The Art of Growth And 5 Steps to Do It

Well, it comes to day 5 of my 1K Words Challenge arranged by +Gideon Walker. My first post since day 1 always talk about personal development. From trying to apply The 4-Hour Workweek (affiliate link to Amazon) method, meditation and healing the wound inside. All of these things will end up in one final destination, growth. Growing up to become a better person and starts to creating value for others. Making an impact in all kind of roles we take, all kind of activities we do, and all kind of dreams and stories we share.

Growth is not easy yet not that hard as in your imagination. It's not easy due to habit that we have. Every person has their own habit such as communication style, the way we do things, and even the way we see things. Changing all those bad habits is tons of work. Imagine if you always use an Iphone than suddenly change it to Android phone, it's not easy, isn't it? Growth is also not that hard to achieve. You can start making an impact by just do very little step such as start to arrange your book shelf or maybe just organize your bookmarked pages on your browser. It's not a leap, it's a step by step process to getting better. From "bad" to "mediocre", "mediocre" to "good at it", and from "good at it" goes to an expert.

Committing to a growth is just like taking the bad taste medicine in order to become more fit in the future. There are few steps I started in order to developing myself:

1. Challenge Yourself

This is something you might don't want to hear. Leave your comfort zone. Most of us tend to live inside our comfort zone, me too. If you want to develop yourself make the challenge becomes your habit. Here is a simple thing that might good enough to start it. Try to go to your workplace with a different route  today. Realize it or not, most of us go to work with the same route, same street everyday. We use the same route since our brain consider it as the fastest or safest way to take. Take another route today and evaluate it what do you feel about it?

2. Share Your Blessing

Share stories, help people, and bring something to the table for everyone will change your perspective. Stop thinking that you will never have enough and start to think you have too much for yourself. Develop yourself means bring value to both of your life and others'. The candy picture in the beginning of this post means that. Great people always look tasty and delicious to others. How can you are looked delicious and tasty when you never bring something to the table. 

3. Accepting Yourself

In my previous post, I wrote about healing your wound. I wrote this post for you but to be honest I wrote especially for me. Do not hide your wounded part and buried it deep inside. There's a sentence I love from a book titled Wisdom of Sam by Daniel Gottlieb, "Let your wound healed. Then, use all of the wisdom you got to heal the world". Accepting ourselves who are wounded by others is never easy. Walking down a path of suffering make our brain unconsciously hates the causes. Start with accepting yourself what it is, your suffering, your happiness and all other feelings. By accepting yourself, you will start to enjoy the world since you are living in the presents and not in your own imaginary world of feelings.

4. Be Positive

To be honest, this is the hardest thing to do in  my life. I didn't know and don't know what is the reason behind it. I am such a negative person. Every condition I face will always be negative in my mind. My brain just start to make imagination about the future end and always end up with bad ending. I know it's wrong and I start to change it. I do meditation, I read a lot of books about personal development and all other things that I think will help me to become a more positive person. I haven't reach and achieve it yet but I am on my way to become brighter than sunshine ;). Be positive about things and universe will conspire to help you. I don't know the explanation about it, I just experienced it. So, be positive.

5. Just Do It

(Photo credit: bbaunach)

Like Nike's tagline, "Just Do It". You may not know the result but just do it. Wasting your time to think about the result will bring you no where. You just need to do it then let see the result. You will get something when you do something. At least you know the mistakes when you fail to do it. People who succeed always do think, they just don't think about it. Best selling authors like Malcolm Gladwell wrote their first word to have a best selling book,  Brin and Page started Google as a small research project, and Jobs started Apple in a garage. Look at them, aren't they several of most successful person in this world? They got all their success with acts not just by think over their dream. Make it different between life of a person who has a dream and a person who is daydreaming. Stop thinking and just do it.

Let me be honest with you, I am not a successful person yet. I still need to do a lot of things in my life and fix a lot of things in myself. I haven't achieved anything and not even finish with these five things I just wrote. I just try to develop myself by making this post. Because by making this post, I just bring value to myself and others. Well, the worst case scenario, I just bring a value to myself. Enjoy your day and I wish you the best in your life ahead.

