Where's the change?

"You know, you've changed a lot..." --- a friend of mine

I always had this weird belief that when change happens it makes me feel different too. Almost like those blinding moments of self-revelations that changes your life forever. I now realise that those moments are pretty rare and requires A LOT to incite anything that radical. What I found was that change happens in bits and that those bits amount to large scale change.

Small Changes about to a Big Thing

It's funny how I only realised how much I've changed after my friend pointed it out to me, which made me wonder how much I really have changed. I found that it's been a lot of little things that made me change in a big way. I also found that because these changes are so small that we tend to miss them.

So how do you measure change if we tend to miss it? By asking our friends. You'd be surprised how quickly your friends pick up on changes in you and some might even be quick to point it out (like my friend above - you know who you are). Be careful of some friends though, because some changes might upset them to the point of trying to force you to change back. It's more a reaction in concern for you, than for themselves and maybe they just need time to get used to the idea.

Another nice way to keep track of changes in your life is to use a change log (plug for previous post :P), which is also great for the motivation to continue changing (since you have a long list of successful changes right in front of you).

In life it's the small things that have the biggest impact in life and the same goes for large scale change: It happens in bits, but all those bits surmounts to something big.

Developers Productivity Toolkit

Change should be logged.

This is the thought that recently hit me while I was working on some code. Programmers use many ways to keep track of their progress and boost their productivity while working on projects. These ways can be useful for future developers to continue work on abandoned projects and to help the current developers not to step on each others toes. Basically, these productivity tips work and it hit me that they can also be applied to many things other than just programming.

These ways are usage of the Change Log and the TO-DO list.

The Change Log

This is how programmers keep track of changes they've made to a program since they've released it and it normally features bug fixes, added features, removed features and modifications made to the code. The benefits of this is that they can see how far they've gone with something and how many improvements they've made within that program.

I've modified it a bit to work and log changes I've made within my life instead - call it a shortened journal entry to keep track of my accomplishments. I started off adding to it daily by writing down what I've archived for that day and which changes I've made by adding, removing or correcting things within my life. This is also where the TO-DO list comes in handy, because what you remove from there, gets added to your change log.

The TO-DO list

This is how programmers keep track of things they're yet to achieve, add, fix or remove with their program. It's also keeps programmers from working on the same problem at the same time, because a programmer can 'claim' it and only once they fail to do it, can it be passed on to the next programmer to attempt. This is also a very different kind of TO-DO list than those you normally use, because of the fact that it includes future and current goals.

I applied the same principles with my TO-DO list. My list comprises of future and current changes I want to make in my life with a few rules on how to do them. The first rule I have is that once it's done, it goes straight to my change log for that day, the second rule is that once I take on something on my TO-DO list, that I keep going for it for that day until I either achieve it or fail to do it at which point it goes back on to my TO-DO list. The third and final is rule is you can keep adding to the list, but once you decided on what you're going to do for that day, you cannot add more things from for yourself to do for that day - this also works vice versa, were if you take on too much for a day, you can drop it back on to your TO-DO list. See the third rule as reward for a day of being productive and once you're done with your goals for that day, that you can relax. However don't use the third rule as a excuse to move things on to the next day, because you're TO-DO list will only get bigger while your Change log doesn't.

The Aim of the TO-DO list is to give you a idea of your current and future goals, while the change log is to remind you of the things you've succeeded in and hopefully motivate to keep succeeding. The trick to both these methods is realistic goals and the commitment to them.

Hopefully the DPT can be as useful for you as it has been for me. At the moment, it's still a work and progress and I'll expand on them a bit more in the future and maybe even start a series on them. I wish you all the best of luck with them.

Stop living in the past

"The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour" - Dr. Phillip C McGraw

This is one of Dr. Phil's famous sayings that has made him such a iconic figure in selves-Help circles today. It's also really bad advice when used out of context. It seems that it's one of many excuses for people not to try at all, but give up because they've failed in the past at it. We all figure that the best way to move forward is to keep avoiding our past failures and hurts to which our past becomes our yardstick to which we measure our current success or failures. It's a vicious cycle which can easily destroy our happiness or any joy that may comes into our lives. The only cure to this is to learn to let go of our past, forgive ourselves and choose to live in the present.

There are a few benefits to not living in the past and they are:

1. We stop measuring our happiness by our past.
2. We free ourselves from regret.
3. We take more risks.
4. We allow ourselves to be more present.

We stop measuring our happiness by our past

We've all seen it happen, our best friend gets broken up with and suddenly their ex becomes the perfect man or woman. What happens? They ruin every relationship they have after that by comparing their current with their idolised (as in imagined) view of their ex. This might be a extreme example, but we all do it to some degree and the outcome is always the same: dissatisfaction, disillusionment and destruction of our happiness.

The funny thing about memory is that it's subjective, so we only remember what we want to remember and our brains has the amazing power to tweak our memories to fit out expectations of them. So that perfect person we've created in our mind is just a illusion, a mix of what we wanted them to be and who they really were. The reverse is also true when it comes to making a ex the reincarnation of the evil, they may have been a coward, they may have freaked a bit, but their still pretty much human, like you and me.

