listening

There are some people who are gifted with an extraordinary ability to hear things, memorise them and then reiterate them word perfect. It's pretty amazing how some people can just pick things up, store them and replay  it back almost instantaneously.

But is there really more to it or is listening merely utilising your auditory capabilities to decode decibels into meaningful data for your brain to interpret?

One of my friend had learn to become more than just a father. His daughter, Lisa was born autistic. So for him, it didn't only involve learning about diaper change and feeding time, he had to learn to communicate with Lisa. It wasn't easy from day 1 to begin with because it was very difficult to communicate with Lisa. He would find her sitting in one corner just rocking back and forth staring into blank space and mumbling to herself. He wanted more than just to care for Lisa, he wanted her to have a normal life like every other kid. But before he could hope for her to have a normal life, he knew he would have to breach the communication gap that stood as a barrier.

It took him weeks to find some way to communicate to Lisa until he discovered it by accident. Apart from rocking back and forth, mumbling to herself, he noticed patterns in the way Lisa reacted depending on her mood. For example, Lisa would grip her soft toy really hard if she was hungry, curl her toes really tightly when she needed to take a leak, and a myriad of other patterns he noted in Lisa. When the patterns started to form more conspicuously, he grabbed a notepad and started to record the patterns he noticed for future references.

The result, he became more than a father to Lisa. He became Lisa' best friend. He knew what she wanted, what she was asking for or at times, he simply knew Lisa just wanted a nice comforting hug. It was almost like communicating on an emphatic subliminal level of which an open line of communication was available between only the two of them.

Communication doesn't always have to mean someone talking and another listening. It also involved a huge part of observation and understanding. Those involve your eyes and your heart. That's how Lisa and her dad bonded. Not by words but through gesture, body language and a certain degree of mumbling.

Listening requires more than your ears. It's your ears, eyes and most importantly, your heart. It means communicating with another not just via literary words but with a tinge of empathy.

Knowing

Have you ever stopped to think about the good things that has happened in your life and wondered if it were ever planned or premeditated?

Now, here's what I learned from a well known CEO. Someone who gets featured in magazines and newspapers. Grab a piece of paper and start listing all the achievements in your life. I am going to assume you are able to list down at least 10 things.

Once you have listed them, take a read through and there is a high likelihood that you'll notice that about 60% more of the items listed had happened without you planning for it.

Of course I don't mean you should just leave everything to chance but it goes to show that not everything needs planning. Sometimes. Just sometimes, gold does fall in your arms.

So.... Sometimes, going with the flow is simply the solution to a good ending. Planning is good but too much planning and you end up doing a lot procrastination only with little action.

Hence, getting on our feet running instead should be the kick start to whatever you do. Then as you run your life's marathon, planning in between will point you in he right direction.

Success isn't about planning it out. It's about doing it and doing it with conviction.
Best regards, Micky

No pain no gain...

Not everyone agrees with the statement, "no pain no gain". I guess it really depends on the circumstance and the level of pain.
Recently, I had one hell of an experience after having injuring my knee for the 5th or 6th time. One of the risks that comes with playing squash as a favourite sport. Thankfully this time it wasn't as serious as before. Last time I had a torn hamstring that left me walking with crutches for a good 4 weeks. This time around I had an inflamed ligament. Walking wasn't a problem but certain angles really hurt.

Thinking the ligament was painful was a very wrong thing to do. The treatment I had to undergo was a lot more painful. A month of physiotherapy and another month of rehabilitation workout at the gym.

The pain is one thing. But what I gained was very meaningful and I learned a lot. All this while I thought I had been strengthening my knee well enough but I never knew strengthening major muscle sets isn't sufficient because even minor muscle sets mattered when it came to explosiveness, movement and stability.

Plus, when we think of strengthening our muscles, the first thing you think of is pumping iron. Surprise, surprise even simple free weight exercises could be pivotal to muscle strengthening.

At the gym, my trainer worked with me to build myself back up bit by bit. Also, despite all the iron pumping, it's when we are resting after exercising that our muscles build up and not during exercise.

I could go on and on about the stuff I learned throughout the recovery period. But the point I want to bring about is the fact that sometimes getting hurt isn't all that bad. There are still things you can learn, improve and impart to others.

