What Women Don't Need to Do

As an Asian individual, I was taught to follow regulations and rules for most of my childhood and even through my adulthood so far, and this is from home related tasks to school related work and to even work related situations.  I get it: we need to follow rules in order to do certain tasks successfully and   thoroughly; it's not easy for a new person to do new tasks so they are there to give guidance and an extra push for the new person.  I think rules and regulations are great since one of their purposes is to help the person succeed and excel in whatever they are doing.  However, there are times it is more than acceptable to break the rules.  I was browsing the website Life Hacks one day and I ran into an insightful article called "15 Things Women Don't Need Though They're Expected."  Society can be a confusing bunch and place to be in; it puts laws and rules on certain individuals or groups in order for it to run smoothly and which helps humans adaptive to the situation. In the article, the writer lists out the behaviors women are expected to show and carry out; but the new kick is that the article argues that women do not have to follow any of those social norms.  Women do not have to be nice, keep up with fashion trends, sit with your legs together, apologize, explain, clean your house, have kids, work outside the home, work inside the home, wear a shirt, wear a bra, wax your legs (etc.), speak quietly, act like a lady, and agree with this post.

To sum up, the article asserts that women do not have to follow the social norms that are place on them.  Dalai Lama once said, "Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly."  This applies to this situation and many other circumstances in life.  Women have to learn what is expected of them and this will give them the confidence to do whatever it takes to prove society wrong and to better themselves and to do great things.

Source:  http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/15-things-women-dont-need-though-theyre-expected.html

Disciplining

Disciplining yourself means to train yourself to do certain tasks.  You can discipline yourself to learn how to be a better test taker, how to think better, how to ride a bicycler, how to read and write, etc; basically, you can train yourself to do almost anything.  The desire to do it is easier to arrive at but the process itself can be darn difficult.  When we train ourselves to do something, we are changing the process and undo the parts of some parts of our brain that learns the incorrect ways of doing something; our brain gets confused and frustrated and even uncomfortable because we are letting it do something that it's not use to or we are reteaching it something else; we have to remember that getting frustrated is a natural stage for disciplining and when we continue and move pass it, we will grow and be a better person and this eventually will help us succeed in future endeavors in many areas of our lives.  The key to getting pass the disciplining stage is: first of all, the right attitude and motivation will help us sail pass the obstacles.  Second of all, it takes practice, a lot of practice.  Success does not come over night; it might take days, months, and even years to build a disciplined habits and you will have to go though a great bout of frustrations and maybe depression to get to where you want to be.  The investor Robert Herjavec once said, "Tough time does not last, tough people always do." Once we remember that, once we acknowledge that we can fly pass any obstacles we become tougher and this will give us strength to handle future problems.  What matters is we need to keep pushing ourselves and seek new opportunities out there.

Logic

Logic comes easy for some individuals and it’s unnatural for others.  Being logical means to have the ability to process information—internal or external information-- in a sensible and reasonable way.  It is a systemic process that looks at all aspects of the situation and the information given and make a conclusion and eventually an action will result from there; thinking about thinking is the main part of logic.  Logic comes from experience; we can’t just read and learn about it in school; it's as hand-on and one must put it into practice every single day.  It is not driven by emotions, authoritative innuendo, group-thinking, and the desire to please other people.  The benefits are endless: it helps us to think clearly and teaches how to think for ourselves and it helps us to become a better problem solver.  We need it in order to do well in school and more importantly in life; we need it for work and later on in our chosen career, etc.  It will only better us and definitely take us far in life. 

