Calendar Man

Once I'd quit my course I had made a decision that affected me in more ways than one. The most logical of which being that I didn't have a course and wouldn't be getting my diploma. This also meant that I suddenly had a huge amount of time to spend on, well basically anything I wanted. I was taken away from the social 'working' life that I had known for years now. From now on I would be on my own during the school days.

Being alone for five days a week certainly had some consequences. For example I started to monitor my feelings a lot more than I had done with people around me. I'm a people person so being alone for so long is not very comfortable for me, which was refelcted in the way I felt. Certain events triggered certain feelings and I was curious to see if I could influence this in any way. If I could find a way to steer my emotions towards the more positive side, even in the current circumstances that would be awesome.

The first step I undertook was to monitor my feelings. I was linked towards an awesome site by someone who knew the situation I was in. On the site there was a calendar on which you could register how the day went by putting a certain emoticons on the current day. I immediatly fell in love with the idea and decided to make such a calendar below. Instead of emoticons I would be using words as they are more descriptive in my opinion. The results cn be seen below. For every day of the week I will register my feelings. Because I found that my emotions can change quite drastically in a day I decided to put use two words every day.

The words that I use are the ones that best describe my feelings over the day. Now it should be noted that I didn't have the word Okay right from the start. So if my day went okay I would use the word Awesome instead which may give an incorrect image of how amazing my first weeks were. The later weeks are more reliable and I'm quite proud to say that I haven't really had any terrible days since the 15th. Below I'll show you the words I'm working with. They are ordered from best to worst.

EPIC  -  CONTENT  -  AWESOME  -  OKAY  -  NEUTRAL  -  MEH  -  CRAP

I'm also using my calendar to detail my 30-day trials. My current 30-day trial is playing the keyboard for at least 30 minutes a day. As you can see it's not going partiularly well so far but I'm sure that'll come in the future.

Creating the calendar required very little work yet the results were amazing. It livens up my room and I can keep track of my feelings in a fun and rewarding way. Furthermore any goals I wish to achieve can be added to the calendar, such as my current 30-day trial. I'll certainly create another one for the coming month and, if the idea interests you, I would advise you to do the same. It's way more fun than your regular calendar and you can keep track of anything you want. Of course you can use the idea for a number of other things as well and there is really only one advice I can give you: Go wild!

Personal Growth - Star of the Show

In my quest for personal growth I’ve come across extremely useful information from a number of sources, books mainly. This information corresponded with parts of me that were already aware of the information but had yet to put it into the right perspective. Though I’m quite sure there are a number of ‘self-help’ books that are not as helpful as they claim to be I have found some books which were eye-openers in the areas I needed. This article is a result of information from such a book, “You Can Choose to be Happy” in this case. I would definitely recommend the book to anyone, especially if you find the following information to be as useful as I did when I first read it.

We all have our moments in life where we feel like not all is going as we had hoped it would. Our general emotions may be leaning towards depression. We may feel alone, drained, unappreciated or unsupported. The people around us try to understand and help us but what do they know? They don’t know us as good as we know ourselves. They most likely don’t know how we truly feel.

Have you ever had this happen to you? Have you ever felt like everything was working against you? It’s highly likely that you have. Because sometimes the world doesn’t seem entirely fair. And at times it’s easy to forget the value of everything around you. Everything may feel out of your control and it may seem like your life is living you instead of you living your life.

It’s at times like this that maybe you wish you could be a movie star. The center of attention, the character in the movie that all of the other characters revolve around. Respected and recognized. But that dream may feel like it’s far away, or impossible. You could never fulfill such an important role. Or could you? It’s easy to look at all the depressing things going on and to forget about the things you already have, the things you are. You are the star of your own life!

Think of your life as a movie with yourself as the central character. You are the main character and star. Everything that happens to you is of importance to the plot. The ups and downs in your life define the character of the movie, the central character. And they are all important to the viewer. The viewer wants to watch the main character grow, and keep going no matter how bad the odds. Your growth and development over the course of the movie are the main themes. They define the movie and your life. How are you doing so far?

If you ever do feel down it helps to think of your life as a movie. Every action you take is of importance to the plot, to the main character. Through personal growth a character is born that can face even the toughest challenge. And it will be a movie many would love to see.

Personal Growth

I’m 20 years old, single, live with my parents and don’t go to school or have a job. Through the eyes of society it would be easy to see me as a failure. Indeed looking through the eyes of my 16-year old self I probably would have considered myself a failure. How could I be in this position, and what on Earth could I be doing with my time then? I’ll be telling you all about it in a series of articles entitled Personal Growth. Let’s start at the beginning.

PERSONAL GROWTH PART 1

After I quit college and literally had half a year of doing nothing ahead of me I, with help, worked out an epic schedule of how to spend every day. Every day I would be working from 9:45 to 16:30, be it on finding my life’s goal, finding a new study, finding work or working on personal growth. The first and latter of which have had the most impact on me. Searching for your true life’s goal and working on personal development are activities I would truly encourage everyone to do. And to me it was important that I got to spend so much time on them, far away from the responsibilities of work and college. This half year to me would be all about myself on a level deeper than I had originally imagined.

