Month: September 2010
When Your Life Breaks Down
When your life breaks down, it’s hard to put it back together with the missing pieces gone. Maybe your best friend has left to begin a new life away from you. Maybe you lost your job and you’re trying to make ends meet. Maybe the divorce letter has reached your doorstep and you’ve become a single parent overnight.
So you find yourself clinging to memories from the past. You’re haunted by them. You dial a number that’s disconnected. You find yourself driving to a place that you no longer belong to, so you force yourself to U-Turn. You look at a wedding picture that is torn into half. it’s like you’re driving with your eyes on the rearview mirror.
And you try to get over it. You really do. You find your wall has lost half of it’s bricks, and there are holes all over.
But sometimes if you look closely, you will see it…some holes are being filled with tiny pieces that slowly grow into the holes, pieces that eventually fill these holes. And that’s when you know you’ve healed and you’re ready to start your life over.
So watch out for the tiny pieces. “enjoy the little things for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” Robert Brault
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Today’s Blah Blah Blah
So it’s been a while since I ranted on this thing, and I actually had to be reminded by Asma Saleh that it’s been four days since the last note.
Oh my God…FOUR DAYS!
As you can guess, back to student life, and assignments are on th roll. Gone are the idle days that used to inspire crazy notes like “When Time Doesn’t Pass“. So far it’s been quite “interesting” in Masdar City. For a sustainable city, I’m wondering why the classes are freezing cold and the library so warm? Aren’t we supposed to be optimizing energy usage?
One interesting sign that’s placed next to the elevators is shown below,
So what are we supposed to do? Jump out the window?
That’s it for today unless you’re interested to know what my sustainability assignment is all about. I’m back to camping in loserbucks (aka, the library) since there’s no internet at the villas where we’re staying.
Ciao
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Simple Recipe For Success
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; there is where they should be. Now put foundations under them”- Henry David Thoereau. A lot of us saunter through life like ship wreck survivors, just going with the flow, hanging on to floating wood, hoping to get to that beautiful island with the whispering palms and glaring sunshine. However, we wake up every day to the same sight of infinite blue carrying specks of sunlight that make it look as though crystals have been cast in the ocean, and we wonder, why haven’t we reached the island?
a) Define what we want.
When we fail to define what we want, we spend so much energy in various activities that add little or no value to our lives. We are not focused towards a definite set of goals, so we run around like hyperactive toddlers, bouncing off the walls, climbing closets, jumping off the couch, then wonder why mommy is screaming at us. We do get tired, but we get tired doing what? Having a clear vision of what we want from this life helps us streamline our efforts.
b) Gain knowledge. Gaining knowledge on how to succeed in what we do is a basic step to personal development. We need to know how to step up our game, how to sharpen our various skills so we can sail to our goal easily. Finding information is easy nowadays whether in books or on the internet.
c) Plan. We need to start working out our plan to reach our goals. However, we shouldn’t spend so much time “overplanning”. Someone once said, “It’s not the plan that matters as much as the process of planning.” The process of planning helps us break down our goals into smaller mini-goals that can be set within definite time periods. Then we start taking small mini-steps towards that goal. A decision is not made until the first deliberate step is taken towards that goal.
That’s the difference between a goal and a dream. A dream stays a dream until it’s written down on paper, and deliberate steps are being taken towards it. Then it transforms into a goal.
d) Don’t stop working until we reach your goal, and then start the process over and raise our standards higher.
A lot of people quit when they don’t see immediate results to their efforts. They expect life to work on an immediate “If” function. “If you do A, then B will result immediately.”
However, it doesn’t always work that way. A lot of times, you have to put in so much work before you see any results. But when we reach that point, the results appear exponentially. It is graphically represented below,
A lot of times we give up just before we reach that point. There is a quote that goes, “When the world says, ‘Give up,’ Hope whispers, ‘Try it one more time.’”
Remember that point every time you are on the verge of giving up. Also remember that big achievements are could be defined by the integration of small achievement (represented by “s”) over a period of time, or in engineering symbols:
This signifies continuous work…there’s a Swahili saying that goes like, “Haba na haba hujaza kibaba.”Literally, that means, Little by little fills up the measure. Another quote goes, “If you take a step a day in whatever you want to venture into, look back a month later, you will be 30 steps ahead. Do not wait-DO IT!”
And with complete tawakkul on Allah (SWT), you’ll achieve success insha’Allah in this Dunya and Hereafter. Just remember to keep your intentions pure.
Have a blessed day!
Ciao.
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Why?
There are times
When you ask yourself
Why?
A drop of dew
That slides off a leave
And forms a pool
Why?
A soft wind
That covers the distance
To send a whisper
Why?
A butterfly dancing
Above the rose garden
Why?
Two birds tying
Imaginary braids
In the sky
Why?
Sunshine trickling
On the marble floor
Why?
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A Heart's Echoes 