Forgiveness

As a Christian, I was taught to forgive those who wrong me and this will eventually lead to a more joyful life that God wants me to live.  The question is what is exactly forgiveness? It is a feeling? Is it logical? Is it possible? Is it worth it? Forgiveness is more of a mental shift in a person and this eventually affects the action of the individual; rather than holding a grudge and letting the past lingers on mind, we decide to move on with our lives and look pass at what happened before.  It is a mental process that produces an action; likewise, it is a decision that we all have to take now and then as predicaments arrive or else we will burn and get torn out by whatever bitterness in us.  It's a simple concept but it's not easier. It takes a lot of determination and motivation to do it and the individual has to actively make that decision.  A few results come out of forgiving people; first of all, we will receive a freedom that we have never seen.  Our angst will automatically release us from the chain that holds us back and we will continue to move forward with our lives rather than staying stagnant.  Furthermore, we have more time to think about the important things in life.  We can zoom in and focus on what makes our life better and what is not.  Forgiveness isn't an easy task but maybe we should give it a go more often, maybe we should all acknowledge it and take it more often in aspects of our lives, why? We might land on something we never always want.

Being Assured

My late 20s has taught me so much about how to be assured of myself; it was—and still is--not easy because there is a part of me that always want to prove to others of my worth and please others. We want to feel accepted and fit in with society and not to hurt anyone’s feelings and sometimes, it’s because of this, we become more unassured of ourselves every single day since we are allowing other people to determine and do the thinking for us.

Being assured means we know who we are and know what we want out of life. We can think for ourselves and appreciate ourselves without having any other external factors play a part of; it takes a lot of trial and error to get to that point and we will have to pass through many frustrations and hardships in order to get to that stage.  There is a saying that life is simple but it’s not easy; the simplicity of reaching the self-assured path has a simple formula but getting there will require a lot of concentration, endurance, and motivation. The formula is to practice every single day being decisive of your daily decisions and actions and eventually our confidence will grow. But in the end, all the sweat and frustration will be worth it when we remember where we are going is more important than where we are today. 

Open Yourself

I cried today. I don't know why I cried but tears kept falling down and however I tried to change the direction of my thought, my mind is still occupied with the news that was given to me. My closest friend broke the news today that she's pregnant. We were born in the same year and grew up in the same neighborhood and attended the same school for most of our lives since childhood. She's like the sister whom I never had and wish I had so the news was definitely a personal one.

The exact reason on why I cried is not obvious to me, but my guess is that the reason is mainly that the news was so unexpected that it's partially scary, it's frightening to know that my best friend will have an addition in her life. She said I will be like an aunt to the kid and that's when I started to cry.  It was such an unexpected news that I broke me to pieces.  Fear contributes to those teary eyes and from this experience, I learn to come to the unexpected with open arms and accept that being afraid is normal at any given news.  Life gets messy and it's unpredictable, life is volatile, it's constantly changing and the best we can do sometimes is to flow with it and enjoy the ride.  Every situation is an opportunity and we must all grab it and in in the end of the journey we might get something out of it, we might grow and gain strength from the situation.

The Vision

Recently, watching the television show named Shark Tank has been on my to-do list for most evenings after a long day of work. My sister has been talking about the show for some time and I finally gave in to it and gave it a shot.  In a recent episode, cofounders Andrea Sreshta and Anna Stork from the company LuminAID was featured on the show.  They presented their company to the five investors, who are known as the "Shark" on the show, and all five investors offer to invest in the company.  At the end, business partners Anna and Andrea chose the investor Mark Cuban to work with.  All the other four investors believe in the company and the cofounders but the difference between Mark and the other Sharks was that he sees the same vision as the cofounders and that bought Anna and Andrea's favor and Mark was chosen for that reason. Anna stated Mark has the same vision as them and they appreciated that.

In the same way, we all want to be around and work with people who have and see the same vision as us.  As adults, we all want to be understood and feel connected to someone else in a grander picture. Gone are the days of just being around people and doing trivial activities that have no set purpose;  we don't want just to have someone to do something with us as we age, we want someone who sees the same vision as us and help us grow from the stage we are in life.  Cofounders Anna and Andrea did not just want someone to give them the money they need, of course this would help them a lot, they want someone who they can work with and who has the similar mindset as them.  Knowledge is power.  When hardships arrive, knowledge will triumph over the negative aspects of the situation.  The vision gives hope and it will give us the endurance we need in order to get through it.  Having someone who has the same vision as us gives us more strength and more empowerment to accomplish what we want out of life, no matter what that is.