beliefs. Some people.. will believe that they cannot think and grow rich because their thought habits have been steeped in poverty, want, misery, failure and defeat.”
Good words, great year…. Begin the year with a prayer list. Write them down and tape the sheet to the mirror. Each day pray through the list – speaking out words that that were written, and believing for them to come true. Amazingly, about 80 percent of them will come to pass, especially those that would have been inconceivable two years ago. They could be desires for your marriage to improve, for your children to develop well, for greater finances, – whatever your desires are, put them into words, then open your mouth and speak them out. And then get ready to have a great 2006.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Tips for beating the Gloomy Weather
Our island is not short of rain these few days. Even the stray cat under my block of flat looked so warm and contented on the void deck table.
All started with pitter-patter on the window panes on Saturday night, so nice to curl up on my bed and snuggle up with Wilson under our cosy comforter. Throughout the night, there was rain. When we woke up on Sunday, it was raining still. Instead of going out, we cooked Indo-Mee for lunch. And then I drank camomile tea, flipped magazine and fell asleep to the sound of rain... woke up from nap, still raining!! Mopped the floor, ironed some clothes, listened to music: still raining. I am so happy!! At night can sleep sooooooooo soundly now. And before going to bed, I proposed an idea to Wilson: Let's play in the rain and get all wet so that we can have a hot shower, towel dry and cuddle in bed again. My proposal was rejected; he said I am SO vulnerable to flu bugs.... What to do? So much for my BRILLIANT idea.
Monday came. The floor so wet from the rain and my open-toed shoes got wet too on the way to work. Started to feel abit gloomy because people were all rushing around to seek shelter especially for those who came out without their brolly. Conclusion: Rainy days are best reserved for staying at home to sleep OR to sip hot milo OR to have steamboat OR we can do all three... Whoa Hoo!!! Okie, so at night I went to bed repeating in my brains: Rain rain go away come again another day. Over and over again so that tomorrow will be shiny for us to visit the Zoo. Yes, the Zoo, hadn't been there for so long!
Tuesday came and oh no no no no no, raining and raining and raining! I don't want to wake up!!! Lazy me... finally I got up just after 9am and the rain has stopped but the sky still looked dangerously grey. Anyway, Wilson was up and about way before me and busy making sandwiches while packing the bag. A slight guilt crept over me **Faint**.
In an hour's time, we reached Singapore Zoological Gardens!! So pretty, got fountain in front (wah, I sound damn sua-ku). Toilet so nice, almost spa-like.... Waited for Tau Shen to hand him the corporate pass before we stepped into the Zoo proper! Our first stop was some black looking monkeys making a lot of noise. Alright so I learnt that these species have a throat sac; which is why they can 'howl' very loudly. To me they are all monkeys BUT actually there are baboons, Orang Utan, etc.... Okie ok, I know I sounded like a Bimbo but this bimbo knows more profound facts about the giraffes and snakes because of Discovery Channel. Too boring to share here.....
By noon, we covered half the zoo and then we ate our sandwiches before we seek shelter at the penguin station. I wore my cap and Wilson forced an 'oversized' raincoat on me after which he 'admired' me, telling me I looked like Winnie the Pooh. Come on!... I feel like yaking the raincoat off but I didn't dare to offend him.
Drizzlng translated to a heavy downpour; getting really inconvienient some more. We got so sick of looking at penguins and decided to brave the rain. At least we have our brolly. Initially, I felt pretty silly to be visiting the Zoo in such a weather. As we continued walking I can even say that it's getting quite romantic! By now, the rest of the visitors started to venture out as well... it's as if the rain never existed! Oh well,.. almost since I can't ignore the fact that most of us are accessorized by umbrellas/ raincoats.
So my advice? It matters not the situation, but in state of mind - for once instead of just reading this proverb on paper; I experienced it first hand. And I must say it's definitely first class!
All started with pitter-patter on the window panes on Saturday night, so nice to curl up on my bed and snuggle up with Wilson under our cosy comforter. Throughout the night, there was rain. When we woke up on Sunday, it was raining still. Instead of going out, we cooked Indo-Mee for lunch. And then I drank camomile tea, flipped magazine and fell asleep to the sound of rain... woke up from nap, still raining!! Mopped the floor, ironed some clothes, listened to music: still raining. I am so happy!! At night can sleep sooooooooo soundly now. And before going to bed, I proposed an idea to Wilson: Let's play in the rain and get all wet so that we can have a hot shower, towel dry and cuddle in bed again. My proposal was rejected; he said I am SO vulnerable to flu bugs.... What to do? So much for my BRILLIANT idea.
Monday came. The floor so wet from the rain and my open-toed shoes got wet too on the way to work. Started to feel abit gloomy because people were all rushing around to seek shelter especially for those who came out without their brolly. Conclusion: Rainy days are best reserved for staying at home to sleep OR to sip hot milo OR to have steamboat OR we can do all three... Whoa Hoo!!! Okie, so at night I went to bed repeating in my brains: Rain rain go away come again another day. Over and over again so that tomorrow will be shiny for us to visit the Zoo. Yes, the Zoo, hadn't been there for so long!
Tuesday came and oh no no no no no, raining and raining and raining! I don't want to wake up!!! Lazy me... finally I got up just after 9am and the rain has stopped but the sky still looked dangerously grey. Anyway, Wilson was up and about way before me and busy making sandwiches while packing the bag. A slight guilt crept over me **Faint**.
In an hour's time, we reached Singapore Zoological Gardens!! So pretty, got fountain in front (wah, I sound damn sua-ku). Toilet so nice, almost spa-like.... Waited for Tau Shen to hand him the corporate pass before we stepped into the Zoo proper! Our first stop was some black looking monkeys making a lot of noise. Alright so I learnt that these species have a throat sac; which is why they can 'howl' very loudly. To me they are all monkeys BUT actually there are baboons, Orang Utan, etc.... Okie ok, I know I sounded like a Bimbo but this bimbo knows more profound facts about the giraffes and snakes because of Discovery Channel. Too boring to share here.....
By noon, we covered half the zoo and then we ate our sandwiches before we seek shelter at the penguin station. I wore my cap and Wilson forced an 'oversized' raincoat on me after which he 'admired' me, telling me I looked like Winnie the Pooh. Come on!... I feel like yaking the raincoat off but I didn't dare to offend him.
Drizzlng translated to a heavy downpour; getting really inconvienient some more. We got so sick of looking at penguins and decided to brave the rain. At least we have our brolly. Initially, I felt pretty silly to be visiting the Zoo in such a weather. As we continued walking I can even say that it's getting quite romantic! By now, the rest of the visitors started to venture out as well... it's as if the rain never existed! Oh well,.. almost since I can't ignore the fact that most of us are accessorized by umbrellas/ raincoats.
So my advice? It matters not the situation, but in state of mind - for once instead of just reading this proverb on paper; I experienced it first hand. And I must say it's definitely first class!
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Sidetracked....
Didn't want to start off 2006 with all my complaints and grouchiness but all of you just have to listen to this: My mum's giving me STRONG hints to have a baby!!!! Oh dear... Can those of you who faced this same question tell me all the possible answers??
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