Thoughts on Time
What exactly is time? How does it work? What's the best way to relate to it? I hear so much about time management and just about everyone I know, including myself, have wrestled with this issue. Is there really such a thing as time management? Or is it self-management? Time just is. It doesn't do anything. It's just there. We know it's coming, it passes and then it's history. No way to get it back. We have a real knack of getting ourselves into situations where we feel trapped by time.
These are some distinctions that I feel helpful to reflect on.

Time is a tool that is exclusively mine to play with.
How I spend my time will give me 80% of the fulfillment I desire.
Time is not manageable, but my choices and actions are.

What should I do with my life?
By Po Bronson
Need to return this book to the library. It's a week overdue. It was a good read. Many different stories of people and how they found fulfillment through the journey of their lives. We each have a wonderful story to tell. We just need to sit down, reflect on how we've become who we are and what it is we want to do with what's left of our time here. What do you really want? Do you know what you're passionate about? Do you absolutely love what you do? If not, what are you going to do about it? Good thought-provoking stuff.

My mind is a bit of a blank lately. But I shall post a question I find humourous & challenging:

Are you sucking the marrow out of life every moment of the day?

Outrageous Desires
There's a question I really, really like that I'm planning to put on the back of my future business card. It goes like this:

What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?

I know most of the time I'm so busy doing whatever it is I'm doing that I don't day-dream or even night-dream (too shack!) anymore. That's no good. I believe we should all reconnect with our dreams.....and make them BIG dreams. I now firmly believe in an "abundance" mentality. Whatever I want to do, it can be done. Just have to figure out, in detail, what it is I want to do.

That's where dreaming comes in. Problem is. Most of our dreams are scaled down because they may not seem very realistic. As we get "supposedly" older and wiser, we also get more realistic, and so our dreams get smaller and smaller. But it's a dog-eat-dog world. That reality may then lead us to conclude.....why bother to dream at all?

So, my challenge to myself and you as well, is to set aside the rational side of your brain and think BIG. Start thinking and making (yes, writing it down!) a list of the most outrageous things you would do or create if nothing held you back. Set the wheels in motion for acheiving everything you desire.

I can if I believe I can.

And so can you.

Do you love your work?
I like these two quotes about work.

I never did a day's work in my life: it was all fun. Thomas Edison

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his information and his recreation, his life and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is always doing both. James Michener

That sort of sums up how I feel about being a life coach. It feels great!

Hynotherapy
Bad attitudes are a real pain to deal with. The ones I'm dealing with are long standing and deeply ingrained. I give it a lot of credit for turning my brown-black hair to white. So I have a brainwave. I need to enlist the help of a hynotherapist to cast out those bad attitudes and replace it with attitudes of gratitude.

How early does your memory start?
This is an interesting conversation piece with children. Ask them what their earliest memory is. For my son, two things came to mind. The first was that he was on holiday in America. He remembers waking up, being in K1 (the year he turned 5 yrs) and thinking that's the beginning of his life. The second was going into his brother's room and that his brother had no hair. Oddly, that memory would have been when he was younger (3-4 yrs old).

There were so many things of him as a toddler which I thought he would have remembered but he doesn't.

He doesn't remember biting his brother (a major issue for us parents which stretched for a seemingly long time). He doesn't remember moving into our present home (a traumatic event for him and us because of a strong attachment that required some severing). He doesn't remember how much he disliked attending nursery and how the teacher had to forcibly pry him from me. I felt such guilt as I walked away. Then on picking him up afterwards, I would have to gently persuade or extricate him from under the table (positively heart wrenching to see him there).

Good thing is he doesn't remember me caning him either. What a relief! And to think that I may have felt partially guilty or responsible for all the 'abuse' my children had to bear because of my experimental parenting. There's no memory of it. All those tears they shed are probably harmless. Now that's something to think about.

