1. Need to be around positive friends and people.
2. Need to get into the habit of controlling how I FEEL now. First acknowledging that I am not feeling positive for some sort of reason (although a lot of the times there is no reason as to why I am feeling down, it can be the smallest of trigger), then manually switching to a more positive emotion by saying to myself 'Look how big our world is, we only live once, life is too precious to waste any negative energy on". If we manually do these switches, in time, I believe it will work out to become a part of myself.
3. What others say or think or so is their business, we are just an observer. It is not necessary to step in and judge others lives or think too deep of random conversations that flows around us everyday. We only need to focus on what and whom is important to us, treat them with kindness and diginity, all other not-so-important things and people are just passengers that jump on and off with our journey.
4. This extends from #3 - take things lighter and laugh away. If laughing away is too hard a challenge, then just simply stay calm and feel the negative energy flowing away from my body.
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
Monday, 15 August 2011
Rush my day through...
Everyday of my life, I am in a constant rush. I am rushed in the morning to brush my teeth and do my make-up, I rush downstairs to the car park, I rush to drive to work, gobble down the food like I've never eaten for days, rush to read my first emails. I rush to get home, cook, clean, shower.. then somehow by the time I finished all daily chores and sit on the sofa with TV on, my crazy rush has finally put to an end.
I often ask myself why I am in such a rush everyday? Why am I always late? Why I always forget things? Why I talk so fast? Why I get anxious and angry so easily? And lastly, why does all these rush stops the minute I sit on the sofa and relax?
The problem is I can't relax.. My mind is constantly occupied with thoughts. Loose trail of thoughts which does not add up/contribute to anything positive, but rather it breaks down my main tasks/goals into pieces because I have no space to do the things which requires patience. I am always so busy with the nitty gritties, the non-important things of the daily grind wherever my mood takes me, and I often have to drag myself back from my emotion-in-control-self back to reality, as suddenly I realised I have not been doing the things I should be doing but rather the things I felt like doing at the time! YES! that was the problem. I let my emotions drift, what's worse, I let my emotions run me!
In the morning, my emo says it wants to sleep in for another 15mins, result is I'm late for work, so I need to rush and make up the stupid mistake which my emo made earlier in the morning.
Start of work, my emo says it wants to check all of my social network sites, personal emails, blogs as a priority rather than start my work day with planning what I am going to do for the rest of the work day. Result is I've been delaying the work tasks til last minute, and I have to rush again at the end to cover up my time lost..
Because of no planning, no time management, I often realise at last minute of the important things. Then I'll stress out, I'll be anxious and angry.. Not with others, but angry with myself! Angry of my stupidity.
Ideally, I would like to start my day without slumping in bed forever. I'd like to get up nice and early and fresh, do my washing and careful make-up, drive out in the sun and the breeze, sit down at a cafe for a nice coffee and plan my day. Arrive at office on time, start referring to my daily plans and nut down each problem as I go. By noon, I'd feel I've had a productive morning, I'd be more joyful to enjoy a nice healthy lunch to treat myself for all my efforts in the morning, I'd take a 30-40mins walk/exercise down the road as a way to pay back my own body. Fresh afternoon with a cup of tea and getting down with the rest of the tasks for the day. How nice it will feel to leave office at end of the day and ticked off all my activities planned for the morning!!
I will start my day in this way tomorrow. Starting to me is no difficulty, but pushing myself to STICK to this routine and make it as my habit would be a big challenge. But I am willing to take this challenge and I know I will WIN!
P.S. Thank you to myself for not biting onto the junk food tonight, and instead I did the right thing! And for that, I feel good. And for that, I say thank you to myself and have a good night sleep. :)
I often ask myself why I am in such a rush everyday? Why am I always late? Why I always forget things? Why I talk so fast? Why I get anxious and angry so easily? And lastly, why does all these rush stops the minute I sit on the sofa and relax?
The problem is I can't relax.. My mind is constantly occupied with thoughts. Loose trail of thoughts which does not add up/contribute to anything positive, but rather it breaks down my main tasks/goals into pieces because I have no space to do the things which requires patience. I am always so busy with the nitty gritties, the non-important things of the daily grind wherever my mood takes me, and I often have to drag myself back from my emotion-in-control-self back to reality, as suddenly I realised I have not been doing the things I should be doing but rather the things I felt like doing at the time! YES! that was the problem. I let my emotions drift, what's worse, I let my emotions run me!
In the morning, my emo says it wants to sleep in for another 15mins, result is I'm late for work, so I need to rush and make up the stupid mistake which my emo made earlier in the morning.
Start of work, my emo says it wants to check all of my social network sites, personal emails, blogs as a priority rather than start my work day with planning what I am going to do for the rest of the work day. Result is I've been delaying the work tasks til last minute, and I have to rush again at the end to cover up my time lost..