Related articles

• How to Heal The Wound Deep Inside.
• Meditation, A Way to Found Your True Self and Inner Peace
• The Truth Within Life
• Get Organized in A Busy Week and Month by Applying 4 Hour Workweek Rules

How to Heal The Wound Deep Inside.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's really dark inside there. Nobody shall ever try to come in. A dark cave that I closed down for years so everybody will never feel the miserable darkness inside it. This is a path of embarrassment, sadness, pain, and all other bad feelings that you can ever taste. So don't go there, it's for your own good. I will close it forever so nobody shall ever see this terrible cave and walk through the path of all of the bad feelings. You shall never ask me about it anymore.

Everybody has their own secrets, and just like the short stories I wrote in the first paragraph. most people tend to keep their darkest experience as a secret. It is something that really normal since that experience can be embarrassing, full of sadness and traumatic experience. On the extreme conditions, even ourselves can forget that we have those experience since we buried it to deep.

Slowly and not realized, we keep those wound around us all the time and we still hurt because we don't try to heal it.  Later on, this problem will start to form our behavior and habits. Keeping this wound inside you is not a good way out. Wound is still a wound until you heal it. I just did it 2 months ago when I met my best friend that helps me in many ways in my life journey. Before I share some tips that maybe useful to heal the wound inside you, let me share the story about my deepest wound I had been keeping since I was a little boy.

I was like 8 or 9 years old little boy, this wound happened when I was on the third grade in elementary school. It happened when my curiosity gave me a one unforgettable experience with one of my friend back in school. He was a son of rich guy who could afford all the things that he wanted while I was a poor family that should understand our family economic situation in such early stage of my life. 

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One day, he was wearing this brand new and cool G-Shock watch. As a little boy, me and all other friends were so amazed with that watch. All of us were giving him a compliment about how lucky he was and how cool was the watch he put on his right hand. Enjoyed with all of the compliment, he started to push several button and show us all the features that he knew from this black canvas G-Shock watch. We were having a lot of great times by just seeing him give a demo and explanation about his watch.

At the afternoon, around 3.30 to 04.00 p.m, I talked to him and we still had discussion about this watch. Later on he just raising his right hand and show me once again how to turn on the green lights of his watch. I was a kid with high curiosity and in an instant, seeing this high tech watch for the first time in front of my face, I just pressed one button that changed the watch to a stop watch mode. Both of him and me were really surprised with that mode. Stun for 5 to 10 second, he began to panicking and screaming loudly in the class. He seemed didn't care even though there was our teacher in the class.

He started to cry and shouting to me. I tried to check on the watch and pressed several buttons to bring the watch back to its normal mode but I couldn't found the way. I was so panic and didn't know what to do. My eyes filled with tears of regret. Why I pressed the button? Why did I become so stupid and let my curiosity take control of me? My teacher separated both of us and she said that I shouldn't be that naughty. She said I need to fix the watch since it's me who broken it. This is  where my dark cave was built for the first time.

On the next day, this kid came to my place and said it couldn't be repaired anymore and I need to buy a new one for him. I didn't know what to do at that point. Only one thing I know, my parent can't afford to buy one. They even cannot provided me with the text book for school. Where the hell I supposed to find that amount of money? I didn't want to make my parents sad and give them another burden to find the money. I just said I need time to find the money but he didn't care. He pushed me over. While walked away he just said I must get him a new one.

This things happened day by day in school and I kept it all the time by myself. All the time, my mind filled with that only one problem. I only enjoying my time when I watched my older cousin played the video game or when I played with him. At night I couldn't close my eyes, all of the thoughts came back and start to terrorizing me. My hearts beat faster as I know I would face the same kid and same problem again in the school on the next morning.