SO NICE AND BREEZY......
I just love this windy weather. I went running on Tuesday morning and it was actually cool....for a second there I thought I was in Cameron Highlands. I went running earlier this evening and it was super breezy. I just love it when the leaves of big trees are just swaying to and fro. It was so, so pleasant. I felt so happy just to be out and about. Wish every single day could be clear, windy and cool like today. Never realized before just how much influence the weather has on my mood. So used to being hot, sticky and semi-grouchy most of the time. This weather is really refreshing! I love it!

I've been feeling lately that there aren't enough minutes in the day. All 31 days of January have just whizzed by and my 2007 routine is still not fully in place. I've not been blogging because I haven't been sitting down to reflect on what's going on. Reading today's Mind Your Body interview with coach Robin Sharma has reminded me the value and joy I get from journalling. But now I have to get back to attending to my "I should have done that yesterday" list of things and strive for better balancing. I've been studying about the Law of Attraction (which is simply the idea that what you think about, you bring about - whether good or bad). So I resolve to focus forward positively to bring about good things I want.

The Strategic Value of Naps
You must sleep sometime between lunch and dinner and no halfway measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That's what I always do. Don't think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That's a foolish notion held by people who have no imagination. You will accomplish more. You get two days in one - well, at least one and a half, I'm sure. When the war started, I had to sleep during the day because that was the only way I could cope with my responsibilities - Winston Churchill.

Thought for the Day
This is taken from John C. Maxwell's book titled "Today Matters".

Today is the only time you have
It's too late for yesterday
And you can't depend on tomorrow.

Another quote I came across has also set me thinking.

If a person will spend one hour a day on the same subject for five years, that person will be an expert in that subject. - Earl Nightengale

Now what shall I focus on for the next 5 years?
That's something to think about. All I need to do next is to settle on a regular time and place to do some good thinking. At the moment, I do my best thinking when I'm stranded in the car in between appointments and have nothing to do and no distractions. It's pathetic and awfully sweaty.

Farewell Spacewagon

We got this when No.3 came almost a decade ago. It was great for carting around my 3 monkeys all under aged 5 because those mandatory car seats were so bulky. It served us well. It made countless trips up the Malaysian North South highway fully loaded with seven people, seven golf bags and all our hand luggage. Looking like people moving house, we bought the roof rack and the Thule box on top to stuff even more rubbish. There were a few memorable trips to Cameron Highlands where we came back with a dozen head of cabbage, strawberries and all variety of green leafy vegetables. It also witnessed a few spells of vomitting and was home to whole families of cockroaches. It also absorbed all manner of smells....never quite recovered from Elliott's biweekly post rugby sweat. Then there was the time a mysterious putrid smell that baffled and poisoned us for weeks. Finally the workshop people took the engine and aircon apart to find that a lizard had gone exploring in there and died. There was also a lizard that was squashed by my door as it tried to get into the car. I was driving along quite happily until Matt pointed it out to me. I spotted the be-bodied critter out of the corner of my right eye and detoured to the Botanics (nearest safe spot to stop) for help. Think I shall miss being the road bully it allowed me to be as I bulldozed cars to give way to me. Alas...those were good times.

Hyundai Getz

This is the zippy little rental I'm driving around nowadays. It is so cute. So far I have squeezed into gaps between cars and yellow boxes, teeny tiny parking spaces, spaces between gridlocked cars. I just "make like a sardine" and inch forward. Filled up 3/4 of the tank when I got it and that was only $40! It's a little lacking in va-va-voom as it's only a 1.3 litre but city driving is what I do most anyway.

Getting a new car!

Scrapped the old big MPV clunker and eagarly awaiting this spiffy new piece of metal. But there's a 2-3 month waiting list. So many great minds thinking alike! In the meantime, am zipping around in a rental. It's so liberating driving a small hatchback. Feel like Rapunzel who cut off those heavy locks of hair in favour of a crewcut.

Reflections
These numbers were taken from the Straits Times Special Report on 23 Dec 2006. I saved it and would like to take some time to process it now.