Ultimately, letting our past have a say in our present only ruins our happiness. So by letting go of the past we allow ourselves to forgive ourselves, move on and find ourselves again. It opens us to the joy and love of today's moments, which is the building blocks of true happiness.

We free ourselves from regret

Regret is a terrible thing to have to live with and like I said before, our memory is subjective, so the thing we regret doing seems worse than it really was. I think regret is pretty useless, it makes us feel worse for something we've done wrong, which messes up our happiness and makes us less incline to risk it again. I deal with regret differently. I take it as it is, figure out how it went wrong, learn from it and then move past it. The only function regret has is to teach us; other than that it's pretty useless. We cannot change what happened and if scientists can be trusted, we'll never be able to go back in time to change it. So let's learn from our mistakes, accept them and move past them, anything else is just a waste of our happiness.

We take more risks

Bad experiences have a crippling effect on our ability to take risk, they make us give up before we succeed and make us act irrationally with fear when having to face them again. Taking risk is how we grow and succeed in life and by fearing past failures repeated, we stop ourselves short of winning in life. Helen Keller once said that the bold gets hit just as much as the careful, which means that failure is part of life, if we take risks or not. Haven't you ever noticed how the one thing you try to avoid happening, you ultimately make happen?

What is the difference between the bold and the careful? The bold expects failure and have prepared themselves for it, while the careful, believing themselves safe, have not. Risks may lead to failure, but they also lead to success. Learning from our past failures makes the chances of us succeeding greater next time around. Letting go of our past mistakes and learning from them, makes risks much easier to do and ultimately allows us take more of them. The matter of when we'll succeed, then just becomes a matter of time.

We allow ourselves to be more present

Living in the moment is the key to all success, because we grasp at the moments that make our lives and the opportunities that present themselves. Living in the past does the exact opposite. We constantly regret moments we forget to grasp and opportunities we missed, which in turn blinds us of those moments and opportunities presented now. Do you see the vicious cycle living in the past creates?

Letting go of our past frees us from this cycle by allowing our attention to focus on the now rather than the could-have-been's. Living more in the moment makes us instantly aware of the things that can help shape our future, the risks needed and the opportunities that come from it. It's like waking up after a bad dream to a wonderful warm spring day, life just seems more promising and it becomes easier to let our past rest in peace.

I won't say I have all the answers yet, because I'm still learning to live in the present too. What I have found is that my life seems like a much happier place, I'm doing what I enjoy, I speak my heart and mind and opportunity is just a risk away. Living in the past only messes up our lives, but living for the moment might just save it.

Is Anger Only Negative?

Today I came to a weird realisation pertaining to anger.

Society teaches us that any actions in and created by anger is bad. It's considered a self-destructive trait that it will hinder us in our future life and for that very reason, our mentors tried their best to beat it out of us, never quote seeing the irony in that very action. It was because of this thinking I was surprised to discover anger isn't only to blame for the worst things in life, but also some of the greatest!

The best things in life...

How can I claim that not only was the worst done in life, but also the best? Simple. It's called history. In American History, Martin Luther King Jr. once said that he did get angry, but then chose to focus his anger on creating something positive. He shaped the frustration and anger of those that were oppressed and helped shape not only a fairer Nation, but a fairer world view. In my own country the heroes weren't men who took silent action or waited to act, but the outrage of the youth of a small town in South Africa. Their actions sparked the fire of passion in others, which ultimately lead to the fall of apartheid. It wasn't by patience or being submissive that these world changing events became real, no, it was by pure anger, focused and distilled into it's purest form that the world was changed forever.

I believe frustration and anger might have their negative aspects when unfocused or when misdirected, but I also believe that when focused and directed, it can have a positive effect as well. Anger is by definition passion, unfocused and untamed yes, but still passion in it's rawest form and to do away with our anger is to do away with our passion. Anger in itself can be a indicator that something seemingly unacceptable happened to us and we're reacting in a effect to protect ourselves. The down side of ignoring this instinct is that we end up accepting a lot of unacceptable things in our lives. It's by this very acceptance of the unacceptable, that we become victims of those amongst us that seek to profit from our fears or suffering.

Stop accepting the unacceptable

Many people in their pursue to live anger-free, ultimately ended up compromising so much on what's acceptable that they now accept even the unacceptable. The best cure for this is to allow yourself to become angry, just not express it unless you're sure what sparked it and toward whom. Anger is sometimes necessary and by not expressing it, you're allowing the unacceptable to happen to you and inviting others to do the same.

In high school, the kid that never fought back, was the one that always got picked on. I used to be picked on badly in high school, but like many, I bit my lip and never fought back and the bullying continued to a point that I nearly took my own life. Ironically, the day I stood up to them was the day they became like friends. I chose to focus my anger in to convincing them to the fact that I could laugh at myself. It worked, and they even ended up protecting me from others like them. The moral of that little story? Stand up for yourself, focus your anger in to something positive, don't put up with the unacceptable and do something about it!

