We can’t think of everything at once. We simply can’t. The stars moving, the earth turning, the politics of the country on every level, the economic situation around you, the problems that you have at work. Try keeping in mind all these things at once. It’s impossible. You can’t keep in mind multiple layers at once. But wait, don’t all problems and all situations have multiple layers?

Yes. Yes they do.

A problem with too many layers

So, let me paint you a problem. You want to explain something. You want to get your message across. But you also don’t want your audience to get bored while you explore the varied multi-level aspects of whatever it is that you’re explaining. What do you do?

Symbols.

You use symbols. It’s how good storytellers work. And filmmakers. Choose a scene that compresses that feeling into a moment. Then describe the moment. An example is the Susan Boyle video clip. Oh? You haven’t watched it yet?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PPlkOyaqaQ

You can actually pinpoint the moment that your emotions change. Your mind going from amusement to surprise to disbelief to wonder to shame and back to wonder again.
Tears streaming down. All in one moment. Symbolism. Or in another word, simplification.

To reduce it all into a moment that we can easily comprehend.

Any good movie or advertisement has that same moment. A simple scene of 2 people sitting in a room with rain streaming down the windows outside and candles lit. That moment, that imagery, conveys a deep feeling. You don’t have to know more. They don’t have to speak.

They don’t have to open their mouths and tell you that they’re feeling sad or happy or angry. That crass explanation would only ruin the perfect understanding we have of the situation.

But I can’t make films!

Don’t fret. Don’t worry. We all have our own tools.

Language works the same way. Instead of using video, you can just use words. Here’s a famous secret: sometimes words are powerful. Just ask Obama. Words have power behind them, the power to compress abstract ideas into 7 letters or less. They allow you to tell someone else what you mean by reducing all that complex information into a single word.

There are many complex ideas behind the words “go green”. How long would it take you to explain all the thoughts and emotions evoked by those simple 2 words?

This! This is symbolism. To embody a powerful concept into a picture, or a statue, or a sentence, or a brand, or even… even a person.

The best leaders… almost without exception and at every level, are master users of stories and symbols.

– Tom Peters

Think about it for a second. Are you loyal to any brands? Or do you feel very strongly about an idol/singer/celebrity? Do you love a movie? Here’s one that I know you’ll have to say yes to. Have you ever heard of Romeo and Juliet? All of these are symbols that evoke deeper feelings in you.

4 paragraphs ago, I used the name Obama. I could’ve instead written “politicians”, or described a situation where words are extremely powerful. That would’ve been a waste of time when I could just call forth the image of Obama and you would’ve understood what I meant. Using only a single word.

But there’s a problem, Houston

Did you catch that? This sub-heading is totally wrong. It’s supposed to be, “Houston, we have a problem“. And if you don’t know where that’s from, I have huge respect for you for not wasting your time on TV. +4 points. But you are soooooooo not a geek. -5 points. Let’s get back on topic. So, what is the problem?

The problem is… oversimplification.

We oversimplify and miss most of the layers of information. I mentioned before, the human mind is limited. Therefore, when an idea comes that has many layers of information, it’s only natural to miss many of those layers the first time around. The problem happens when the second time never comes. You never go back and ponder if there was more.

That way, you miss all the subtleties and complexities inherent in any symbol.

Because the purpose of symbolism isn’t to give you new information. It’s merely to anchor information and understanding that’s already there. So if someone doesn’t understand your symbol, showing it or telling him the symbol won’t give him understanding. You can only get the first layer of meaning across.

But it’s different if they already have understanding from before. What does this mean? What symbolism does, is to call upon all the layers of understanding that you already have, using a very simple message. Symbols are just triggers. And that, my dear readers, is why quotes can seem extremely wise.

Quotes (and yes, poems too)

Quotes don’t actually carry any meaning that’s more complicated than how long the quote really is (which is usually only one short sentence). However, the best quotes are phrased in ways that they call upon your own past and your own experiences.

Poetry is that art which selects and arranges the symbols of thought in such a manner as to excite the imagination the most powerfully and delightfully.

– William C. Bryant

And if you grow with time? Then reading the same quote again will make the quote even deeper. Is this because the quote has changed and become more complex? No. It’s still the same quote. This happens because you have more layers of information that are called upon when the symbol (the quote) is triggered.

Which is a reason why quotes are so loved by most people. You can say a quote, and everyone will nod. Does this mean that everyone understands it? Not necessarily. Does this mean that some people are lying when they say they understand the quote? Not necessarily either.

We would all understand them at our own level, at different layers. Because we’ve all had different experiences. And we love that feeling of having understood the words of the wise, the words of the ancients that have come before us, the words of those who understood life.

Do you see the problem with symbolism now?

It’s a vague message. In fact, it’s only a trigger. It’s a wink and a nudge and afterwards expecting that the other person understands completely your extremely complicated plan that should’ve taken 10 minutes to describe.

