Life As An Orange

On frequent occasions throughout the day, we encounter situations that make us frustrated, angry and resentful.

During these times, we blame the other individuals or external forces. We feel they are the source of our ill feelings. They made us feel this way.

We often think, without these people in our lives, we’d be better off.

Oranges.

When you squeeze an orange, naturally orange juice comes out. Why does it come out? Because that is exactly what is housed inside that delicious rind.

Let us think of our bodies as individual little oranges.

When people take jabs at us, poke us and make us feel frustrated, resentful or angry, it isn’t them that make us feel those feelings.

Like the orange, we already hold those feelings inside ourselves. The jabs from the world accentuate the feelings we inherently possess.

We allow feelings of frustration, anger, and resentment to live deep within us and lay dormant until the world is able to poke it out of us.

So then, how do we remedy our internal feelings? How do we take charge of our thoughts, feelings and actions and explode with happiness rather than anger?

We’ve come up with a few techniques to train our body and mind, shedding away any ill feelings that lay dormant.

A) Cancel Rule

In our many life experiences, we have encountered many jabs and pokes. In most cases, these scenarios are largely unavoidable. Sometimes, the people we spend the most time with are the worst for us.

While we advocate ways to change our circumstances, there are alternate methods without drastically cutting people out of our lives.

In our next dicey encounter, let us remember the Cancel Rule. When someone takes a jab we must rapidly and repeatedly yell ‘cancel’ inside our heads.

We cannot let their words penetrate our fleshy rind.

We must train our brain to cancel out their negative thoughts. We must never internalize them or let them sit inside our bodies.

Allowing such a scenario only adds to our pot of ill feelings. Use the Cancel Rule as a method to avoid internalization.

B) Deep Breathing

Our brains chase the easiest method to any scenario. When we encounter a less-than-stellar situation, we often get flustered and our breathing gets shallow.

Shallow breathing is a reaction when we’re angry or frustrated. The primary muscles, which facilitate breathing—diaphragm, abdomen, chest, and neck—are tense which limits free-flowing unconscious breathing.

As our negative thoughts continue to circle around our heads, our breathing inadvertently becomes shorter and quicker, only increasing the ill feelings.

When the world pokes at us, let us stop and think of our breathing. Let us fill our bellies up fully and slowly till our angry orange juice subsides.

Live long enough, and we’ll encounter our share of tough times. That’s okay. We all experience this from time-to-time. Ill feelings are relatively natural within us.

But imagine if we could control our thoughts, feelings and actions? Imagine if we could truly harness our ability to choose happiness over anger.

Well, we can. We believe this goal is relatively simple to achieve.

Through some diligent actions and positive thoughts, we are able change our internal orange juice.

Until next time, my beautiful readers,

Be bold, be free and love on.

The Work/Life Balance Fallacy

When we were children, time didn’t occur to us. All our activities fit perfectly into the day. Unless the sun was going to bed, our time seemed endless, wistfully passing by.

Our parents dealt with our schedules, moving and shifting around hockey practices with dentist appointments. Our lives were handled in their responsible care and we were blissful.

Soon after, we matured into self-sustaining adults with our own work schedules and responsibilities. We began to focus on time; trying to fit all the minutiae tightly in.

Then, we became obsessed with time. We became obsessed with balance. It seems that most of us endlessly sought a balanced life.

However, the ‘balanced life’ does not exist.

One of life’s biggest lies is the notion of a balanced life. Nothing ever achieves absolute balance. Nothing.

Between professional and personal life, striving for that perfect balance is most peoples’ mislead goal that they find attainable without ever stopping to truly consider it.

This is tough to believe mainly because one of the most frequent mantras for what is missing in most lives is, ‘I need more balance.’ We hear about balance so much that we automatically assume it’s exactly what we should seek.

It’s not.

We should be seeking purpose, significance, and happiness, the qualities that persist in a successful life.