I faced this thing for over two years. Can you imagine it? Couldn't close your eyes and thinking over the same problem for every single. Facing the same terror for over 2 years. I would only fell asleep after 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. That wasn't for me, AT ALL. Sometimes, I just wish that I could erase myself so I didn't need to think about it at all. This is my biggest fears and what makes can become a man with hundreds of mask. I get used to hide my problems and pretend to smile to everyone in the house. I know if that happens right now, I can switch the watch back to  its normal mode but that happened years ago where I didn't have all the knowledge as much as I do right now. Same terror, same fear for almost two years. He stopped terrorizing me when he and his family moved away to another town by end the of our first term in 5th grade. I never meet him after neither contact him anymore. I just wish the best for him and his cool black canvas strap G-Shock right now.

Photo credit: @Doug88888)

Letting Go Your Trauma and Bring A Light to The Dark Cave

I have done a lot of ways to heal my wound and get over it. Some of them were not working but some of them worked just like magic. So, here is a list of steps for you that might heal your deepest wound:

• Have a best friend to share your stories. My best friend is someone I could never thought before. He is the general manager in my previous company. The first time I share this stories, I cried a lot. Tears just streaming down my face when I started told him about my childhood trauma. It gives me a big relieve and faith that I will get through and I have companion along in my journey to heal this wound.

• Write your own trauma and problems on a letter or on computer. Read it over and over, write down how you feel about it as detail as you can. Give and put some illustrations or pictures, change the font color. Read it over and over, day by day. It will give you the courage to admit and accepting your wound.

• Pray to God and let Him know your problem. Let him be your final place to put all of your problem. Trust Him that he can lift the burden and sadness from your shoulders and throw it away.

• Find a good reading material that broaden your wisdom and knowledge. I suggest you to take a look on Wisdom of Sam by Daniel Gottlieb, The Angels Inside by Chris Widener and As A Man Thinketh by James Allen. All of them are good readings for your soul. I made reviews of these books since I consider it as a great source of wisdom.

• Do meditation, eat well and do exercise. These 3 things is basic things that human being need. It will help you let go things and stop you being worry and afraid.

I hope this post is worth your time reading this post. If you read about my childhood story here, you just know it faster than my parents since I consider to tell them about this little secret when I go back to my hometown on May 2013.  If you want to engage more or share stories with me you can circle my Google Plus Profile or send me a message there. I am quite busy with my work on the weekdays but I have a lot of time on weekend. Weekend would be the best time for us to chat or having a hangout on Google+. May you have the courage to face your darkest fear and trauma. I wish all the people will heal their deepest wound inside. Enjoy your day, have a better days and life ahead.

Meditation, A Way to Found Your True Self and Inner Peace

(Photo credit: asparagus_hunter)

Meditation means silencing your mind. Resting your mind from all of the external influence that get over your mind all day long. Is it possible to resting your mind? The answer is yes it is possible and meditation is one of the greatest way to do it.

Most of the people are thinking they are okay but in fact their mind is a mess. If you project it to a screen, you might seen a crazy traffic jam of things stuck one each other. I do also has the same thing and that's the reason I do meditation. 

All day long, you spend time with thinking things. When you meet people, you start talk and chat about things, people, and other issues. Even it's not related to us, most of the time we will spend time to over think all of those things. When you see people fight each other or you see the gossip news on TV, its energy illuminates yourself and start creating imagination and thoughts about it. By doing the meditation and having your mind rest, you will have a chance to clearing those negative energy from your body. You will find your true voice and feel the inner peace. 

(Photo credit: albill)

Do you really need to meditate?

Answer this question to yourself. If you say you do need it, than start meditate for 15 minutes. If you say you don't need to do it, try to think the reason of it. If you say you are too busy with your daily routines, than you will need an hour meditation for a day. Why? It's because you are too busy with external things and it's starting to take control over your life. You will always feel that you need to do this, you need to do that. In truth, your inner voice is drown in the middle of external influence. You have lived in the world of imagination and thoughts. Not seeing things by how they should be instead you see things based on a bias perception. Do it one time and maybe you will feel better. Do the meditation will bring a better perspective to yourself. 

What can I get from meditation?

You will get a lot of great things. You can things more clear as how they should. You can live in the presents and not in the world of imagination. You will start to hear you inner voice. You will have higher productivity since you're unattached to the external influence as bad as it was.

How to do a right meditation?

