That Southern Vibe

What is it? I can’t really define it. Its a sense of things and the world. I can only describe it using the following images:
Imagine a mango cream pie. Its smooth texture and soft constitution playing with your tongue. Neither too sweet nor too sour. Its just right. It’s the texture that makes it good, and perhaps, healthier than most other pastries. Its the perfect dessert to cap off a great seafood dinner, where the natural fruit sweetness softly, not abruptly, pushes away the residual fish flavors. If the dessert were a person, it will only ask that you like it for what it is, and is more than willing to adjust to what you want to make of it. It grows into you slowly, egging you on to ask for more.
Imagine that nice looking girl (or guy) who doesn’t go out of his way to change you as you deepen your relationship. He or she simply delights in your presence and seeks a common understanding with you, rather than forces you to see things his way. He or she accepts you with little questioning, and so does his or her family.
The southern vibe is a laid back sense of the world, characterized by warmth and openness. It takes in all things and delights in diversity. It is a tolerant culture, often faulted for not having a conviction, whereas THAT is the conviction. It does not expect the world to conform to it. It seeks harmony rather than strife, and has no chip on their shoulders about being better than others, nor wanting others to conform to their standards. The apex of this vibe is Cebu, and its legs are the Visayas and Mindanao. They all take pride in concrete things like achievement rather than an empty sense of superiority.

Near Death

(My halloween, kalag-kalag(in Cebuano) and Undas (Tagalog)special - what we fear and look forward to!)

Watched a nice documentary on zone reality yesterday about near death experiences. Certain things really struck me. One of this was the statistic that 90 percent of those who went through a near death experience reported seeing a bright light at the end of darkness. What was most interesting was the intense feelings that accompanied this vision: a strong sense of self love and a love for life and mankind. Not a fear, mind you, but a warmth and contentment.

As they woke up, many relate that they went through an intense spiritual experience. This was accompanied by a desire to be one with the world, and help others in need. A great love of self, replete with higher self-worth and self-esteem that seemed to have erased many anxieties they went through in their previous lives. A conclusion drawn by researchers is that "they no longer fear death, and do not fear living."

To my mind, it is transcendence to a higher level of concsiousness. Forged through an intense experience, we are able to transcend ourselves and obtain a higher level of meaning in life.

Interestingly, a pediatrician who documented this phenomenon in children had the kids draw their experience- the images were the same. The feelings were the same...

Eerie? Perhaps, for some. Inspiring for me. I no longer fear death and the after life. Monsters dont scare me.

On the lighter side, a friend of my wife went through the same near death experience and reported that the intense feeling of contentment was way better than an orgasm. Why am i not surprised? If its so out of this world, then it better be good!

Let's get real....This is what i fear:

1. compounded credit card Debts.
2. Unpaid taxes with penalties.
3. Bungee jumping, skydiving, ferris wheels and roller coasters (things my wife absolutely loves)

Hence, an intense halloween experience for me is sitting in a roller coaster beside a BIR (internal revenue) examiner!

This year, i hope to slowly get over my fear. BIR volunteers? Free roller coaster ride!

Being Proactive with yourself and your challenges
-paradigm shifts, stratagems, and why positive thinking makes them work for us

Two authors and thinkers came to mind as i was developing this realization and learning:

Stephen Covey makes a good point with the need for a paradigm shift rather than just behavioral and personality change. Seven habits starts from this deep change, or shift, in paradigms, which are the perspectives with which we view phenomena or situations and people around us. I guess i've arrived at that. These Perspectives or paradigms really can have a strong influence on your emotional response. Stick to old paradigms, and you often find it difficult to understand and accept situations and develop new ways of adapting and djusting. Shifting paradigms makes us and see things from different perspectives give you a better sense, understanding and acceptance of the situation. You are less stressed and emotional when you figure things out from a different perspective, or paradigm. You tend to think faster, and adapt more quickly to the changing situation.

Sun Tzu, one of my favorites, always admonishes against being emotional, drastic, and mercurial. Its the pitfall of lesser skilled generals. Being cool and calculating, therefore is a virtue in the art of war. When emotions get to you, you lose that ability to calculate your moves, because you lose your cool. Revealing emotions therefore are only a deliberate tactic of the skillful general to obtain certain objectives among your men, in the same way coaches need to use emotion to drum up a necessary response. This is why,m in the art of war, we wage war by STRATAGEM. I translate that as "Organized diskarte," where a series of moves are planned and executed swiftly in an organized manner, enabling the element of surprise, leaving your opponent dumbfounded and confused as a result. When you look back at your enemy, you are already a series of steps ahead, and can cut him off if you need to. Again, when we are emotional or easily emotionally affected, we lose sight of executing the stratagems properly, and always falter because we are prone to inconsistencies.

For when we drive ourselves on the road to mour success, or we need to gain specific advantage, we need to be calm and cool to enable us to see the situation in the light of a paradigm shift and make the necessary adjustments in our stratagems. When we look at challenges this way, our probabilities of overcoming the obstacles are higher! Seeing things, events and people's actions as part of a paradigm, and planning and adjusting by stratagem enables us to go beyond simply keeping up with and reacting to situations. We sieze the advantage and make our oppooinents react to us, and follow our lead. it therefore makes us PROACTIVE.


Positive thinking as a paradigm shift that builds good stratagems

For me, the best way of being proactive is to think positively. It enables paradigm shifts and encourages you to face situations in a positive light. You are lighter . Being a negative thinker makes you heavy and slow, since you hold on to too many preconceptions that are a disincentive to being open-minded, creative and agile in the way we see the world and the situation at hand.

