Stop worrying, instead count your blessings

I have been observing every person that I encountered everyday and what I always noticed about them is that many of them are whining. Complaining about everything. Well, I understand that life is really hard these days- what with the world-wide recession, the stressful traffic, unemployment, H1N1, high prices of commodity goods and so forth. But whining will not help us. Let us stop to think awhile. Perhaps we need to change our ways, let us become more appreciative despite of life difficulties. This is the prevailing theme of one of the short note that I post Yes life is hard, but then come to think of it- there is more to life than worrying. Worrying would not help us face the challenge of our times. But looking at things differently will do. There are still many things in this life to be thankful for- - that we are still alive and can still worry; the dead could not- that we still have air to breath no matter how stale - the dead could - that we can still eat- there are others who could no longer taste food- that we can still walk in our worn out shoes, there are people who have no feet at all- we can still hear the baby's cry, even the howling of dogs, the irritating noise of screeching wheels-still for those who could not-these could be music. There are many things to be thankful than being sorry. Sometimes we are overwhelmed by our problems, yet we have a God that is bigger than our problems. Let us count our blessings and we will see that we have a hundredfold of them that our difficulties. I believe that looking at our difficulties in a bigger frame of mind will embolden us, give us the confidence to take the challenges of life. This morning I realize that worrying will get me nowhere. But a change of attitude will...

She says

I think I could say without fear of contradiction that Filipino women have come a long way. I come across a blog that caters to women, although I'm not sure if it is exclusively for women and I feel so happy with the way they handle issues. Although I observed that it is purely women talk on lighter issues- I know soon I would be privy to more serious exchange of ideas. The topics like " does size matter" no longer make the women blushed. I read about some of the posted comments and I smiled. Frankly, I have never think much about it. By the way, does size really matter? But I have to comment on that later.

I had written about the new law on women- The Magna Carta on Women. I said it could be an emancipation of Filipino women- In my opinion, the emancipation of women is more than gender equality it is more on women empowerment. It is the right of women to speak their minds, to do what they want and not be dictated upon by false sense of morality. Our society has adjusted to the women liberation where women could do as they want. However, modern Filipina are more discerning individuals- and are more assertive of their rights. They know what they want, and they certainly have a way to getting what they want. I could cite so many women who are modern icons and the list would be so long. How I admire their articulateness, and the things that they accomplished- While there are still who raised their eyebrows on single mothers; mistresses, lesbians- there are getting fewer. I see many women in compromised situations who rise above their mistakes and emerged not only strongers but winners. The double standard of morality is not as intense as thirty years ago. But I don't imply that modern women have no sense of morality- they have but they a discerning kind of morality. Before I forget - does size really matters ? Of course not, what matters is your man and how he put his whole consciousness-body and soul to put you both in blissful union.

If you care enough-spread happiness

From twitter, I read about a quote shared by literaryquote that says, " Remember that happiness is as contagious as gloom. It should be the first duty of those who are happy to let others know of their gladness". This is the essence of caring and living life. Let us spread joy, instead of woe. Let us make a difference in the life of others by caring enough to share the happiness that we have. There is no sense living if live the way we please uncaring and unmindful of others. Perhaps this is the problem why real peace eluded this earth. All we care about is ourselves. The wasteful lifestyle and the destructive way we live easily endangered the lives of everyone on this planet. But still we do not bother. What this world needs is caring people. People who care enough to share happiness. There is so much that we can do to spread joy and happiness to our fellowmen, as there is so much that we can do to bring grief and loneliness to them. God has created us with a gift of free will, we have a choice whether we spread happiness or spread loneliness. If we spread goodwill, the return would be tenfold of bliss, but if we choose to bring pain and grief to others, the return would be tenfold woes. Let us be bothered and start caring. Spread happiness and be ten times happier.

Live life or survive life

How are we existing? Do we live or do we merely survive? How's life, we may be asked: our common response is : "oh fine". But is it so? Let us reflect upon ourselves how we deal with our lives. First do we find joy in living? Do we appreciate what life has to offer? Do we crave for more of life? Do we want to live life to the fullest? If so, do we appreciate waking up every morning- seeing the rising sun in summer, or seeing the fine drops of snow during winter. Do we appreciate the gentle rustling of the wind on our face?Do we feel awe at God's creation - no matter how small and insignificant though they seemed to be? If we answer affirmatively, then we enjoy life. We are living because we never fail to notice everything that we encounter everyday. But if we do not appreciate and notice these things, then we are not living, our existence is merely surviving. We are too busy with coping, with trying to find fulfillment in life, finding satisfaction and happiness to what the world has to offer instead of what life has to offer. As a result, we lead a stressful life and a never ending quest for happiness and contentment. Most of us live in despair- and angry with the world. Many social problems including family disintegration and disharmony in society are the results of merely surviving instead of living. Let us learn to live again. Let us live again and see how we can transform our life. A change of attitude towards life is an important step in renewing our commitment to life and living.

