Simply Be Present

My obsession with self-improvement leads me to reading a great books that inspire me to do something fantastic, motivate me to change my habits to better ones, or develop myself in completely different ways.  The only problem I have found is a lack of conversation about it.  I find it uniquely stimulating to share my thoughts and ideas about something I have learned, so that I can solidify my understanding of them and/or gain a new perspective.  However, it seems to me that self-improvement is not towards the top of the list of topics people talk about.  Same as with investments or finances, and many times relationships, I have encountered that many people tend to shy away from talking about important matters and instead focus on small talk about the weather, a new piece of technology, or the next vacation they will take.  Although I believe these are all fair topics of conversation, I have been yearning for the kind of conversation I rarely experience, from which I leave feeling empowered and with a thrilling sensation that I have found out about something that will help me improve my life and the life of those around me.

This lead me to continue pondering about the options I have.  Thankfully, we are blessed with living in the information age, in which most of the information you want to know about is just a few clicks away.  You can purchase great books in less than a minute, and have it delivered to your eReader or any other electronic device almost immediately.  You can also access fantastic online resources and learn just about any topic.  The two things that I lack from this approach, however, are direction and the opportunity for conversation.  A lack of these two makes the process of improving my life less efficient, hence why I decided to find mentors to help me.  Here is what I want to get out of my mentor or mentors.

Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction.
- John Crosby

Direction

I could try to learn everything there is to know about calculus on my own (with all its derivatives and integrals), or I could choose to go to school instead and have a professor guide me through a curriculum of what he or she thinks is more appropriate for me to learn.  If I choose the right place to study for my purposes, the assumption is that the latter would yield me much better results in a much shorter period of time.  The guidance and mentorship of a professor would help solidify the right knowledge and help me apply it in the context of what matters to me.  This is the kind of direction I am seeking in a mentor.  Someone who can see where I am coming from, where I want to get to, and help me set a direction to close the gap.  This is what I refer to when asking for direction from a mentor.

Conversation

I learn the best, and I assume most people do as well, when I have a chance to bounce my thoughts around with someone knowledgable responding to them and challenging them.  When I started learning Japanese in college I quickly realized that memorizing words before the quizzes was VERY challenging for me.  I would sit and read the list over and over, write the words over and over, and try to memorize them.  Inevitably, there would always be at least one word during the quiz that I would forget.  After a couple of weeks, however, I studied for one quiz with one of my classmates, and we quizzed each other out loud.  We also attempted to use the new words in the sentence structures we had learned, and that’s when it hit me, this wasn’t so difficult after all!  I realized that the easiest way for me to learn new vocabulary was to actually put it in context of conversation and actually attempt to use/understand it.  Having someone there to listen to me say my newly formed thoughts/sentences and respond to them solidified for me the knowledge I had just acquired.  It also gave me the opportunity to learn alternative ways of thinking about the new concepts I was learning from my classmate.  Now, if this approach was so effective to learn while in school, why am I not using it to learn about important life topics such as finances, spirituality and life in general?  It doesn’t sound like something wise.

Mentors come in all different shapes and forms, or so they say, and some of the most important advice I have received has been given to me over a casual meal or while chatting on the phone.  I have been lucky to find a few great mentors at different times in my life and am now looking forward to find one more (or a few) to fill in the gaps that I am currently experiencing.  Most of the mentors I have had, however, have been there for me without me having to go and find them.  I simply met them at my workplace, at school, or through a friend.  I never had to go out of my way to find a mentor, the relationships just grew organically.  So I am left to wonder, how do you go and find a mentor when you need it?  There’s only so much Oprah I can watch/read, and doing so only gives me the advice I seek, not the advice I may need and don’t know I need.

What do you think about the importance of mentors?  Where do you find mentors?  How have you found your mentors?

