BIGGEST LESSON OF 2020

 To not be so hard on yourself.

Wah typicalnyaaaa. -_-

 Assalamualaikum

I should explain. In the past years, I never considered myself as someone who is hard on herself. I mean, if I was, why was I so happy when I scored 52 on my ACCA P1 paper lol. If I was someone that put pressure on herself, I should have aim to win the world prize or something...but I did not. So I thought I was the laid back, chill kind. lol. But as it turns out, grades were the only one that I don't care, everything else, well, to put it simply, nothing in my life was up to my standard.

You see, I am always interested in life, I have this big ideas on how life should be, I wanted that perfect life, I wanted to be that perfect being; which of course, is setting myself up for disappointment because there is no such thing as perfect in this world. Who am I to think that I am an exception. I can't and will never be perfect. So whenever I try to built a "good" habit let say, in the beginning, I would feel so good because wow I'd successfully done it for like a month or two, that's an achievement right? but then, the minute I felt lethargic and missed like a week, I got disappointed, I scold myself, and I gave up on it because why bother. I am going to slip anyway.

🤦‍♀️

Teruk sangat perangai ni.

And if I were to justify why I am such a procrastinator, I think this has got to do with the fear of letting myself down as well because you see, starting something means you have to finish it, and finishing something gives an outcome, outcome of something may or may not be up to my standard and when things is not up to my standard, I'll be disappointed, I scold myself, the whole things repeat itself!

This year was full of "disappointment". This is trying trying time. Nothing is normal, MCO disturb everything. MCO even kills all the "good" habit that I manage to keep. Productivity was out of the window. I was down most of the time. I was down when I don't work as much, when I woke up late, when I slept late, when I gained weight, when I prayed late, when I don't touch the Quran, but when I tried to look at the bright side, when I tried to appreciate the fact that I am not infected with COVID-19, I am able to pay my bills, I don't need to withdraw my EPF, I still have a job and the fact that I like it's raining, I instantly feel guilty because well, you insensitive brat, people are suffering!

Overwhelming year, I know.

I was so tired of everything I decided f**k this shit. I will not care anymore. haha. and I got happier? serious talk, the minute I decided that I will not care, to take things slow, to forgive myself every time I slip, I got much happier than before. I have finally become the cool ones guyssss, lol, sometimes too cool that I let myself do mistakes, repeatedly, because I know that I'll bounce back soon. This is all thanks to this thing I read online, I don't know from where I read it, I would have credited the author if I know, but this is something that passed my timeline one day,

"Each prayer time is a new opportunity to be better,"

Why is that so cool? You know how people say things like how each day is a new day to be better, while I think that's cool, thinking that each prayer time is a new opportunity to change is even cooler! That is like what, five times a day, five timelines to change your life! It's no more "new year new me," it's the "new Asar, new me!". I know you can't hear me but I am practically shouting now guysss! I don't know mannn, something about having too many opportunities to change just motivates me so much, and since I now have a lot of opportunities, I have stop being hard on myself, because well, now I don't have to wait, I can just bounce back in the next prayer time.

Who would have thought a sentence can make it this easy to stand back up from a fall.

And on being insensitive, this might be so selfish of me to say, but I decided to feel what I want to feel. Everyone has their own life, you have your own, I have my own, I want to focus on the good in my life, I want to be grateful for the things that I have. I have it, God bless me with it, I will enjoy it. I learn that I can enjoy my life but at the same time have empathy on others. We all should not be down together, we should understand each other.

So that's basically sums up my 2020, a year that I decided to f**k this shit.

Happy New Year guys. No matter what it might be, may you always find good in everything, Insyaallah.

BIGGEST LESSON OF 2020

Wednesday, January 6, 2021

A PHOTO A DAY

Assalamualaikum

I am currently trying to build a habit to take a photo/videos everyday. I decided to do so after Ayu pointed this out,

Her: Weh teruk gila phone kau. Semua gambar pokok je (plantzoo product shoot).

 

At the time, months had passed without a single photo on my life. When I reflected upon it, I realised, pre-Covid, I only took photos of me on the way to work, my life with my colleagues, outing with friends and family or trips. I almost never took any photos at home. So Covid = cannot go out = no photo

No wonder 2020 feels stagnant. I have no proof that I live through it!

So that's what I've been doing...take a photo everyday. I don't even care if it is not aesthetically pleasing (not that I know how to take good photos -_-). I just snap random moment, like....

