transiting beyond myself

It is a difficult transition.

Here I think I am ready to love someone for the rest of my life, but the rubber meets the road, fears emerge in the form of questions:

What if I am not capable? Can I trust myself with someone else? Will I fail? How do I care for someone else day in day out when all I have had was just to care for myself? Can I transit to be less self-centred? To become more other-centred? What if I hurt her? What if I am hurt? Who is going to protect me?

As I contemplate, I know that I have a community of close friends  who will help check me, hold me accountable for my actions.  This same group of people will assist me with if I need help. It is reassuring.

Here I go into transiting.

I get so emotional with you…

Yes, we get emotional with a lot of things, most of the time these ‘things’ are words. We react to words, we react to the context behind the words in our own world/lives/narratives. The words “Shut up” comes across as rude and challenging to me. The context is that my teachers use them when they get frustrated.By the time they get to use that word, it means that we will be getting punished, whether we were culprits to the noise making or not.

Here’s another example of linking emotionality with words.

“You shouldn’t stereotype, it is wrong for you to do that!”

The word “stereotype” becomes a bad word. It becomes bad behaviour, something a nasty person would do. While many have indeed stereotype and have decided to stick to their assessment of the stereotype, stereotyping is not necessarily wrong.

What I realize now is, stereotyping occurs when I do not have enough information about whatever I am stereotyping. So I can either be curious and find out more, or keep my stereotype ideas to myself. If people are involved, things get trickier.

In any case, I think that being curious is healthy and I would go on that path, when I stereotype.

Words… words are loaded with emotionality. The word “bed” could mean rest and enjoyment to one, but fear and pain to another (who might be tortured in bed).

Be careful when you use words… they are loaded.

reading a lot

I have stacked up a lot of books I want to read lately. Not sure if it is a good thing.

I managed to borrow Sam Gosling’s Snoop from the library. Best thing about the library when it comes to expensive books.

Reading about how we get to know one another. One researcher suggested that there were three levels of knowing someone. The first level consists of character/personality traits. The second level looks at goals, wants, values, themes of a person.

The last level is one that talks about the narrative of a person’s life, thus his core experiences will determine how he functions and who he defines himself out to be.

I define myself to be the scapegoat of groups. The clown of groups of friends. The unwanted personnel who happened to be there to lighten the mood. This has definitely impacted on to my self-esteem. It led me to think that I was dispensable, and not worth, therefore I come across to honest friends as someone who tries to impress.

Some self-disclosure from me. Interesting?

what’s wrong with being emotional?

I’ve been sneaking to my local bookstore, reading chapters of Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational. Go buy it, ease my conscience.

So far, I have finished chapter 1 and 2. Here is what I got from chapter 1.

Many of us make decisions based on the information available on what is present. Seldom do we dig into our selves to find out what our stand is, or what our values are before making a decision. It is sort of like a Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” situation, only it is based on external ideas not internal beliefs.

This proves dangerous to us, because it makes us more irrational than rational. This tells us many things about us. We do not take ourselves seriously, and we do not know our values seriously. We are easily swept into making emotional decisions.

Dan explains that we tend to always make decisions based on the the information given directly to us. That is, whatever choices given at that moment would be compared with each other, and then the ‘best’ decision is made.

However, unbeknowst to ourselves, we fail to value each choice based on the values that we have personally.

Interesting how marketers use this mechanism to make us buy things that we really may not need.

Read the book, what is written here is simply my understanding. Dan has done an excellent job illustrating his observations, I am just trying to be smart.

simple wisdom

Coming from the point of Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational, wisdom is sometimes something so simple and fundamental that we fail to follow her guidance.

I met up a old friend from JC days, and my, I am pleasantly delighted to see how far he has come. To come from a neighbourhood secondary school, and then to not do extremely well for his degree (but then neither did I), he has managed to secure himself a banking job.

Naturally, my inclination to think that a banking is very stressful came up in the conversation. He poignantly pointed that while the stress is always there, there are some rules and principles that he follows that would take off undue stress.

He explained to me that his principle of working was simply always to be honest and hardworking. To be honest is to present clearly options available, his opinions, market trends, and most importantly not to over-promise investments. He said that he learned these over the years from observing his managers, fellow peers, and juniors. He explained that when he did not over-promise, expectations of this customers were sufficiently managed. This makes sense!

The other principle which he holds closely to is being hardworking. He narrowed down that being hardworking was about being conscientious in the work. To do and finish as much as possible, and to remain focus on the main issues. He confessed that some procedures really bored the heck out fo him, but he just pursued at getting the job done, and not get distracted by the side projects that avail themselves when he was feeling heat of the boredom.

Simple wisdom? Absolutely.

I must add that this friend always had an air of confidence about him. His confidence is matched with his sincerity as well as ability to change the tone of his voice when required.

My friend would add that he always had been ‘lucky’ to have understanding customers. But, I refuse to accept that, I just begin to realize that his rapport building skills are really efficient to the extent that he does not realize it.

Kudos to you, Cougar! All the best in your banking career!

Interesting stuff to read…

I have eye-ing two books recently. After reading Seth Godin’s Tribes, I was quite excited to read another book of a similar nature. Something that I was naturaly interested in and that might be on my mind for a long period of time.

When I was young, I always wondered why people could behave so irrationally. This is attributed to even people who are smart. Up till now, my explanation is that we know reality to a certain extent and irrationality comes about when that portion of reality has not been explored yet. That means that that specific reality is still in the ignorant part of the person’s worldview.

Now comes a book by Dan Ariely, book titling “Predictably Irrational“. I would like to read it, if I have time and that leisure. Professor Dan explains how human behaviour is fashioned after circumstances and human’s understanding of the systems they function in.

The second book that I would like nose through is a old hobby of mine. I used to analyze people, how they talk, how they walk, and how they do things, and make deductions about them. I have stopped doing that since I found that it was actually offensive. Someone called it “mental raping”. So I stop. Talk about advancing the “Kindness campaign”.

Anyway, this book by Sam Gosling is titled “Snoop“. Professor (yes, another professor) Sam uses the Big ‘Five’ Personality theory to introduce how people’s living style, mess in the room and even song selections, can partially describe the personality of a person. I used to come up with my theories and would like to read what his has to say.

Well… I’ll see if I have the time and money to read it. Hehe.

personality tests

I have always been very interested in personality theories and tests. There is the usual MBTI, commonly known as the Myer-Briggs personality categories, the Ennegram categories, there is also the DISC personality categories and etc.

Which is better? Which is more realistic? Are they accurate? Why do them? Do they yield information that is useful? Shouldn’t it be useful since many people have used? Big organizations have used them too, surely they must be useful?

Anyway, I got too crazy with personality tests and its literature. So it was time to put it in its proper place. For that, I was unable to articulate it, until I read this blog post from an author whom I really respect:

For example, test makers know that test questions are connected to your present circumstances, so as your circumstances change, so will your test answers. Also, none of them claim to offer omniscient insight into the human heart. They are simply organizing your answers into categories they hope will be useful. Personality tests, in general, are for fun. They have more in common with parlor games than they do with X-Rays.

And there you have it. You can click on the link to read the rest of it. It is based on a Christian worldview, but you can just take the “Christian” out of it and just read it for practicality.