February 10, 2007

Mind over Heart?

As my clock counts down to my departure from UK, I'm looking back to reflect to see what I had done wrong and how I can best improve my attitude from here.

Like an athlete who constantly wants to improve, I often take time to reflect on my performance after I've completed a particular task. I benchmark myself against my past performance, as well as compare myself with other people's performance in the same category. Of course, I must not let other people's performance demotivate me, but rather, I should us that as a goal to aspire to. If you keep thinking that you are the best and not improve, you are only limiting yourself to your past performance. The world is changing very quickly, what is done in the past, is the past. It can be used as fuel to push us to move forward, but we should not rest on our laurels.

A very good example is Tiger Woods, one of the great golf players of our time; comparable to the great Jack Nicklaus. After taking time out to improve his swing, he fumbled for a while, not doing very well for a while. However, after he got hold of it, he began to win more tournaments than ever before. The reason why he changed his swing? He figured that his old swing was not only limiting him but also may cause problems in the near future. Now, he's at the top of his game but he's not satisfied. He's improving other aspects of his game.

So, the same goes for me. I'm not fully satisfied with my performance and attitude this time around. I've been a big whine and wimp, complaining to others about my predicament and etc. I realized that when I started to sound like a broken record, I suddenly decided to stop this whining attitude. I decided that I needed to find solutions to my problems. It is OK to complain a little, for we being unsatisfied can only find a few methods to express our disatisfaction, - to express, to keep it all inside or just completely ignore it.

I realized that I had been very reactive. I should have been more proactive about things. I didn't do a pre-emptive strike. Why so? I was involved too much by my heart - sad, depressed, homesick... I didn't use my head enough. It is hard to push away emotions since I'm a person with emotions, not a robot.

I had been affected by my surroundings and I did not let my logical mind to take over. I let my emotions dictate my mood for the day, which is not good because it did not motivate me to do my best.

However, realizing this, I try to change my surroundings by being more cheerful and spreading happiness all around. I did this for a while, but I was affected by the mood of my colleague, who, not only being quiet and reserved, suddenly changed his mood from being robotic to moody and dark. I have suddenly become negative because I was influenced by this.

I got plenty of advice to just ignore this guy and try to be cheerful, but it is hard to do so, when you are sharing a house with a colleague whose mood is affecting you. So, what can I do? I have tried to cheer this guy up but it is not doing any good. Any decent conversation I try to strike up, has become into a shouting match.

So, I have come to the conclusion that in this situation, I should have just kept quiet and let him be. He is not a sociable guy and hence, does not want the pleasure of my company. So, in the future, should I meet a person like him again, I know what to do and spare myself the suffering agony and waste of time trying to be this guy's friend.

The article which sparked this blog entry is here, entitled "Angry/negative people can be bad for your brain".

I was thinking to myself what I can do to improve my attitude and in the process make myself a little happier, and then I realized that I could have let my brain be sucked into being influenced by the things and people around me.

Looking back, I have come to realize that I may not fit a particular organization because I find myself changing from being very pro-active to being a little slow and reactive to situations. This is not me. I am a person who is on the move and likes to do things quick and efficient.

So, in short, has my mind being overshadowed by my heart? :)

The answer is yes. I have failed and let my emotions get the better of me. I guess it is good to just step back and look at things from a different perspective and just move on.

Let this be a lesson to me and that is it.

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