Don’t Be Perfect, Just…

It’s been a while since I blogged, so as I sit here having my yoghurt with honey, I thought of posting one of those random ramblings just in case something useful comes out. One thing about bloggers is that when they take a hiatus, one thought keeps nagging at the back of their minds, “You haven’t written in two weeks, so your next post must be WOW! It must ROCK!” That thought puts more pressure on them and naturally extends their break, because whatever they write – or half-write – isn’t good enough for a post, and so they’d rather not publish it. I have to admit that I can be guilty of that as well. But one way to face the resistance is to just aim at publishing a bad post. Not horrible. Aim for mediocre. Just don’t aim for perfect. That way you’ll break the hiatus, overcome inertia and -hopefully – gain momentum.

I guess this is today’s message. From the short length of this post to its incomplete title, my message is, “Don’t be perfect, just try your best and you’ll be surprised.”

Did you enjoy UAE’s weather last weekend?

Brownie-like Recipe for Dealing with Bad Experiences

A lot of times we go through experiences that tend to upset us or haunt us. While they may not be entirely traumatizing, they can be really clingy. Take for example embarrassing moments that we can’t seem to forget about or people who’ve deliberately walked out of our lives we don’t seem to let go of. So today I made up a recipe for writers on how to make the best of those situations.

Ingredients

1 stick of facts (or butter)

1 cup of imagination (or sugar)

1 teaspoon of more imagination (or vanilla extract)

2 speculations (or eggs)

½ cup of characters (or all-purpose flour)

1/3 cup of setting (or Cocoa)

¼ teaspoon of conflict (or baking powder)

¼ teaspoon of theme (or salt)

Directions

1)     Start with the facts. That’s as essential as the butter-sugar-vanilla mixture when one is making brownies. You can just list the chronological order of the incident as bullet points but at the beginning just stick to the facts.

2)     Speculate. Add your speculations and judgements. Realize that while the details of the incident may be laid out as facts, a lot of how feel about it comes from our pre-conceived notions, background and experiences. During your speculation stage, try to look at the incident from other point of views, and challenge any assumptions you might have made about it. In other words, beat them together the way you would beat the eggs.

These first two points deal with the plot of whatever story you’re going to write out of the life incident. Next we move to the rest of the story.

3)     Draw up characters and give them names. The thing with us writers is that sometimes we don’t really understand a situation until we put it down on paper. It’s true we tend to think of paper.

4)     In the case where we’re turning this incident into a work of fiction, this is the point where we add elements that would fluff it up a bit the way the baking powder would. But since stories have to have setting and themes, you have to add cocoa and salt to the baking powder and stir together.

5)     Get into the zone the way a baking pan would get into an oven heated to 350 oF. Call it the creative zone, call it whatever…Let the story grow its own legs and take you in different directions if it must. You might start at a true-life incident and end with something that you would never do in real life, but would fill you with satisfaction.

And by that, you might have a story that was inspired by a clingy incident, and you would realize why the incident was so clingy in the first place (maybe its purpose was to act as inspiration for a piece of art and it wouldn’t let you go until you wrote it). Also whenever the incident comes up, you’ll end up thinking about your piece of art, and you might be so consumed by the piece of art to be bothered by the real incident.

Alternatively, just use the recipe between the lines, bake some brownies and enjoy eating them.

(c) alisdair

Under The Date Palms

Under the date palms they dreamt
On the swings
Their eyes closed against the wind
Nobody had yet told them that they cannot fly
That there are no dragons
And so they flew
But after so many hours fighting dragons
They had to crash land to planet earth,
Thirsty,
Panting,
They had to run to drink water,
You have to be realistic after all

Nobody told them that their choices
Will not be their choices
That their lives will be sketched
By the broken dreams of their family
That the sky is not the limit
As the ceiling gets in the way
You have to be realistic after all

With the pressure of life over their heads
Their imagination loses color
Then bit by bit it loses sound
Until one day it turns dark and silent
And they wonder
Under the date palms
When they had lost the will to dream

(c) A. Albadawi

Unleash Your Dickinson

Try Walking Away

Randy Pausch once said, “The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”

What if somebody doesn’t know what the brick walls are even hiding? What if they are clueless about what they’re passionate about? They go through the motions of the day, not knowing what they really love doing and so they do everything with mediocrity, feeling like….blah, doing their best to just get by. But there is a simple test to find out things that they love doing, “Try walking away.”

Because the moment you walk away from something you love doing or somebody you love spending time with, something will probably go wrong with your system. You might become a different person. You might start shuffling, stop smiling, continue sighing as though you carry the burden of the world with you, when all you carry is a heart heavy with pain.

