Hello everyone,
It has been three months since I wrote a public post on WordPress and honestly, I missed it a lot. I wrote everyday privately, but it’s just not the same as making a public post. My dream as a writer still lives on, so I write about two thousand words a day, yet none of them has been published in the last three months. I thought, “How will my writing be known if no one reads them?” So I decided to start blogging again, in hopes of having a career in writing in the future. Like always, I’ll be touching base in several subjects in a single entry, anything from events at work, relationships, what I read in a book, etc.
A lot has happened in the past three months. Good, bad, horrible, amazing and in-between experiences.
Two weeks ago, I started working as a runner at a popular restaurant in downtown New York City. I applied as a waiter, but since I have zero experience in waiting tables, the owner wanted me to start as a runner for a while until I get some experience.
I was very nervous about working as a waiter. Last time I worked as a waiter in a cafe about six years ago, I failed horribly. The owner of the cafe trained me on a Friday night, the busiest night of all. I knew nothing about their system and the procedures. The customers kept coming in and I didn’t know where I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to do. I was criticized for being too slow and if I was doing a task, I was told I should be somewhere else and criticized again. I thought I took enough abuse for a year’s worth and I didn’t have any motivation to come back the next day to work for the same owner.
This time, even though I was extremely nervous, I tried to focus on positive visualizations. I thought about getting great tips in the future, making the customers happy, getting along with the coworkers and not making big mistakes in the first few weeks on the job. After many positive thoughts, I had a lot of confidence in myself and I felt like I could blast through a wall. I was pumped!
The first day wasn’t that difficult. It was Tuesday and the business was fairly slow. I got to know the behind the scenes of a restaurant and I was mind blown by the amount of work that was behind the scenes. I felt a bit stressed, because there were so many things I needed to know and required to do, yet my body didn’t know what to do, so I felt frozen in many spots. I knew I looked awkward and out-of-place a lot of times. I just had to move around and at least look like I knew what I was doing, but I was questioning myself in many situations where if I should be working on a certain task with the customers or if I should be in the kitchen doing something else. In most cases, I asked my coworkers what I should focus on and they put me on tasks that were the most important. The job seemed fairly easy.
On the second day, the reality began to settle in. After a few hours of opening, the restaurant was completely packed and there were a line out the door. My coworkers were too busy to help me with my requests. They were walking in and out of the kitchen, while giving me requests, without fully explaining what I needed to do. The kitchen was in full speed, preparing the food and making sure the meals are completed in time.
For the last year and a half, I haven’t had much of a social life. I worked overnight shift mostly alone at the office three days a week for the first eight months, everyday for three months and on the weekends for the last five months. On my days off, I read a lot of books, went to the gym frequently and spent some time with my girlfriend, but I wouldn’t consider it as social life per say. It’s definitely not a normal social life for an average person.
So you can imagine a person who hasn’t had much of a social life for over a year, all the sudden working in an extremely busy hours in a restaurant as a runner, trying to think straight while being overwhelmed with the experience of dealing with people who are chattering, laughing, complaining, while listening to the requests from the coworkers and not knowing what to do with my current responsibilities. I know I have pretty bad case of social anxiety issues and there were many times where I thought to myself, “This really isn’t the right job for me… I should be a librarian or something.” That’s the positive twist to put it. In actual words, I said, “What the fuck am I doing here?” I must have said it at least twenty times while cleaning the utensils, when the owner came up to me and said, “Hey, how is it holding up? It’s hard, right?”
I said, “No, haha. I’m okay.” (Years of experience in poker helped me with this one.)
He said, “I want to make my living doing easy work, but I realized there is no such thing as easy work in life.” He laughed.
What he said really rang true to me. This was the most difficult work I’ve ever had.
Working in a restaurant is truly a humbling experience. The end product, the food, comes out clean, fresh and tastes great, but everything before and after are all dirty and hard work.
Being a chef seems like a glamorous job on TV and we are very jealous of other chefs, but in the kitchen, it’s absolutely blazing hot. The chefs are standing in front of extremely high heat, working with four stoves at once. The chef’s assistants are working just as hard and quick.
Being a waiter seemed like easy work and great pay, but in front of the customers, we are filling up water, listening to their requests, changing their plates, grabbing dirty cups, plates and utensils in one swoop. In the back, we are dumping leftovers, packing to-go meals, making deserts and cleaning utensils, and we come back out with a smile on our faces, no matter what happened in the back or with other customers. And everything must be done very quickly and positively for the entire shift.
