Reflection.

What are the 10 Greatest Moments in your life?

…

painfully frustrated.

 

to be continued.

**bleep**

ever have those moments when you’re so frustrated and you want to scream or yell, but you just can’t.. because you’re at home, or work, or school, or somewhere where you just can’t yell. but you OH-SO-WISH you had a pillow you can scream into or a mountain you can yell from….

WELL. i feel that way RIGHT NOW. and this blog is my pillow. and i’m YELLING into it. because i’m ANGRY.

that’s all. thanks blog. for allowing me to do that. as opposed to punching my laptop screen or chucking my cell phone across the earth.

Life’s too short.

man, TWO huge blogs in one day…what can i say. im an emotional bear. nothing we all didn’t already know about me. =P

i feel like so many things happened this week to make me appreciate life just a bit more each day. things that seem so certain, that we all take for granted, and then life just throws unpredictable challenges out there to remind you of how lucky you are.

my family…i talk to my mom every day on the phone and it’s usually a rundown on my family stuff. my mom constantly struggles with my brother and his life choices and most of the time, it kills me. it kills me to hear my mom sad. she’s one of those scorpios that puts up a front like she doesn’t care but deep down inside she cares so much that it kills her inside. and she’s all alone at home most of the days and it just drives me crazy. it doesn’t help that my dad is an emotional, menopausal rollercoaster. my mom just worries about jade so much, and loves him so much. and jade thinks my parents don’t support him and don’t love him like they do me. but in reality, my parents worry about jade and love him more than he will ever know. it’s because they love him so much, that they feel helpless and have no choice but to accept it all. i just wished that he would step back and realize that some time.

friends..a few of my close friends have gone through some life changes of their own and apparently, i seem to be taking it in just a tad too much. i hate that about myself. i worry. i sympathize. i get distracted. i get attached. i get all emotional. too emotional. too much everything for my own good. but i guess it allows me to take a step back and realize how much i appreciate these people in my life. how much they’ve done for me to make me happy and how much i wish the same for them always.

one of my professors…he’s completely passionate about what he does. and i love that. he’s the most positive person, loves what he does, loves life and lives it to the fullest. you can tell he’s got a good heart and he’s a good person. he told us once that when he was 25 years old, he was diagnosed with a rare terminal illness and the doctors told him he had a life expectancy of about 5 more years. he’s now 36 and living the good life. what a fighter! makes sense…the whole positivity thing. unfortunately, we just found out that his terminal illness is back, and it’s a severe malfunction in his kidneys. we received a letter in our mailboxes from his friend. it was a final plea for anyone to donate a kidney. he’s currently on a kidney transplant waiting list and the average weight is 7 years. you can kinda tell it’s physically affecting him because he looks skinnier…not so peppy as usual. it just makes me think how unpredictable life is and how anything can happen to change your life so drastically. he’s one of those people that loves living. loves life. and appreciates it all. and life’s just not giving him a fair chance. i just hate seeing good people fall. i told my mom about it and she said that good health is greatest blessing you can have. and most people take it for granted. life’s just too short to do that.

all in the same week, i went to my leadership class and my prof starts the class by telling us that class will be cut short today, only one hour long rather than 3, and we’ll be leaving at the break. SCORE!!! what wonderful words every student wants to hear! he goes on to tell us that he’s ending the lecture early because his wife is suffering from breast cancer and he needs to be at the hospital at her bedside. OMG. wtf. completely unexpected. i felt horrible for being so happy that class was ending early. and you can see it in his eyes. i can’t begin to imagine what he and his family are going through. health is inevitable. what an awakening realization…

FINALLY…dino told me a story about a man at his church that he’s known for a while, but not too close. he’s always super happy, loves life, really positive and spreads that around. dino told me that he was observing him the other day…and it just hit him about how trivial some of our problems can be compared to other things people face in the world. this man that he was observing…was in a coma a while ago. a COMA! like, lifeless in a bed. and he came out of it. and was given another chance at life. and he’s not going to let any moment pass him by. and dino just realized that sometimes we face challenges and problems in our lives that we make out to seem so huge and critical when there’s so much else out there that we don’t have to endure. bigger problems out there that others have to face. made us appreciate things a whole lot more and realize how blessed we are.

on that note: here is the most recent list of appreciatives in my life. i actually meant to post them a LONG time ago and it’s been sitting on my desktop waiting for time to just fly by! my assignment is technically complete now, after 14 days. but ill try and continue this as often as i can.

20 things i appreciate in life (in no particular order): Days 14 & 15

1.    Our PUR water filtration system
2.    Stores with no specific return policy
3.    When my boss let’s me study at work during exam weeks
4.    Comfortable shoes
5.    That jieae trusts me to give her good directions
6.    When the condo is clean
7.    That Angie and I can maintain our long distance bestfriendship of almost 18 years.
8.    Condiments
9.    When I can actually reason with my dad (this is extremely rare)
10.    My ipod
11.    That Montclair gym has television screens on their cardio equipment. (yes, I’m a fat American addicted to TV. Let me be.)
12.     Every type of ethnic market is within driving distance of my parents’ house
13.     When Dino and Jade get along well
14.     Anti-Poof Conditioner
15.     that I can get thai food that tastes almost as good as my dad’s right near school.
16.     Opportunities to attend Buddhist temples with my family
17.     that Pam has a huge wardrobe of clothes =)
18.     that my parents brought me up in America instead of Thailand
19.     that I live in California (as opposed to any other state in the United States)
20.     100 calorie snack pack

and opportunities to appreciate all the things in my life.

