equivocality — Jeff Ngan's collection of thoughts, experiences, and projects, inspired by pretty much everything
Viewing entries tagged with "self-improvement"
Pages (2): 12
23 Apr 13
0

sprung

I’m rid­ing on so much momen­tum it feels like I’ll never come to a stop. This is a dras­tic change from only a short while ago, and I can attribute it mostly to the chances I’ve had to apply the lessons I’ve learned. Being able to prove to myself that I still have things to dis­cover, that I’m still refin­ing myself as a per­son, has left me feel­ing con­fi­dent and hum­ble lately.

420 protest on Parliament Hill

April 20th is the one day I wish I owned a BeaverTails stand. Protesting doesn’t get any more peace­ful than this.

Making peace with myself used to be a strug­gle. Now that I’m actu­ally happy with who I am, I real­ize how low a bar that used to be. I’ve been through stretches like this before though and they’ve never lasted, so I’m still approach­ing it all with cau­tious opti­mism. At least now I’m wise enough to know that hap­pi­ness is some­thing that needs to be worked at con­sis­tently, in the lit­tle ways, and I’m strong enough to keep it going.

Jon-Kabat Zinn has been help­ing me on this path too. I’ve been lis­ten­ing to a series of his mind­ful med­i­ta­tion exer­cises, and I carry a sense of calm through the day when­ever I hear his voice. Every now and then he offers gen­tle advice on doing this kind of work, like how impor­tant it is to give your­self per­mis­sion to feel what­ever it is you’re feel­ing, and I’ve been dis­cov­er­ing that so much of it has rel­e­vance in other parts of my life.

tagged with #reflection #self-evaluation #self-improvement / filed under Photos Thoughts
04 Jan 13
2

tides

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I’ve been look­ing for new inspi­ra­tion and lis­ten­ing to as much new music as I can find recently. I haven’t dared go into much of my old music. I sup­pose that means I’m not yet com­pletely over some­thing or other. Thankfully, peo­ple send me new songs all the time (this gem cour­tesy of Mansour Chow), and often it keeps me going until the next addiction.

I haven’t picked up my gui­tar lately either. For the first time, the break has been self-imposed, though out of a desire to pur­sue other inter­ests more than any­thing else. Also pos­si­bly the fact that I lost two months of growth when I chipped my thumb­nail, and I’m not inter­ested in learn­ing any­thing that requires a thumbpick right now. Ever since my dad gave me Larissa as a birth­day present two years ago, I haven’t able to put her down until now. I’m hop­ing it’ll reset a few bad habits, and give me more focus when I start again.

Practicing gui­tar has been the one tan­gi­ble way in which I could tell I was improv­ing. Now that I’m tak­ing a break, I’ve been faced with an unset­tling sense of stag­nancy, cause I’ve always held self-improvement as one of my main rea­sons for liv­ing. But I’ve also real­ized that it’s not always pos­si­ble to con­tin­u­ally improve, so I’m try­ing to be happy with who I am at the moment, and accept that it’s nat­ural to go through cycles of growth and stag­nancy, pain and heal­ing, frailty and strength.

tagged with #guitar #music #reflection #self-improvement / filed under Random Thoughts
27 Dec 11
4

it is impossible to stop the motion of snow at night

I got what I wanted for Christmas.

Piles of it. Sheets falling from the sky, melt­ing instantly on your wind­shield, forc­ing the traf­fic to 20kph on the high­way. So much that you have to brush off your car if you leave it parked for more than a minute, but the sky glows orange for you to savour every second.

house in the snow

 

Not that I cel­e­brate Christmas, but I do enjoy the trap­pings of the sea­son. The lights and the dec­o­ra­tions and the spirit and the snow. I’m just sick of the con­sumerism. It seems per­verse to see all this fancy paper wrapped around a box only to be torn off and thrown away. To see peo­ple scram­bling to buy things just to have some­thing to give. I’ve got it just right, where I don’t exchange gifts with any of my friends cause I don’t want either side to feel obliged. I’d rather give a present when the time is right for both peo­ple, and save my money so it’s some­thing spe­cial every now and then. The last thing I want is to be a scrooge, but the older I get, the more I feel like that’s what I’m turn­ing into.

The hol­i­days are the only time I truly veg out. I watch more TV on Christmas day than in the entire year com­bined, marathon reruns of Dog the Bounty Hunter and Parking Wars and Cake Boss. Shows that are fas­ci­nat­ing in short bursts with the right com­pany and snacks, but never good enough to make a point to watch on my own.

trees and night

 

I was lucky enough to spend some qual­ity time with a cheap elec­tric gui­tar. The body was dusty, the strings were dirty, and the into­na­tion left some­thing to be desired, but the action had me feel­ing like all the time I’ve spent with a stiff steel-string acoustic has paid off. About a month ago I put down a $200 deposit on the nylon-string beauty I’ve always wanted (with the promise that I’d get my deposit back if I didn’t like it) so I could wrap my arms around the body, run my hands across the glossy fin­ish, and feel the fret­board beneath my fin­gers. Guitar has been my only ther­apy lately. The only thing I can throw myself into and for­get about every­thing else, the only part of myself that I can tan­gi­bly tell is improv­ing, some­thing I need to be feel­ing right now.

