Having "Me" Time

In life, in dealing with problems and losses we go through five stages of emotions:   denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance .  Most commonly we experience this from heartbreak, losing a loved one, going through a crisis, business problems, etc..  The list is endless.. We humans have a lot of problems and we deal with them through our emotions. Sometimes we do not acknowledge that these are our emotions.  Yes, we feel hurt, feel sad, feel angry, feel serious, feel resentment.  We try to act "civilized" and push these emotions aside.  We ignore them. After all, we are all grown ups and grown ups do not succumb to their emotions.  It's dangerous.  Psychologists mention that it is not good to ignore these emotions for it can cause "emotional indigestion." It can cause us to be tense, stressed and ready for a fight. Our heart beats faster and our natural instinct sets in.  We want to survive. We are ready fo...

The other day I had a chance to go to a temple unlike others in that the monk does not simply chant the buddhist prayers during the funeral, but instead he'll spend roughly half an hour teaching us some of the philosophies in plain language for all to understand.  I think it's great and I although the journey there was long and the journey back included wading through the flood and having my car at times turn into a boat, a lot of interesting thoughts remained in mind.  So much so I thought it'd be great to share a little of it here with you today.  It's about anger. Now we humans all have emotions. We feel happiness, sadness, fear, anger, jealousy and a zillion other feelings.  Sometimes we feel more than one at the same time and cannot quite distinguish which is which.   Sometimes they get the better of us and start influencing our actions. It's how we control those emotions though that make all the difference.   The monk's ex...

Yesterday morning I went running as usual.  Unlike other days, instead of watching Bloomberg news, following currencies and stock market movements, I decided to watch Oprah Winfrey.   There was an interesting show in which she had brought a bunch of obese teenage boys and girls to attend a workshop. I guessed most of them must have weighed over a 100 kgs.  It wasn't their size that fascinated me, but what they did during the workshop.  It changed their lives. They faced up to their fears and acknowledged what it was that had been gnawing at them inside and causing all this unhappiness and emotional overeating.  It's something that many many people succumb to without realizing it and then they get stuck in this vicious cycle that becomes hard to break and detrimental to their health. The workshop had these teenage boys and girls start sentences with " If you really knew me, you'd know I ......"   A lot of things came out.  A lot of ...