All the sudden, it seemed like a very small pay for such mentally and physically taxing work.
On a Friday night, it seemed like the longest and the most difficult day to go through.
I think the most difficult part was that I was watching people socializing with their friends, laughing and having a great time, while I felt like I didn’t have much of a social life at all. It wasn’t that I was jealous of their social life, but the pain of reflecting on my current social life. I was asking myself, “Where did I go wrong?” “Why am I working on a Friday night?” “When was the last time I really had fun like these people are?” And I had to get through the rest of the shift while thinking about those things. Usually I can put most things aside and think about it later, but those questions and in that kind of environment where I have to be visible at all times, it was very tough not to think about them.
When I came home, I felt like I was making my life too difficult. I knew the pay would be good in the future, but what about my well-being? When I looked back on my work experience, for someone who has social anxiety issues and has trouble dealing with high level of stress, I’ve picked some of the most stressful jobs.
That brings me the subject of money.
I picked some of the jobs because I had to, but most of the jobs I picked were because of money. I picked whatever paid the most and if I had two very well-paying jobs, I worked in both of them. And I don’t regret working in any of them. I learned some of the best life lessons while working at those jobs.
But it’s the same as why I chose working as a waiter. It’s because of the money. With my current ability of dealing with people, which is a lot better than before but still very low compared to an average person, and dealing with stress and pressure, I’m not supposed to work in a very high paced restaurant. It’s just too much for me to handle. There are many important qualities in being a waiter: Dealing with very difficult people and working under high pressure in a very fast paced environment. Moving around all day and working very hard. Constantly shifting through tasks and keeping them in mind while working very quickly.
And the truth is, I’m not qualified for any of those. Throughout the day, when it gets too tough, too hard and exhausting, I want to quit and pick something easier that’s more fitted to my personality.
But while the last two weeks were arguably the worst two weeks of work experience, other than working at a Dry Cleaner in Brooklyn, I had the most life changing and rewarding experience.
My co-workers are some of the coolest and the most hard-working people. That’s no surprise, considering some of them have been waiting tables for years. They work some of the grueling night shifts, while paying their own tuition and putting themselves through school, pursuing what they really want to do in the future and they aren’t even fluent in English!
When I listened to their stories, I felt humbled, but mostly embarrassed. I could speak English and Korean very well, but I wasn’t doing half of the things they were doing. I used to work one full-time and one part-time, paid my own tuition and went to school, but it was absolutely exhausting and I stopped after two years.
At this restaurant, I was surrounded by at least four coworkers who were thinking about putting themselves through college and grad school by waiting tables. I understand that people have different lifestyles, motivations and their paths to different goals, but what I realized was there are no excuses. They all complained about waiting tables, being a full-time student and finding time with their partners, yet they still did them anyway. It’s just part of life. Life is supposed to be hard. Sometimes you complain and move on. Around these people, I always felt like I have nothing to complain about.
Working as a waiter has really ramped up my motivation. On my off days, I want to go out with people, eat at a restaurant and just spend time with people. In the past, if I was exhausted from working, I would sleep in and just surf the internet at home. But after spending thirty hours a week observing and serving people who are having a blast eating awesome food, I wanted to enjoy my life just as they were. So I’ve been going out more with my wife, talking to more people and enjoying the outdoors more by taking photographs.
Waiting tables has also taught me a lot about money management. Since the work is so grueling and I work so hard for the money, I have less urge to spend money unless I really love something or if it’s something I need. “Easy money, easy go” seemed so true in the recent days. If I think about spending money on something I don’t need, I think about how hard I had to work in order to earn that money and how much work I need to do in order to make up for it. When I think about that, it’s very hard to spend the money on something I don’t need.
Although this has been very rewarding past two weeks, when I look forward to next week, I still don’t want to go to work. It sucks. Really, really sucks to go through all the work with the customers and in the kitchen. And thinking about going through all the work on a Thursday night in a packed restaurant, it’s just a big long sigh.
My coworker and I had a discussion about doing what we love and hate for a living. I told her about something I read online how some people intentionally do what they love as a hobby, because they don’t want to get tired of doing what they love and they are thankful that they don’t burn out from doing what they love.
She told me, “I try to balance my life with the work I hate and I love. When you do something that you hate, you start to appreciate the work you love and you can really tell the difference between what you like and don’t like.”
