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.