Dear Mr. President Come take a walk with me Let's pretend we're just two people and You're not better than me I'd like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestly
What do you feel when you see all the homeless on the street Who do you pray for at night before you go to sleep What do you feel when you look in the mirror Are you proud
How do you sleep while the rest of us cry How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye How do you walk with your head held high Can you even look me in the eye And tell me why
Dear Mr. President Were you a lonely boy Are you a lonely boy Are you a lonely boy How can you say No child is left behind We're not dumb and we're not blind They're all sitting in your cells While you pay the road to hell
What kind of father would take his own daughter's rights away And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay I can only imagine what the first lady has to say You've come a long way from whiskey and cocaine
How do you sleep while the rest of us cry How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye How do you walk with your head held high Can you even look me in the eye
Let me tell you bout hard work Minimum wage with a baby on the way Let me tell you bout hard work Rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away Let me tell you bout hard work Building a bed out of a cardboard box Let me tell you bout hard work Hard work Hard work You don't know nothing bout hard work Hard work Hard work Oh
How do you sleep at night How do you walk with your head held high Dear Mr. President You'd never take a walk with me Would you
I thought it ended last weekend at MR 500 Got all the emotional attachment packed Physical items put in placed as well Thought it all ended Letting myself rest and feel complete Nah ... Subconsciously, I came back again To to same place I grin I smiled & I feel at peace once again It always feel like being in another dimension Isolated from the reality Isolated from the worldly affairs Peace ... It never fail to bring my soul to a complete calmness Complete stillness Undisturbed Placidity Tranquility Only to realise that it's the place & everything associated with the place that got me into that dimension It feels good It does help alot In the quest for stabilty and peace ...
Your inner core Sometimes I feel like my life gets covered over by unimportant things and I lose my inner core. Its hard to explain but things like work, trivial arguments, trivial tasks, financial burdens, social events etc all paint over what’s really important to me. My life - somewhere along the way the fact that it is my inner core gets forgotten. It’s like pouring syrup over me which is hard to get out of. It’s very easy to get covered in this syrup and a lot of people don’t recognise it until its too late. Ask yourself the question: What is my inner core? (What do you most cherish in the world and want to spend more time doing or being with?) It could be your family. It might be a passion you have. It might be spending time with yourself. It could be anything. If you vaguely understand what I mean here you might be sitting saying ‘yes, I know what you mean’. These are some ways to clean the syrup from your core and here is what I have come up with.
Take a day off work. Simple and yet the hardest thing to do for some people. Believe it not, when you're away from work, everything else continue functioning. It’s a sad fact but we can all be replaced at work quite easily, we might be missed but we can be replaced. Remember this if you are doing more than your fair share. So, juz let yourself take a break at times
Make a point to spend time with your passion everyday. By this I mean real time. If your passion is your partner/spouse etc, sit down and talk, not over dinner or in bed at night, talk and let each other know how much they mean to you.
Get the little things out of the way. Little things we have to do niggle us and are in the back of our minds. Get them done and out of the way so you can concentrate on your inner core and what’s important.
Do less of what takes you away from you. If you work lots of hours every day work 1 less hour per day and spend it with your inner core.
Deep down you know what your inner core is and you know where it is not. By this I mean you know what you want in life and you know the things that steal the energy which keeps you away from what you want. Think about this often and figure out small ways which leads you back to your inner core. The small things done every day will soon build up to be the main thing in your life.
*Some tots* ~Living Congruently~ Do you tend to compartmentalize all the different areas of your life? Career goes there, relationship goes here, spirituality fits there, and health … well, that’s neither here nor there.
Or maybe your compartmentalizing is temporal instead of spatial in your thinking. During the workday you do what you must, this evening you’ll do what you love and have some fun, and on Sunday you’ll think about what it means.
Or perhaps you experience a feeling of compartmentalizing thought vs. action: “I’m spending X% of my time thinking and Y% of my time acting.”
When you view your life as a series of different compartments, each with different rules, then life gets pretty complicated. Trying to achieve balance is very difficult because you constantly feel the need to task switch. My relationship needs attention. Oh no, I’ve been neglecting my health. I need to work harder. I’ve got to stop thinking so much and take more action.
