How To Be Free

I should be applying for jobs at this moment but my mind keeps getting distracted by not writing this post.

Recently I downloaded few free books on my iPad. These days I use to travel for 1.5 hour x2 almost each day, which means I have lot of time to read books. One of the books I just tapped on to be downloaded was titled "How To Be Free" by Joe Blow.

Now you may think that I don't feel free hence I want to be accompanied by this kind of books. Maybe. I am just making progress in this area. Lately I have been trying to understand why our human fellows behave in certain ways. So to support my understanding of the basics and get some new perspectives on this, I thought this book may have some answers. I have to say that I always have been poor in understanding people. Understanding in the essence that I never really thought about any hidden agendas, that people said what they meant/felt. My earlier world was so black and white, no grey zones existed! As I started to see that people do not express what they want, but instead play games with their human fellows, I thought enough is enough. I may get started understanding this human being and its nature. I may say what I have felt so far about human beings is nicely put down on writings in this amazing book. Amazing so far till the first 31 pages, as I haven't finished it yet...may finish it by today.

Already from the first page this book is very appealing, honest; clearly and effortlessly says why human behaves in the certain ways they behave!
- what is Evil
- what is Armouring
- what is Sexuality
Just few topic among the pages I have read so far.

The main point I got here, and which, for some people is an awful truth, is:
We deny, struggle, and fight against those things we may think we do not have, thus projecting hatred, jealousy, bullying etc. on other people is the "natural" way of expressing for most of people.

Understanding this, we no longer will feel the necessity to look inwards ourselves to understand why some people act/behave in certain way. Understanding this will equip us with the tools needed to face any situations with upright head full of confidence!

But everything needs some time full of practice. So read the book, start observing people's behaviour, and you will be surprised seeing your insight is actually making you free - on all levels.

Give this book a try and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did/do.

"But what we need to understand, if we are to understand ourselves, is our own impulses to engage in destructive or dominating behaviour towards others.
If we have such impulses, they originate in a lack of acceptance of some aspect of ourselves. Hostility towards others or the need to control others is projected self-contempt."
- from "How to be Free" by Joe Blow.

"Nobody creates ideas or truths. They simply exist. We either see them or we don't."
- from "How to be Free" by Joe Blow.

Have a great Monday!

Be Free!

Purely Will! - About a girl who wanted to play tennis but there was no tennis courts.

Hello there,

Today I want to share an inspiring story about two people. One person, who wanted something but never did anything to achieve it. The other person did something amazing to achieve the goal, and I really hope you guys will enjoy the inspiring part as much as I did/do.

We all go around and have lot of things, goals and dreams we wish we could achieve one fine day, I do. I have lot on my 101 things-to-do-before-I die-list. But for most of us the mundane things/activities get much of our time and we easily find excuses to postpone our goals and dreams for a while. And soon "a while" ends up as months and even years, and we see our goals/dreams far away in the horizon...vanishing slowly into a blurry memory of a dream we once had.

So there may be some way out of this generic tendencies of dropping our goals/dreams on the floor and settle for less. Sure there is and we all know what the solution is, but we do not take it seriously. The following will show you what I mean, and I hope it will take you out of your box and move you a little closer to your dreams.

Yesterday I went out for dinner with a lovely friend I've had the pleasure to meet here in Toronto. We did catch up on each other's lives. And as we walked looking for a nice place to eat, the topic came on sports.
Tennis! I always wanted to play tennis, be good at it, dreamed of playing it. But never played it - apart from the one time I had the opportunity back in primary school. And my friend told me she had played tennis. She is from Palestine, and where she lived, they did not have a tennis court. So she couldn't practice. But she really wanted to play tennis!

So if you do not have a tennis court where you can practice, but you want to learn playing tennis, what do you do? The solution seemed so effortlessly simple but amazingly creative: She watched tennis on TV and learned how to play! -  from learning the rules to how to hold a tennis racket, how to serve, etc. That's pretty amazing isn't it? "If I don't have a tennis court to practice, I will learn from watching it on TV" - she thought and she followed it up with watching, learning and playing tennis this way.