I’ve never been this uncer­tain about the future, and it’s freak­ing me out. I already had a feel­ing 2012 was going to be a new start. My projects would be done by the end of the year, I’d have a nice lit­tle break, and I’d be ready to begin again. Now I’m forced into that real­ity, and life is soon going to be very dif­fer­ent. I don’t know if I’ll be able to han­dle it, but I sus­pect I won’t have much of a choice.

tagged with #change #guitar #self-improvement / filed under Daily Life Photos
05 Oct 11
6

a short break in adolescence

I’ve been feel­ing like an adult.

This isn’t due to my fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ties or my tidy home or any other things I used to use as a mea­sure for matu­rity, but from feel­ing like every­thing makes sense. Like I have all the answers the way adults seem to do, because I can see the big pic­ture, I under­stand what truly mat­ters, and I don’t sweat the small things anymore.

It’s only now that I’m at a point where I feel like a grown up. Like this is finally who I’ll be for the rest of my life.

That’s not to say I’ve fin­ished grow­ing, that I’m not human or infal­li­ble, but there aren’t the same strug­gles or changes that I used to have, so my emo­tions and atti­tudes have evened out.

For a while I won­dered if I’d just become another turning-30 cliché, but I real­ized it was never about age. Various things have brought me to this matu­rity, from con­ver­sa­tions to rela­tion­ships to trips far away. It all hap­pened to be around the begin­ning of a new decade in my life.

Maybe I’ve been feel­ing this way only because things are going so well. It’ll take some hard­ship to test how far I’ve truly come as an adult, but until then I’ll try to live like a child, cause too often youth is wasted on the young.

tagged with #growing old #growth #mat #self-evaluation #self-improvement / filed under Thoughts
03 Jul 11
0

the art of longing's over

So the great affair is over but who­ever would have guessed
It would leave us all so vacant and so deeply unimpressed

On a sleep­less night in Paris, I came upon the sud­den real­iza­tion that the last thing I should be think­ing of was a per­son I hadn’t spo­ken to in more than half a year.

It brought to mind some­thing Jason told me once, about a pol­icy his life-coach has for his ses­sions (which are very forward-focused): if you bring up some­thing neg­a­tive from the past three times, the life-coach would end the work­ing rela­tion­ship cause it’s in indi­ca­tion that you’re hold­ing on to some­thing that keeps you from mov­ing forward.

So there’s three things you can do:

For so long, hope meant that I’d been try­ing to change the sit­u­a­tion. And when I finally, finally, finally under­stood the futil­ity of it all, I knew I had to change myself, and come to terms with what I didn’t seem capa­ble of accept­ing. Being in another coun­try, sur­rounded by an indul­gent, hedo­nis­tic cul­ture and filled to the brim with hap­pi­ness, was exactly what I needed to gal­va­nize myself into that change, and end things on my terms.

I’ve been set­tling back into my reg­u­lar life, and I don’t feel much of any­thing now, except free. Like I’m finally in con­trol, above water, instead of tread­ing it.

tagged with #hope #self-evaluation #self-improvement / filed under Random
18 May 11
3

la petite mort

I’ve been spend­ing too much time around friends and fallen heroes, stay­ing up too late, run­ning away from my thoughts, pun­ish­ing my body, killing myself one day at a time. The exhaus­tion is numb­ing — exactly what I need — but I know I can’t keep this up for­ever. I used to lose a day here and there, think it’s Wednesday on a Thursday. Now I lose entire weeks. I’ve decided that it’s all okay as long as shit gets done.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been feel­ing trapped. I’m too busy to see past things as they are right now, a vic­tim of my own self-distraction, so it feels like I’ll be here for­ever, stuck in this end­less loop of heal­ing and heartbreak.

I’m still try­ing to find that del­i­cate bal­ance between accept­ing myself (which risks com­pla­cency) and striv­ing to improve (and the con­stant dis­sat­is­fac­tion). At the very least, I’ve come to the real­iza­tion that there’s a dif­fer­ence between the things that hap­pen to us and the way we react or deal with them, and since you have no say in the for­mer, all you can do is improve the latter.

Sometimes you have to die a lit­tle inside to fig­ure that out.

tagged with #realization #self-improvement / filed under Random
22 Mar 11
2

i know i found the recipe for me

All I do nowa­days is dance. Not in any coor­di­nated man­ner, mind you, and cer­tainly not in the pres­ence of any­one else.