There's a lot of resources out there that you can found on the internet about the right way to doing the meditation. But the basic things about meditation is just silencing your mind and thoughts. You can start doing it by sitting on the floor or on the chair, find your most comfortable position and just close your eyes. Focus on your breathing, make a count for every inhale and exhale cycle. Make a count to 10 then go back and started again from 1. Focusing on your breath will help you to concentrate and keep your mind to stay there.

(Photo credit: betsystreeter)

I cannot concentrate and my minds is keep thinking about things

It will happen all the time. You will start to think a lot of thing and losing your concentration. Well, let the thoughts going anywhere it wants, just keep coming back to your counting and focus on your breath. Inhale, exhale, just focus on it. Like I said in the beginning, our minds has not think as clear as it should be. External influence and energy already takes control and mess up with our mind. If you see it in clearer perspective, that's what happen all this long. Your mind is not in your control anymore. As you do the meditation more often, things will start to get better and more organized. Me, myself, was experiencing those things in the first few months of meditation. I still experience it until now but it less compared to the first time I did the meditation.

How often I need to do the meditation?

(Photo credit: Lua Ahmed)

Well, for there is no certain minutes daily meditation schedule that will work for everybody. It depends on your need. What can I suggest is do it twice, in the morning and night. Do it in the morning because you want to start your day with a clear mind, and do it in the night since your mind need a rest just as much as your body need it. Another thing I should remind you is try to keep doing it even you already feel better. Imagine your brain and mind as a computer where all the  files, data, program and apps running all this long. You will to keep clearing the "unused data" to keep it work at its best performance. You don't want to go to the "Task Manager" and forced to end the process or restart. Keep cleaning your "hard disk drive"(I mean your brain) will maintain and ensure the performance at its best.

Any other thing that I should do for a better life?

Life is always about balance and in order to live your life at the fullest you need to maintain this balance. Meditation for your mind and spirit, eat well, enough rest and exercise for your body. This things will keep your productivity in a high level. You will enjoy your life more since you live the presents with a clear mind and fit body. 

Why should I believe in this stuff? It just doesn't make sense to me.

I am just a 24 years old young man who doesn't achieve anything yet, just an Indonesian guy who works in a bank to pay his bills and helping his families, and was a miserable guy who don't know what to do, where to go and why should he do it. Well in this case, you have all of the rights to not believing what I have written in this blog. One thing that's true and it's a fact, I am not taking advantage for what I wrote in this post. 

I just try to fulfill my inner voice which is sharing all of my knowledge that can help people to get better life. I was a miserable young man once and as my life starts to get better and better, I want to make others to feel more happy and better with their life. And meditation is one of the options to live our life to the fullest. Anyway, here is a link where you can get tons of great resources that I used as my guide in the early stage of my meditation. You can get great guidance to start your meditation from there.

And Oprah alongside with Deepak Chopra are having this 21 Days Meditation Challenge that worth to join. Come and join this challenge for getting a guidance from Deepak to start your meditation. It's free and you have nothing to lose. If you feel like you don't want to do it, you just can quit anytime. It's a pleasure for having you reading this post and I hope you will have great days ahead. 

The Truth Within Life

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I just finished my day 1 meditation challenge arranged by Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra. I feel greater and better after finishing today session. I can both see and think with more clear and organized view.

Like I just told you in my previous post yesterday Get Organized in A Busy Week and Month by Applying 4 Hour Workweek Rules, in this post I will inform you the result of to do list that I made yesterday. I managed to finish 3 out of 5 to do list that I made before. I have done the  day 1 "1k words challenge" from +Gideon Walker, I have joined the Hangout On Air on Google+, I managed to do meditation. 2 points that I failed spending 4 hours to learn the Risk Management Book and spending 1,5 hours to learn the Japanese. I did learn the Risk Management for 2 hours yesterday but I didn't learn any Japanese language yesterday. 