Take the example of the writer who stops writing because it doesn’t pay or the husband who sends his wife packing only to realize he’s having difficulty living without her or the child who is afraid of touching a football because it hurt him once even though in his heart he still loved playing.

It might take a while to figure out what is wrong, what is missing, despite it being missing in your life from the start – since of course it’s behind those brick walls – but because you’ve given it your back and walked away from it, that’s when you start losing the state of equilibrium in your emotional or physical well being.

So the next time you’re having doubts, try walking away from what you’re passionate about, and if you can do so without repercussions then you probably didn’t feel that strongly about it in the first place.

And if you can’t walk away, then maybe you should walk back.

Creative Commons License from Flickr/CitySkylineSouvenir’s

You’re crazy

Have you ever had someone tell you that you were crazy? Maybe you worked hard to get your degree in engineering and then you decided to go sell falafel. Or you worked hard to become a doctor only to hang your stethoscope and decided to work as a farmer.  Sometimes you’re deemed crazy because of decisions you make that others deem irrational. And what’s worse is when you try to rationalize that decision for them, which maybe you can’t because you can’t even rationalize it to yourself as it’s more the product of the heart than that of the mind…

If you’re working towards a dream, you’re probably a few steps away from many people, because not many people know what they’re passionate about, and even if they do, not many people have the courage to dream, let alone work towards their dreams. So a lot of times, they’d just try to push you back, tell you you would fail or that you are crazy, to discourage you because they feel like they’ve failed in pursuing their own dreams, or maybe they don’t even know what they want.

So if people think you’re crazy, let them be, remember Steve Jobs’ quote, “ere’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

And finally, remember the words of 15-year-old me, “Sometimes it’s crazy not to be crazy.”

“Sometimes it’s crazy not to be crazy”

Success is Counted Sweetest

As Kenyans wait for the results of the presidential elections, I was thinking about this poem by Emily Dickinson,

“Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.”

The way it’s usually analyzed is that Dickinson wrote about how people with the greatest needs for success are the ones who value it the most. As the tallying continue, Uhuru Kenyatta – the candidate who who faces charges at the International Criminal Court – happens to be in the lead, so Raila Odinga’s camp – in the voice of Musyoka – is beginning to complain about results being “doctored” (his words not mine). Kenyans are tense, hoping that the president would be announced peacefully without the bloodshed and the fires that burnt Kenya in 2007.

But why I was thinking of Dickinson’s poem…if the loser places a higher value on success than the winner, then logically, the winner considers success to have less value (the opposite sides of a seesaw). But there’s another reason why a winner shouldn’t be too excited about winning a position like the president’s, because it is a position that comes with great responsibility. According to 2011 statistics, there are 41 million people in Kenya who the president should be thinking about. From the barefeet children running in the slums of Kibera, to the hungry people in Turkana, and the clouded-in-a-shroud-of-oblivion drug addicts on the Coast, there’s a lot of responsibility that comes with that position.

All eyes will be on the president to make changes in a country where 50% of the population is under poverty line [1]. And mind you, those changes must be positive. So whoever wins, Raila or Uhuru, they need to know that after they celebrate their victory with their families, running mates, and dancing troupes, they’re going to have to step out onto the street every morning and work hard to make positive changes in the lives of 41 million human beings, they’re going to have to step up to the challenge of fulfilling the expectations of those who voted for them, and they’re going to have to spend every day knowing that with great privileges comes great responsibility, and that taking the president’s seat is more about giving to the country than taking from it.

And I personally wouldn’t want to be in their shoes.

And talking about people who truly understood the responsibility of leadership, I am reminded of the saying of Umar Ibn AlKhattab- the second Caliph- “By Allah, if a mule tripped over and fell in Iraq, I would be afraid that Allah will ask me about it why I did not level the road up for it.”

[1] http://www.indexmundi.com/kenya/population_below_poverty_line.html

 

Shadows and Light

“A certain darkness is necessary to see the stars.” 
Appreciate the role of challenges in your life, as they are not there to crush you completely. They are there to help you grow, to let the light within you shine, as darkness creeps in. Everybody experiences dark moments every once in a while. It’s a natural way of life. To fully appreciate joy, pain must be felt. To truly appreciate success, one has to fall a couple of times…or more. Ask a child who keeps on falling over and over again before they can properly walk. They teach us that, “Failure is not falling down; failure is staying down when you have the choice to get back up.”  