Note: Symbolism can also be in pictures, and can also be in your deeds (what you do). For the purpose of simplicity, I will write hear mostly about words, but you can replace words with images/deeds & listening with seeing/wanting to do.

No. There’s a time and a place for symbolism, but too often we use symbolism to communicate, as if there were no clearer words to describe our thoughts.

But they’re still extremely powerful. Because it turns out that when symbols and symbolic gestures are used well, they are far, far, far more potent and moving than normal messages because we’re not really listening to the other person. We’re listening to ourselves.

We’re listening to our own voices explaining those quotes, using our own layers, using our own stories. Of course we’re convinced! Of course then, those words carry meaning for us. The only problem is that you can give whatever meaning you want to those symbols.

So when do I use symbolism?

Think of Obama. Think of his words, “Yes. We. Can!”

Remember that symbols aren’t actually the message themselves. They’re merely the trigger.

Once a symbol is tied to a feeling or an emotion or a memory or an idea, the symbol can be triggered instead. Afterwards, instead of having to make the same speech all over again, and taking 20 minutes to do so, he could just say 3 words and have a similar effect. Or think “red” and get angry. Or hear “cancer” and get sad. Or read “be yourself” and understand whatever it is you understand from it.

That is the power of symbols.

They don’t give new information, but they can call back old information so quickly, so vividly.

They don’t convey new information, but often times, the message you want to send is not entirely new. To send that message to another person, you have to bear in mind that we humans have limited minds. In that context, it’s often much much more efficient to send the message by using a symbol first, a trigger to call forth old information, then later add on the parts of the message that are new.

So instead of explaining the whole situation to someone, you can instead say, “Remember the incident that happened on our last holiday? Yeah, it was like that except this time I actually succeeded.” Short. Simple. Efficient.

Conclusion

Symbols are triggers. And you have to remember that triggering them might not call forth the exact message that you want. So you should either choose your symbol very carefully, or use the symbol and afterwards explain further to make sure they understand at the same level that you do.

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

– Albert Einstein

Compare the before and after pictures:

I’ve been meaning to change to a more personalized theme for the longest time. The theme I used before this was a theme someone else coded (it’s called the Graphene theme by Syahir Hakim). I merely used it.  It fit most of my criteria but it just wasn’t really there. It looked too.. busy. There was just too much on the page. And you know how much I love minimalism in design.

So I worked on a new look on the site in my spare time. That’s why it’s taken this long to make any progress. I used a completely different base called Responsive, which is a “responsive design” by Emil Uzelac. What’s a “responsive design” you ask? What it means is that the website should look similar whether on a desktop, phone or ipad. It simply rearranges things so that you can read the website better. Try it!

You can try the responsive design by making your current browser (chrome/firefox/internet explorer) window smaller. Actually, make it thinner. As the window becomes horizontally thinner, you see the website start to rearrange itself so that it’s easier for mobile devices to read.

I tweaked the look as well. There’s still a long way to go before the site looks decent but I thought that the theme seemed to be “ready enough”. Feel free to leave feedback on changes that you’d like!

Improvements

The new site should now be:

1. Simpler. Less useless stuff around.
2. More Social. To share to Facebook/Twitter/etc, you can just use the bar on your left at any point during a post. Now you don’t have to scroll all the way to the bottom any more.
3. Mobile-device friendly. You can use a tablet/ipad or an android/iphone/smartphone and get a similar website, but one that’s arranged nicely to fit your screen.
4. Faster-loading? I’m not too sure about this. It only took me about 2 seconds before this anyway. I can’t tell differences that are less than a second. Tell me if the site is slow to load.
5. More accessible. I’ve added a “top posts” box on the right (when on the home page). Later on I’ll add a whole page that shows previous posts. This way, I hope past posts will be easier for you to find.
6. More elegant? I think so. What about you?

I’ve changed the look before this intermittently (at random) over the past few months. I’ve always changed back after realizing the looks/themes that other people made just didn’t fit what I wanted.

I’m happy with it so far, but I feel that perhaps it’s lacking some colour. Should I leave it like this and go for the minimal look? Or add a splash of colour somewhere?

Let me know if you have any feedback.

They say that the best way to communicate is to fit your message to your medium.

Use face-to-face communication for personal and sensitive issues; SMS for quick updates; email for business purposes; phone calls to settle minor details; etcetera. What comes to my mind suddenly is… stories and poems.

If stories and poems are also forms of communication, what kind of communication are they best suited for? It’s an interesting question to ponder, because stories and poems both convey emotion. They aim to make the reader feel what the author wants to say.

But art is not only limited to words on paper. Art is also pictures on paper. And I think that’s where I can truly understand the purpose of both these literary forms.

Stories are painted, poems are sketched

Paint the stories, sketch the poems

Stories are deep descriptive writings. They aim to draw the reader into a world where many imaginary things are described for them; the colour of the clothes, the smell of cookies wafting from the kitchen, the slippery feel of the bathroom tiles.