Many good stratagems are build out of positive thinking for three reasons:
One, it enables us to look ourselves in a confident positive light. We are more able, because we THINK we are more able to face situations and deal with their appurtenant issues. Secondly, we see more of the situation rather than the limited, negative, often cynical and prejudiced perspective that narrows our field of vision and hence, limits our response. These are fetters to our agility.

The third reason may work for some, but not for all people and situations. Being a positive thinker makes us see the good in people, and draws out this goodness as a means to build teamwork, or achieve resolution of conflicts. Often, non-cooperation and strife are born out of a lack of good self-concept among the protagonists. Bringing these out helps build the trust and confidence in people, especially in the way they see each other and the situation they are in. It requires, however, that WE have a paradigm shift towards seeing others in a positive, good light.

Over-all, this takes practice and time to train the mind and heart to be positive in our outlook. Good stratagems will follow.

Difficult people train us to love. Really.

Difficult people train us to love. Really.

There are many types of difficult people. The most difficult people are those we are least prepared to deal with or understand. Often, these are people we don’t know, and may have emerged from part of the world, or a time in history where cultures and circumstances are different from what we have been used to.

For some of them, what is right, wrong, beautiful, sexy, sweet, sour, yummy, yucky may be different from ours. Sometimes, they would even force their definition on us, exacerbating the difference and making us, and our own definitions small or inferior to theirs. As such, they can be arrogant, uncomfortable, even offensive. These are the people who are overly able compared to us. We find them difficult because we feel put down by them. Our self-esteem is affected when they put us down and make us feel small.

Likewise, they can be weak, needy or sick, deaf and dumb, neurotic or psychotic, morally reprehensible, the emotionally needy, drug dependents, alcoholics, lazy or poor, gasatador, estapador, liars, cheats, or the no-reads and no-writes of the world. Again, compared to us, these are the lesser able people in the world. Sometimes, they are people who have selfish desires for us. We often scoff at them, or want little to do with them because of the energies we perceive they remove from us, our precious time they waste, or the harm we think they bring. We see ourselves as better people than they are. When we put them down, we sometimes do it to boost our self-esteem.

Both types of difficult people become more difficult when they happen to be a parent, a brother or sister, or a close family member. This makes us often obliged to deal with them while we would rather avoid them. Having to deal with these attributes day in and out tires us, and their familiarity to us breeds a contempt and callousness towards them. What makes it even more uncomforting for us to face these different, difficult people, is when we were raised in a social class or community where we were expected to mingle only with people considered appropriate. We are sometimes admonished to build our pride and self-esteem by acting negatively, either bucking them or avoiding them.

Often, our parents or those who raised us are the inadvertent and unknowing culprit. Sometimes, they are the overly able people who put us down, or are the lesser able people we feel contempt for . We are especially harsh towards them because we feel that they, of all people, should be trusted by us. We feel rejected, used and hurt by these people we are supposed to trust. .Broken trust exacerbates the contempt against them. The irony is that when we react negatively towards both these difficult people, it betrays our LACK of self-esteem.

Often, in our current relationships, love is premised on meeting material needs, such as money, sexual desire, professional advancement and the satisfaction of emotional needs and wants, even moral arrogance. The greater irony is that real love can only grow on the good soil that is proper self-esteem. Without it, we become slaves of our self-esteem issues, and victims of those who threaten or want to harm us - for they also suffer from the same lack of self-esteem. Life then becomes simply a game of meeting these wants and desires. When we cant play this game of life well, we despair and get depressed.

Real Love is the ideal antidote to self esteem issues. It allows us to cross over our material needs and experience others properly in he light of caring and compassion, warmth and openness. It takes away pretense and conditions, and makes us patient and kind, sincere and real. This love transcends the material considerations, enabling us to accept, and empower others.

Real love is the seedbed for fruitful, long term relationships and partnerships. This is especially important for building families and raising children, for we want our spouses, friends and families to feel secure in our love, and feel the warmth and acceptance that will help make them great people, and real lovers, to others. Of course, the material and emotional needs are met, but we have to go beyond just meeting these needs and desires.

Real love is God’s love. He has the ultimate capacity for loving even the most difficult people. He loves us even more than our mothers, no matter how difficult we may have been, or are. He has given us all the chances in the world and never saw us for our ability, material possessions or emotional needs, even our past. Real love begins with our own realization that God loves us deeply, no matter who we are. It is knowing this love that we feel confident, and our self-esteem is built. He loves us for us. No other person can affect or malign this wellspring of self-esteem, security and confidence his love brings.

Not everybody can give real love. Some people have a bigger capacity for it, many don’t. It requires maturity, training, exposure and realization deep inside us. Real love requires commitment and decision, for loving difficult people may often require the best of us, and our highest self-esteem, confidence and inner strength to see beyond the difficulty of people. God encourages us to love like that. Without conditions. To love them for them, in the same way he loves us for us.

SO when we come across these difficult people, we no longer judge them as overly able or lesser able, for ability is not the real source of worth or self-esteem. In fact, we don’t even need to judge, for even the act of judging affects us, and betrays our low self-esteem.

What we need to do is use the love to make these difficult people grow into real lovers themselves: confident, empowered with the proper self-esteem to enable them to love others as well.

All we have to do is love. Really.