That time when Yati send me a birthday cake and present

That rare moment when Faiz decided to cook for lunch (See what I mean by "I don't care if the picture looks good" lol

That time when I finally setup a proper home workstation

That time when I pretend that my new workstation has a direct correlation with my productivity

On rare occasion where I dressed up and go out (I don't like Covid but I must admit, I like this "mask on" new normal)

and many moreeeee private moments....it's been fun =P

***

On another note, I recently decided to journal again in Day One (last entry was in June oppss). Why do I feel the need to journal again? During the time when I did journal consistently, I realised that it has make me a more grateful person overall. I became more conscious of my life, I realised all the small details, the small joy and achievement, the little steps I took, which TBH, it'll otherwise overlooked if I don't process my day.

Journal helps me differentiate between having merely existed and actually living a life, which is something that I very much need this time around, to be aware of life.

If you don't know where to start, consider this 5 minutes AM and PM prompt I got of Day One and google.

5 minutes AM (as soon as you wake up)

1. I dreamt about.....
2. What would make today great?
3. Daily affirmation.

 

5 minutes PM (before bed)

1. Three things that happened today:
2. How could I have made today better?
3. Today I'm grateful for...

Or just use Day One :P. It's free (limited features).

I know some of my friends don't journal because they don't know what to write, even with the prompt, they have to think hard on what to pin down but babe, you don't have to be serious all the time. After all, this journal is for you and your eyes only. It's not like you're going to publish it anywhere.

For reference, this is my answer several days ago when I woke up really tired and lazy;

5 minutes AM (as soon as you wake up)

1. I dreamt about.. goblet of fire
2. What would make today great? If I work
3. Daily affirmation. I am rajin

 

Lol. That was me trying to pujuk myself to wake up and work -_- Very short and malas answer :P 

Start somewhere. You'll soon realised how uplifting journaling is.

***

On another different note, pandemic has force me to re-organise my gallery, and then was when I discover pile of random videos waiting to be compiled. Here is the first one, sorry in advance for the poor quality.

A PHOTO A DAY

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

THE PERFECTION TRAP

 

Assalamualaikum

Recently, my company organize this new female mentoring program for us. It's a small book club kind of circles (4 mentees and 1 mentor in each circle) where we all need to read this book "How Women Rise: Break the 12 Habits Holding You Back From Your Next Raise, Promotion, or Job".

First and foremost, let me talk about the book. I haven't finish the book as I want to follow the course of the program, but from the chapters that I've read, some habits are nothing new, bad habits that we ourselves know we have. However, some are really eye-opener. I find myself doing this a lot while reading the book, I stop and reflect on things that happened/did not happen because of the way I reacted to a certain situation.

I personally like the book. I think it’s a shame that it’s marketed only towards professional female adult. I think this book could benefit everyone; men/women, professional/non professional, matured/young.

Onto our mentoring session. The chapter that we discussed for our first session is "The Perfection Trap". Here is what I find interesting; we have so much in common! Some of them are:

1. When giving example on unhealthy perfectionism within oneselves that we need to fix, our mentor mentioned about being so particular about font type and size. The rest of us literally went OMG me too! Well, what are the odds that all of us can relate? haha.
2. While other mentees in the call are all successful woman with good career progression, we all confess that at a point in time, we all preferred to work with male bosses than women due to this unhealthy perfectionist women tend to be.
3. We think men are a good sales person. Although not all, some really know how to sell themselves even when they know nothing, which is a good thing in a way, because they are always ready to take opportunity whenever it comes. The “fake it till you make it” thing. Women on the other hand are a bit reluctant to take up offers in areas that they are not quite well versed on and tend to self-doubt a lot.
4. We all take a long time to draft emails. We read emails over and over and over again to make sure we use the right wording.

That font and email thing is so simple but why do we fall on this perfection trap? It’s not like it will change the business or anything. -_-

***

What the book says about "The Perfection Trap"

1. Women are more vulnerable to perfection trap. Why? Because we were brought up that way. Thinking back, we are thought to be graceful, to be obedient. Girls are always expected to be a certain way; speak a certain way, sit a certain way, eat a certain way and many more. Therefore we react by striving to meet the expectation, to get everything right, to be perfect. Whereas boys are given much more latitude. Imagine a naughty kid, a girl will be seen as disgraceful while a boy, well, boys will be boys they say.
2. The cost of falling into the perfection trap - As a boss, the person would be over controlling and judgmental; he/she will micromanage everything. He/she will want to be involve in everything; does not delegate work which in return is self sabotaging as he/she would get tired and stress from doing all the work. Other than that, from employees POV, having a perfectionist boss will limit their growth. 
• They will not take responsibility for their own work as they have this default mentality that their boss will finalised everything. 
• This can also limit creativity of the team members. No one wants to put out new idea if the idea is not throughly thought through yet.
3. Perfection doesn’t exist. People will make mistake.
4. The healthy perfectionist - He/she notice the detail, but considers things in a larger context.This person is good at delegating, knows how to prioritise and get comfortable taking measured risk.