Balancing what I hate and love to do, that was something I never thought about. But in a lot of ways, it makes perfect sense. We have to learn how to deal with and work together with difficult people and people we hate; We have to learn how to deal with jobs we hate in order to get the jobs we want; We have to learn to deal with not getting what we want. If we always do what we love, only work with people we like, only work in jobs we enjoy, always get what we want, then we will never learn life’s difficulties. And if we only do what we like and love, then how are we going to appreciate what we currently have?
It still doesn’t take away from the fact that waiting table sucks. But now I just try to think it’s just part of life. We can’t always have what we want and do what we want to do. That’s just too easy; We would only be living half of life. The other half is the part we don’t want to go through.
There is no such thing as easy money or living. If it is, something is not right.
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My dad, mom, sister and I were in the living room. My dad criticized my sister for not being independent at her age. He thought she was old enough to get out of the house and make her own living. He spoke very softly, just loud enough where we can hear him talking about it. He looked like he was talking while doing some activity, but we knew he was just taking his anger out on us. And I was very upset that he handled the situation this way. He wasn’t even talking to us. He was talking to himself or telling us in a way that was very demeaning and I was very upset about that. My mom was poking my dad to let him know that he shouldn’t be saying these things and he kept saying them anyway. My sister and I couldn’t say anything, because that’s just the way it was in our family. When my dad said nasty things to us, the only thing we could do was to keep our mouth shut or get a beating in return.
The dream ended right there, but when I woke up, my imagination didn’t. I started imagining that the ending wasn’t how it should have been. I wanted to fight back for myself and my sister, that we shouldn’t be treated like this and my parents shouldn’t treat their kids like that too.
I yelled at my dad that since I became independent in junior year in college, due to his financial bankruptcy, I had to go through crazy ups and downs in life. I worked for everything. I worked odd jobs to make a living and to pay my rent. And there are a bunch of guys like me, who worked odd jobs in order to support themselves. I met guys who worked at cafes and supported themselves through school and if not school, they lived on their own just working odd jobs.
And what has my dad done in his life to preach about independence? He was filthy rich from his birth. He inherited millions of dollars from his dad and he never had to find a job or work for anyone else. What would he know about independence, struggle and working odd jobs? I told him I respected a guy working at cafes making a living than him who inherited a bunch of money doing nothing for himself.
And my sister, what did she do to deserve the criticism that she should be independent? If she isn’t independent, then who is responsible for her dependence? Is it her responsibility or is it the responsibility of the parents who should have taught her independence, money management and responsibility? Instead of criticizing her daughter for her dependence, he should ask himself, “What could I have done to help her be more independent?” As the head of the household, he should be the one to take the responsibility. In any country, there’s a saying, “The head of the household is responsible for everything that happens inside the house.” Her dependence is his responsibility as the father.
And mom too, she can’t just let dad say to us whatever he wants to. She can’t just poke him on the side to let him know that he shouldn’t be saying these things. This has been happening all the time. She needs to step up as the mom and not let him say these things to the kids. She can’t just let him run his mouth off and tell us, “Just understand that it’s the father’s perspective on how he sees things.” It’s like every time he verbally and physically abuses us, we are supposed to understand him. What about us? Are we supposed to just sit here and let him do whatever he wants and we are supposed to be understanding?
“Dad, I want you to think about these things. You should be embarrassed that as your son I’m telling you these things. We aren’t going to let you do whatever you want to us anymore. If sister and mom aren’t going to fight for it, I’m going to fight for myself and them. I’m tired of letting you run over us. Saying and doing whatever you want without any consequences. I’m leaving this house, but if I hear anything from sister and mom about anything, I will be back.”
While I was walking away, my dad grabbed a long and thick wooden board, about six inches wide and two feet long and headed towards me. My mom and my sister were screaming.
I turned around and took away the wooden board. I’m not sure exactly how my imagination was like afterwards. If I started hitting him with it, I turned off my imagination while I was hitting him.
“Do you see who you are married to, mom? You can’t be married to someone like him. I can’t be around with this family anymore. Please, just get divorced.” And I walked out.
I didn’t like how it ended. I felt this imagination should have ended when the dream ended. With the imagination feeling so real, I felt like this really happened. I’ve been working on reconciling with my parents and I knew this imagination pushed me back a few steps.
I’ve been having similar imagination for a long time. There are a lot of things I want to say to my parents, but I know I will regret it. The truth is, I wish I could. Dreams and imaginations are safe places to say what I need to say.
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This Valentine’s day and my recent decision to get married with my girlfriend brought a lot of good and bad memories from long, long time ago, and it also made me realize how far I came in terms of dating women.