Seek those important qualities and you will more than likely live a life out of balance, crisscrossing an invisible middle line as you pursue those qualities.

Think of balance as the middle line, and out of balance when we’re away from it. Get too far and we’re now living in the extremes.

The persistent problem with the middle is that it prevents us from making extraordinary time commitments to anything. Stay here too long and our lives will grow stale and ordinary.

Stray away from the middle and we could get reckless, marginally living a terribly hard life, devoid of relationships, fond memories and love.

Knowing when to pursue the middle and the extremes is true knowledge. Results are achieved with perfect negotiation with your time.

The reason we should never pursue absolute balance is because the magic never happens in the middle.

Magic happens at the extremes.

The extremes are where we are truly tested in will and guts. Our strengths are galvanized towards a lifelong dream. We naturally understand that success lies at the outer edges, but we don’t know how to manage our lives when we’re out venturing.

When we work too long, our personal life suffers. We unfairly blame work when we say, ‘I have no life.’ Even when work doesn’t pose a threat, our personal lives can be filled with endless ‘have-tos’ that we, once again, reach the same conclusion, ‘I have no life.’

When we get bombarded by both sides – professional and personal – we face an imminent breakdown and once again proclaim, ‘I have no life.’

Time waits for no one.

If we stray too far to the extremes, chasing our professional lives, we forget to cherish the middle, the simple.

Sometimes our work schedules become overwhelming, but our belief is that if we work hard now, we can enjoy the fruits of labor later.

Push something to an extreme and postponement can become permanent.

We seem to believe that we can make up for lost time.

But do we really think that we can get back a child’s birthday or bedtime story? Is a party for a five-year old with imaginary friends the same as a dinner with a teenager with high-school friends?

In Click, Adam Sandler has an epiphany before death where he says, ‘family first.’ Realizing all the time he spent at work instead of with his family, gave him his biggest regret.

He couldn’t make up for lost time. He couldn’t find balance.

Time on one thing means time away from another. This makes balance impossible.

Finding the right amount is essential to our personal and professional lives. Through careful deliberation of our activities, we can slowly understand where our time is best spent.

We have to spend our time on what matters most to us, instead of scrambling with minutiae. We have to accept the fact that not everything can get done in our days, weeks, months, years, and lives.

We need to realize where our true passions and priorities lie in life. We need to separate all the important activities from the things we think are important.

Professional and personal success are measured equally. If we do not treat bodies with respect, our families and friends with respect, we suffer immeasurable in the latter.

If we do not achieve professional success, we feel defeated and depressed, bringing those feelings into our personal lives.

We must crisscross the invisible line, while simultaneously chasing purpose, significance, and happiness.

We must spend a little extra time sharing memories with our families and friends and being mindful of ourselves – our bodies and minds.

We must also focus on our professional goals by working our hardest – but not longest – and giving our entire being in that singular moment.

Balance cannot be achieved.

The art of counter-balancing is a more realistic goal. With everything that we do in our professional life, equal time must be spent in our personal lives, and vice versa.

When I die, I want to have the shortest list of regrets possible. With that in mind, making sure to be mindful of my body, treasuring my relationships and chasing professional success are goals, which are strived for equally.

Until next time, my beautiful readers,

Be bold, be free, and love on.

Symbol of scales is made of stones on the cliff

1 Indisputable Way To Overcome Bad Days

We all have bad days. They are inevitable. Sometimes they are life-changing and devastating. In my last article, I said that change is necessary. Change is important for personal growth.

It is necessary because life wants to test your limits. It pushes you to your limits. And in that ‘make it or break it’ situation is where real growth occurs.

That being said, you still have to overcome the bad day. How do you conquer something when everything around you collapses and just nothing goes your way?

Well, yesterday my laptop died. Just two weeks before one of the biggest changes in my life, it dies and extra expenses occurred. But, worst of all, there goes all my data.

All my articles, journals, school assignments, and ideas, gone.