***

Why I think this can be applied outside of professional setting?

If you’re a mom, ask yourself this; are you handholding your child in every turn of their life because you want them to be perfect? Do you do house chores yourself because if others do it, they’ll never be able to match your standard? If yes, then you too have fall into the perfectionist trap.

***

I guess everyone’s mantra should be this going forward,

Perfection does not exist.

THE PERFECTION TRAP

Wednesday, December 2, 2020

TO-DO-LIST

Assalamualaikum 

Life update - do I still like to work from home? Yes I do, very much. I like the fact that my workstation is only few feet apart from my bedroom, I like the fact that I don’t have to waste both time and money to drive back and forth the office, I like that I am home as soon as I finish work. For someone with a lot of hobbies, this arrangement allows me to spend more time doing other things that I love.

However, as much as I love WFH, WFH has cluttered my mind more that I think it would. I thought transitioning from office to home would be easy. I'll have more time for myself, I said. While I do save some time by not driving to work etc etc, with various changes I have made to my life to adapt to the current situation, I now have more things to sort on a daily basis compared to before. Things like fixing my own breakfast (which I will otherwise skip when I am working from office), more laundry and dishes to wash, tending to my increasing collection of plants and many more. While I love some of the new tasks, having to remember to do them periodically sometimes give me anxiety. 

Have I water my plant? Have I hang the laundry? Have I this? Have I that? Sometimes, when I realized that I haven't completed a task, it's too late in the day that I could not do it within the day itself. I got demotivated, scolded myself, I think too much about it to the point that I can't sleep. 

I was exhausted both mentally and physically.

I recognize that this problem and was finding ways to automate and declutter my mind. That was when I was re-introduced to the concept of to-do-list. lol, it's a simple concept I know I've tried keeping one myself, multiple times actually, and every single time, after a certain period of time, this too, slowly become something that I forgot to maintain. -___- 

What changes this time around?

1. My mindset. 

I enter into this journey with the mindset that I need a better life. I sat with myself and we had a serious talk on commitment, on how I wanted this process to last, on how I wanted this process to actually be my way of life. I promise myself that I'll commit.

2. I keep it real. 

One of the major reason why I fail my previous attempt was because I tend to complicate things. I add a lot of things into the list. I even added things that I don't even do on a daily basis just because they are supposed to be the "better way to live life", things like exercise, read books etc etc, I added them to the list. Of course, they are indeed good for your life but if in reality it's not me, I might do it for the first day or two, but faking things has it expiration date, soon, I left the items untick from my to-do-list, in the end the list become just another list that I can ignore rather than complete. This time, I keep it real. No more exercise in my list lol. I stick to the real tasks that I need to complete within the day.

3. I automate the process.

For things that I'll repeat periodically, I'll schedule it to repeat based on their interval. This is more on the decluttering my mind part. For example, since I only water my outdoor plants every other day, I make the list to repeat itself every two days. This way, I eliminate the mental space of having to remember when to water my plants, the apps will tell me that it's the day. You have no idea how much I use this function. I use it for even simple things like when to wash my hair, when to change the sheets, when to charge my watch, basically everything routine that I need to remember, I pin it down.

4. Do it digitally.

Of course, for me, point no 3 will only work digitally. If I were to do it on a physical paper, I still need to remember the days of when I need to get it done, which is not quite long term for me. Plus, since I carry my phone everywhere anyway, I love the convenience of having it close to me all the time. I can check and tick of the list whenever I want. 

How has it been?

This has improve my life, tremendously, especially through the automation process. With the automation, I now have the day all plan out for me without the fear of missing anything. My life become much smoother than before.

I now have clearer mind as well. I wake up with only one thing in my mind, to check my to-do-list. With clearer mind, gone are the anxieties as well. I am a much happier person overall.

Plus, I recently schedule to update my cash flow tracker weekly as opposed to monthly (payday), in return, I am now living a much more conscious financial life. Why is this important? Well, the short story is, I have a credit card. hahahahahahahahahhahaha. so yup, like any other irresponsible credit card owner, I spend spend spend lavishly monthly without even caring whether I am in the position to actually spend that much. Then, when the monthly review comes, that's when I realized I spend a lotttt more that I have, I'll regret the whole thing, but I'll repeat the same thing in the following months, regret, spend, regret, spend. -___________- Now, with this weekly cash flow update, my credit card has been ZERO for the past two months say whatttt. 

