Feelings follow behaviour

During the past year, I have been going through a difficult time. I was unemployed, lost a few friends and was lonely. I had felt negative about everything that it impacted o the way I behaved. I had no time for other people and focused on what brought me down therefore bringing myself down. I lacked confidence in myself and slept through most of days when coming back from job hunting.

One day, I decided to pack a few of my belongings and head home. I needed to be surrounded by parental love and support which gave me security. I told myself that I am not returning to Cape Town. I helped at my mother’s NGO, went to church, tried putting on a few kilos (I looked like a anorexic giraffe), going with my parents to visit relatives or help out when they got jobs on the side. With encouragement from my parents and the results that I am due to graduate in my Diploma in PR, I returned to Cape Town where I squatted with my brother. I reached out for help and reached out to people who were supportive, true family and friends.

 I noticed that all that negativity had made me behave in a negative way where I was drowning in my pity party. If you feel a certain way, you endorse a particular behaviour. Its either that feeling is a good one or a bad one, you can be the judge of that. Rather have good feelings that will encourage you to have a positive behaviour.

Not all who wander are lost

Source: www.google.co.za

You may be on a path of a journey, wandering. Perhaps that is the point of your journey. When you are wandering, you are moving about without an exact destination or purpose.  The quote is taken from JRR Tolkein (also quoted in The Lord of The Rings); I have tried to interpret the line. I defined it as perception and assumption.

Someone may seem to be lost yet they have their own agenda of which they will not account for, hence wandering. I perceived that wandering is the point of your journey yet   I assume that how can you tell the difference between knowing if you are lost or wandering. Some of us may be wandering because we have to or others are wandering because they do not know what to do.

Perhaps getting lost is reason to being lost on your path and you feel that any direction is as good as any. You may end up finding some precious things along the way while you were lost. I am on a journey and I am wandering with means to achieve the purpose of my journey knowing that I am not lost.

An Honest Psychiatrist

Q: How do you feel?

A: I feel numb?

Q: How does that make you feel?

A: Angry.

Q: Why are you angry?

A: Because I feel numb.

Q: So in fact you feel angry and numb?

A: Err maybe, I guess. So you guess?

Q: You aren't sure?

A: I don't know?

Q: So you are numb, angry and unsure to sum it all up?

A: You've lost me...

Q:What I'm trying to say is that have you considered the fact that you may be depressed?

A: No, not really, maybe I am. I have been feeling down since my mother passed on....

 

The truth: you are grieving, you are supposed to be numb and angry and down. Deal with it like millions have before you. Go through all the motions and get through it without being subjected to paying thousands for a session that only highlights your lack of self understanding and your lack of sentence construction with a conclusion and diagnosis that only you can come to. But if you enjoy the happy pills and the nausea, why then go right ahead..

The Me I Became

The New Me

When most the world’s statistics, troubles, joys and hardships affect me directly with no child like ignorance to say I do not know what is going on. When my destiny leads me to being one the world’s heroes, black sheep, revolutionaries, business people, corrupt tenders. A year that I’m supposed to shine and live according my pre determined destinies.

From the withering trees of autumn in the back drop of dusty old Transkei is where my being lies. And lie it did, for stories of a prosperous life filled with promise it bore.  Yet I look at it now and find the paradox which is life and the paradox of living to die. What is it all for? 

So what to do until the lie becomes the truth but to live in this lie and let it consume me until it becomes the truth. So that in the end I too can lie like so many and say I came, I saw, I conquered.... When all I saw was the life I feared and all the only coming was not the 2nd coming and all I conquered was being all which was not promised to me

Job hunting is the pits!

Picture: www.dominica-weekly.com

If there is one thing I hate next to cooking is job hunting. This is the worst ordeal one can face. The emotional turmoil that one goes through and not to mention being broke as the story of your life. I know I have been looking for a job for some time and the results of that is desperation. You end up doing settling for some crappy job so that you can hold onto something and get money while you hate the place.

I have done odd jobs for a person who has a diploma. Nothing disgusts me more than these fly by night businesses that take advantage of desperate people who want to work. Also working at a place where you know you are not challenged and wasting your time and getting a low salary.

The emotion that comes with seeking employment is when you do not get that job. The money you waste of which you don’t have going to interviews, internet cafe’s printing out your CV and other documents that are needed. The only thing one can hang on to is hope. Hope that you will get that ideal job you deserve.

Getting rusty

Picture: www.freefoto.com

As a little girl, I could do and dreamt many things. I was an athlete, one of the best actresses, model, could draw and I was crafty. I attended schools that could hone my talents but in my high school days I had to focus on being an academic, getting good marks so I could get into varsity. I continued to do the things I loved as a little girl but somehow I felt forced.

I became rebellious but I was a good child. I did a few bad things that teenagers do. One thing I have come to realise is that I do not like being confined and being surrounded by ridiculous rules meaning I was restricted. That attitude has stuck with me and it is not a good one. I am stuck. As I am growing I realise that I am yearning to do the things that I feel I missed out on and time is ticking.

I wanted to be so many things but I haven’t achieved any of those. Opportunities have come and gone and I always played it safe. I need to take risks and jump at an opportunity and work hard as I did when I was a young girl.

Every day is a good day

Source: www.facebook.com

“Every day is a good day” is a quote from a Zen  koan spoken by Master Yun Men. The statement is found to be the most influential quotes of Zen literature.

To have conviction that every day is a good day means that we are living our own lives. If we discriminate it based on our feelings of happiness or unhappiness and say ‘i wonder if today wil be good” or “today i am so happy that it is a good day” or “if something good happens to me today i will regard it as a good day” with that attitude it means that we are living our lives passively. As if life is something that happens to us. If we live this way we are giving up the direction of our own lives and we will inevitably decline.

To understand that every day is a good day takes courage. Some days we will suffer, some days we will be happy. If its ur day to fight then you will fight, if its your day to die then you will die. The attitude can be contradictory to our familiar mental habits. The implication of thinking this way is that we are responsible for our own lives, and if we treat each day as a good day to face what we face then our lives begin to change.