18/8/05

Presentation today was ok!! Phew. More practice in presentation does not equals to better presentation skills. Improve self confidence and self esteem equals higher chance of better presentation. That is correct.

Today's activities are quite tight. After the morning class ended at 1030am, I went for a meeting. After that, i went to computer lab and typed a speech for my elective which was completed at 2pm. I was hungry at 12 plus but felt numbed at 2pm so i took out another thing to do and typed something regarding another project and finished it at 2.30. This was the time I went for lunch.

I went to NUS and reached there at 4pm. I went for the band prac loh. But before that, my good friend L, brought me around NUS for a tour. Nice walk around the place. And took free shuttle bus. Good quality bus loh. Had dinner at a canteen and waited for my celebrity friend to meet us. He never fails to amuse us with his humour!! hhee. He is still the same. Laugh and laugh when he is present.

I reached home at 11.30pm and preparing to sleep now. Hee ta

Slice of Life

Handling Disappointment

Someone once said, "No appointments, no disappointments."

We experience these somewhat similar emotions when we have created expectations concerning what we will receive from others, life or even from ourselves. We might also feel such emotions concerning our own abilities or efforts when we are unable to achieve the goals we desire.

We feel this way when things do not happen the way we expected, or more often, when others are not who we expected them to be. We develop expectations, and then feel cheated when we they are not fulfilled.
When we succumb to such feelings, we often give up making any further effort, which in turn obstructs our growth.

In order to handle disappointment, we have to first understand that we are all in a process of evolution and that no one is perfect. It is unreasonable to expect or demand perfection from ourselves or others. We would not be here in this evolutionary process if we did not have much to improve.

Have faith in the flow of life. There is a wisdom greater than ours. Something drives the salmon upriver. Something unfurls the flowers at dawn and closes them in the evening. Something makes the crystals grow in almost perfect asymmetry. We don't yet fully understand what that something is, but there's no denying it's there. So instead of demanding results immediately, we need to learn that change, manifestation and creation are usually slow organic processes.

Now this is hard to do when faced with disappointment - having confidence that with patience, practice and perseverance, we can manifest the changes we seek. But it's crucial that we develop greater trust in our ability to manifest our goals and life purpose with or without the help of specific persons.

See how you can achieve greater self-sufficiency. When we are independent, we need less from others and will expect less from them. What are the gaps in your life you now require others to fill? How can you work towards filling them yourself?


The Turtles

A family of turtles once decided to go on a picnic. Turtles, being naturally slow about things, took seven years to prepare for their outing. Finally the turtle family left home looking for a suitable place for their picnic.
During the second year of their journey they found a place ideal for them at last! For about six months they cleaned up the area, unpacked the picnic basket, and completed the arrangements.

Then, to their dismay, they discovered they had forgotten the salt. A picnic without salt would be a disaster, they all agreed. After a lengthy discussion, the youngest turtle was chosen to retrieve the salt from home. Although he was the fastest of the slow-moving turtles, the little turtle whined, cried, and wobbled in his shell. He finally agreed to go on one condition - that no one would eat until he returned.

Fair enough, the rest of the family decided, and the little turtle left. Three years passed and the little turtle had not returned. Five years rolled by, then six. Then, in the seventh year of his absence, the oldest turtle could no longer contain his hunger. He announced that he was going to eat and began to unwrap a sandwich.

At that point the little turtle suddenly popped out from behind a tree and shouted, "See! I knew you wouldn't wait. Now I am not going to go get the salt!"

Like the little turtle in the story, some of us waste our time waiting for people to live up to our expectations. We are so concerned about what others are doing that we don't do anything ourselves. We're worried that other people are going to let us down, so we live in fear and suspicion. We often think the worst of others, not realising that it's our very lack of faith that leads to the result we dreaded. The family of turtles would have waited for the little turtle to return. In fact, they did; seven years they waited. Eventually the oldest turtle was forced to stopped waiting because of the little turtle's mistrust. In the same way, we often bring out the worst in other people because we expected nothing better from them.

So choose to see the good in people. Don't waste time judging others while not doing anything to improve yourself. If we were like the little turtle in the story, we would all suffer.