 

Focus on the moment

I took this picture one morning when I was on the balcony taking clothes out of the clothesline. I had to leave just after dawn as my mother needed to be dropped somewhere. The thing is, if I hadn’t been gathering my clothes at that time I don’t think I would have even noticed that the dawn was breaking. My room turns into a dark cave when I close the curtain, and the darkness is so penetrating there is usually no way of knowing if it is morning or night outside. The incident made me realize that sometimes we get so caught up in the day-to-day activities that we stop observing their surroundings. And maybe that’s why some people get caught up in their past, because they  they stop engaging their senses on the present, taking it for granted as the routine of the day remains the same for a lot of us.

They stop listening to the waves crashing against the shore and instead focus on their fingers clicking on the keyboard. They stop seeing the magnificent change in color as darkness turns into day, because they are so busy looking at the television. They stop smelling that aroma of flowers because they are too busy stuck indoors. Since they lose the curiosity they were born with, the curiosity that let them explore – and learn – their surroundings as children, they find themselves stuck in a rut, living in their heads, where it is easy to be stuck in their past; a past that consists of memories that linger for longer than necessary, until it becomes a heavy burden they carry with them like a wallet filled with a hundred unneeded receipts, just adding to the weight without being practically useful.

Negative thoughts from the past are like weeds that suffocate the other plants in a garden, so don’t let them grow unattended, and make a conscious effort to change them. An easy way to forget worries from the past could be to just focus your attention to the present. Why is that when someone has a rough time, someone suggests that they change surroundings and go on a holiday elsewhere? Because just the fact that you are in a new place makes you more aware of your surroundings as you try to take in everything you can about this new place. So why don’t you make it a habit to notice your surroundings wherever you are. Alternatively, just break out from your routine slightly by trying new roads, new restaurants and going to the park instead of walking into a mall.

There’s a quote by John Greene that says, “You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking how you’ll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”

Exercise living in the moment. Take the time to consciously stop going on auto-pilot and observe, and if you must do it on your laptop, then try this website; http://www.donothingfor2minutes.com/

Sometimes We Need That Little Push…

I had a relative whose vehicle wouldn’t start until somebody pushed it. I thought it was a joke, but turned out to be true. You can check wikihow on how to push start your car and find out all about it (1). It’s funny because the same guy used to always boast that his cars were thief-proof, which is something major in Kenya given the number of carjackings that used to happen back then. With time one learnt that the cars were probably thief-proof because nobody wants to steal them anyway, and if they did, they wouldn’t know how to start it or it would break down a few meters away (just an indication of the quality- or lack thereof – of the cars).

Anyhow, what made me think of that person’s wont-start-till-you-push vehicle was how some people take for granted the power of a motivating word or gesture. Sometimes in life, we don’t start working on a particular thing until we’re pushed by someone. We can’t expect to be self-driven all the time, because sometimes we run out of fuel, and we need to recharge. Sometimes this push doesn’t come from a positive source, however. It could come from a negative one. Have you ever heard of a fat kid who was bullied for so long until one day he decided that he has had enough and so worked to lose weight? While I disapprove of bullying in general, in his case the push came from a negative experience; one that pained him so much that he decided to do something about it because the pain of staying the same was worse than the pain of making a change. There’s a quote that says, “We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.”

But most of the time, the pushing comes from a positive source; a friend who believes in us; a family member who makes duaa* for us; a stranger who invests in us; a writer whose words have made a difference in our lives. So take a moment to appreciate the people who’ve pushed you and helped you reach the place that you are at right now, because there are some whose dreams get extinguished because of other people’s consistent mocking and teasing. And if you’re one of those who are continuously discouraged, just remember the quote, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

And sometimes, the push is just what we need to not only move ourselves forward, but move others forward as well…sorta like this.

Image from istockphoto.com

Just for fun; 1) http://www.wikihow.com/Push-Start-a-Car

*duaa: prayer

Power of Keystone Habits

In the book, The Power of Habits, Charles Duhigg talks about the habit loop, which is like a computer code that starts with the 1)Cue, then moves to the 2)Habit and ends with the 3)Reward. Craving for the reward keeps the code running in an infinite loop, until you reprogram it or break it.

I’ve mentioned all that in a previous note, but an interesting thing the author mentions is how making significant changes in life doesn’t require conscious reprograming of dozens of habit codes. Some habits are more important than others and are called “keystone habits.” Making changes in these keystone habits initiate changes in other subroutines in your other habits code, so for non-programmers, it’s like dropping the first tile in a dominos game, causing other tiles to drop and changing habits in other areas of a person’s life.

One keystone habit is “Exercise”. Duhigg writes, “People who exercise start eating better and become more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed.”

So with experience one could learn what habits are keystone habits in their lives and focus on those primarily.

Until then I guess we should start exercising .