Passionate Living

How many times have you been worried about being ill?

Having a health condition can be nasty because it interferes with your productivity. You spend time and probably money in order to gain your health back. Not only that, you also need extra time to regain the balance you had prior to falling ill. Falling ill is not a good business.

Sunrise on the Boardwalk by Arturo Donate

Or is it? There’s a lesson behind every disaster we experience as human beings. There’s a benefit to every adversity we endure in the journey of our lives. Humans grow from these difficult times, although we would mostly rather avoid them.

During the recovery process after falling ill, you develop a more delicate sensitivity and objectivity towards what you see and hear with your senses. You are more open and appreciative of the small details in life, and you can absorb the moment with greater proficiency than when you are in full health. In fact, sometimes being in full health can make you drown in your business and take the finer details for granted.

There is a TED talk but I fail to remember the title or the speaker. In it, she mentions the importance of disease. Would she rather have people stay healthy and disease free all the time? Not necessarily. She says that it is because of these diseases, these life changing maladies, that occur in the first place, that have made most of the greatest people in our society become great people: after their heart attacks or cancer diagnoses or other life threatening illness, their priorities were shocked into place and they pulled their act together. Lawyers become social workers, engineers become designers, accountants become community managers, and other more fundamental changes of characters.

This story shows, that although we might prefer to have a smooth and happy life all the way, it is the tough times that make it all worth while. No life was ever worth living if it never was worth fighting for: the struggles, the (non-personally invited) drama, and the battles that need be fought are the ones that make us change to be a better person. It is during hindsight, that we gain the clearest perspective and know then which step to take next.

Therefore, there is a benefit to falling ill: you stop being busy, you stop being part of the beehive, you stop being distracted by the hustle bustle and noise of city life. You start to notice the stillness of the clouds, you start to see the light of the sun, and you start to stand still be one with nature as you ask yourself, “Where have I been all this time? What have I been doing? It feels like I’ve done a lot but accomplished little in reality.”

Enjoy the process, absorb the experience. Before you lose grip of it and fall into the vortex of superficial living again.

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[1] Photograph by Arturo Donate

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the amount of information you have to learn? Ever desire to be fluent on a subject but don’t know how to start? Accumulated a wealth of information from magazines, websites, blogs, and twitter feeds more than you can digest?

St Margaret's Steps by Neosnaps

The world wide web is the one stop shop for finding anything and everything on any subject that might be your recent fascination. From fashion to food, cars to cooking, music to self-motivation, the web provides us with more information that we can shake a stick at. The problem today then isn’t lack of information – as it maybe was back in the pre-web eras – but management of information.

You’re a sophomore student majoring in biochemical engineering who also has a serious hobby in digital photography; so you subscribe to a physical biochemical journal and also several free photography tutorial blogs from various great resources on the web. But between the time you need for actually attending class, digesting the journal, being involved in social activities in campus, you may end up using more time reading than you do getting things done like photo hunting or making a discovery in your experiments. The old adage – take things one step at a time – then becomes a serious application that holds true today than it did centuries ago when it first came up.

You might think “Yeah sure, I know to take things one step at a time. What’s new huh?”. But are you sure you actually apply what you know? The mistake with most of common knowledge today isn’t the effectiveness, but the efficiency of all the famous sayings that have come into our collective consciousness: we are lacking in the execution of our knowledge (also known as xQ: Execution Quotient).

Taking one step at a time does sound easy, but how can we truly apply it to our daily activities? Here are 3 tips to help you be more efficient in learning things one step at a time:

1. Decide on 1 source. Period

Yep. Not exactly the easiest thing to do, but it sure get’s the job done. Humans have the tendency to collect things, so practicing limitation is going against your natural inclinations. By limiting your source to 1, it doesn’t mean 1 for the rest of your life, it means 1 for a certain limit of time: for example, go over to Digital Photography School and spend maybe 2 to 3 weeks just learning from that site alone.

2. Practice 3 to 4 tips every 2 weeks

When you’ve decided on a source, make sure you practice at least 3 to 4 of the many tips contained in that site. The above site is one of the leading sources for digital photography, so there are abundantly more tutorials than a couple. But in order to not overwhelm yourself, just choose a few and practice them out in the course of 2 weeks. You might think this is getting little done, but in the course of 3 months, you’ll have developed 48 new techniques! If learning piano is your pursuit, you’d have mastered all the basic chords on all the white scales! Huge improvement!