Enjoying more free time for yourself

How many times do we complain about not having enough time for ourselves? It is a problem common to all busy people. As a result we suffer from exhaustion and stress even burnt out. And being stressed is not good to our health. Henrik Edberg posted an article that could perhaps help all workholics out there. Actually, it is his tips for enjoying free time for summer. But I believe these steps could be applied all year round and like to share these tips for those who want to enjoy more time for themselves. Please read on the following article from Henrik Edberg:
Here are three simple tips that have enabled me to find more time for myself to do so. And since I have a lot to do this summer I will apply them even more diligently than usual. I hope you will find these three tips helpful too to get more time out in the sun, to work on your book or blog, to play some Frisbee or just relax and take it easy.
1. Find out where your time is really going.
This is like when you are trying to lose fat. It’s very easy to fool yourself and think you are doing “pretty good” when you in actually are not doing really that good. Thinking that you are doing “pretty good” won’t get you’re the results you want though. Actually doing what is needed gives you the results you want.
An easy way to stop fooling yourself in both cases is to use a log. If you are trying to lose fat, use Fitday.com to keep and eye on how much you are really eating.
If you want to find out where your time in a normal day or week are going create a simple time log in a Word-document or something similar and simply type down notes about everything you are doing.
I have for example found that I have spent too much time on social networks like Facebook over the last few months. I will cut that stuff down to a minimum to be able to have more time to relax and rejuvenate. And to keep up with the writing on this blog and other important stuff.
2. Realise that you don’t have to do everything you do.
And that the sky might not fall if you do/don’t do something. One thing that’s stopping people from improving themselves or just finding time for themselves is all the things they ”have” to do. You don’t really have to do anything.
Try to look at it as you choosing what to do instead.
Of course, if you choose to do or not to do something there will be consequences. Sometimes big, sometimes small. Sometimes bad, sometimes good. Sometimes one thing disguised as the opposite.
But the point is to take control of your life and feel like you choose. Instead of having your world choosing and controlling your life. This makes it easier to find out what isn’t really that important and eliminate or reduce to free up time for more interesting things.
3. Show up and just do it.
When you have found out what you are actually doing with your time and let go of some of the things you “had to do” then show up and just do the rest.
Instead of procrastinating, instead of thinking, instead of hoping someone else will do it or take an initiative, instead of rationalizing and inventing excuses for not doing something establish the habit of just doing it.
Most of the time you need to do it anyway sometime in the future and until you are more or less forced you’ll just waste a lot of time procrastinating and thinking – and feeling bad - about having to do whatever you need to do. And if you wait for someone else to do something about it can take a lot of time before someone does so. Establishing this habit can be a bit difficult if you are used to thinking - or over thinking - a lot.
One useful way that I’ve found to develop this habit is simply to not identify so much with my thoughts and emotions and realize that I can control them instead of the other way around. I still think you should think a bit. But after that it’s most often just better to go and do whatever you want to do.

H1N1 - the Philippines' Case

Unfortunately the Philippines is no longer H1N1 free country. As a I write this blog the inflicted Filipinos are more than 400 and still counting. Everyday our Department of Health Secretary appears on television announcing new cases of H1N1 in the country. Since this appearance seemed to be going regularly- I began to dread his appearance on television. What is being done to prevent the continues and unabated spread of the this virus?. I'm inclined to think that the government has not done enough to prevent the spread. The Philippines' situation is alarming- at the rate the virus is spreading compromises the health of the Filipinos making everyone almost vulnerable. I believe that a more proactive response from the government is in order. However, we need to be just as proactive ourselves. Sanitation is very important. Let us all be responsible people, making sure that we help in abating the spread of the virus by taking all healthy precautions. Equip our body with the essential vitamins to increase its resistance capability against this virus and all disease-causing organisms. Cover our mouths when sneezing and coughing. Avoid congested and humid places. There are so many things that we can do. It will not be so difficult for us if we have made it habit and lifestyle-clean-living.