(Image Attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shande/3855788935/)

Last year, I wrote a rather lengthy post which I just re-read, and although I appreciate it very much because it brought alive some old memories with its prose, I will refrain from duplicating the effort by doing the same this year.  Instead, I want to take a few minutes to reflect upon some of the lessons 2010 offered me that I would like to remember throughout the year:

1. Treasure friendships.  It is friends that give us the strength to continue moving forward when things get difficult.
2. If it matters to you, give it your best.  No one will ever care for what you ‘could have’ done or achieved, but rather for what you actually did.  Make sure you have no regrets.
3. When it is time, simply let go.  Sometimes we focus on not failing or try to hold on to someone/something and don’t realize that it’s hurting us more than it’s worth.
4. Learn from others, but don’t blindly believe everything they say.  There are many wise people out there who can give you well-intended advice, but it’s not necessarily the best advice.  They can only see the world through their own eyes.  Learn from their perspective, but don’t get lost in someone else’s world.
5. Follow your own advice. We often have great advice for our friends but are unable to follow our own advice when we need it the most.  Be honest with yourself.
6. Keep a healthy body and mind.  Your body is the instrument you have to make a difference in this world, make sure it is in good shape to allow you to achieve your dreams. Meditate, eat well and exercise.
7. Be optimistic and keep happiness simple.  It’s the only sustainable way to work and achieve your goals while continue to be happy and healthy.
8. Be grateful for what you have. It will allow you to focus on the right things in life.
9. Keep your goals in mind. Luck really is when opportunity meets preparation.  Make sure you are ready, or working towards being ready, for when the opportunity arises.
10. Take a real interest in others. You will become a better person, and make the world a better place, if you genuinely care for others.

There have been many other lessons and great things I have come across this year, and I would like to finish off by sharing some quotes that I would want to read again in the near future.

“Don’t take yourself too seriously, no one else does”
- Regina Brett

“Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t – you’re right.”
- Henry Ford

笑う門には福来る
(Good fortune and happiness will come to the home of those who smile.)
- Japanese Proverb

“How people treat you is their karma, how you react is yours.”
- Wayne Dyer

“It is the simple things done over long periods of time that will give permanent and constant results.”
- T. Harv Eker

“Find what you’re going to be famous for. That’s not to say you should ignore your weaknesses. But make sure your strengths are aligned with what you want to be famous for – what your legacy will be.”

And, just to keep it real: “When you are complaining, you become a living, breathing “crap magnet.”"
- T. Harv Eker

I hope this is a good summary of things I want to keep in mind in 2011.  I have many goals, but mostly I want to make sure I am on my path to do greater things each day.  The specific ways in which I will achieve this remain unknown, but I will let life surprise me with opportunities.  I will work on getting myself ready for when the opportunity arises.

I have the tendency to write a blog post writing about ‘you’, whoever ‘you’ may be.  I talk about how to improve yourself, how to build your healthy habits, how to do this and that.  Yet, most of the time I am writing to myself.  I simply address it to ‘you’ in an effort to give the best advice I want to give myself but am maybe hesitant or afraid to listen to.  In fact, sometimes I take a look back at posts I wrote months ago and wonder… did I write that?  How can it sound so foreign to me, yet it’s published on my blog?

I earlier read another blog post by Jeffrey over at ‘The Art of Great Things’ and there was, and still is, an incessant chatter in my head going on.  Jeffrey talks in his entry about the concept of ‘Personal Branding’ on blogs and, as someone with a blog, I could identify greatly with many of the things he talked about.

I took a step back and reflected about the concept of ‘Personal Branding’ as to how it applies to my personal ‘offline’ life as well.  I remember growing up and thinking that it was weird how people labeled themselves. I thought it was a very strange concept feeling entitled to identify yourself by titles, whatever they would be.  Some people would call themselves professionals.  Others would decide they were mature, while others would say they were goth or emo, etc.  I never felt like I was enough of something to belong to its category, yet in an effort to join the ranks of labeled people I started looking for things that would somehow describe me. Now sometimes I think of myself in certain ways — MIT Engineering graduate, consulting analyst, independent, conscious eater (sometimes), etc.

The problem is, what about when what I truly want to do doesn’t fit that idea of myself I have created and projected?  What happened about the whole concept I had as a child of simply doing what I truly wanted?  What about those blissful days in which I would walk out of the door and get dirty playing with mud simply because I felt that right then and there, it was the perfect mud for me to play with?

The more I define who I am, the less freedom I have to simply BE. To simply be whatever I want to be at the moment, and enjoy the pleasures offered to me NOW.  Instead, I feel pressure about dating the right people at the right time so that others don’t judge me.  Or maybe I have felt pressure to continue something longer than I wanted simply to not let others down.  Or maybe I’m afraid to reveal to someone that I am gay, simply because I don’t know how they will react.