So.... Sometimes it is true that no pain is no gain :0)

Best regards, Micky

Everyone wants to save someone

It was a long day for Hank. He had just spent almost 20 hours in the operating theater working on a patient would was brought in on extremely short notice for heart complications. But the patient wasn't just any patient. It was his own brother who suddenly had cardiac arrest while he was halfway running a marathon. A marathon that meant a lot to him because it was a marathon that he trained for for almost a year. Hank fought the full 20 hours trying to bring his brother back. He didn't want to give up, he couldn't give up on his only brother, Jimmy.

As Hank operated on Jimmy, in the back of his head it was as if a video cam was playing back all the good time Hank and Jimmy shared. Jimmy's first birthday, first toy, first bicycle and all the other rainbows of life he and Jimmy shared. Hank fought back tears throughout the ordeal. Jimmy was his only family left after their parents passed away in a fatal car crash 3 years ago. Hank had lost his parents, he wasn't going to lose his brother.

20 hours and eventually Jimmy must have decided to walk into the white light to be with their parents. Hank sat slumped in the outpatient waiting area with his operating mask hanging from his neck, hands covering his face, weeping for having failed to save his only family left. Wrecked and hard broken were probably understatements of Hank's feelings.

After that ordeal, Hank started to lose himself in depression. Every morning dark circles were visible beneath his blood shot eyes. He hardly ate complete meals, he could hardly concentrate when patients consulted him. It reached a point so bad that certain days Hank just didn't show up to work and leaving his nurses in a pinch having to cancel all his appointments. Eventually one day when his nurse, Diana tried to reach Hank on his cellphone and house phone and no one answered, she decided to visit him at his home. She was going to let something this take her crush away.

When she got to Hank's home, she thanked God Hank left a spare key under the carpet and entered into his house which was pretty much in a mess. She called to Hank and got no response. That's when she decided to do a spot check of the entire house. As she reached into Hank's room, she heard running water and immediately went to check the bathroom. To her horror, she saw Hanks slumped next to the bathtub filled with blood. Hank had slit his wrist.

Diana immediately called the ambulance.

Three days later at the hospital, Hank is finally conscious after having lost so much blood. He opens his eyes to see Diana and realises he failed to kill himself. He looks at Diana and turns away not wanting her to see him this way.

After a brief moment of silence, he finally spoke.

"I wanted to join my family. There wasn't much reason for me to live anymore having no one around and having failed to save Jimmy."

"Hank, why did you become a doctor?"

"Save people. I wanted to save people."

"How are you going to save people if you are dead?"

"Doesn't matter anymore. I couldn't even save my brother for Christ sakes"

"Hank. You can't save everyone all the time. Even the best doctors in the world will tell you that. The result could have been the same had a different doctor worked on Jimmy."

"I tried my best! I tried!"

"I know Hank. Everyone wants to save someone. That includes you. But if you decided to take your own life, you'd have failed to achieve saving someone. Saving somone would also mean saving yourself first before you can save someone. Dying is easy. It's living that's difficult, Hank."

With the help of Diana, Hank eventually got out of depression and moved on to be a very established heart surgeon. Today, every time he speaks to a patient in dire conditions, he always says this:-

"Time is never on our side. God took millenias to create the universe that only allows us to live up to about a hundred years old. But you and I probably get only 75 years to live. Everyone wants to save someone, and I want to save you. Please don't give up on yourself because dying is easy, it's living that's difficult."

different colours, up and down

We share two things in common when it comes to our daily lives. Colours and direction. Colours and direction can then be best described by a fairy wheel!

Ferris wheel always comes in many different colours, much like how our moods can be described by colours. At the same time a fairy wheel always goes round and round, up and down.

I took a picture of the ferris wheel but never really got the chance to sit on it because I had too heavy a meal and didn't want to risk myself puking out the window of the ferris wheel when I was on vacation in Adelaide. But towards the end of the day when I was leaving the Royal Adelaide Show, it dawn on me that our lives are like one big ferris wheel.

Each time we step into a different ferris wheel, we sit in a different coloured cabin, like how our moods and experiences differ from day to day. Then, once we sit into the fairy wheel cabin, it takes us on a ride. We go up and come back down. Again, we are continuously going up and down in our lives experiencing the peaks and valleys life has to offer.

As we come to the end of 2011, the fairy wheel of life is slowly coming back to where it started before taking us on a ride. It'll then proceed to take another round bringing up and down again.

Just remember this - up or down, peak or valley, no one promises a smooth ride all the time in anything we do but whether it's up or down, only we can keep ourselves going no matter how tough things are. God gave us the science defying brain, mind and emotions. These are the three tools we must continue to use and not take for granted if we want to survive the ups and downs of our lives.

Happy New Year to all of you out there and for those who have continued reading my posts. I thank you very much and hope my writings have been reading pleasures to you.

How do you deal with it?

Growing up entails more than just growing taller, looking older and in certain cases, balding. Growing up or older probably often involves a certain degree of pain. Pain because we tend to lose something along our journey of growing up as we get absorbed in the only constant in our life - change.

But the pain of losing something dear to us - favourite toy, favourite blanket, favourite pillow, will always linger because we tend to cling on to these favourite items. Clinging on to these items tend to give us a form of security. It's when we lose it, we suddenly feel naked.

Losing the attachment is what that really makes us feel that sorrow in our hearts, the pain of losing something. But I once read somewhere that sometimes even though we may feel the sadness of loss, our heart rejoice deep in us for what we have gained.

Our first reaction when faced with loss is typically stress, anxiety and sometimes anger. We lash out or try to reach out to anything we can grab to feel a sense of security like trying to hug your lucky bolster when you were a toddler. It is times like this we truly grow, from the process of evolution, we learn to cope and handle our anxieties. We are actually truly adaptive creatures, naturally seeking out opportunities in adversity. Every valley we stumble upon will be temporary and we soon find ourselves on the peek staring down the valley you just overcame.

Like waiting for your turn to get a train ticket in a massively packed train station during the holiday season. You can choose to wait patiently, knowing that it will be a matter of time before it is your turn. Likewise, you can wait with the utmost frustration, cursing the crowd in your heart, but it wouldn't miraculously move you up the queue. We just have to deal with it as it comes.

So how do you deal with it?

Maybe it's time to let nature take control

When we talk about movies, inspirational stories, success stories, have you ever stopped to think and notice that there is always a common theme across all the media mediums and genre?

Personally, I'd say yes - it will always be about someone following low and bringing himself back up. It is after all a good seller in terms of stories because otherwise there really wouldn't be much to write about and shoot about.

Let's look about real life instead. Our lives. Yours and mine. Our lives, if you ever stopped to notice revolves a whole lot of trial and error before we finally get things right. I don't know if I would be right to say this but it is almost as if it is embedded in our DNA for us to be naturally inquisitive - always asking questions about everything about us. I do not deny, it is this inquisitiveness that brings about progress and technologies that continue to leap frog upon exiting technologies. Progress has been burgeoning over the last few decades, to say the very least!

However, there are certain aspects to things that could categorically describe us as, "pushing things a bit too far". For example, when you if you drop a couple of apple seeds on a vacant piece of land (assuming it has the basic nutrients to be deemed fertile). Come rain and shine, what you will initially see are a couple of small apple plants popping out from the ground. That's nature's work.

Just leave them there and let nature take its cause, those plants will eventually become apple bearing trees. That too is nature's work.

Now, if you leave them alone for too long, branches grow out of control, dead leaves fall all over the place. Eventually, enough branches cross each other and the trees start fighting for nutrients from the limited land. Plus, enough dampness and nature's call will bring about insects that basically do more damage to the plants and the soil around it. That's nature's work too.

Question is - at what point do we step in to ensure that nature does not erode itself?

For example, as a baby grows up into kid, we step in to make sure school is there to ensure that education brings him up in the right direction from a social standpoint. Without education, a child is at the minimum illiterate.

Pollution happens, we step in to establish controls to control the level of pollution and hopefully have a more sustainable future.

When we fall sick, we take antibiotics and other types of medication to recover from the sickness.

Still in the beginning stages of the 21st century, have you notice lately, that we have not been very successful in correcting nature's cause? Flood becoming more uncontrollable, weather going crazy, earthquakes, volcanoes, oil leakages in the ocean. All this is happening and all we can do is be reactive in implementing damage control.

For the past decades, maybe we have been stepping in between nature for far too long and too much - building dams, hydroelectric plants, mining, tree felling.

From the context of an apple farm earlier, maybe it's time we stop trying to improve the apple fruit from the apple tree but instead try to trim the edges of the tree to keep them nice and neat. We may have been too near sighted constantly harping on the fruit not realising the trees have been growing out of control.

Maybe it's time to let nature take control instead.........