Help me understand you…

it’s finally friday!! i thought it would never get here! i’m at work for a full day today and my boss is on vacation. therefore, i get to blog my life away and make money for it! not a shabby deal at all…. well, at least until i have that darn marketing report due by 2pm today. what a kill joy.

despite this chaotic week’s events, i must say, i really enjoyed my class lectures this week. it’s a shame that im finally enjoying my classes during my last semester in grad school but at least i can finish off on a pleasant note. i learned a few life lessons this week i thought i’d share. feel free to scroll down and bypass my blabber. im just writing as it pop in my head.

one thing i learned from undergrad (one of the few things i learned there) that i still carry with me is that all conflict arises from misunderstanding. in times of conflict when we are angry or aggressive and act irrationally, it is usually because we misunderstood the other party in some sort. for example, when we drive on the streets or on the freeway, it’s uber common for people to cut you off, speed, road rage, merge into your lane without looking and nearly side-swiping you, etc.. our instant reaction is typically ”WHAT the FUCK?! you fucking asshole learn how to fucking drive!” (we’ve all been there.)  in that instant moment, if we are able to take a step back and think alternatively, perhaps we won’t let our emotions get the best of us. instead of thinking that the other driver had bad intentions to piss you off, YOU, specifically, because ya know, there’s no one else on the road but you. and no one else is in a hurry except you. cause you’re the best driver in the world. and everyone needs to respect that, we can think of things as, “what if his wife is having a baby and he’s rushing to the hospital?” or “what if she just got a phone call from the hospital that her son has been in a major car accident?” “what if he’s late for the job interview of his life?” granted, im sure there ARE plenty of people that ARE really horrible, rudely inconsiderate drivers out there. i suppose we would never really know what their intentions are and what’s going on in their minds, but at least in your mind, you can realize that “most people are misunderstood. and i understand that.”

in my leadership class, we learned steps to negotiating with difficult opponents and conflict resolution, an idea by William Ury, author of “Getting Past No”. i found that these steps could be easily applicable to people that we don’t get along with or wonder “what the fuck they were thinking?!” in the same sense, my self-management class also touched on ideas from positive psychology and how to deal with problems by “changing your questions” and “becoming a learner rather than a judger” im not gonna sit here and type out the whole lecture (although it seems that ive typed enough about it already) but here are some key takeaways that i gained from the two classes:

• Go to your balcony: in times of conflict, go to your balcony and look at the entire picture. “The balcony is a metaphor for a mental attitude of detachment. From the balcony you can calmly evaluate the conflict almost as if you were a third party. You can think constructively for both sides and look for a mutuallysatisfactory way to resolve the problem.”
• When we become judgers, our mental systems shutdown and we immediately discard any chances of learning. Judgers have a hard time listening and being open-minded to different situations that can possibly turn into opportunities.
• When we are confused about other people and their actions, rather than assuming, step back and ask yourself, “what must they be going through in their life to make them act this way?”

ONE more story: (as you can see, i haven’t blogged in a while…now you must suffer the consequences of my notoriously long blogs) i was watching an episode of oprah one day a long time ago that really touched me. the guests were a panel of mothers of children with autism. i didn’t know too much about the disease so i thought id watch and learn something. after going through their children’s history, the onset of the disease, symptoms and etc., the mothers describe how most people don’t really understand what they go through unless they have a child with autism. to make a long story short, oprah asked at the very end of the show, “mothers, if you could offer one piece of advice or information about autism to anyone watching, what would it be?” and one mother said, “when you see a parent of an autistic child in the grocery stores, the parks, in the bus or at a restaurant, the ones holding a baby in one hand with another child throwing something, screaming without reason, or demanding attention. rather than passing judgment, getting annoyed, and assuming we’re bad parents, please stop by and ask, “is everything okay? is there anything i can help you with?” it helps just to know someone understands and cares. i definitely learned something new. and gained a whole new perspective.

In need of a blog!

i think im more sad when i don’t have a chance to blog. i’ve been dying to blog for DAYS now and im WAY behind! so much to blog about and not enough time. what a CRAZY week it’s been: tiring, depressing, emotional, confusing, enlightening, shocking, refreshing, alarming, charming, frustrating, enduring, and endless! how’s THAT for a roller coaster of emotions. i was even thinking about dropping everything and just taking my laptop to the beach and blogging for a couple hours. bah! and now here i am…at work. again. and i can’t really blog cause my boss keeps running in and out of my cubicle. blah. so i decided to BLOG about how i don’t get to BLOG properly. that’s all. boo.

 friday is just taking its sweet time to get here….geez.