March 31, 2005

praise > criticize

I was reading through Dale Carnegie's book again about how to win friends and influence people.
It's kind of funny that I've done a 180 turn from what the book recommends to do.
I was good earlier at praising people in freshman and sophomore year, but in junior and senior of college, I started slipping back to chastising instead of praising. I'm going to work on this trait, and change it for the better.
My drive is to become a better person, lead and manage people better, and accomplish something great and important by praising people's strengths instead of focusing on weaknesses. By praising people, they can do more for me and I can accomplish more. I can also feel a lot better by making people happy and realize their own strengths that they might not have known about before. I will acknowledge good work when it's done, and encourage self actualization from everyone around me.
John

March 28, 2005

happiness

This is a pretty tricky topic. Means a whole world of different things to different people. However, I do like having open discussions on this.
I think there are two parts of happiness, one part fixed, and one part variable. The fixed part means that you MUST have at least most of these things in order for you to be happy. The variable part I believe is experiential, and as attitudes and behaviors change so do the experiences you want that generate happiness.
One part of life I'm enjoying right now is figuring out the things that I like to do and derive joy from, versus the things that I really despise doing. Some of the things that I enjoy doing now is talking to my roommates, talking and spending time with friends, reading stories of people with incredible achievements, kayaking, rock climbing, working out, bjj, working towards retirement, and working on personal development things.
In the past, my idea of happiness was being able to do what I want, when I want. Now I realize that it's also with WHO I want. In addition to that, it's also not doing what I don't like, and not being financially constrained.
I've mentioned this in other entries, but what I've been lacking is long-term friendships and relationships. The kind that build on each other and create a synergy. I think that's what I want from a girl more than any other quality, just not slowing me down and pushing me forward in all different directions that I never knew existed. Closer towards self-actualization.
Self-actualization is a very interesting thing. It's when you've reached your limit, when you've 'actualized' your potential. It's the finish line that when you pass, you can see the next finish line in the distance, and the race goes on and on until you're done with that direction and move on to another direction.
Amazing.

March 24, 2005

relationships

I'm very bad at maintaining relationships. One thing I realized I do sometimes is that I withdraw from my emotions when they get too extreme, in either direction. This is very bad when you're around people you like being around a lot. There are three distinct examples of where I fucked up some really good opportunities.
Example 1: I remember a time in seventh grade where I had a really strong crush on this one girl. She was really hot, athletic, smart, creative, and friendly. One time I remember another girl asking me if I liked the crush girl, and I blushed for like 5 minutes. I couldn't help it, and I felt so out of control. I didn't like that feeling of complete helplessness, like I just surrendered my logical thinking self to be a slave to emotions.
I never wanted to feel that vulnerable and helpless again, so I decided that the next time that happened, I would control my physical reaction and not blush, and even feign dislike. It worked like a charm. No longer was I a slave, but the master of my emotions. I could turn them off any time I wanted, and it felt good at the time to re-establish control.
Example 2: There was this one girl that liked me a lot, and I liked her a lot. We chilled out for hours every day after school and on the weekends too. We'd go fishing, and she'd make food for me, and we'd just shoot the shit for hours with new things to talk about every time. Well, one day, she wrote me a 10 page letter on how much she liked me and how she liked being around me. I screwed that up by pretending that the letter meant nothing to me, even though my heart fluttered with excitement as my eyes seemed to pierce straight through the paper and words to absorb everything where was to say. But because I didn't show my emotions, I screwed up a good relationship. We don't even talk anymore, and the last time I saw her, it was just full of awkward pauses.
While this felt bad at the time, in retrospect, it was probably a good thing I didn't get too emotionally attached to this girl because she had too many problems going on. She had early child abuse problems, slit her wrists, and was totally dysfunctional with family stuff.
Example 3: This is probably not a good example, because I'm sure I can salvage this one. But anyways, continuing my sad story, this was probably the weirdest hook-up ever. A mother in a boot camp I went to stated that she was psychic, which is probably true, and she told me a couple things that I found very very interesting. Anyway, she invites me down to her place and stay with her daughter, claiming that she's hot and that she and I would be married.
Now, I'm a very open-minded guy, and I also believe things happen for a reason. I'm also very much an explorer, willing to try almost anything once. So I call her about once a week or every other week, just feeling her out and seeing how things are going. She's hot, flexible, cooks, down to earth, learning latin dancing, and is just a fun girl to talk to. However, I feel like I'm getting too busy and just stop calling her and stop taking her calls. I can still recover from this one by calling her again, which I will do some time this week. It's officially on my list of things to do.

While these stories aren't very tragic and they probably aren't my soulmate or anything permanent, I have identified a personality problem, a pattern that may lead to destruction of good friendships and relationships. When I start to see myself going through a pattern of withdrawal, I need to go through a rationalization of the situation, and put a value to continuing to withdraw vs. expressing what I feel. In this way, I can completely master the situation by choosing what I express and what to hide.

March 23, 2005

spring break 2005

I had an awesome time this spring break, mostly because I went out and actually took a break, instead of studying.
I'll really cherish those joyful moments and I respect all the personal sacrifices that were made to make this trip so positive. Below is a quick summary of the events on each day.
3/12/05, Sat. We woke up at 6am. Steph and Deb made us breakfast and it was delicious. We finally headed out at 8:15 or so and nearly missed our 9:05am plane!
At 12pm we headed to a dim sum buffet which was very excellent and had some boba tea dessert. Afterwards, we settled down, I was staying at Anson's parents house with Anson, Bin and Alvin. Park stayed at Fred's house in Garland. For dinner, Anson's sister Winjie and her husband Darrell treated us to Simon's Sushi, which turned out to be really excellent sushi. Probably the best I've ever had.
3/13/05, Sun. Today was more relaxing. We went to Fred's driving range and hit a lot of balls. I got a call from my good friend Dave, and we chatted a while. It turns out that I picked up golf very quickly. I remember going golfing with some friends of mine in high school. Both of them were on the high school golf team and I wasn't. Needless to say, it wasn't very fun. I don't really remember what we had for dinner this night. At night we went bowling and shot some pool. That was a lot of fun. I had a conference call later that night about learning different apartment markets, and I fell asleep halfway through it.
3/14/05 Mon. Today was going to Six Flags. This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. We went on the Texas Giant and Titan, and Superman many times. For lunch we went out of the park to Sonics, where I had a hot dog, and a Sonic burger. Those burgers were delicious. I then blew some money on the crooked carnival games, which I pretty much never do, but I wanted to try out some of the games. The pool stick was flat at the top, making it very hard to hit the balls straight. The most memorable time was probably when we all decided to do 'shocker' shots during the entire ride of the Texas Titan.
For dinner we went to On the Border, where they gave me a Strawberry Daiquiri with only 1 shot of vodka in the entire pint. I was very disappointed and told them to give me a Corona.
The rest of the days are kind of a blur now. I remember going to the DMA, eating at bob's steakhouse, eating at tasty wok, going to NBA basketball game, going karaoking until 4am, and
going to the shooting range.
This is one of those times I will always remember.

March 20, 2005

Post Guidelines

This is my first blog. I'm using this as a tool for personal expression and reflection with no real intent on sharing the contents with anyone. As such, it will be more a personal outlet of my frustrations, successes, and also a gauge for personal development. I may share this blog with a few close friends in the future.
I'm using this format because of its ease of use, portability, and organization.
I plan on adding an entry every couple days. Each entry will be about how I feel at the time, a memorable experience, a personal insight or observation, or about an interesting topic or book that was brought to my attention.