I cannot determine to what extent my own image of who I think I should be has been dictating my behavior.  It wouldn’t matter to me, but I have this discomfort down inside that tells me that I need to reassess the notions I have about myself, and determine what truly makes me happy.  I have recently felt threatened by the suggestion that I’m not mature, since this was suggested by someone close to me.  I responded by trying to prove my maturity, and this by itself should have proven to me that I have much maturing to do.  And although now I realize that, I wonder, how much nicer would that day have been if I hadn’t even been bothered by the comment about my maturity?  What if I didn’t identify so closely with the thought of being mature that I let someone’s opposing view spoil my day? Wouldn’t it be better if we stop worrying about people’s thoughts about us and rather focus our energy in enjoying the moment?

Yet as I write all this, I can’t help but wonder… am I being judged for writing this?

Although my MIT education was full of a very diverse set of experiences, I wouldn’t say that everything I did was amazing or fantastic, or that I couldn’t have been successful without having learned certain things.  However, there are a few particular things I learned at MIT, inside and outside of the classroom, that have served me well and will hopefully continue to do so after graduation.  At least, I think that they will.  Here are a few of them:

1) There’s usually a lot more to a problem that can be initially appreciated. This is a lesson I learned inside and out of the classroom.  The thought that I understood all there was to a problem was one of the easiest way for me to fail.  Always keeping my mind open to other possibilities was one of the most important things I learned in college.

2) One of the biggest mistakes we make is to not make the most out of the resources we have. This was something difficult for me to learn.  I used to believe that there was some sort of value in being able to say “I did all this by myself,” but really, no one cares.  At the end of the day what matters is what has been achieved.  If you learned how to use Maxwell equations by yourself and someone else did it in half the time by going to office hours, there’s really nothing for you to be proud of, you should have made better use of the teaching assistants yourself.  Don’t get me wrong, I still think there is great value in doing things yourself, but only if that will allow you to acquire skills that you wouldn’t obtain otherwise.

3) Overcommitting is the easiest way to do a mediocre job at many things, and not feel good about your work, VERY often. After a good semester in college, I had this overcommitting syndrome, or however you may want to call it, and I tended to want to take on the world all by myself. I would want to do sports for 10+ hours a week, and work for another 10+ hours, while simultaneously undertaking a courseload that was expected to consume 60+ hours of my week.  I would then end up doing a mediocre job at everything, and up until today I feel bad about some of the decisions I made.  The only thing that I’m glad about is that I learned from those experiences.  I learned to do as much as I can do and feel proud of, but no more than that. If I can take on 5 things and be proud of none of them, I would rather do 1 to 3 and feel proud of everything I do.

4) There’s MUCH more to life than our surroundings. This is probably one of the most important lessons I learned.  Most of us tend to live in a bubble, in which we only think in terms of what is immediately around us.  It only takes a shift in our mindset to realize that those tormenting problems we have, the ones that consume our life and energy, are silly tiny details we have chosen to focus on and don’t compare to the blessings we have received in this life.  A simple trip somewhere else, or conversations with people outside the environment we are surrounded by, are usually enough to make me realize this truth. 99% of the time we take ourselves too seriously, and think that our problems are bigger than they truly are.  We need to relax, chill.

5) Balance can be tricky, and I’m not just talking about work-life balance. Many problems I encountered with regards to bringing balance to my life were not related to work.  I actually had more issues making time for myself, rather than committing all of my time for extracurriculars, academics, and friends.  I realized that having some time to unwind, clear up my thoughts, and simply reflect about life, was one of the most important things I learned to do during the past 4 years.

6) Most, if not all, of our limitations are self-imposed. Over and over I found myself making excuses as to why I didn’t achieve something, or performed at a certain level, just to find out later on that my excuses were vague, empty and meaningless.  There was someone out there facing worst circumstances and still pulling off the results I didn’t.  This taught me to re-evaluate myself, my actions, and thoughts.  Once I started removing obstacles from my head, just like magic they disappeared from my life.

Although there are many other things I have learned, this is the first installment of things that came to my mind as the most salient lessons I have learned.  I hope you enjoyed them.  If you happen to have any reaction, comment, idea, thought, etc.  please leave a comment.