I met my first girlfriend in ninth grade. Not having any experience with women back then, I was completely clueless. But because she was charmed by my good looks with perfectly gelled hair and muscular body (I wore a tank top on purpose), she gave me a chance.
Even when I think about it now, she was very pretty. Probably too pretty first girlfriend for a guy who had zero experience with women. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. No one taught me about dating women. I had 56K modem back then and I didn’t know about Askmen.com, Menshealth.com or dating books available in Amazon.com. I’ve never kissed a girl and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to kiss on the first, second or third date. Even if I knew, I couldn’t have done it. I was a total nervous wreck, thinking about so many possibilities and choices, that I barely talked to her or even looked at her. My palms were sweaty from holding her hands for too long and I didn’t let go (I know. Very embarrassing).
Unfortunately, seeing right through that I had zero experience with women, she dumped me after one date. Oh, it really hurt.
Number one, she was hot.
Number two, I was so upset that I was so bad with women.
After this experience, I wanted to prove myself that I could be better with women. I met women online and in person; I talked to every woman I possibly could.
My first kiss was a girl I didn’t even like and we lasted for a few days. I dated girls who didn’t even like kissing (Now that I think about it, that’s pretty sad). I’ve ditched dates in the middle (Many of them unfortunately). I’ve had girls constantly calling me after dates and me refusing to pick up the phone! (That’s when I knew I made some progress in dating).
Sometimes I would think they were a waste of time and money, but recently I realized, they were experiences I needed to go through in order to learn about dating, and I have great stories to tell about bad dates. When I thought about it in that perspective, I actually thought it was a lot of fun.
It has been thirteen years since the breakup of my first girlfriend. I went through relationships that lasted several days, weeks, months, years and current relationship of three years.
What I’ve learned so far (keyword: so far) is that with every new experience, I learned how much I didn’t know and how much there is to know.
When my girlfriend and I decided to move in together, it was a very tough decision to make. I had a really bad experience living together in my previous relationship and I thought the same problems would arise again. I thought I was making the same mistake again and I wasn’t learning from my mistakes.
We have been living together for one year now and we are doing very well. I’ve learned that in relationships, it takes two to tango. If both people are willing to work it out, anything can be worked out.
Now we are about to get married and we are expecting a baby. I don’t think our marriage will be that different, it will be just like we are now, but when it comes to raising a baby, we are going to make a lot of mistakes. A lot of deep-rooted issues will come up when discussing how to raise a baby and we will go through a lot of things we never expected we would go through.
Dating seems simple but it’s a very complex series of steps. From meeting the person of choice; Getting to know the person; seducing and having fun with the partner; getting more serious with the relationship; living together, going into marriage and having a baby and more babies. It is a lot of work. Each step takes a lot of mistakes, a ton of experience and deeper understanding.
For the first time in our relationship, I bought my girlfriend a box of chocolates, large flowers and a card for this Valentine’s Day. Last two years, she was upset that I didn’t get her anything. Maybe I didn’t have much money then. Maybe I didn’t feel it was that important. When I saw how happy my girlfriend was, I wondered why I didn’t do it before. I want to do it every year from now. I also learned how to take care of flowers. (#1: Avoid direct sunlight. Oops. #2. Change water every few days. I’m sorry.)
If you didn’t give your partner a box of chocolates, one great thing about the day after Valentine’s Day is that it’s a pay-day.
“I heard the fifty percent off chocolates are sweeter.” That might lighten the mood.
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
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While watching some professional fights on TV today, I thought about how some athletes come back or rather never come back from major injuries or losses. There are a lot of times where some athletes will become better than ever after traumatic injuries or losses, and some athletes never become the same person again. It really made me wonder what are some of the differences between those athletes.
When I thought about the athletes who came back better than ever, they have a very forward-thinking thought patterns.
- “I don’t think about what has happened and how I could have won. I just think about what I’m going to do next.”
- “I learned from my mistakes and I’m just going to move on.”
- “I realized what I did wrong.”
- “I’m just focused on my next fight.”
Those athletes, some of them champions, who were never the same after a brutal loss or an injury, said
- “I can’t get it out of my head.”
- “I’m very hesistant about what I’m going to do. I’m afraid I’ll make another mistake.”
- “I was afraid it will happen again.”
I know both groups of athletes worked extremely hard, as I saw the videos of their training, I’m sure all of them were in their best shape, but it really made me wonder, if life, not only sports performance, is one hundred percent mental.