***

As someone who used to half-ass anything, I just want to take this opportunity to compliment myself for a job well done. Well done dear self for staying consistent for the past two and a half month. Let's stay consistent for years to come ^__^

TO-DO-LIST

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

FICTION

Assalamualaikum

I have a question,

"Is reading fiction better than watching a drama?" 

like any normal person with question living in this era, I googled it. I need to know. 

Why is this important to me? I am addicted to TV that is why lol. I consume my fiction from TV so I don't think I need it from books as well and when I have enough willpower to finally sit and read, it has to be a non-fiction.  To me, non-fiction bring new value to my life as opposed to fiction books.

So, is one really better than the other?

Not surprisingly, a lot of articles backed by scientific research concluded that reading is better. I won't argue. However, I would like to also bring light to the fact that with most scientific studies based on people's reaction and development,  the result almost never shows 100%, because humans are not a fixed variable, no one person is the same than the other. In fact, 2:55pm me writing this on 22 October 2020 is not the same me who publish this tomorrow at 12pm on 23 October 2020. So when studies shows that "Most do bla bla bla," "most people reacted xxxx," we have to be open to the fact that they are people out there that don't react like most people.

***

The articles said that watching tv is a passive activity whereas reading is an active one. One very important reason they point out is the fact that when you watch tv, you passively accept the digested information rather than process it yourself. Reading on the other hand, makes you imagine stuff and process the information on your own, therefore making your brain really active.

While I agree with what they say about reading fiction, I would like to argue that watching fiction is not as passive as it seems to be. For me at least, I don't take things on the surface level. I processed my dramas too, evidently from various drama reviews I've written on this platform.

And if I want to be petty and further argue the points in my favour, remember the time when people wanted to check out Parasite after they won so many awards, only for the majority of them (especially from english speaking countries) to be disappointed with the fact that they have to read (subtitles) too. So, technically, when I watch a drama, that is also me reading for hours :P I mean, a korean mini series is around 16 episodes, imagine that 16 episodes worth of subtitles, how many pages in a book that is?

So while I still agree that reading is generally still a better option, watching fiction is not the bad end of the stick either. Especially now when TV is not just about romance and makjang (soap opera) anymore. There is so much more we can learn from TVs as long as you pick the right thing to consume. For example, in this twitter post made by Dr Beni Rusani on Laryngoscope, if you see the comments, most already know this device from various TV series they watched!

I guess, in the end, the conclusion is this, you do you (overly used conclusion). I personally don't like to read fiction but it's not that I shut fiction completely off my life. I have multiple moments when I picked up a fiction books and love it but generally, if I were to choose one over another, I would prefer to just watch my dramas and as for reading, I leave it for my non-fiction.

In the end, I guess, this is just another episode of me trying to justify my choices in life. haha. Luckily I am not an influencer lol.

FICTION

Friday, October 23, 2020

FRIENDS AGAIN!

Assalamualaikum

Looking at the bright side, fixing my relationship with my Terendak girls is among the best thing that has come out of this pandemic. 

No. We did not putus kawan or anything but you know, the classic happened, we drifted apart, although it was not our intention to make it go this bad, life sort of got in the way, everyone got married, have kids, or in my case I've been busy with work and travel, Anut moves to JB, scheduling meet up got harder and harder. In the end, everyone just stop trying.

Since I can only speak for myself, if I am being real, at least for me, I stopped trying because I don't want to disturb them, they all have their own little family now, Whenever things happened, I did not reached out because I didn't want to add my problem to their already full plate. It's Lily and Marshall's "8 or higher rule". Although, if I pay close attention to  the series, I would have known that the rule has serious flaw, it pushes people apart. Plus, this shows how narcissistic I was. I wasn't the only one struggling, my friends are struggling too. By not reaching out to each other, all of us were left alone (well not really alone, but without each other) in our trying times.

Then comes MCO. Although my other relationships suffer, things got better with my girls. We reconnected over our new hobbies and interest; tending plants, jamu, house decor, skin care, hair care, the list goes onnn. We met each other so much more this past month, more than the last 5 years combined! We have salon date, dessert date, shopping date, enough said, we're best friends again.

Now, if only Anut can move to the central... 😋

FRIENDS AGAIN!

Friday, September 25, 2020