Why can't I manage to do the other 2 things? The reason is simple, I don't fell I want to do it but I must do it. Feel or being forced makes me put less commitment to those 2 things. I don't enjoy it as  much as I enjoy writing and meditate. Distractions came up with a lot of ways and make me can't concentrate. A lot of things that not in my control started to take over my mind. That's the reason I made "The Truth Within Life" as the topic of this post.

In life, there are so many things that causing us feel both unhappiness and stress. We are doing it in hope to get to us closer to our happiness. It is okay as long as it's on the right proportion. If you need to do things that you don't like everyday so that you can reach your happiness, I suggest you to stop doing it. Just stop doing it because by the end of the day all of your effort will become nothing.  All the result will be minimum and what you will get is not worth the suffering.

I know there are some conditions that we cannot avoid to do things even if we don't enjoy it. One thing all of us should bear in mind, we can learn to enjoy things. Sometimes things are bad the first time you experience it. In a condition of must do things, try to look more deep into it. Spend some time with it and look the right person to become you mentor. You might end up enjoying it if you know the real purpose of doing those things and have the right companion along in the journey.

Give some time to do things that looks bad in your imagination. Things tend to not as bad as it seems in our mind. Open to all possibilities at first will take you further to your final goals. Just remember to stop when you feel as bad as the first time you do it. When all of those things start taking control and mess your mind. Look for alternatives that will take you closer to your final goals.

(Photo credit: Moyan_Brenn)

The truth within life is our life will always about limitless and limited. There are so many constraint in this life that make life more complicated than the life we shall have. To make life more simple, we shall see all of this constraint and erase the bad one for the sake of our own life. Our mind can be limitless or limited. External things that not in our control are also either limited and limitless. Trying to control the external things will limited our mind. Too much things that shall not in our little brain will cause us. Control what you can control will make yourself the true you. External thing will follow to be in your control if you do control your mind.  I am not an expert as I also still far away from my own perfect life. I just keep open myself to all of possibilities that can take me closer to my dreams and here are several points I have learned to find the truth within my life and my life purpose:

• Learn the meditation to clear your mind. Do it in the morning and night.

• Make your own map to your final goals. Try to find all of the possibilities that you can do to take you closer to the goals.

• Stop hearing too much information, have filters on your brain. It's really good if you can filter all of the information but if you don't have it yet just leave people that talk to much. Believe me on this one fact, you will get more crap than information you need.

• Find the right person to accompany you in your life journey and can lead you by becoming your mentor. There is always no one such as perfect persons so anybody is good as long he or she bring the light in your life.

• Have faith in God. There is no specific religion that better than any other religion. I don't have religion but I always believe in God (I am an agnostic). Trust He always at your side, on every step you take in your life. Learn your own way to pray to Him, I always spend around 10 or 15 minutes in the morning to pray this last one month and I feel greater and better since. Have a faith to let go all of the burden on your shoulders to Him.

Tomorrow, I will make a post about meditation as my daily activities. The reason behind my decision to do the meditation and what result I already experience by doing it. I have been doing it for this 4 months where the last 2 months I already have a regular schedule. Just remember to enjoy your life to the fullest, nobody has a certain way and only you who can find your way to enjoy life. Take control of your mind and stop listening to external things that will only mess your mind. Enjoy you day, I hope you enjoy reading this blog post and thank you for spending your time in here. 

Related articles

• 21-Day Meditation Challenge (lovinggodonpurpose.com)
• Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra Partner to Launch 'Oprah & Deepak 21-Day Meditation Challenge' (tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com)

Get Organized in A Busy Week and Month by Applying 4 Hour Workweek Rules

(Photo credit: AJC1)

Super busy week, tons of work and deadline. I know a lot of people has experienced it. This week it's my turn. It will be super crazy, busy, and hectic week or maybe month in my daily life.

I have 2 big exams I need to face. One for the Banker Risk Certification in Indonesia and the other one is Japanese language test. Plus there are several  personal projects and challenge that I took. I decided to take the challenge from +Gideon Walker, to write 1k words every day for 30 days. I never done it before but it will be fun for me since I enjoy writing very much. I also have a new course from Coursera that just coming out one week ago. Last thing but not least, I also will face  21 days meditation challenge held by Oprah and Deepak Chopra (join me, it's free and should be fun). We need balance, to resting our mind in this super busy and hectic world, in order to achieve our potential every day. I suggest you to join the last program that I mention, meditation has helped me a lot to get through my busy day job and life in Jakarta. 