Be a father

"Be a father" is a blog posted to salute the fathers. It is posted by Meta-Dad which I want to share with the rest of the bloggers. The topic of fatherhood has been all over the news recently with people buzzing about Obama’s recent fatherhood speech in Chicago where he stated, “What makes you a man is not the ability to have a child. It’s the courage to raise one.” These are strong words, to say the least.
Evidently, the Ad Council in conjunction with a number of government sponsored offices and organizations are using this buzz as an opportunity to raise awareness about the importance and the positive impact of active fathering.
An estimated 24 million children (34%) live absent their biological father.
Nearly 20 million children (27 percent) live in single-parent homes.
Children who live absent their biological fathers are, on average, at least two to three times more likely to be poor, to use drugs, to experience educational, health, emotional and behavioral problems, to be victims of child abuse, and to engage in criminal behavior than their peers who live with their married, biological (or adoptive) parents.
Children with involved, loving fathers are significantly more likely to do well in school, have healthy self-esteem, exhibit empathy and pro-social behavior, and avoid high-risk behaviors such as drug use, truancy, and criminal activity compared to children who have uninvolved fathers. [Source: Ad Council]
While I am not surprised at the statistics in the first two bullet points, I find the other two points a bit vague since it is implied that these children (without their biological fathers) don’t have an active male role-model in their life. There are enough cases where children are being fathered by an uncle, grandfather, or other family member or friend. Regardless, the point has been made that children benefit greatly from having a positive father figure in their life

How well do we know ourselves?

On Ms. Vernon website I come across a question that sets me thinking: how far can a man go to search himself? Just how far, indeed? Do I know myself? From a distance where there are multitude of people can I identify myself? Physically maybe yes, still may be not especially when you have a blurred vision. We identify ourselves because of the tag, the labels we have, i.e. our names, birthdate, parents' name, name of spouse and so forth. These are our personal information. Without them, perhaps we do not know ourselves. Who are we? Just how far to we go, indeed to search ourselves. Everyday we set out to a journey. Every experience that we have tells us something about ourselves. When we are hurt- either we get angry and hurt back or do we cry? When are loved- we are happy, we love and we care as well. Every tear that we cry; every laughter that we share and every love that we care-perhaps tell something about us-I don't know if I am making sense- but I just thought that if we try to understand ourselves- we could perhaps understand other people more-- and who knows we could be a little more caring.
When we know ourselves- we know how it feels to be alone and unloved, we will not dare be indifferent to those who are alone, unloved. We will not discriminate, become prejudice to those who are colored, poor, those who do not share our belief, our faith... When we know ourselves we know how it feels to lose someone we love in war, in terrorist attack- perhaps then we will not make our world a warpath where men kill not only each other, but even children, women and the helpless old people. When we know ourselves we know how it is to feel hungry, to be homeless- then we will learn not to be greedy and indifferent. I don't know we really ought to know ourselves better to become better and caring persons. Just how far: do we need to experience pain and sorrow to understand the feelings of those who are suffering. If it should be ... perhaps it would be better...

Computer and bloggers

Computer- truly an amazing invention. Imagine being in touch with the rest of the world. In a day that you want to relax, one needs to sit down opens one computer and sign in and viola- you have the worldful of good and interesting people to know at one's fingertips. Learn a great deal about their country, their culture through their lifestyle and many things. I'm glad at my age, I could still enjoy being blogger, being in facebook and being followed and following in twitter. Indeed it's wonderful to be a life. Smile...

Feeling Good

Yesterday I stumbled upon a very interesting blog post. It was about stress management. Using a glass of water to illustrate his point the blogger effectively taught us how to handle our problems and burdens. There are at least five ways that the blogger mentioned on how we can effectively deal with stress. I might visit his blog to share these steps. However, if we should positively think that there is no problem bigger than God. And for every problem is a solution. Perhaps it would make us feel good if not better.

Climate change

Climate change. I did not care much about these words. Perhaps I have been too busy to notice that there is something wrong in our times. Seasons come and seasons go , until Melenio (one of the strongest typhoon that hit the Philippines in recent history) came uprooting everything including our roof. I could only watched in terror as strong gushed of winds threw everything on its path. That was three years ago. But until now the experience remains unnerving. And since then, I began to take interest in observing and noting the changes in the climate. Typhoons are getting stronger and really frightening and , just when everyone is thinking of going to resorts and vacation, rains and even storms begin filing in our atmosphere. We could no longer turn deaf ears on the warnings of the people who had been tagged as alarmists in the past. We have destroyed our environment and until we do our share in taking care of what's left nothing will be left to the next generation. We have harm our world to the extent that we can not do much today, except perhaps to make the world more livable for the next generation. Let us save what is left of our environment. Let us start caring...

Rainy Days are here again

It's raining. The wet season is finally here. The roads are wet and slippery. The drivers and commuters need to be more careful. The drivers should check their cars, jeeps and taxis before starting the day. It pays to be cautious like doing some checking on your brakes, oil and tires. Commuters should follow road rules just as drivers do. Ride on designated areas. Use the sidewalks and cross on pedestrians' lanes only. Remember, live and let live...