The different “bins” of your life are all fighting for your time. And the longer you neglect one of those bins, the louder it gets and the harder it will fight for attention. Put off your health for too long, and you’ll crash with an illness. Put off your relationship for too long, and a breakup may be the result. Put off your work, and your career and income will suffer.
This is a paradigm that many people share. Keep all your balls in the air. Keep all those plates spinning. Don’t let your spiritual beliefs interfere with your work.
But I think it’s a broken paradigm. Let’s consider a different way of thinking….
What if your life had only one bin, one ball to juggle, one plate to spin. Just one. No need to deal with 10 different areas of your life and keep them all balanced. Just one.
How is this possible? It’s possible if all of those different areas of your life are congruent, if they all follow the same rules. Then thought and action are one, both pointing in the same direction. They’re on the same path. Your work is congruent with your most deeply held spiritual beliefs — you don’t have to take your spirituality offline when you go to work. Improving your health improves your relationship. Increasing your income increases your service.
This means moving from a paradigm of the different parts of your life being in conflict to a new paradigm where they all cooperate. Instead of seeing each part of your life as independent, you begin to see them as interdependent. And isn’t this a more accurate model anyway? Can you truly isolate each part of your life as something separate? Can you abuse your health and think it won’t affect your career or your relationships? Do you think your feelings about your relationship won’t affect your financial situation? Can you ignore your spiritual beliefs when making business decisions and expect no negative consequences?
It seems obvious that all the different parts of your life are deeply interconnected. But a common way to treat problems is to try to isolate them. If there’s a problem with your health, you need to diet and exercise. If there’s a problem in your career, it’s time to work harder. But this isolation protocol doesn’t work well because there’s too much overlap between all the different parts of your life, no matter how much you try to isolate the problem areas and go to work on them.
It’s often the case that the obvious cause of the problem isn’t the true source. If you feel lonely because you haven’t been able to find the right relationship, and you keep trying harder and harder to find a relationship, you may get nowhere. The problem may be that you work at a career you aren’t passionate about, and you project this lack of passion to everyone you meet. And still a deeper issue may be that your spiritual beliefs tell you that service to others is very important, but you don’t feel you’re doing that. Then you change careers to do what you love, and it aligns with your spiritual beliefs because now you feel you’re contributing and serving. Then out of nowhere, you meet your future spouse, who is attracted to your passion about your work and the contribution you’re making. And the encouragement you experience from this relationship in turn helps you advance your career, increase your income, and free up more time to spend with your new spouse. Your stress goes down, and your health improves too. Your inner spiritual conflict was the real source of your inability to find the right relationship. Everything is deeply interconnected.
Although it seems that each part of your life follows different rules, they all follow the same rules. You may have different values for each part of your life, but the rules that govern those areas don’t change.
An example of an unchanging rule is kindness. The concept of kindness should resonate with your spiritual beliefs. You can be kind to your body, and your health will improve. You can be kind to your co-workers, and your relationships with them will improve. You can be kind to your spouse, and your marriage will grow stronger. You can be kind to a stranger, and your self-esteem will increase. It doesn’t matter to which area of your life you apply the principle of kindness. Its application is universal.
Another universal rule is being proactive, assuming personal responsibility for results and taking positive action. It doesn’t matter where you apply this rule: health, relationships, emotions, spiritual beliefs, career, business, money, etc. Being responsible works no matter where you apply it.
Cheating is another universal principle. No matter where you apply it, the long-term results are negative. Cheat your health, and pay the price of sickness. Cheat in your relationship, and the cost is a loss of intimacy. Cheat in your education, and your income suffers.
But more powerful than these intra-area effects, there’s the rippling effect due to the interrelatedness of all areas. So if you apply a universal principle in one area, either positively or negatively, it ripples into all other areas. If you cheat your health, then in the long run this will hurt your career, your relationships, your finances, your emotional state, and your sense of spiritual connectedness. You can’t cheat in one area of your life without suffering the consequences in ALL areas.
Similarly, be kind to your body, and your increased positive energy will positively affect your relationships, your work, your finances, your emotions, etc. Be proactive about building a career you enjoy, and your passion will spread to every other area.
If you violate a universal principle, it negatively impacts all areas of your life. If you follow a universal principle, it positively impacts all areas of your life. Universal principles don’t compartmentalize.
So the key then is figuring out these universal principles and aligning your thoughts and actions with them. This is how you achieve congruence between all the different parts of your life.