Professional athletes lives are a little different from most jobs, for example, professional fighters and football players regularly take two thousand pounds of force to their head, knees and to the body regularly everyday.
But I don’t believe going through life is any different. It has been proven that emotional and verbal abuse are just as damaging as physical abuse. From childhood to adulthood, many people go through traumatic and shocking experiences throughout life.
When I thought about my own life, I’ve been in the best shape of my life for the last two years, since I regularly lifted weights, trained for marathons and just being regularly active all around.
Yet, my career hasn’t been going well, probably at the worst point right now. Relationships that I have with friends and families are either stalling, barely alive or nonexistent. I wasn’t always like this though; When I was young, I was very outgoing; I made friends very easily and life felt like sailing in the ocean.
Then I wondered, did I never recover from my childhood?
I don’t see the need to put in great details about my childhood, but I’ll just say whenever I think about it, I get very angry and depressed. I wasn’t the one to hurt others and take advantage of other people as a young kid, I was always the good child. And after experiencing so many traumatic troubles at home within the family, something just flipped within me, and I was just never the same. Not only did I flunk out of high school and college, my childhood ruined life after college and I was regularly in toxic relationships with others at work and personal life. I was extremely angry, hostile and depressed almost all the time. Thankfully, reading tons of books and writing in a journal everyday for the last couple of years have helped me understand myself and others much better, but I still have a long way to go before I feel like I’m “just like other people.”
When I was younger, I would look in the mirror and feel I’m still young and I have a lot of time left. Now I can tell I’m getting older. I don’t look or feel the same. I’m thinking more about, “I’m still very upset about my childhood and how my childhood has affected my life up until now. Will I be thinking about the same thing in ten years? When I’m thirty-seven, will I be blaming my parents for my life and what they did to me?”
When I’m thirty-seven and look back on the last ten years, I would like to be able to say the last ten years were the best years of my life. I’ve moved on and I did a lot of things that made my life more meaningful. I would also like to be in a great relationship with friends, girlfriend, the baby and hopefully my family.
The reality is that there is really nothing I can do about the past. I can only learn from it, so I will make less of the same mistakes, and just move on with my life.
With a baby on the way, my priorities have definitely changed. There are some things I want to do but can’t do or will need to wait. And some things I don’t want to do, but have to do.
There are so many things I need to take care of. Instead of looking at the entire list and feel overwhelmed on what I need to do, I’m just going to go through one thing at a time and only think about my next step.
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Today was the first time in months I felt like I got my life back. I feel very motivated to do a lot of great things, whether it’s career or relationships, and that’s a major improvement from a while ago, when I had zero motivation to do anything. I’m finally feeling optimistic again!
When I enjoyed my life more, as little as appreciating the ability to speak, write and read English, and appreciating the life I have in New York, I started to think, “Maybe I’m too critical of my parents.”
I’ve blamed my parents for a lot of things, for putting me in a horrible childhood. Some may disagree, but I also haven’t shared everything with anyone. Yesterday, when I took personality tests and read about mental disorders, I fit the personality in many of the severe ones, and it made me very upset of my current emotional state.
But like I said in the earlier entry about the book “Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard” and Solution-Based Therapy, talking about childhood and grave digging for past memories is, according to the book, TBU (True But Useless).
I’ve been trying out the Solution-Based Therapy since I read the book. I’ve always believed in making peace with the past memories and coming to terms with them, so SBT is very new to me and the fact that the therapy didn’t care about childhood was very shocking. Like the book suggested, I asked myself, “What would I do if I wasn’t depressed? What would I do differently now?” Even asking questions to myself for solutions was very hard. I kept thinking about my childhood memories and negative thoughts about my parents. It was as if my thoughts were battling with coming up with solutions and “You can’t move on! Come back!” Maybe that’s why it’s better to work with a therapist…
So, I exercised, cleaned the apartment, enjoyed my girlfriend more and went to a job interview, without thinking about horrible things my parents have done in the past. And the result was, I felt really great. If I could feel like this everyday from now, if I could ask questions to myself, “What would I do differently if ______?” “How can I do more of it?”, I would have a wonderful life, without blaming others for my situation.
And the truth is, I realized, I blamed my parents for too many things, for too long. I started hanging out with the wrong crowds, when they told me not to. I didn’t finish college when I should have. I blamed my laziness and motivation on them, when I should have been more responsible.
It doesn’t change the fact that my childhood really sucked. It really did. But there’s nothing I can do about my childhood and the way it made me who I am today. My girlfriend had a dream that I kept taking personality tests and I was getting more and more depressed. I realized, I can keep thinking about them and make myself more depressed, or I can find solutions to the problems and move on.