Because of no planning, no time management, I often realise at last minute of the important things. Then I'll stress out, I'll be anxious and angry.. Not with others, but angry with myself! Angry of my stupidity.
Ideally, I would like to start my day without slumping in bed forever. I'd like to get up nice and early and fresh, do my washing and careful make-up, drive out in the sun and the breeze, sit down at a cafe for a nice coffee and plan my day. Arrive at office on time, start referring to my daily plans and nut down each problem as I go. By noon, I'd feel I've had a productive morning, I'd be more joyful to enjoy a nice healthy lunch to treat myself for all my efforts in the morning, I'd take a 30-40mins walk/exercise down the road as a way to pay back my own body. Fresh afternoon with a cup of tea and getting down with the rest of the tasks for the day. How nice it will feel to leave office at end of the day and ticked off all my activities planned for the morning!!
I will start my day in this way tomorrow. Starting to me is no difficulty, but pushing myself to STICK to this routine and make it as my habit would be a big challenge. But I am willing to take this challenge and I know I will WIN!
P.S. Thank you to myself for not biting onto the junk food tonight, and instead I did the right thing! And for that, I feel good. And for that, I say thank you to myself and have a good night sleep. :)
Thursday, 21 July 2011
Self-help books overload
I really enjoy reading self-help books, in fact, I think it's an overload already.
When I feel down, my first intuition is go go to a book store and get stuck into the 'Self-Help' section. Then all of a sudden I feel good again. Slowly, I began to notice this is a cycle...
I feel depressed --> reading self-help books --> anxious looking for answers for my confusions and questions --> expect to find THE answer --> some times feel good temporarily as I am doing some positive to myself OR feel even more confused because after all I could not find the answers I want...
I see more of this as a vicious cycle than anything else. Because it is not helping, or at least, it does not help my real issue.
When we look for self-help information, we tend to feel good and driven in the pursuing stage. Somehow we feel very motivated for this act, but I've came to realise that all those books (or at least most of them) are basically talking about the same agendas, same theories, same action points etc, to which, I already knew. Then why do we keep reading the same things? because it is a temporary relief to us, that we're doing the right thing AT THE TIME for us.
But the real problem is that we never ACTED after reading all those motivational words, affirmations, theories. We read through them, understood them, connected to them, and then we're back to where we were without doing any actions. So it's basically that we take a step forward, we felt good about that, then we stood there, and finally we took that step back. If you are one of these people like myself, PLEASE STOP WASTING YOUR MONEY AND TIME IN READING THESE SELF-HELP BOOKS! because it is not helping.
Yes our intentions are always good, we want to learn, we want to change. However, change is in actions, not through knowledge. We can know all we want, but without translating them to actions, it is meaningless.
We like shortcuts, we like finding out the essence from knowledgeable source, but some times, there is no shortcut in life. We can only learn by experiencing, especially with our mental state.
SO, I'll suggest to myself and everyone who is like me to pause a minute from pursuing and start putting actions to all those things you already know/read about.
This would be a good starting point.
When you act, you feel a sense of accomplishment, and this is your REAL drive!
When I feel down, my first intuition is go go to a book store and get stuck into the 'Self-Help' section. Then all of a sudden I feel good again. Slowly, I began to notice this is a cycle...
I feel depressed --> reading self-help books --> anxious looking for answers for my confusions and questions --> expect to find THE answer --> some times feel good temporarily as I am doing some positive to myself OR feel even more confused because after all I could not find the answers I want...
I see more of this as a vicious cycle than anything else. Because it is not helping, or at least, it does not help my real issue.
When we look for self-help information, we tend to feel good and driven in the pursuing stage. Somehow we feel very motivated for this act, but I've came to realise that all those books (or at least most of them) are basically talking about the same agendas, same theories, same action points etc, to which, I already knew. Then why do we keep reading the same things? because it is a temporary relief to us, that we're doing the right thing AT THE TIME for us.
But the real problem is that we never ACTED after reading all those motivational words, affirmations, theories. We read through them, understood them, connected to them, and then we're back to where we were without doing any actions. So it's basically that we take a step forward, we felt good about that, then we stood there, and finally we took that step back. If you are one of these people like myself, PLEASE STOP WASTING YOUR MONEY AND TIME IN READING THESE SELF-HELP BOOKS! because it is not helping.
Yes our intentions are always good, we want to learn, we want to change. However, change is in actions, not through knowledge. We can know all we want, but without translating them to actions, it is meaningless.
We like shortcuts, we like finding out the essence from knowledgeable source, but some times, there is no shortcut in life. We can only learn by experiencing, especially with our mental state.
SO, I'll suggest to myself and everyone who is like me to pause a minute from pursuing and start putting actions to all those things you already know/read about.
This would be a good starting point.
When you act, you feel a sense of accomplishment, and this is your REAL drive!