We are talking about a time where we were not privileged with holding a Nintendo Wii remote controller in our hand to play tennis - the first Nintendo Wii was released in 2006. A little while after our teenage years.

Then she entered university, and there they had tennis courts. She was excited! Finally! She started playing tennis. And while she was playing tennis at the university, one of the main figures in the tennis in Palestine was attending the games. After the game he asked her, where she had learned to play tennis. She told him that she had learned tennis from watching it on TV. No doubt that he may have been pretty amazed about her creativity and talent.
He said he was going to be her coach, and from here she headed towards the tournaments! How amazing is this girl's creativity? And determination about following her goal - playing tennis?

This story clearly tells that reaching your goal is about what you already have. The English proverb is just the right to describe what is needed:
"Where there's a will, there is a way!"

I found it truly inspiring to listen to her story!!

And the other person who didn't follow up on what she really wanted is simply me, I just put excuses as "couldn't afford" it/couldn't make it to the tennis courts on the table. Now writing this post here, I realize I could have done so much to make it affordable or to overcome all the other struggles to play tennis as one of my leisure activity back then.

Sometimes we get stuck, can not think out of the box, and let our passion/interest for something go away. And we settle for the less. We complain about what we didn't/don't have instead of thinking of the little we had/have to get started!

Yes, sometimes somebody needs to walk beside you, tell about what they did, and make you realize what is needed to be done!

Have a great weekend!
(Shared with you guys, after asking permission to write it here.)




    

Writing from Toronto

I've been on a long break from this blog. An idea hit my mind and all of sudden I ran into unexpected things: I ended up moving to Canada and one of my dream living abroad came true out of the blue - all executed within 3 months only.

I took one year leave from my current work place, gave up my apartment in Copenhagen, packed my bags and landed in Pearson International Airport mid February 2013. 

Luckily for me I was accepted by my relatives to stay with them, otherwise I may be short of money by this time as I had no luck finding an engineering job in Toronto yet. And I do not really want to move to another province 4000 km away - Alberta. And start all over again making new friends in a new environment.

I don't know where the past five and a half months disappeared, but time flies really fast these days. Really a sad fact, indeed! I've this feeling of catching up a lot but do only have time for few things at a time. Maybe I should be relaxed and just be happy for the fact that I'm actually getting the few things done at least :)

Apart from the job hunting, I have been putting myself into meeting new and wonderful people, and also have been putting some hours into the volunteering area. To be honest I'm not a volunteer person but this role really appealed to me in some ways. Being with a person who knows, he/she is going to die within 3-4 months put your whole life into a new perspective. Being with these people really makes you think of your company of friends, family and acquaintances, who has surrounded you almost throughout your whole life. 

There comes a time where you want to move away from some and get closer to some - simply because you start to realize what life is all about. You definitely want to have those cheerful, highly motivated and caring individuals closer to you, and let those not quite positive and less caring people be a distant memory. How long time can you be kind enough accepting those people being a part of your life? Easy to say but hard to follow up on. There comes times where you have to stand tall and tell people, they are not right, or their behavior or how they treat others are not nice, but would you be able to tell that to their face? Now you know some are not right, can you do the right follow-up on your thought? Or would you be able to stop yourself from participating in or reacting to those people's talk. Tricky! But it is worth pondering for a while. Being kind is so easy but being kind to those non-kind people put you through a fire. I've just begun taking the very first baby steps into this - a whole mountain needs to be climbed, and I'm still deep down along the valley wandering and wondering how to get myself up to the top.

I don't know when the next post would be here as job hunting and meetings with wonderful people is my new full time job lately. Hopefully I would be organised to manage my time properly and post few thoughts once in a while. Because this is really an interesting topic and I want to keep track of my thoughts on this through this blog. (For once I'm saying I don't know when the next post would be here lol)

So today's thought is:

"Always pray to have eyes that see the best in people, 

a heart that forgives the worst, 

a mind that forget the bad, 

and a soul that never loses faith in God"

I came across this quote a day ago or so on one of those pages I have liked on Facebook. And Google didn't give me any answer to who the author for this quote is. If anybody knows, please let me know.

Have a good night! :)