So what are the universal principles? Stephen Covey claims that the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People are based on universal principles. I tend to agree, and that’s a good place to start. But I think all of these principles can be reduced to just one: to love. Not the passive squishy emotional feeling of love, but “to love” — the action verb. To love your body translates into proper diet and exercise. To love your mind equates with learning. To love others is service. To love your work is to do it passionately and enthusiastically. To love your feelings means to respect and honor the messages they send you. This verb translates into different specific actions for each area, but the underlying principle is the same. Depending on the situation, “to love” may mean to listen, to serve, to work, to relax, to touch, and so on.
When you start injecting universal principles into every area of your life, alignment will gradually occur. The parts of your life will be transformed such that all these different pieces assemble themselves into one congruent whole. You won’t feel like these different parts of your life are in competition for your time and attention. Instead you’ll feel a sense of internal cooperation. You will have a sense that exercising your body is the best thing for your health and your relationship and your career and your spirituality.
Within each area you’ll either adapt your current circumstances to align with universal principles, or you’ll let go of all the misaligned pieces and start fresh. So your career may shift slightly as you adapt, or you may switch to a whole new career. Your old relationships may transform, or they may end while you seek out new ones. It just depends on how well the external parts of your life are able to align with who you are.
Alignment comes down to working on these four questions until they all produce the same answer:
What do you want to do? (desire) What can you do? (ability) What should you do? (purpose) What must you do? (need) When these four areas are aligned, motivation occurs automatically. Thought and action are automatically balanced because you are living your purpose consciously. You won’t feel like you should be thinking when you’re acting or acting when you’re thinking. The line between thought and action will disappear. Being and doing will become the same thing.
When you experience misalignment between these four areas/questions, the natural tendency is to slow down… sometimes to a crawl. You’ll feel like you have all these ideas pulling you in different directions, but you aren’t fully satisfying any of them. Your mind knows that continuing to work hard is likely to be futile and won’t solve the real problem of incongruence. It knows it’s time for you to stop, ask directions, and choose the path of alignment.
You will realised this when you are busy with your everyday lives, when you becomes totally oblivious of whatever is happening around you. This is what happens: You will start to containerizing everything: your health over here, your relationship there, your work here, and your spirituality there. Each part of your life felt like it had its own set of rules. Eventually you will start questioning whether this was the best way to live. Are we supposed to live like a collection of parts or as an integrated whole? You wondered whether it would be possible to live in such a way where there was only one set of rules governing all areas, essentially meaning that you followed your deepest spiritual beliefs in all matters. This line of questioning will lead you to discover just how it might be possible for all these different parts of your life might become a single, integrated whole. This would mean that your conscience and your interpersonal relationships were all one. There would be no sense of separation.
In order to go through this process, you had to transform certain parts of my life while totally shifting others. Try to transform your career from within, but then you realised the disconnect was big enough that it required a more dramatic shift. Other parts of your life were able to adapt more flexibly. The main reason for this shift away from was that it wasn’t a strong enough outlet for service for me. I must say that this push for congruence in all areas turned out beautifully. I don’t feel that sense of separation between the different parts of my life anymore. My purpose says I’m here to serve and help people. My ability says I can do it through writing and speaking and running a web site. My needs say I must support myself doing it. And my passion says it’s what I love doing most. I don’t have to separate supporting myself with a job and then having fun on the weekends and thinking about spirituality at other times. Work = play = love.
When you live congruently, it’s as if all the different parts of your life lock into new positions to form a new whole that’s greater than all the individual pieces. Everything grows stronger: health, relationships, motivation, actions, results, etc.
I know that as a practical matter, it seems as though different rules often govern in different areas. Separating your spiritual beliefs from your work is very common. A lot of businesses seem to operate on the assumption that universal principles don’t exist. I don’t buy that at all. There are non-universal principles that apply just within their own domains (the rules of nutrition apply to your health but not to your work, for instance), but universal principles apply to all areas. I think that one’s spiritual beliefs are the single most important factor in choosing a career or a company to work for. If you have a deeply held belief that you hold sacred, you cannot violate it in any area of your life without suffering the consequences in all areas. You must be true to your inner self at all times. That’s the only way to be congruent and to live as a whole person instead of merely as a bag of competing parts.