Poof.

Note to self: Excessively back-up everything from now on.

I wouldn’t find out for five hours if anything could be recovered. Waiting five hours were like standing on upright needles, holding a pink elephant above my head.

I screamed and cried. “Why does this always happen to me?” I affirmed. I even prayed.

I lost everything.

But then, I stopped. I dug inside myself. I began to come to terms with it. I started to rationalize.

Did I really lose everything? Well, no. I’m still here. I’m still breathing, walking, thinking, and feeling. To me, that is a miracle.

You are always alive

No matter how bad the situation is, if you are able to share your experience, thoughts and feelings with anyone, even yourself, there is still something to cling on to.

I found solace in that thought.

Data is nothing when it’s compared to your own life, your own humanity. In fact, very few things are considered devastating when you compare it your existence.

Next time something dramatic happens, sit and think:

“Well, what else? Can I breathe, feel, and think? Can I walk? Can I depend on someone? Am I able to come up with ideas? Can I be grateful?”

If you can say a resounding ‘yes!’ to even one of those, then you cannot be shaken.

“I cannot be thrown off the block during this challenge. This bad day does not define who I am. It will not throw me off my course.”

That is my mantra. Try it. Repeat it yourself out loud, over and over again.

When something devastating occurs, there is nothing that can pull you out but yourself. Social circles, family and prayer will definitely help, but in the end, it lies within you.

You possess the unbridled power to change how you feel and how you react to any given situation. Introspection can do wonders when you’re having a terrible day.

Nothing is as bad as it seems when you compare it to your humanity.

As for my data, I recovered it and, through it all, I didn’t lose my sanity standing on upright needles, holding a pink elephant above my head.

Until next week my beautiful readers,

Be bold, be free, and love on.

4 Steps For A Successful ‘New Year, New Me’ Mentality

Tomorrow is my birthday. I’ll be hitting twenty-four. Coincidentally, it’s also the New-Year. So today, I will be reflecting on my year of life. It has been an interesting journey.

A year ago, I didn’t have anything. This blog, the YouTube channel, all the lovely readers, the confidence, the support and love, were all missing from my life. I was a wandering soul, trying to figure out my purpose.

My conscious goal was to figure out my life and in March 2014, I found solace in helping people. With each article, I felt a sense of satisfaction. My purpose became clearer, more refined.

Starting a New Year is interesting for many reasons. Among the sea of ‘New Year, New Me’ people there are a few that prosper. My goal is to increase that few from a hypothetical 10 out of 100, to a hypothetical 90 out of 100. Reaching everyone is foolhardy, but I can definitely increase that number a little bit.

Here’s what I’m going to do tomorrow.

Scratch that. I’m starting today.

1) A New Habit

Aside from the core habits – sleep, diet and exercise – there are many others you can implement. I’m solidifying an older routine into my daily practice: 10-minute meditations.

We’ve talked about meditations in the past, but humor me for a second. Your brain is the central entity responsible for all your thoughts, feelings and actions. It is responsible for everything; consciously and unconsciously in your body, yet we allow no rest.

When was the last time you did nothing – no thinking, worrying, fiddling? Your answer, like mine, is probably never. You have 10 minutes a day to dedicate to nothing.

Set a timer and focus on breathing. The hardest thing isn’t finding the time, but sitting still for 10 long minutes. It will be hard, but the more you do, the more benefits you reap and the practice becomes easier.

2) Determining Your Landmarks

I’m already one semester closer to graduating. What seemed like an eternity in September has passed and April is on the horizon. Time has a way of rapidly passing if you don’t monitor it.

Today, consciously think about where you want to be in 1 month, 3 months, 6 months and 1 year. How do you want to feel physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally at those landmarks?

Decide the method you’re going to implement to feel that particular way. Write them down; post them somewhere visible, somewhere significant to you, as a reminder.