Thinking about that, I felt really bad for my parents. They don’t deserve all the blame I put on them. I’m sure they feel horrible about the mistakes they made and for me to put blame on them again, it’s only making the pain even deeper. Blaming them for my misfortune feels pointless now. I don’t think I can forgive them and to apologize for my actions yet, because the memories are still vivid, but once my life improves more and start taking more responsibility for my life, hopefully we will be more like family again.
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“Let’s call it a problem focus. To see it, consider this situation: Your child comes home one day with her report card. She got one A, four B’s, and one F. Where will you spend your time as a parent?
This hypothetical comes from author Marcus Buckingham, who says that nearly all parents will tend to fixate on the F. It’s easy to empathize with them: Something seems broken- We should fix it. Let’s get her a tutor. Or maybe she should be punished- she’s grounded until that grade recovers. It is the rare parent who would say, instead, “Honey, you made an ‘A’ in this one class. You must really have a strength in this subject. How can we build on that? (Buckingham has a fine series of books on making the most of your strengths rather than obsessing about your weaknesses.)
- Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
While browsing through Amazon.com for a new book to read, I found this book called Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. I have been reading lots of fictions to improve my writing skills on improving writing dialogues, building tension, better storytelling and among other things, but the most important thing on my mind was getting out of the depression I was in. Feeling so depressed all the time, I couldn’t write anyway! I stayed away from non-fiction and research papers, but this book kept calling out to me.
This book really took me right out of depression. Just like the quote I put in the beginning of the article, this book focuses on positives and “What’s working right now and how can we do more of it?” and there are many great stories of solving big problems with small solutions and focusing on the positives.
In the beginning of the book, it states that some people and situations will never change. Some people don’t care about the consequences of their actions and you can’t do anything about that. What this book will help readers is making changes easier (because often, changing is so difficult.)
What surprised me the most was that when people are seeing psychologists, they don’t need to have once or twice a week sessions for five years, and after spending five years and $50,000, realize that it’s our parents fault.
Solution-based therapy doesn’t care about the past, childhood, friends or parents of the patients. It’s focused on the problem at hand and how the person can come up with a solution, with a bit of positivity and focusing on what is currently working.
“Solutions-focused therapists believe that there are exceptions to every problem and that those exceptions, once identified, can be carefully analyzed, like the game film of a sporting event. Let’s replay that scene, where things were working for you. What was happening? How did you behave? Were you smiling? Did you make eye contact?” And that analysis can point directly toward a solution that is, by definition, workable. After all, it worked before.
What does this mean for you?… If you are trying to change things, there are going to be bright spots in your field of view, and if you learn to recognize them and understand them, you will solve one of the fundamental mysteries of change: What exactly needs to be done differently?
…
Bottom line: You are spending 80% percent of your time exploring Debbie’s success and finding ways to replicate it. You aren’t obsessing about the manager who was skeptical. You aren’t planning another training program with the same managers to review the material. You are simply asking yourself, “What’s working and how can we do more of it?” That’s the bright-spot philosophy in a single question.”
The book really put my thoughts in different perspective. I wasn’t always this depressed. There were times I was happy and positive everyday for months. I was overwhelmed with joy and positivity; I wanted to do anything for everyone and I was much more of a fun person to be around; I had a sense of humor and I laughed often.
When I thought more about what I did at the time, what made me so happy and positive, was that I focused on people’s strengths. I was very grateful for everything I had, was and will be. I made people feel good about themselves. In my previous entries from the months ago, I did a lot of things that made me and others happy.
When I thought about what made me depressed, I was very focused on negative parts of my life. I was obsessed with my weaknesses and mistakes I made in life. I wanted more and bigger things. I constantly beat myself over the head for all the bad things I’ve done.
Once I decided to look for strengths and positives in my life, it’s amazing how much I have going on in my life, but I missed out on so much, because I was focusing on the wrong place.
I wonder, where would our world be if everyone focused on each other’s strengths and positives?
“Imagine a world in which you experienced a rush of gratitude every single time you flipped a light switch and the room lit up. Imagine a world in which after a husband forgot his wife’s birthday, she gave him a big kiss and said, ‘For thirteen of the last fourteen years you remembered my birthday! That’s wonderful!’ “
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If there was one thing that has been lingering in my mind for the last three weeks, it was “How am I going to tell my parents that I’m going to be a dad?” When I really thought about it, it wasn’t what I was going to say, but how I was going to respond to their concerns emotionally.