3. Be involved in the community, if there is one

The DPS site is community powered: it’s huge because it has one of the largest web communities around (for any kind of site, not just photography!). Granted, participating in an online community takes more of your time than simply reading, but the rewards and lessons you acquire are worth the time invested . You might even be able to get a quick tip or two, speeding up your learning curve greatly! Humans learn best from each other, so talking to a fellow enthusiast or professional is often the best way to go.

An adage is an adage because everyone needs to re-learn it as a principle for themselves. This is called here Re-Incarnation: or why we need to learn things for ourselves, even if it has become common knowledge. Taking things one step at a time is old advice, yet it is always new in application. So let’s get started!

What’s your take on the old adage? Are there other principles you’ve rediscovered for yourself in life? Share your thoughts and opinions in the comments:

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[1] Photograph by Neosnaps

Have you ever felt like you’ve run out of fuel? You feel like you’ve done so much that you couldn’t possibly do more? Like it’s finally time for you to take a break and relax?

compass by ^@^ina

In 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey points out that the 7th Habit – Sharpening the Saw – is as important as the previous 6 Habits. Sharpening the Saw is more closely related to keeping balance and doing the activities that don’t bring you results directly, as opposed to the other activities of the 6 Habits that aim to help you achieve your goals with accuracy and efficiency. Nevertheless, without Sharpening the Saw, executing the 6 Habits would be very difficult indeed.

Stephen brought up this concern lightheartedly during one of his seminars where he asked the audience, “Have you ever been so busy driving that you ran out of gas?” – and surprisingly a lot of the audience raised their hands. The aspect of Sharpening the Saw, called here Re-evaluation, is not as sexy or glossy as other catchier more beautiful management techniques that promise you better results in faster time. However, keeping balance is very important to maintain momentum in the long run.

If you’ve been on a prolific spree for six months; you’ve set your goals and you’ve sped on fifth gear on a highway, maybe it’s time to slow down to a lower gear and check the engine for repairs and maintenance. True, the road may still be long and there is still plenty to do, but taking the time to rest is also an important part of the journey. Let’s look at several ways we can re-evaluate our goals to help us regain our energy and excitement for the next leg of the race:

1. Keep your journal

A journal can help you document or record the progress that you’ve made. Not everyone is diligent enough to keep a periodical journal, and that’s mainly because you might think it has to be a daily or weekly journal. In fact, it can be as simple as you need it to be, such as Gretchen Rubin’s one sentence journal. By keeping a journal, when it comes time to stop and assess your progress, you will have a better clearer picture on the paths that you have taken and where you want to go after this.

2. Summarize your progress

If you haven’t been keeping a journal, then you can re-organize for the future by summarizing the progress that you’ve made thus far. Whether that be financially, in family relationships, or your education, write down all the progress you’ve made, no matter how small it seems. Studies show that when we learn of the progress we made, even if it be trivial, we gain a boost of energy knowing we’ve got something done.

3. Restructure your goals

From the information contained in your journal, and from the progress summary you’ve made, you can then find out and sketch out which goals are the top priority for the next phase. What was the top goals six months ago, does not necessarily have to be the top goals for the next six months: things can change, and priorities can change also. Restructure your goals to know which ones are most important, so you can allocate the most energy for these goals.

The next step after the three above is: execution. The beauty of execution is that it will NOT go according to plan, no matter how meticulous your plan is. All smart planners understand this inherent property of planning, so they are not surprised when the execution falls slightly short of the original design.

It’s alright, because all of this is part of growth. If you don’t plan for a target in the beginning, you won’t reach anything anyway! So the worst part is that you don’t make anything happen, whether you plan or not plan, whether you take the time to re-evaluate or not re-evaluate.

To achieve the goals we want to achieve – and to create the change we need to create – re-evaluation is an important part of keeping ourselves healthy and sane. Understanding our limits and working around them is intelligence at its finest. Therefore, let’s take this time to stop and re-evaluate our progress achieved so far and our progress to achieve in the coming months.

What about you? What are your goals for the next six months? Do you feel it’s time for you to stop and take time to evaluate? Let us know your opinion in the comments.

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[1] Photograph by ^@^ina