Thursday, 30 June 2011
INFP and expectations
I found that we have expectations and high expectations in everything. Every response we seek when we talk to our partner, every call we expect from our friends, every praise we expect from our boss after some overtime work. IF it happens so that we got the response we expected, then the sun is shining, and we feel like the happiest person on earth, but when we don't get our expectation fulfilled, we will feel instantly depressed.
If we put some common sense into this concept, it is very clear that things just don't work like this.
Another problem which I think INFPs have is the need to acquire 'best friends'. The process of fishing (yes, it sounds like a negative word) for potential 'best friend' candidate is very strict and detailed. On the first meet, if we feel comfortable talking to this new friend, if we can crack a few jokes to this new person, then they have passed our initial screening. Then it gets very complicated... because indeed we don't want friends we can just 'talk' to, we need friends we can communicate our feelings and expect them to understand our deep emotions. Now seriously, how difficult would this be? We're imagining that every other friend we meet to be the other half of the apple.
Then after several meets with this new friend, we tend to start judging and evaluating his/her opinions expressed, the things she/he does which may not fit into our criteria - then we think: nah! that's NOT the one...
Most people use this filter process when searching for their loved ones, but not with friends. But INFPs may tend to do that with everybody..
I think I have learnt my lesson, that by doing so I am only going to make myself a loner.. unless I am lucky enough to meet my soulmates/best friends. But again, this just means that our happiness is so much dependent on others, that one true friend, that close intimacy with the partner, the smiles on other people's faces when we talk..
So.. maybe it's OK to have friends who are indifferent to us, maybe it's better to have friends who thinks differently, maybe it generates more creative juice if we crossover with other personalities and that we can learn from them. Maybe we should cut down our expectations and be satisfied more easily rather than always picture a scenario which we want the consequence to fit into that imaginary scenario.
Maybe if we try this, then we will feel more happier.. to some degree.
If we put some common sense into this concept, it is very clear that things just don't work like this.
Another problem which I think INFPs have is the need to acquire 'best friends'. The process of fishing (yes, it sounds like a negative word) for potential 'best friend' candidate is very strict and detailed. On the first meet, if we feel comfortable talking to this new friend, if we can crack a few jokes to this new person, then they have passed our initial screening. Then it gets very complicated... because indeed we don't want friends we can just 'talk' to, we need friends we can communicate our feelings and expect them to understand our deep emotions. Now seriously, how difficult would this be? We're imagining that every other friend we meet to be the other half of the apple.
Then after several meets with this new friend, we tend to start judging and evaluating his/her opinions expressed, the things she/he does which may not fit into our criteria - then we think: nah! that's NOT the one...
Most people use this filter process when searching for their loved ones, but not with friends. But INFPs may tend to do that with everybody..
I think I have learnt my lesson, that by doing so I am only going to make myself a loner.. unless I am lucky enough to meet my soulmates/best friends. But again, this just means that our happiness is so much dependent on others, that one true friend, that close intimacy with the partner, the smiles on other people's faces when we talk..
So.. maybe it's OK to have friends who are indifferent to us, maybe it's better to have friends who thinks differently, maybe it generates more creative juice if we crossover with other personalities and that we can learn from them. Maybe we should cut down our expectations and be satisfied more easily rather than always picture a scenario which we want the consequence to fit into that imaginary scenario.
Maybe if we try this, then we will feel more happier.. to some degree.
Wednesday, 29 June 2011
My INFP growth begins today
I have came to the decision to create a blog that solely talks about
how I can grow as an INFP. I have had blogs or other social network
tools to communicate with friends, however, I hardly talk about my inner
feelings, and I find it's pointless to talk about feelings out in
public when your voice cannot be echoed back..
It just goes to show that sometimes INFPs need too much approval from others,
rather than simply wanting to express ourselves to our heart's content.
This may be derived from the odd or negative feedback from others about
our strong emotions, and as this builds up, we may very much be living
under our shells and pretend to be someone else in the external world.
However, today, I want to start this brand new blog, and I will keep feeding
through this blog along the way to my road to INFP growth. I don't want
this blog to be my word vomit, but rather, I want to share my learnings
to help myself and fellow INFPs on how to achieve personal fulfillment
and happiness.
how I can grow as an INFP. I have had blogs or other social network
tools to communicate with friends, however, I hardly talk about my inner
feelings, and I find it's pointless to talk about feelings out in
public when your voice cannot be echoed back..
It just goes to show that sometimes INFPs need too much approval from others,
rather than simply wanting to express ourselves to our heart's content.
This may be derived from the odd or negative feedback from others about
our strong emotions, and as this builds up, we may very much be living
under our shells and pretend to be someone else in the external world.
However, today, I want to start this brand new blog, and I will keep feeding
through this blog along the way to my road to INFP growth. I don't want
this blog to be my word vomit, but rather, I want to share my learnings
to help myself and fellow INFPs on how to achieve personal fulfillment
and happiness.
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