When you live congruently, a quantum leap will occur in each of these four areas. Desire becomes passion. Purpose becomes mission. Need becomes abundance. Ability becomes talent. And it becomes almost ridiculously easy to achieve fulfillment in every area then because all the parts are working together in the same direction.
Passc has been showing incremental improvements It's only the 2nd time we join the 20 mens category and we got into finals competing with the strong dragons: canadian, nus ntu etc Not bad hur As for the mixed, we always go into semi every race we went to And always lost in the semi Though we went into the grand finals before for our mixed team Always miss the medal by a bit So near yet so far Stayed til the end of the whole event for the 2nd time The first time was Regatta Only to see the same ppl winning the medal But at least now our name has gone somewhere far further than in the past ... Thought I could achieve sth before going for a break But it's alright I guess Cos we did do better for every race we went to Maybe what we need to do now is to challenge ourselves..Not with the others For greater improvements Will be missing the June races with my team Hope they will win something in June & Hope I will be back for Regatta race
Today's MR 500 This is my first time going for MR 500. Cos last year my team did not join the MR race. Though small race but the competitors are still there Those strong ones Follow you wherever you are Lolz ... Db has always been something I hold close to my heart Maybe it wasn't the case when I first joined But, along the way, it's juz like love ... It creeps slowly into your heart. There has been some sentimental ties with this & it has been the most wonderful chapter of my life However I as look at the scene once again today It paints another picture Another persepctive The persepctive that reflects reality, that reflects life ... A day out ... makes me contemplate about many issues Am i aging? Or ... It would have never be an issue to many people especially when everything is passing by you so swiftly But it would be .. for people who spend most of their time ... searching ... ~ For meaning? For reasons? For excuses? For another life? *Shrugs*
Everything's still the same It's so true that time won't stop because you stop The breeze still comes, the the trees still sway The laughter is still heard, the topic is still there The only difference is ... It has become emptier ~
Just like a missing piece in a jigsaw The left over of a donated liver Incomplete
Solicitude in Solitude Growing in altitude and latitude Ffacing it with the right attitude What could be done to strength the fortitude Reason being as simple as this It just hurts so much to separate When souls are connected "Days of absence, sad and dreary, Clothed in sorrow's dark array, Days of absence, I am weary For there is a missing piece in the picture" ~Missing someone gets easier every day because even though it's one day further from the last time you saw each other, it's one day closer to the next time you will~
Let it pass Let me go Please ... Suffocated ... My beliefs will stay I need the space And the peace No questions I don't like questions No doubts I don't like doubts No whys I don't like to explain If you don't have intention to understand Leaving things as it is I'll walk my path from here alright ~
Distance really brings people closer Though there's this distance But somehow or rather There's this tie that keeps 2 hearts beating as one Yes You did what you promised I did what I promised It'd become a habit for me to constantly converting time Updating myself of whatever is happening in your life I hope I can give you the best gift you asked of from me this june I'm working on it Though sometimes I lose myself As time passed, I reaised & am glad that you're starting to fit yourself more & more into the whole picutre ... Into the picture that I had wanted to get into ... The picture that I want us to get into Creating everything that is so beautiful around us I will beautify it even more With all my means ~ Never felt so fulfilled before Now I truly understand the meaning of contentment 沒有誰能把妳搶離我身旁 妳是我的專屬天使 唯我能獨佔 沒有誰能取代妳在我心上 擁有一個專屬天使 我哪裡還需要別的願望
March seemed to have passed so much faster than Feb. Maybe it's because it's a busy month with all the deadlines so near each other. It's mid March already. Soon ... I'll be away ..!! Yeah!!~ :)
Everything's still the same as before Left untocuhed Nothing else can change anything A clear declaration of my stand has been stated All along Impossibilities will always be impossibilities Hold no hope Hold no dreams As all hopes and dreams will only be scattered into more & more pieces I have my life & I hope you have yours too No ties Nothing Not even friends Unless you can really be one
My body feels so pain Not from the aching but more from the sunburnt Omg~ The sun was killing everyone of us It's like you are being put into an oven Layers and layers of moisturizers One over another Hoping that this would help Training at bedok is always like that.. We'll all end up getting burnt! Despite the sunblock applied
Sat's training was supposed to be nice but somehow or rather most of my team mates were unhappy abt it Not because of what happened But cos of the perceived intention they felt about "lao shi" But maybe it's his way of motivating us hur Some kinda reverse psychology? Should be ba ... Had a few friendly races with smu To me, I would juz take it as a fun race yah And I was asked to cox the women's boat for a race leh ! omg my first time coxing for a race Crazy~ Yes I do wanna try but it ain't the time right? true enough ... My boat bump into smu's 2 twice Omg~ I feel so bad to be the determining factor of the outcome Shit ... Sorry gals & sorry smu Don't really mean it It's really my first time coxing .. *sighs* feel so bad..