Thank you, Omar

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paullew/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

New year, new beginnings – or so they say. “What will the new year bring?” we often ask. “Happy New Year!” we often exclaim. Are we taking the time to really celebrate and enjoy the holidays? Are we taking the time to reflect and take the proper steps to enjoy the new year?

Each day presents us with at least one opportunity to change the rest of our lives. So why do we place so much emphasis on celebrating the beginning of a new year? The reason is, I think, that a year is a time that is long enough for us to really transform our lives, but short enough so that we can still reflect on it and learn from all the experiences we have experienced.

In a day, you can adjust the direction in which your life goes. In a week, you can reach a new destination. In a month, you can make new friends and start new relationships. But in a year, in one year, you can build a new life for yourself. It is amazing how much we can do and change while living through the four seasons. So, what will I transform in my life this coming year?

A year ago I found myself thinking about my future. I would, I said, make a change from my engineering life into a more business-related one. I would find a way to complete my bachelors in chemical engineering, but I would graduate and move on to something different. I wanted a career that allowed me to make a big impact in society and organizations, but allowed me to frequently interact with others. I also wanted to meet many new people, expand my social group, while simultaneously keeping my friends close.

This year allowed me to do that and more. Although I did not test for my black belt in Taekwondo, which was one of my goals, I think that my year was all I could ask for. I took some time off taekwondo and focused on academics, work, and friends. I also used that time to plan for my summer in Japan, a summer that was life-changing all by itself, and to figure out my career plan after graduation. Taking that break allowed me to clear up my mind in a way I may not have been able to otherwise.

A lesson I learned from that process, however, was to always keep communication open with others. To not shy away from sharing my honest thoughts with those around me, friends, family, instructors, and peers. Not keeping things clear may give rise to misunderstandings, and may end up hurting relationships unnecessarily.

I also learned that although it is great to have a close group of friends, you should always listen to your heart and your mind. There are times in which only you will know what is best for you, and if you don’t give yourself a chance to explore what your mind is telling you to do, what you feel is right, you may be giving up on the life you always hoped for. I love my friends, I cheer them every minute I can, but sometimes I have to be strong and self-reliant, cause only I will be there for myself every second of the day.

Here is a summary of what the seasons this year brought me –

Late Winter – Spring 2009
Just like the fields flower in the Spring to symbolize the new beginnings, there were plenty of new beginnings for me. Although I had a successful Academic semester, my major accomplishment was to learn to keep myself happy and relaxed! I think that, although I have always been on the ‘happy and relaxed’ side, this year is marked by an optimism I had not felt before. Maybe it was partially triggered by reading “The Secret”, Eckhart Tolle, or one of those philosophical books I read, or maybe it was just the strengthening of my relationships with my family, friends, and that special someone. Whatever it was, I think that my approach to life and the way I looked at it made this past year possibly my happiest yet. Waking up every morning and allowing myself to feel good about me and my day, and whatever it may bring, allowed me to really absorb and enjoy the beauty of each day. Even when times were not the best, when friendships/relationships were rocky, when family was not at its best, or when academic pressures were at their peak, there was hope and happiness within me. I always new things would be great. Not okay, not good, not fine, but fantastic.

Summer 2009–
When the heat of the summer came around, I ran to beautiful Japan and there had a summer I could never summarize. As I wrote on my summer report about my summer –

How do I begin this report? There are far too many things I would like to express and share from my experiences in Japan, far too many to summarize here. However, to keep things simple, I will just say that my summer in Japan was a life-changing experience, and the memories from this trip I will forever treasure.

I think that is the best description of my summer. I wrote plenty about it here – http://simplybepresent.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/meditating.jpgtag/summer-2009 if you ever wonder what I did or loved so much in Japan.
Looking back at my summer, all I can remember is happiness and joy. I allowed myself to smile and laugh for no reason, to truly be present at the moment, and to stop thinking that “tomorrow” or “someday” I would be able to have the life I wanted and truly enjoy happiness. I replaced that thinking with knowing that there is no better day than today, no better moment than the present, to feel the warmth and happiness in our hearts that I had always been ‘seeking’. Maybe it was not Japan in particular that made my summer special, maybe the special part of it was me allowing myself to truly enjoy life.
I am now thinking about my summer in Japan, and it was a beauty. Those long days were beautiful and allowed me to truly experience what it was to be completely free –