My parents and I don’t have a good relationship. We rarely talk about anything personal to each other. When we talk on the phone (they are in Korea, I’m in New York), I tell them I’m doing well even if I’m not doing well and they tell me how I should take care of myself. When I ask them how they are doing, they tell me they are doing great although I know they are not.
I went through a very deep depression starting in early December and I recently crawled out of it. One of the causes of the depression was realizing how much I lacked in empathy for others. It was a very sad realization. I looked in the mirror and realized I had caused so much pain and hurt other people’s feelings because I lacked consideration in other people’s feelings. I asked myself, “What can I do to increase empathy in others?”
I realized people who make the biggest improvements are people monitor their performance in audio or video and take a cold look at their performance. Athletes would review their performances before and after games and analyze the performance with their coaches.
And the truth is, watching or hearing yourself hurts like hell.
I remember when I recorded myself sing for the first time. I thought I was the baddest singer in the world. My brother would tell me, “Man, you think you’re the shit. You should hear yourself sing.” I said, “Okay, let’s do it.” When I heard myself, I was so embarrassed I wanted to hide in a cave for the next ten years. In middle school, when I saw my performance in a Speech class, man, that stung. I couldn’t lift my head up for the entire day.
Great performers in any industry watch and listen to themselves every single day and it hurts every single time, but that’s how they improve. You realize how you see is completely different from how others see. You see how many things you are doing wrong and it hurts. That pain though, drives you for improvement, because you care.
Using that same mindset, I wanted to improve on my lack of empathy. I knew it was a mental disorder and I knew it could be improved. I wanted to stop hurting other people’s feelings. I wanted to be a better boyfriend, friend, father, coworker and a better person all around. If I could place the other person’s feelings over my own, I didn’t need to work on being a great father or a friend separately; I would be a better human being as anyone.
I didn’t have any video or audio performance on myself. That would have been really nice. What I did have was though, was my own memories. I could use imagination, visualizations, thoughts and feelings from the past to see and feel what and how I said, what and how I did and anything else I might have hurt the other person’s feelings and how my words and actions might have affected them.
This wasn’t an easy task. I wanted to solely focus on my actions, but my mind would make justifications like “I did this because he did this to me” , “I said this because he said this” or “He made me feel this way, so I acted like this in return.” And for someone who lacks empathy on others, it was very hard to feel the other person’s feelings. I was so used to importance of my feelings that thinking of other person’s feelings was unimaginable.
So what I did was, whenever I had a memory that I responded in an unkind, abusive or any hurtful way, I completely blocked the other person’s behavior and words. It didn’t matter what the other person said or did. I only focused on how I responded and how I acted that might have hurt the other person’s feelings. It took a while to get used to, maybe a few weeks, but I thought about it for hours a day.
That didn’t work out too well. It wasn’t that I wasn’t trying hard or long enough, but I didn’t feel it was effective. I thought, I’m not trying to correct my words and behaviors, those are external behaviors, like an evil person trying to figure out how to be nicer or an impatient person trying to be patient. I knew I had to get to the root that caused the words and the behaviors in the first place.
What I eventually figured out was, I needed to feel the other person’s feelings as well as my own. That’s the core of empathy. So each time I thought about a memory I hurt the other person, intentionally or not, I reversed each situation and imagined as if the other person had done the same thing to me.
There were tons of mistakes I made. Each mistake stung a little and some things I regretted it a little bit, but some things I regretted very, very deeply. I couldn’t believe what I had done. It was as if my heart was stabbed with thousand needles and some put me in so much agony that I couldn’t walk for hours. I kept telling myself, “What have I done?”
The thing about our mind is that when we think of one thing, we have constant stream of similar memories over and over again. When I deeply regretted one action, I thought about hundreds of similar actions that I had done that were deeply hidden, as if I had suppressed them for years. I was very depressed by then, but I wanted to never make the same mistakes again; never hurt other people’s feelings again, so I kept pushing myself, facing the consequences of my actions over and over in my mind. When this was happening, I had many questions in my mind whether I was mentally and physically abusing myself, but I didn’t think of this way. I thought I was simply owning up to my mistakes and if my mistakes didn’t hurt, that meant I didn’t feel I didn’t do anything wrong and that would have been very wrong. I have done lots of terrible things in the past and I needed to know how my actions would have felt to other people. And when I came out of the depression, I felt like I became a new person. I know I still have a very long way to go. I know in order to truly own up to my mistakes, I would meet everyone who I have hurt in person and tell them I’m sorry. I know I can’t do that yet, but from now, I feel I’m much more responsible for every word and action I take. I’ve done lots of things I regret and I will regret them everyday for the rest of my life, but I won’t make the same mistakes again.