I've only touched the basics on this, but the points I wanted to make was that anger can be used to create positive things in the world as well, not just the negative, that you get angry for a reason and that you should listen to that little angry kid in yourself sometimes. Anger is our passion raw and untamed, it's there to protect us, it's there to use to save us or to destroy us when we don't. Either way, the choice of how it effects you in your life is ultimately yours.

The Myths about sex

Sex isn't a quick-fix.

There is a lot of talk about sex these days and it does sell because we have a thriving sex industry, yet for some reason we forget to teach and be taught what sex won't do. I'm not talking about abstinence here, because I feel it's just as much to blame as anything else, but because we must examine these myths to move beyond them.

These myths are:
1. Sex is evil except in marriage
2. Sex will save relationships

1. Sex is evil except in marriage

I don't disagree with the idea of abstinence, but the main problem with this mentality is that people abstain from all forms of sex. This is dangerous in any form of abstinence and creates a greater risk of falling into the mental trap that society sets for us. This is also true of teaching our children that sex is evil, dirty or wrong. I believe the true solution to curbing teenage pregnancies is not by taking these extreme mentalities or by creating childish laws that forbid teenagers from even kissing, but to instead teach responsible sex.

Teaching responsible sex is a two way street, it requires us to be honest about sex and teach about it honestly. It requires us not to seek the easy route out of teaching our children, by forcing them to abstain nor to make them feel guilty or believe wrongly of sex, but to teach them what sex won't do and what it does do. It's about teaching the lighter side of sex too while allowing yourself to be human and to laugh about it.

2. Sex will save relationships

There are no quick-fixes in relationships and the worst thing you can do in self-destructing relationship is to have sex. If talking fails or your partner is putting pressure on you to have sex, know that right after you two have sex, the relationship is over. You'll either be to ashamed to face each other or finally realise that things truly is over. The simple reason being that sex can't fix something that's already broken.

Sex also won't change you or your partner. This seems to be what makes people believe that sex can save relationships. That by some strange magic that only sleeping together can generate, you and your partner will suddenly be different people. It's unlikely, even with months of therapy and won't ever make you feel better about yourself nor make your partner stay.

There are many more myths about sex, but ultimately by teaching responsible sex and understanding that sex isn't a quick-fix, we'll move beyond the current extremes while dealing with it. By advocating the truth about sex, we will find that our children will be more responsible regarding sex and hopefully they won't make the same mistakes our parents did with us.

How to breaking up and keep your self-respect

Break ups hurt.

This is a undeniable truth about break ups and it's the number one reason why most people avoid doing it. There are a lot of strategies out there that guarantee that you don't have to break the news and nobody would get hurt. Amongst them are the 'cut-out', 'make-them-hate-me' and 'ignore' methods. I'm sorry to say, with those strategies somebody will get hurt, but it's just not you. The price of cowardice while breaking up is that that person will be hurt more by your actions and ultimately lose their respect for you. This could also lead to others you never met feeling the same way about and finally bite you in the ass for something that happened years ago.

So how do you avoid that from happening?

1. Accept that Breaking up will always hurt

No matter how much you to plan around it, avoid it and run from it. It will always hurt. This however doesn't mean that this hurt is a bad thing that needs to be avoided at all costs. In fact it hurts less just to come out and just break up. Accepting of the fact that it will hurt makes thing easier when it comes to the time to facing the idea that it's really over. It's also puts you your mind at ease and allows you to identify why things need to end, which makes it easier to explain when the time comes to break up.

2. Do the Break up personally

No matter what other people say, the best way to break up with somebody is face to face or at least in some other personal way (like a phone call - but don't hang up after you told them!). There are a lot of tricks out there that says it's better to avoid them, make them break up with you by making their life hell, or just plain cutting them out of your life. It's not and only really helps you feel better while being devastating to the person on the receiving end. The best way is still to go to the person, tell them that you don't think things are working out, that you loved the time you spent together and that you think it's time for both of you to move on. It's hard to do, yes, but it leaves no question in the air like other methods and doesn't berate or embarrasses the other person in any way. It also allows the chance of friendship later in life between with your ex, where the other methods not only makes that impossible, it also gives you a bad reputation if done repeatedly. So own up and do it personally.

3. Be prepared for the post-dating relationship

Sometimes you may go back to friendship with a ex or have to work with them and having been in a relationship, this could feel awkward. The thing to remember here is that you will have feelings for this person and will always have some form of attraction to them. This isn't wrong and there is nothing wrong with it, just don't mistake it for more than it is, which is affection towards a friend.
Sometimes the break up may have gone sour or this person is really destructive to themselves and you. This best tactic with these people is to be civil, but with the ultimate aim to cut them out of your life. It's a cruel thing to do, but it maybe the best thing for you to do until, if ever, this person sort out their lives.

Relationships are hardest when they come to a end, but we always have a choice on how we end them. Nobody said it was easy or permanent. The best relationships are those friendships that can come from break ups, but the first step is to make this known. Don't put it off and do it personally and face to face, people will respect you more if you do.