Where's my finishing line?

Have you ever ran a 1.5km race and just sped up at the second lap because you thought the race was over? Well, with a slight grin on my face, I shyly admit that I have indeed done that. With the spectators cheering on you as you hit the last 100m of that 400m race circuit, you think to yourself that with the finishing line in sight, that perhaps this race is over and you're ahead of the pack. But before you know it, those cheers are merely a distraction that throws you off your target. It is really that easy to be distracted from reality. Yes, the spectators meant well, but it was I who chose to lose my focus and got sidetracked. In case you were wondering, this did cost me a medal!

Point is, in life, there are ample of things that could draw you away from your goal, even without you realising it. Therefore, it is extremely important to stay connected to yourself and to know exactly what you want to achieve at the end of the line.

For me, the best way to go about this is to get my priorities straight. How do you know what your priorities are? This I would say really differs among individuals. For me, at the top of my list, is my family's welfare. After that, of course, that's always that dream career that everyone of us seek to have. For you, it might be different. Perhaps number one for you would be to own that house by the beach, or  maybe it would be to drive around in that awesome car. Either way, you need to be clear about what you want at any point in time. I'm not saying that once you've made a list, it will never change. That's definitely not the case. Number ones would always change depending on the circumstances. But the idea is to know what exactly it is that is utmost important to you.


With sheer determination and a bucket full of will power, anything is possible. The sky would be your limit, if you could just get your priorities right and focus on what you want out of it. Perhaps at times you would feel as if the world had turned its back on only you or your shoulders were really sore from carrying its weight. However, you must then realise that with patience and perseverance, you may soon find yourself accomplishing and ticking off the things on your list as you go. It would be as though someone was helping remove the weight on your shoulder slowly and gently.

This goes for everything in life really. There will always be obstacles and temptations along the way, but it is essential that we stay true to our roots and remember the purpose of everything we are doing. Like the saying goes, don't sweat the small stuffs. Always remember, anything that you reckon should be of paramount importance in your eyes definitely deserves to be treated with full respect and never to be given up on. Once you have instilled this in your mind, without you realising it, all actions that you take would somehow bring you closer to changing your dream into reality. This my friend, is a fact.

A reminder I keep on telling myself- it is not good enough to keep only the finishing line in mind, it is important to calculate and note the path that has been travelled upon as that could be the difference between losing and actually hanging on to a medal.

Accepting Help

Help is not something that comes often knocking on your door asking if he could come in. That said, help comes in different forms and it is up to us to acknowledge its presence. Put proudness aside and open your mind.

I decided to start with me. I wanted to help myself. When I realised I had to change, I put in all my effort into seeing things in a different way. It wasn't easy, I have to admit. To find something to like in a job I hated, was definitely not a walk in the park. But common sense reminded me that there's always two sides to a coin. Changing my view was the first help I welcomed in this process.

Although I was not enjoying what I did, I knew I was good at it and I got along well with the people on my team. So, instead of focusing my energy on how much I detested my job, I decided to focus on how I enjoyed fixing things and the praises that followed. Every morning when I woke up, I told myself that 'Today is going to be an excellent day'. By doing this, I found that getting up in the mornings for yet another day at work gave me something to look forward to. I started feeling better. Even if it wasn't exactly a perfect day, at night, i'd go to bed feeling that it was a good enough day for me, because lets face it- everyday is different. But as mentioned before, it is us who decides if it's a bad day or a good day. I choose the latter.

Sometimes, help comes in the least expected ways. For me, it was through my housemate. My housemate was someone who loved reading self improvement books. She had a whole stack of them in my room. When I moved in, she was supposed to move the book shelf over to her room, but because I didn't have much stuff, and there was extra space on the book shelf, I told her she could just leave it there.

For the initial three months or so that I lived there, I would scheme through the books she had and just think to myself to be an accomplished person and those self improvement books were of no use to me. I suppose, as a person who was so full of herself, I judged people who read self improvement books. I use to think that they felt so little of themselves that they turned to books to inspire them. Little did I know, I was perhaps the smallest person in the world to have stereotyped them as such. Even writing this, I feel ashamed of the me two years ago (boy, am I happy that it was in the past- I feel like i've grown!).

After that fateful day when I teared up in a bus, I decided to take action. I decided to give it a go at reading one of those books that had began collecting dust. And of course, the first book I grabbed was the famous 'The Power of Now' by Eckhart Tolle. I can't stress enough at how this books is a life changer. That book changed my whole perspective on self improvement books and without realising it, I started developing a sense of respect towards all who read to improve themselves.

The thing with self improvement books is- it makes you read the simple facts of life that you already perhaps know in black and white and reminds you to apply it in your day to day life. It is one thing to know that you have to stay positive, it is another to actually take it within you and to see the positive side in everything you do.

Until today, I am so glad that I opened my mind and reached out for help in the form of the self improvement books. I started talking to my housemate about life and what it has to offer and her piece of advice which I am glad to share with everyone today is simply to stay strong and positive. No surprise there. Thank you for that.

Another point to note- help yourself and the whole world will also start lending a helping hand. Somehow or another. You have just got to believe it.

The Small Things in Life that Matter

I have had my share of ups and downs but I have also decided that it is time for me to start enjoying my life. That is my turning point.

Until two years ago, I was pretty much a lost soul. I thought I had everything figured out in life, and when things didn't work out the way I wanted it to, I would feel like a little girl in school being punished to stand at the corner of the classroom while my classmates enjoyed the sunny weather outside.

Needless to say, when I took up a job in a small firm which I really wasn't enjoying- in the big city, where the number of people I knew could be counted with just the fingers on one hand-it felt like I was thrown to drown in the open sea. Without a float.

But I knew how to swim, and although the shore seemed a fair distance a way, I knew I had to somehow gather all strength and swim in that direction.

It was that day on my way back on the bus, looking at all these people dressed up so professionally and satisfied with their day's work that I reflected on my life and without realising it, tears started swelling in the corner of my eyes. With all effort, I tried to wipe it away very discreetly. But it just kept flowing. I was thankful when my stop finally came. By then, I was feeling so sick. Sick of my life. And that's the worst type of sickness one can ever experience.

I was so sick in my mind, that I started feeling sick physically. I was tired and I felt like throwing up. Dinner was the last thing on my mind. I went to bed that night wondering what was wrong with me and where I went wrong in life?

It was at that point that I realised I had put myself through all that misery. It was I whom wanted to look at how happy others were while feeling sorry for myself. It was I who decided to dwell on it while on my way back that day. It was I who had made myself feel so sick in the head that I had to throw up. It was I who didn't love my life. Was I going to put myself through that again?

I decided I was better than that and I made a promise to myself that it will never happen again. Note to self: that was early 2010, two years have passed since and i've lived up to the promise. I deserve a pat on the back.

I learnt my lesson that day- the only reason why I felt so sick was because I was being critically judgmental on myself. I didn't like the way things were, and I felt trapped. I felt it was out of my control to make things better. But when I got over it, I realised that I was the only one here who was not allowing myself to enjoy all the small things in life and only focused on what others had, that I didn't.

Once I started enjoying the bus rides, the 10 minutes walk to work through the pleasant park in the middle of the city, the sound of the water splashing from the nearby swimming pool and the birds chipping away to a good way- I knew my life was heading for a better start. And I was right. It was also convenient that I had the song 'A New Day' by Celine Dion playing on my Ipod.

With some help, I changed my view in life. I changed my views on the way I did things I hated.  I started seeing the small things in life that matter. I had changed. So did the things around me. And this is what I will be writing about next.