When I thought about how the conversation would go with my parents, I couldn’t see how it would turn out well, at the same time, I didn’t want to do anything I would regret very deeply. I knew I would make mistakes and I wanted to minimize the mistakes as much as possible.
They are very traditional Korean parents, so having a baby before marriage is almost unforgivable, and on top of that, I don’t have a great career, a house, and large amount of savings, the things that are essential for marriage in Korean society. I knew they will ask me questions where my self-esteem and self-worth might be questioned and if it was a deep insecurity of mine, I knew I might say something I would regret. My friend told me the most important thing is if my girlfriend and I want the baby and we do. But I needed to prepare for the questions my parents would ask.
What I wanted to do was to emotionally prepare for every question they would ask. If I had a script for every question they would ask, that would be more of a job interview. My main goal was to answer all their questions in a calm manner. If I felt upset in any way, I wanted to be calm enough where they would listen to the message than ask me why I’m so upset. I thought about everything that could possibly happen and I waited until I felt prepared to be calm for everything that could happen. It took weeks before I broke the news.
It happened just like how it would happen, except I wasn’t emotionally prepared for a couple of issues.
In Korea, it is considered very inappropriate for the younger sibling to get married before the older sibling, regardless of the gender. The marriages need to happen in order, from the oldest to the youngest. When the younger sibling gets married, his/her partner becomes the authority figure when it comes wives and husbands. Respecting the elders and people who are older than you, even who are one year older, can become a huge issue between friends, families, coworkers and even strangers. So you can imagine what could happen if an older sibling’s wife who is 10 years older needs to be respectful and bow down to someone who is 10 years younger, just because of an order in marriage. So when it comes to marriages, Koreans are very strict on making sure the marriages happen in the right order to avoid any problems in the future. There are thousands of stories where a younger sibling waits for years and sometimes break up with their partners (!) because the partners couldn’t wait any longer for the older sibling to find a partner to get married. This has also caused the older siblings to rush marriages and find wrong partners that has caused even bigger problems.
When my parents brought up the issue, I thought the rule was incredibly stupid. This issue has caused divorces and even murders and people are following the same tradition because it’s the “Korean way.” They could void this ridiculous rule in the first place, instead of making sure the siblings marry in the right order. Who cares who get married first? My girlfriend and I aren’t planning for a marriage, but even if we are, my brother doesn’t have a girlfriend. Did that mean I would have to wait at least five years before I could get married? Why was my marriage depended on his marriage? It was just common sense; Why couldn’t Koreans see through this and just say, “This is Korean culture, but it’s just stupid”?
I wasn’t prepared to deal with the issue and the way I felt about the issue came right out of me while talking to my parents. I was able to calm myself down and it wasn’t an outburst on my parents. I really hated that stupid rule.
My parents aren’t that happy about my decisions to have a baby and how unprepared I am. Personally, I don’t have a high paying job, career, an apartment and a lot of money, but I know I will be a damn great dad who will always be there for the kids. There are plenty of families who have everything prepared, in terms of house, education and money, but turn out to be horrible parents, because they aren’t emotionally mature enough.
The kids’ major complaints, I would say only complaints, about their parents are completely opposite of what parents think kids need. Kids don’t care if their parents sell lemonades on the street or if they are surgeons. They don’t care if their house is 200 sq feet or 10,000 sq feet. They don’t care how much their parents have in your bank account. They don’t care at all.
What they care about is receiving emotional support, understanding, love, kindness, just being there for them and spending time with them. They are basic human qualities. That’s all they care about. When kids complain about how their parents aren’t there for them, parents say “kids these days complain when we have provided a place to live, food to eat and we give them all the money.” It’s not that kids these days are ungrateful. Maybe parents these days are too selfish to support their kids emotionally. They are too busy making money, going to meetings to further their careers, while neglecting their kids. Parents think if they went to better college, made more money or bought a big house, the kids would be happier. That’s completely opposite from the truth. Parents would be much better parents if they just asked the kids what they expect from their parents than assuming what the kids need from their parents.
Hopefully my parents will come to an understanding that I’m not the kid who has “caused a big problem.” I don’t need anyone’s approval on whether I’m prepared for a baby. I know myself that I’m ready. That’s all it matters to me.
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