I’m only now start­ing to real­ize how nec­es­sary it was for me to sur­vive that cru­cible last year, and how impor­tant it was for me to save myself. It hasn’t tem­pered the extremes, but they don’t last as long anymore.

Blue Mountain village at night

 

It’s com­fort­ing to know I’ve been through this before. It wasn’t all for noth­ing. I’m a lit­tle wiser now, and I’m not going to make the same mis­takes again.

This win­ter hit us heavy once more, and like it I refuse to die.

tagged with #seasons #self-evaluation #self-improvement #winter / filed under Photos Random
03 May 10
10

Famous Blue Raincoat (ukulele cover)

Almost three months ago, I walked into a music store and bought a ukulele. I didn’t even know the frets on the ukulele (or gui­tar, for that mat­ter) were raised; I thought they were just lines painted on the neck used as guide­lines for fin­ger posi­tions. Ever since, it’s filled a void in me. A void I didn’t even know existed until I found myself feel­ing empty when I didn’t get a chance to play.

Famous Blue Raincoat is one of my favourite Leonard Cohen songs. I wish I could write let­ters like this.

I haven’t quite fig­ured out what kind of style or genre I want to apply to the ukulele, but I think my singing abil­ity (or lack thereof) will limit me to the soft Sam Beam folk sound unless I started tak­ing singing lessons. Borrowed in my inter­pre­ta­tion is a vari­a­tion of the pick­ing pat­tern Cohen uses in a lot of his ear­lier songs, such as Hey That’s No Way To Say Goodbye, adapted for the soprano ukulele.

While my brain picks out the mis­takes and details I need to work on when I see myself play, I try to keep in mind the words of my Tai Chi teacher, “We’re never as bad as we fear nor as good as we would like”. I don’t think I’ll ever be sat­is­fied with my musi­cal abil­ity unless I could com­mit a lot more time to it. Unfortunately, that would mean less time for another hobby, so I have to accept that this will prob­a­bly be close to the limit of my abil­ity. Hopefully, I’ll be able to clean things up in another few years. Patience will come from learn­ing to be sat­is­fied from the act of play­ing itself, and not the mas­tery of it. For now, this’ll serve as record of my progress.

tagged with #music #self-improvement #ukulele / filed under Random Video
21 Apr 10
8

Protected: The self coming true

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tagged with #confidence #reflection #self-improvement #serenity #women / filed under Thoughts
07 Mar 10
4

Afraid and shy, I let my chance go by

While I’ve always been very appre­cia­tive of what we did have, some­times I won­der about what we never had the chance to do.

Sure, I bared my soul. I sur­ren­dered. I gave her the songs I don’t share with just any­one. I told her how pro­foundly impor­tant, won­der­ful, and remark­able she was to me. I let her in like no one else before.

But there were parts of myself I never gave up.

It wasn’t because we hadn’t reached that level of trust. It was a way for me to pro­tect myself. To feel as though she didn’t have all of me, so I wouldn’t be left as open and vul­ner­a­ble when the end finally came.

I regret it now. Not because I think it would have changed any­thing1, but because I won­der what it would have been like for some­one to know me com­pletely. To feel vul­ner­a­ble and safe, all at once. Even know­ing I’d be heart­bro­ken even­tu­ally, it would have been worth it to share what I’ve always saved.

I’ve been keep­ing all my girl­friends at arms length to pro­tect myself. I can’t go through life hold­ing things back any­more, con­stantly wor­ried someone’s going to hurt me. That’s always a risk, no mat­ter how sta­ble a rela­tion­ship is.

I have to put myself out there. I have to make the first step, even if it means feel­ing uncom­fort­able, because the more you share, the more com­fort­able you become, the more you share, and so on.

I can only go for­ward now, as a wiser per­son, a stronger soul, a bet­ter lover.

I sup­pose I’m feel­ing nos­tal­gic, or miss­ing her, as is my wont when the sea­sons change.

  1. Cause it wouldn’t have. [↩]
tagged with #emotion #muse #self-evaluation #self-improvement / filed under Thoughts
21 Feb 10
2

My Therapist is a Rockstar

As I was writ­ing notes for ther­apy tomor­row1, I was doing some research on life­traps and came across a short para­graph that cleared up every­thing for me to the point where I didn’t feel like I needed to keep my appoint­ment. It was the answer I didn’t even know I was look­ing for.

Now the feel­ing of empti­ness that’s fol­lowed me for so long is gone, and every­thing makes sense. I feel sta­ble again, though there’s still a hint of doubt because I’ve been here before but it’s never been any­thing permanent.