It’s like some strange mirror. You look at yourself and you see this person, but this person is not really you. You don’t understand his true motivations, don’t know what really drives him or brings him down, what makes him happy or sad. You know of him what you would know of a friend, perhaps not even a good friend. It feels like you only see the outside and the true person that he is, is buried deep beneath the surface, too far for you to see. Yet this person is you. Should you not know everything?

It would surprise people how little they actually know about themselves. It certainly surprised me, shocked me even. It made me feel uncertain of the person I was. But it also fascinated me. How could I know so little of myself, the person I had been for the last 20 years? I was dying to find out more because all the answers would be somewhere in there, hidden from me until the moment I would go deep enough to find them. The answers to questions as, ‘What is my true life’s goal?’, ‘How can I truly be happy?’ and ‘What matters most to me?’. I’m actually very glad to tell you that I have already found the answer to the former but I’ll tell you all about that at a later date.

It’s only been close to half a year that I’ve been truly working on personal development, though the first step was taken about three years ago. I still remember it very well. It was a short monologue, given to me, which lasted about 1 or 2 minutes tops. Yet it changed the way I look at life dramatically, for the better as well. But I’ll get into that moment in a later article as well. For now I want to focus on how I view personal development. This will get us into a nice starting position for future articles about the subject.

As I said working on personal development feels like looking in the mirror but from a third-person perspective. You have to take a look at yourself in an objective way, without judging yourself. This is way harder than it sounds but it’s the first step to change. See once you know what parts of yourself you like and dislike you can choose which parts to enhance and which to discard. These parts are not limited to health, hobbies, career and stuff like that. The deeper parts are about thoughts and emotions you may feel. How does it work with you? What makes you happy? What makes you sad? Which thoughts provoke what kind of emotions? This is all personal development on a deeper level, a level I had never imagined when I first started this all. This is the part where personal development truly becomes personal growth.

When I first started working on personal development I spent time trying to change habits that were either good or bad for me. I would spend more time on the good habits and less on the bad habits. This is an amazing way to change your daily routine and make you a generally happier and better-organized person, but it was only when I started to look at my thoughts and emotions that I truly felt like changing my life and myself. And this is where a lot of my time is going to lately. I’ve been reading books about personal growth and am trying to change myself for the better, even trying to control my thoughts and emotions, a feat I would never have assumed possible before I started this all. I could seriously talk about it all until I collapse, but I think I’ll leave it at this for now. As stated in the beginning of the post, this article was only the start of a series of articles further exploring my take on personal development and growth. I hope you find it as interesting as I do and maybe someday you will go through all these things yourself. Perhaps someday you’ll, like me, experience things you didn’t think were possible at all. 

The Bucket List

Some of you may have already noticed, but for those of you that haven't I'll tell. From now on this blog is divided in pages. So far there are two. The first is the one you are on right now, the homepage so to speak. All the articles I post will be on this page. The other page I have is for my bucket list. Basically it's a list of all the things I want to do before I die. It was hugely inspirational to make and if you want to know a bit more about me it's a great place to have a look. Maybe you could even make one for yourself. I'll regulalrly update my bucket list if I find another goal that I absolutely want to complete before I die, or if I complete a goal. If I do complete a goal I'll probably post an article about it as well. Because well, that's how I am.

Songwriter Special pt. 3

Sometimes when you listen to music you can't help but listen to the text and think to yourself "this is awesome". There are some brilliant songtexts out there which I would love to share, which is why I decided to hold the Songwriter Special. This feature is about songtexts which are absolutely brilliant, be they comical, honest or poetic.


This time it's a mixed bag of poetry and honesty and I find myself loving the song more and more. What is it about? To some it may seem as the life of a rockstar. Sex, drugs, rock and roll and to hell with all the rules. Do everything as you want to and as stated, "live fast and die young". To me there is a deeper meaning to it however. To me it's the choice the artists make. Not content with the 'rules' of everyday life, the drag of the 9 to 5 jobs they choose something else. They choose to step away from the life most people lead and live a life of risks instead. Though I don't think it would be a wise idea to live life as is shown in the song, I do think the song embodies the way some people look at life, including me. I'd rather take risks in life than choose the 9 to 5 job which would not make me happy at all. The song I'm talking about is:


MGMT  -  Time to Pretend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sArxl4TR8K0


I'm feeling rough, I'm feeling raw, I'm in the prime of my life.
Let's make some music, make some money, find some models for wives.
I'll move to Paris, shoot some heroin, and fuck with the stars.
You man the island and the cocaine and the elegant cars.

This is our decision, to live fast and die young.
We've got the vision, now let's have some fun.
Yeah, it's overwhelming, but what else can we do.
Get jobs in offices, and wake up for the morning commute.

Forget about our mothers and our friends
We're fated to pretend
To pretend
We're fated to pretend
To pretend

I'll miss the playgrounds and the animals and digging up worms
I'll miss the comfort of my mother and the weight of the world
I'll miss my sister, miss my father, miss my dog and my home
Yeah, I'll miss the boredom and the freedom and the time spent alone.

There's really nothing, nothing we can do
Love must be forgotten, life can always start up anew.
The models will have children, we'll get a divorce
We'll find some more models, everything must run it's course.

We'll choke on our vomit and that will be the end
We were fated to pretend
To pretend
We're fated to pretend
To pretend

Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah