Category: Reflections

It can be hard to sleep when we’re wide awake. It’s like trying to sleep during the daytime when we’re alert and full of energy. When it’s late and we need to sleep but we can’t, it’s like we know we’re losing sleep, know that we’ll be tired tomorrow, but even if we try, we can’t go to sleep for one reason or another.

We close our eyes, hoping that our thoughts will be quieted, hoping for tiredness to set in. But there’s still noise in our minds–discourse, music and sounds, perhaps. It’s like there’s brouhaha in our thoughts, and we can’t seem to escape it no matter where we go.

We jump out of bed, moving about restlessly as we try to figure out why we can’t sleep. In the process, we realize that there was something lingering in our thoughts–something troubling us, something that needs an answer, something that doesn’t want to be set aside any longer. It could be a question, an enigma, or a dilemma that we need to figure out.

That worry kept us awake. It hid from us, stood in the shadows of our thoughts rather than in the forefront of our minds. But once we became aware of it, we knew why we couldn’t sleep. And as soon as we addressed it, our minds could easily slumber.

Numbers are a huge part of our lives whether we realize it or not. Numbers play a major role in economics, finances, telling time, the calculations made by computers and machines . . . even our health in terms of our biometrics.

It could be said that numbers are everywhere. We use them because they’re precise compared to saying “many,” “some,” or even “a lot”. They’re used in GPS, in scheduling appointments and meetings, in making transactions online and in stores, and in the appraisals of houses, just to name a few. Without numbers, everything we would be an estimation–a rough guess.

It’s one of those things that we take for granted because it seems like it has always been around–will always be around. But what if we lived a day without numbers? What if we lived a day without knowing what time it was, without knowing what day of the month it was, without knowing anything about mathematical formulas, or even the basics of counting? Perhaps there was a time when this was the case–thousands of years ago–when the development of numbers was still in its infancy. A time when hours would go by and all there was to measure time was the sunrise and sundown.

Catching up can feel like an uphill battle. It’s not that we can’t catch up, but the fact that we’ve lost so much time that it has made the road to catching up feel like it’s impossible, or at least, harder to achieve. If only we had been wiser and started on our goals years ago, we wouldn’t have to catch up today.

Catching up can apply to anything: travel, finances, work, even projects that we abandoned for one reason or another. When we’re catching up, it’s like we have to make up for lost time–time which cannot be revisited or added back to our lives.

When we say to ourselves that we’ll eventually get to something, whether that is a place we’ve always wanted to travel to, or a book that we wanted to write, we end up not getting to it unless we make it a priority. If we put it aside, other things will take up our time, and eventually, we’ll end up looking back one day and wonder why we’re so far behind.

At that point, we have to start from the beginning, and even though the road will be long toward catching up, at least we still have some time left. But we must be prudent with our time, because time for us is a finite thing, and it’s easy to squander it if we’re not using it wisely.

Having an ability for something or a talent for it are two different things, but at which point does an ability become a talent? When we first try something, whether it is playing the guitar, skateboarding, painting, writing, or solving math problems, we struggle as we learn the basics. But once we’ve mastered the foundational concepts, we can proceed to learning more advanced ones. After that, we can take those advanced concepts and apply it in ways that transcend the ability of the average person.

In other words, talent is something that takes time to develop, time to grow. We start off knowing nothing, and as we learn, we slowly grasp the basics. Over time, if we stay committed to practicing and improving a skill, it shows itself as talent once we can do it easily and at a more advanced level than even someone who is already proficient.

But it could be said that all of us have talent for the things that come easy to us–the things that we don’t even use competitively or for show. For example, we might have a talent for reading if we’ve read hundreds of books, for accomplishing the tasks at our job (given all the experience we have), or for cooking or making repairs in our home. But those aren’t things we brag about or share with others. They’re just things we do normally–day-to-day–and we do them sometimes without even thinking about them.

Society regards talent as something that must be on display, such as in a contest or a sports or music competition. Or it might measure talent based on the success someone has in a field, since very few have reached their level of success. But those standards measure talent by accolades and wealth, not by virtue of the talent itself. In essence, we all have talent, but we often use it in ways that are quiet and meaningful to us or those around us than for the world to see.

We can be grouchy if we’re having a bad day, haven’t gotten enough sleep, haven’t eaten, or haven’t gotten a break after a long day of work. Even though we’ll try to hide it, it’ll unmask itself in the subtle tics and gestures we’ll make when we’re grouchy. It’s different for each of us. Some people might grind their teeth, stomp as they walk, shake their heads in annoyance at everything, or do things in a careless and hasty way.

And just to add to the list, it could be the bumper-to-bumper traffic–making us late to our time-sensitive destination, or forgetting something at home on our way to work (i.e. lunch, a cup of coffee, important documents, etc.). It’s like the grouchy cloud is hovering over our heads, and as soon as something goes amiss, it’ll rain on us to ruin our day.

To offset the grouchiness, we can put on a happy face, or put aside whatever irritable thing or situation is festering in our minds. But all it takes is one more thing to stoke the grouchy cloud, and then it hovers over us, waiting to erupt into a storm.

A lot could be said about expectations, but the one aspect I wanted to focus on is when what we imagine is worse than what actually happens. The flip side to that, of course, is when what we imagine is far better than what actually happens.

In both cases, our expectations of an upcoming event are different from reality. Our expectations are not there to change reality, but to prepare our mindset (and choices) for what’s to come. For example, if we imagine that something negative is going to happen, we go into that situation knowing that we have to be ready for how challenging and difficult it might be. And if we imagine that something positive is going to happen, we go into the situation with high hopes (or expecting a good outcome).

But when the opposite occurs, it upsets the balance of our assumptions and beliefs. It’s like when we’re about to take an exam, and it turns out to be easier than we expected, we wonder why we thought it would be hard in the first place. We might ask ourselves: why did we doubt ourselves? What was it that made us think it would be hard? Was it because of the last test (which we did poorly on), or was it because we felt like we didn’t understand the material?

If we’re about to take an exam, thinking that it will be easy, but in fact, it’s much harder than we thought, we would wonder why we thought the opposite. Perhaps the last test was easy, or maybe we were overconfident in our understanding of the material. When such things happen, we begin to question our expectations–if what we imagine can ever truly prepare us for what lies ahead.

It would be apt to say that our expectations are more like approximations–a hypothesis of will happen. From our catalogue of experiences, we can reason the conclusions that will follow given certain conditions and circumstances. But there’s always a margin of error to our approximations, since we don’t know all the variables–all the minute and subtle changes that can occur (i.e. the weather, the choices people make, the conditions of the environment, etc.). More than that, we don’t have a crystal ball, and no matter how hard we try to approximate an event given everything we know, there’s always a chance that we could be wrong. Besides, we’re only human.

In this post, I will focus on two types of goals: personal goals, and monetary goals.

Personal goals focus on things we want to work on and accomplish for our own fulfillment. They can be things like learning a new skillset, learning a new language, reading x number of books a year, getting enough sleep a day, trying a new recipe, exercising, etc.

Monetary goals focus on our finances, such as how much we want to save, how much we want to earn, what to cut back on, creating a budget, etc. But there is a clear difference between the two goals, and that is in how they cultivate certain habits in order to achieve the desired goals.

Personal goals develop habits that aren’t necessarily attached to finances, although they can. Personal goals can span a broad range of things, such as our health, to educational and creative pursuits. For example, if we make it a goal to learn a subject, such as history, the purpose isn’t to get a monetary prize or a reward, but to gain knowledge and understanding about the past. And if our goal is to make a painting to hang in the living room, the goal is to decorate our living space, not to earn money from it.

In contrast, monetary goals focus on how to wisely manage our wealth. In having monetary goals, we become disciplined about our spending, as well as in increasing our wealth by earning more or having more income streams. While these goals can certainly increase the size of our wallet, they have little to do with making us well-rounded and creative. Instead, monetary goals are about making sure that we’re financially secure (i.e. have enough to cover an unexpected emergency, have enough saved up for the future, etc.).

Both types of goals have their benefits, but they focus on different aspects of our lives. One focuses on things that are personally valuable to us, whereas the other focuses on our financial wellbeing. But the challenge is in balancing the two. Our personal goals sometimes want to take up more time than our monetary goals allow, and vice versa. When we work day and night, we put our personal goals to the way side. But if the time (or money) we spend on our personal goals negatively affects our monetary goals, then that can affect our budget and our financial future.

In finding the right balance between personal and monetary goals, we can satisfy both. Of course, the right balance is different for everyone, since each person has their own personal and monetary goals. But once we find the right balance, we don’t allow one type of goal to outweigh the other, but rather, we acknowledge that each type is a benefit to us.

There are days when things just seem like they’ve gone haywire. It’s like a perfect storm has arrived, and there’s a succession of delays and setbacks that complicate our lives and prevent us from getting anything done.

On those type of days, it’s as if order and logic have gone out the window. Even if we had everything planned, it’ll all get disrupted by things we had overlooked, miscalculated, or hadn’t foreseen.

When things are off, the only viable solution is to adapt, or to have a plan B. But a plan B can only exist if we had been in this snafu before. And if we hadn’t, well . . .

Once the day is over, we might ask ourselves: how did this happen? Why did things go wrong? Sometimes there’s no explanation for it, because everything was too random and unpredictable to make sense of. Or maybe there is an explanation, but we can’t understand it now, since it was one of those things that will make sense to us later in life.

There are things we can take away from a day that’s off. It can be seen as a test of our character–how well we respond under pressure or when things get tough. Some people might look at the bright side–find the humor and absurdity in it. Or it can be that when things are off, that’s just part of life, and we must face it head on.

When we can’t think clearly, it can be frustrating and stagnating, since it’s like being lost somewhere in a foggy forest, not knowing where to go. We can’t see ahead–can’t see the path that will take us to where we want to go. With the path obscured by the fog, we can’t make progress–can’t see our way out.

This can be due to exhaustion, tiredness, or simply being overwhelmed. It’s like there’s no clarity in the organization of our ideas and our perceptions. The ideas have been blown by the wind, hidden in clouds of confusion, and our perceptions are going in and out as we try to make sense of our surroundings.

To other people, they might wonder why we can’t focus or function well when we seem fine on the outside. It’s not that we’re functioning inefficiently on purpose, but at the moment, nothing seems to make sense. Our perceptions and ideas have become cluttered and mixed up in a sort of rhythmless and inharmonious song and dance.

Everything is a blur, and all we want, before we can do anything productive or creative, is to clear up the fogginess, get our mental lens cleaned of blemishes so that it can be focused. Without which, we are just adrift–moving about the forest like a leaf in the wind–instead of on a path of our choosing.

It can be frustrating to feel like we’ve made no traction toward our goals. It’s as if we’re just spinning our wheels, stuck in the same place. No matter how hard we try, we’re not making any improvements–not inching closer to where we want to be.

Whenever I feel this way, I do one of two things. Either I keep doing what I’m doing, or I’ll try something new. To keep doing what I’m doing, it’s like I’m saying to myself: I’m not going to give up. I’m going to keep trying until I make headway. When I try something new, it’s like I’m stepping outside of what I’m used to doing–thinking outside the box. This will lead me to venture out into the unknown–to experiment with new ideas, concepts, and themes.

The first requires patience, and the second, innovation. Progress seems to be a struggle where we must balance between the two. If we have too much patience and we’re not seeing any progress, it could mean that we’re not challenging ourselves enough with new ideas. If we’re constantly trying to innovate and we’re not seeing any progress, it can mean that we’re not trying something long enough to see how it will pan out (i.e. we’re not giving it enough time to grow).

But when we do finally make traction, we can finally celebrate, since it was a long road to get there. And for a time, things are well . . . until we lose traction again. Then that feeling of frustration will start to fester, and we’ll have to stop and think to ourselves: do we keep doing what we’re doing, or do we try something new?