I’m still going tomor­row so I can solid­ify my new-found under­stand­ing. I don’t think it’s going to be a reg­u­lar thing again, I just need the bit of guid­ance he gives me that lets me fix myself. I can’t explain how good it felt to make the appoint­ment, know­ing I had some­one with a pro­fes­sional edu­ca­tion and years of expe­ri­ence in this to give me an objec­tive view. My friends are always there to sup­port me, but they don’t make sense of the world for me the way my ther­a­pist does.

  1. This is the first time I’ll be bring­ing notes, only because I’m try­ing to cover such a com­plex topic that I want to be sure I’m not miss­ing any­thing. [↩]
tagged with #reflection #self-improvement #therapy / filed under Random
09 Jun 09
11

Surrounding Myself With Great People

It’s hard for me to hang out with peo­ple with same bad habits as I have (or have had).

Habits like:

I always try to improve and refuse to accept these things in myself, so it’s hard for me to accept them in oth­ers. I’m also afraid that spend­ing too much time with them would make me com­pla­cent, as I’d start to believe that these things are accept­able because other peo­ple are okay with it.

That’s why I sur­round myself with peo­ple who are bet­ter than me.

tagged with #pieces of me #self-improvement / filed under Random
25 May 08
5

Psychoanalytic Reflections 05

Sometimes I come out of a ses­sion feel­ing great. Sometimes I come out feel­ing like a mon­ster, like some hor­ri­ble, fucked-up person.

During my first ses­sion, my ther­a­pist noted that this was a mutual process. It wasn’t as if he was going to sur­gi­cally remove an issue with me, it would take the both of us work­ing together, with a pro­gres­sive effort from me.

That’s what I’m doing now. I’m deter­mined to fix myself.

Dependence

Unrelenting Standards revisited

tagged with #parents #reflection #self-improvement #therapy / filed under Thoughts
03 Apr 08
4

Tai Chi Progress

My under­stand­ing of Tai Chi seems to come in the form of a sine wave: the more I learn, the more I real­ize I don’t know, and as I adjust for more and more details, other details get lost.

For the last few months, I felt like I was get­ting nowhere. The con­cepts made sense in my brain, but not in my body. My teacher has said that Tai Chi is already too intel­lec­tu­al­ized, and as a per­son who’s never been very phys­i­cally co-ordinated and tries to com­pen­sate in SHEER MENTAL POWA!, this holds true espe­cially for me. Until I’ve mas­tered telekine­sis, how­ever, I’ll be reliant on more tra­di­tional means of movement.

In the last cou­ple weeks I feel like I’ve reached another level of under­stand­ing, as rudi­men­tary as it may be.

One thing that helped a lot is when a senior stu­dent showed me what ward-off (peng) felt like. As he stood with struc­ture in his body, I tried to push him1, but ended up push­ing myself off him and falling over. In order to move him, I was forced to use the proper tech­nique (since he’s con­sid­er­ably big­ger than me), and expand with my entire body — legs, waist, arms, chest, lungs — instead of sim­ply try­ing to move through him.

Then we reversed roles and he pushed me until I could chan­nel his energy through my feet. It was the first time I ever felt grounded, instead of sim­ply under­stand­ing the idea. I still don’t really under­stand it, inso­faras I couldn’t explain it to some­one else.

Adapting this all to the form is some­thing else. I try to focus on one thing at time2 but it falls apart in other places. At this point, I’m just try­ing to get all the gross mechan­ics to be nat­ural with­out hav­ing to think about it, hop­ing that I’ll even­tu­ally be able to fine tune every­thing else.

  1. It reminded me of the feel­ing of squeez­ing a rub­ber stop­per, some­thing with give but not much, that becomes expo­nen­tially dif­fi­cult to com­press. [↩]
  2. Such as stay­ing at one level with­out being rigid (con­sid­ered “breath­ing”), relax­ing my lower back, think­ing of my body being anchored through my legs, and keep­ing struc­ture and intent in my palms. [↩]
tagged with #self-improvement #Tai Chi / filed under Random
18 Dec 07
8

Defining Myself Through Others

I’ve come to real­ize that as much as I’ve grown and gained, I still seek approval from oth­ers, albeit to a much smaller extent than before. This approval is how I define my self worth.

It’s an old, bad habit.

I can trace this habit back to my par­ents. I would always do things to try to win their approval, only to be met with a com­ment about not being good enough, or unsup­port­ive silence. Their con­stant crit­i­cism led to low self-esteem and feel­ings of inad­e­quacy. Yet another exam­ple of how they mind­fucked me.

At this point, it’s just a knee-jerk reac­tion. Remnants of my old, inse­cure self creep­ing up. I know that one day, I’ll be able to break the habit completely.

Until then, I have to remind myself that it doesn’t mat­ter what any­one thinks of you.

tagged with #insecurity #parents #self-improvement / filed under Thoughts
Viewing entries tagged with "self-improvement"
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