Many people spend their lives searching for themselves Searching for what they realy like Or what they really are Some work in jobs for years realising that they don't like the job at all There will always be moments of your lives where you search for yourself For your passion For a change I recently came across this website that helps people experience their dream jobs Let them have a feel of what they always wanted to do From there, maybe you will realised that you ain't cut out for your dream job and will be more focus on your current job which would indirectly realised that you actually like your current job and will stive to do better? Or maybe you will find that you like this job you have been dreaming about all these while? It's good to explore ... Who knows you might have a total career change and even a lifestyle change. This is the webby: http://www.vocationvacations.com/
Finally settled 3 assignments Thought it's time to relax ... then realized that another is coming my way Never ending .. Juz like how the world still moves and the clock still ticks when you're facing some obstacles and stumbling over it every now and then ... Meet up with jh, jenn,crys n all ytd Quite a memorable day Though nth much happen But it juz feels great cos it'd been a long time there's a full attendance. Celebrate my bday ... Belated though ... It's juz great to catch up on whatever is going on with each others' lives The good old days ~ Sounded old hur ... Spiritually bonded It's like they won't always be there But they will be there when you needed them When you are at ur lowest ... *smiles*
My 3rd training this year. Quite pathetic huh. I think so too. Something cool happened during training yesterday. We were racing with the German team, so its 3 boats racing. We were going for 500m, with one German boat between our 2 boats. Wah ... Germans using the fibreglass .. very light boat ... was like a quater lagging behind our 20 mens boat. Cool huh~ then juz as we were halfway through the race, my boat was asked to stop. You know what happened? The mens boat was going at so high speed that the boat rushed all the way into the construction site ... And cos it was rushing at such high speed that the boat got STUCK in a position like this:
Cool huh~ Like drama like that leh~
We were juz stunned by the scene. So in the end, the german team came and helped and the guys in the boat went down into the water to push the boat. Many of them end up getting cuts ... deep cuts on their feets. Poor boat ~ Got scratches underneath ... deep cuts too .. Our favourite boat was wounded yesterday. After training, since the last time we went to la kopi til now ... It's the 2nd time ... Everyone hasn't been free lately to go la kopi as a team. So, we went TCC again as usual. And we talked abt the spectecular scene again. Lolz ...
I guess it's a long time since I blogged.. These are some pics from chingay... Didn't blog it til now
Never tot I would be sitting at the roadside watching chingay.. Lolz First time though... I can still remembered the time I helped out in the event 9 years ago.. Wah~ sounds old huh
Been rushing through projects after projects for these few days I have no idea why are all the deadlines on the same day Keeping me so damn occupied Yeah ... It's good that I am It somehow keeps everything that has been on my mind away for some time For a moment I thought all my problems were gone After finally getting some of the things settled, I have this little moment for myself. All of a sudden, it seemed like I am just trying to escape. Leaving unfixed problems unfixed Juz wanna know that at least my memories are not totally lost Fixing it only put these at a higher risk of being permanantly lost I'm afraid of losing I really am ... Sometimes I envisaged myself in a situation where I lost my memory I think it would be very sad To live a life without memories If a day like that should come I hope you will be there for me To tell me all the stories once again To give me a life again ~ One reason I like sharing my experiences, happy times and bad times with friends and with you is so that someone can recite every single thing that happened in my life to me again when a day where I lose my memory should come. Just like keeping a backing up your data from your pc to a hard disk. Backing it all up ~ 2007 is a good year for me though there will be tough times as well, I ain't going to let it be another 2006. I am looking forward to all the wonderful things coming my way ...
Je m'applle Candida
Je suis une etudiante
J'ai vingt deux ans
Mon anniversaire est sur les dix-huit fevrier
J'ai une petite amie
je m'ennuie de vous
Desire creates havoc when it is the only thing between two people, or when it is what's missing