Strife: 3.6 million people killed in war since 1980
Poverty: 1.1 billion people living on less than $1.50 a day
Disaster: 91 million people affected by 267 natural disasters in first eight months of 2006
Child Victims: 8.4 million children working as forced labourers or sex workers
Disease: 39.5 million people infected with HIV in the world
Battered women: 1 billion women who have been beaten, coerced into sex or abused

How do I make sense of this world I live in?
The truth is....I've had a very blessed life and I can't relate to all those numbers. I gloss over them and there's not much empathy. I'm just a tiny little carbon unit living on a small red dot of an island in the backwaters of a blue planet - one of a multitude in the vast universe.
Most of the time, I'm pretty obsessed about my life and the lives of people close to me. It takes intentional effort to think beyond that.

ST interviewed several religious leaders and I like Father Simon Pereira's quote the best. He said:
I'm a great believer in the One Person theory. Change begins with the individual. It just takes one person to reach out, bring it forward.

In a nutshell, I believe the one person that makes all the difference in this mess of a world we live in is God the Son, aka Jesus Christ. The human race was rescued some 2000 years ago, and there is reason to hope in better things to come.

I'M BACK!!!
Apologies for the silence. Blogging took a back seat as new interests consumed me. Also, I wasn't taking the time to think about each day and what I liked or not liked about it. I was catching up with fun, friends, family and food. I had a super duper farewell to 2006 and pretty eagar to start going into 2007. Wow. We're now 12 days into 2007 and I'm proud to say I didn't tear the wrong year for my carpark coupons nor any cheques. YES! I AM THE WOMAN!

Our Roots in Jimei, Xiamen
Big fuss welcoming us 'back' to our home village.
Firecrackers galore & welcome brigade in red.
(Top) Tan family home built 1937. Now occupied by people who won't budge because they claim to be descendants but are not recognized by our bunch of Tans. (Middle) The Tan ancestral temple for the families of Tan Kah Kee, Tan Lark Sye & Tan Boon Khak. It's pretty elaborate inside too. (Bottom) Tan family's own ancestral temple located behind the Tan family home.
I always thought all temples were public. It's pretty cool to have not just one, but two, temples that are family specific. We also went hiking around the cemetery (a stone's throw away) to pay our respects to the great & great-great grandparents.

Women's 10km. I placed 2304 out of 4692. Took me 1 hr 23mins 42 secs. Average speed 7.2km/hr.
No blisters this time because I slapped on the petroleum jelly to prevent chafing, wore toe socks underneath & running socks on top. Kiasu! So that was kind of fun. Got a nice tee & gym bag. My Finisher's Medal is now an ornament on the family Christmas tree. Next year......work on the timing.

Capitalist Indoctrination?
Just back from Xiamen, China. It was a 'roots' holiday. Took plenty of pics of temples, scenic vistas, people, food etc. but I went out of the way to take these two pictures. It's interesting and worthy of sharing.
The setting of these signs: a primary school playground. Just what every child needs to be brainwashed as to what's important to grasp - money & power.
Find it particularly amusing which word was mis-spelled.

Clutter
Clutter is not just about clearing a physical space. It's an emotional and spiritual act - Lesley Garner
Do you get a sense of lightness after throwing out a bunch of stuff? I do. I find it incredibly therapeutic. Problem is.....I have too much stuff. And so the process doesn't happen often enough and seems endless when I do get round to it. I find it works best when I have a sudden burst of energy and devil-may-care attitude. Like being trigger happy....I get dustbin happy.
Where does the emotional and spiritual aspects come in? If my junk could talk, they'd be going:
Think about all those good times we had together. Don't they count for anything? How can you do this after all I've done for you? Call yourself a friend? Do this and you'll regret it. Life will never be the same again. Come on....just let me hang around a little longer....I won't take up much space. Promise. Infact, if you leave me here in this dark corner, I won't say a word.