Then I remember about a book from Timothy Ferris, The 4-Hour Workweek(affiliate link to Amazon). It's a New York Times bestselling book about having time for living the life you want and do thing that only really important to you. I just read about first thirty percents (100 of 300 pages) of the book but there're already several tips inside it. Here is the several tips that I noted from the first one-third of the book:

• Don't make your life harder by thinking you don't have time. Priorities is important in order to get closer to your dreams and goals. Do thing that only important and don't let other things that comes in a sudden makes you postpone that important task.

• Remove 20% activities (could be friends, daily job activities, network or any other things) that causing 80% of your unhappiness.

• Focus on 20% that makes you gain 80% of your success and closer to your goals. 

• Focus on optimizing your strength not on improving your weakness. Improving on your weakness only take you to a mediocre level but maximizing and optimizing your strength will take you far beyond your imagination.

• Make a to do list that only really important in order to achieve your goals and dreams. This to do list period shouldn't be any longer than 1 day. Write it on a traditional tools like paper since if you write it on a computer software you can add such of infinite number of task which is something unimportant.

From that tips I try to make my own to do list for this Monday and I will follow it since I have no choice besides doing the important things only in this busy week and month. I am quite unorganized and spontaneous but I believe it's just the time to get organized for achieving goals and dreams. This week will be crucial for me and I don't want to ruin it. So, here you go, my to do list and all of the reason why I need to do these things for Monday (the to do list is sorted by priority just in case if I cannot do it all, I need to eliminate the most unimportant one. Our time is only limited to 24 hours right? :D):

• Spending 4 hours for reading the risk book provided by the foundation who will arrange the test. I need to spend a lot of hours with this book since it has a lot of theory inside of it. 

• Writing another 1000 words in this blog in order to complete the 30 days 1000 words writing challenge. I guess there is no reason needed to state in here. You know, it just a form of  commitment. When you took a challenge, you need to do it even though it's hard. People will put some respect to a man of his own word.

• Joining or watching 4th series hangout on air for writer by +martin shervington. This time Martin's HOA will do an interview with +Mari Smith. It is important for me to watch this since writing is one of my biggest passion and dreams. +Mari Smith is someone that really know about relationship marketing and engagement is something that really important for someone who want and loves to write. For you who want to write a book or blog, come and join us to watch the HOA (the link already attached at this point). It will be fun and one thing for sure, this hangout will broaden your knowledge.

• Doing meditation (2 x 15 mins today). Like I told you, I also took the 21 days meditation challenge and I don't want to waste opportunity to learn the right method to meditate from the expert, Deepak Chopra.

• Learning Japanese letter for an hour and a half. Since it just the basic level, I don't need to spend too many times in here. This one is less important priorities compared to the others to do list points above, I already learn it few weeks ago. All I need is recalling my memory to ensure I am not forgetting any letters when I face the test. 

That's the 5 most important thing I need to do for this Monday. I will coming back to inform you the result and progress that I made. The problem I face and my way to overcome that problem. I will also post the to do list for Tuesday with the result I will achieve today. 4-Hour Workweek(affiliate link to Amazon) is a really unique and interesting book. Well let see how it will goes with my life when I apply what's written on the book. I won't blame the book if I failed, it just don't work with me because of myself. I know a lot of people who apply and implement the methods in this book has taste the good life and success out there.

Geez, a lot of things to do this month, but I promise you I will solve all of it, one by one, day by day.  If you are interested for following my journey this month, you can read this blog since I will complete 1k words writing challenge everyday in here. The merrier the more right? It will be fun for me to take you with my busy journey. I also will have some extra boost of energy by having you guys along with me in this journey. Well that's it for today, I just complete one of my to do list which is 1k words writing challenge, 4 left :). I hope you enjoy this article and what I have wrote can bring another positive impact to others' life. Love you all and have a great Monday :).