3) Live Fully Through Your Landmarks

Aim to improve insignificantly each day with your landmarks in the forefront of my mind. Improving yourself by 1% each day is insignificant, but that’s all you need.

Don’t try and climb your mountains everyday. Instead, take three steps and rest. At the end of year, you’ve improved 365% and you’re at the top of the mountain, well rested, stress free, and happy.

4) Reevaluate

Businesses release their results quarterly to show their progress, strengths and weaknesses and general hiccups. Become a major business. Every three months, revaluate your life.

The questions I ask myself:

• Have I been living congruently through my landmarks?
• Am I fulfilled with all aspects of my life? If yes, continue on your path. If no:
• What can I do to reevaluate and reinvigorate to achieve my next landmark?

Take time each quarter to assess your progress, your strengths and weaknesses and your hiccups. “Where am I faltering? Where can I improve? What is the biggest thing holding me back from achieving my goals?” are all questions you can ask yourself multiple times a year.

This year, like last year, will be tremendously different, if I allow it to be. If I implement this four-step method, I know I won’t be one of the ‘new year, new me’ people that fail and ponder what went wrong at the end of 2015. I hope you implement these methods and questions. If you do, 2015 will be your year.

Be bold, be free, and love on.

The Minimalist Experiment

I’ve entered a new phase in my life. I’ve realized that over the many years of life, I have amassed far too much crap.

Crap that just sits there, collects dust and tricks my mind. Tricks my mind into happiness, contentedness, and security. I threw out most things and donated the good ones.

My mom yelled in the background, “What are you doing? This is still good!”

It may be still good but there is just too much clutter in my room. I can’t think with all this noise. Everything just sits there, staring at me.

I was introduced to minimalism recently.

My Definition of Minimalism: The process of having few personal possessions, limiting the need to want.

I don’t need all these things. I’ve held onto these items forever and can’t bare to throw out anything. Do I need them? Everything changed when I went on that donation/throwing out rampage. I’ve kept these items in a vain attempt to physically manifest my perceived happiness.

Most of these things mean nothing to me. I have no real attachment to them, but I still feel the need to have. These items did not bring any happiness to me. And when they did, it was only momentary.

My money and time was invested in physical items that had little or no value and producing little momentary happiness. I’ve kept all the items that I hold dear: books (knowledge), some clothes (personal well-being), and assorted birthday presents (memories/treasured possessions).

Everything else went in the trashcan or the donation box. I feel good. I feel less cluttered. I can finally think and navigate my room with ease. I can breathe easy.

I’ve realized that the more things I had, the more I wanted. Surrounded by clutter, I had the subconscious need to have more clutter.

“What’s one more item in the sea of items?”

I kept spending frivolously on items that did not bring me long-lasting happiness. Now everything changes. I will start to save my money, spending them only on experiences.

I will spend on gifts for friends/family, social events, knowledge and trips. I will save and invest. I will invest in long-lasting happiness and treasured experiences.

I am fortunate enough to have everything I need. For most people, they can’t say the same. Yet, people live on next to nothing and still hold a gleaming smile.

“How? Why?”

People do not need much to be happy and strive. The basic essentials, good friends and experiences are all a person needs. We have been brainwashed by consumerist ideals.

They convince us that we need more things for happiness. A bigger house, a new car, a 100-inch HD 3-D television. In the grand scheme of everything, these things mean nothing.

I realize that now. Those items meant nothing to me. I can live happily without the clutter.

I feel like it has taken me 23 years to realize this one incredibly valuable lesson. I have the rest of my life to look forward too and I feel like this is a major epiphany in my life.

I urge you, my beautiful readers, to do the same. Petty items will not produce long-lasting happiness. They will clutter you, consume you and trick you into happiness. I urge you to live simply and simply live.

Speaking for myself, I already feel at ease. I am experiencing the calming effects of minimalism. Maybe it is just in my head. But, I figure, that’s the only person I need to convince. Myself.

Be bold, be free, and love on.