Fall 2009 – Early Winter 2009
The fall season was one of changes. The spring flowers and green summer leaves were now transitioning into more serious and mellow colors, and so was my life. But far from being a sad transitioning phase, it was yet another season of happiness and love. Although I missed my life in Japan, and the freedom I felt there, after some stumbles and lessons I learned that I could be free and truly happy anywhere. I did not need to be at a particular place to allow myself to be happy, optimistic, and free. I enjoyed the company of my friends, and I was able to strengthen my special relationship, which had bloomed during the Spring. I was also able to reconnect with friends and find a job, the job I had been asking for – a job that would allow me to transition from engineering to a more business-y job. This would will allow me to solve problems while interacting with others and to make a big impact in organizations.

The late fall and early winter greeted me with snow in mid-October and then some brutal cold. This was before my travels to warm (almost hot) Puerto Rico. Just as I moved physically in the world, allowing me to escape the cold weather and embrace warmth, I learned this year that when everything seems cold around me, in my surrounding emotional world, I can transform my thoughts and my reality to keep my heart warm. I can always choose to irradiate happiness and love, and not to let the coldness and bitterness in the air infect me. There is always a way, if I believe, and it is that way that I will always keep my life open to.

Concluding Remarks –

I am happy, and have learned to be happier. This year has allowed me to transform my life mentally and emotionally, and helped me become stronger and better. I will always strive for better, but will never stop enjoying the present, this very moment I am living. There will never be a better moment to be truly happy than NOW.

Enjoy the Holidays & Happy New Year ~
To a great 2009 and an even better 2010 ~
Life gets better, moment by moment.

As a kid, I had a computer with a password I won’t forget, “success”.  I remember typing it every time I was going to do work, or just browse the internet.  Now, almost 10 years after I first typed this password, here I am contemplating the meaning of the word.

This year has been one of much reflection for me, and it will continue to be so.  I started the academic year back in September, and as a graduating senior it has been quite an interesting year.  The job hunting process has been quite humbling, I submitted my resumé to 14 positions in 8 different companies and got back 2 interview offers.  Those two interview offers resulted in a total of eight interviews, 2 rounds of 2 interviews with one company and 3 rounds with a total of 4 interviewers in the other. After all these interviews, it was up to them to decide if they would extend a job offer.

This past week I got my first response, it was a voicemail since I couldn’t pick up my phone during class, and there it went “…we just made our final decisions and unfortunately have decided to not continue along with you in this process.”

So there was a rejection, so close to the goal.  At first I was just numb, didn’t quite have a reaction.  Then it started to sink in and I realized just how difficult it was to accept defeat, yet at the same time I could only think of the thousands of people who have lost their jobs after having been working for many years, those who already have families that depend on them…

At the personal level, I am happy.  Looking back to the process I’ve gone through, it was quite an achievement to make it to the final round with both of the companies who offered me an interview, so I take some comfort in that.  Although it is still discouraging to hear that I was not considered best fit for the job, I eventually swallowed my pride.  There are many very qualified applicants out there, and I am sure that the people who got the job offer were very well fit for the position.

I am now waiting to hear back from my other final round interview, and getting ready to apply to other job opportunities.  I think this process of applying to jobs is a very interesting one, you keep promoting yourself over and over to people, and then just hope that you can convince the right people to allow you to start a career with them, and invest some money on you.

At the end of the day, however, how do you define success is a very personal matter, and so is failure.  So far in the game, I don’t feel like I have failed, but I am still debating if I can call my achievements so far ‘success’.  I am still stuck in the way of thinking that getting that job offer is the measure of my success during this process, but that doesn’t quite fit with my views since it always requires just a tad of luck to also get the job.

At night, when the world goes to sleep and I lie awake on my bed taking a look at my thoughts as they flow through my mind I realize… I succeed every day one way or the other. The little challenges that each day bring make me a stronger person, a more educated one and someone even more ready to face the difficulties that life presents us.  At the same time, I become someone who can appreciate the blessings I receive, and that is something that matters more to me than anything else.  So… am I succeeding?  I certainly think so, every single day.