But poems! Poems only sketch. They give the barest hints to the reader of what is going on. They give echoes of shadows. But from within these lines, they tell you how those echoes feel against your skin. They sketch the faintest outlines for your mind, but with those faint lines, you can still see a face, even with the lack of detail.

Where stories paint the picture vividly, throwing in greens and hues of red, poems merely use charcoal and sometimes give the better feel, for al the lack of colour.

So I read stories often, but the way to know an author’s heart is to read his poems. For it’s hard to sketch emotion unless you’ve felt it before.

Less is more

And that’s really the story. Less is more. If you can minimize what you say and make it as short as possible (but no shorter!) then you’ll be able to give the maximum impact.

Because even if you can describe something perfectly, no one will listen if it takes you 800 pages to do so.

So, in a poem, you don’t write every detail. When you speak, don’t say every word. Write only the feelings that need to be there, no matter what nonsensical words are used. Say only the words that are important, and nuance the rest with your body language.

A “hmmm” could be contempt or acceptance, but only if you say it like you mean it. And when you have less words to say what you mean, you HAVE to think on every word to make sure that you really do mean it. And you HAVE to say every word like you mean it.

It would be a radical world. A world where people thought before they spoke (because such few words are spoken). A world where you had to listen when others spoke (because poems almost never make sense). A world where you couldn’t get angry straight away because you weren’t really sure what they meant the first time and you had to think their words over first to make sure you understood what they said (because the meaning is not in the words, but in the emotion).

Listen: without it speaking is useless

And herein the problem lies. We’ve forgotten that to communicate better, we don’t need to talk to each other. We need to talk with each other. And even that sentence doesn’t express it correctly. because talking with someone requires a very important part of a 2-way communication. Listening. Rather than talking with each other, we need to listen to each other.

I joined debate and first thought that I would learn to speak to people better and learn how to persuade them with my words. I soon realized that I could only convince them if they were listening to me in the first place. By the end of it, I realized that debate was a lot more about listening than it was about speaking. In fact, I only spoke about 8 minutes for every hour that I had to listen!

So, with such little time speaking, I had to learn to sketch. To set out, in a few quick words, a rough idea of what was going on.

And when I only sketched, I found that I finished so much faster. And I could spend time listening instead to other people’s words, their paintings. And I found that they told the most amazing stories.

I hope that perhaps more people will spend less time painting the elaborate fantasies of their own life. Sketch your own life in charcoal, then when you’re done early, spend that time looking at other people’s paintings. I’ll tell you now, they’re very interesting to look at.

We need to pursue our individual happiness.

We need to do something that we enjoy.

Don’t let others tell you what to do with your life.

And somewhere, that message has become lost in translation, and we now believe that if we are not unique, we also have no value.

You sit and wonder for hours what your special talent is, that one thing that makes you unique. You wonder what you enjoy most in life and what your passion is, because everyone has told you to follow your passion, so you could never downgrade yourself enough to work in a job that wasn’t your passion.

And it’s so weird, because the vast majority of us have no idea what our passion is! Sure, we enjoy doing some things, but everyone enjoys a few things in their lives which doesn’t necessarily make it their passion.

But the hyper-concentration on uniqueness has gone just a little bit too far. It’s crossed the line into the extreme. And everyone knows that anything taken to the extreme is bad.

You don’t need to be “unique” to have value

Or at least, not unique in the sense that society usually seems to understand it. The way people say it, it implies that if you follow what somebody else does, you’re boring and not unique and have no value. That you can’t bend to social norms and the rules that exist, because then you’d be a tool of the government. That you have to rebel, because if you’re not rebelling, then you’re following.

So it means that society’s meaning of “unique” is just to rebel. Where rebelling often means following somebody else anyway.

Let’s face it. There are 6 billion people on this world (and growing). There’s no space to be unique. Somebody has done what you’ve done (or what you aspire to do) and probably done it better. But that doesn’t mean that you’re not worth it. Because being “unique” doesn’t bring value. At least, not in and of itself.

So what brings value then?

Doing meaningful things.

That’s right. Making a change in the world. It doesn’t matter if 1000 people are also doing what you’re doing; if you are making a difference in the world, you have value. Preferably a good difference.

Because life is full of people who aren’t unique and aren’t special. But they’re good people and their life is full of meaning.

Honestly, I’d prefer it more if people who made a meaningful difference in their lives weren’t considered unique. It would mean that good people are everywhere, and that being a good person wasn’t considered something special.

And that brings me to me. Because sometimes, I pride myself too much on being unique.

Don’t get me wrong, being unique isn’t a bad thing. It helps tremendously in marketing something (and marketing yourself) because it draws attention. But you see, I’ve sometimes thought that it was enough. And THAT’s the problem. Because there’s no point in drawing attention to something if there’s no meaning or value to it.

And this is the problem that I’m talking about.

Forgetting the purpose of individuality

It’s not just about being individual.

We’ve become so busy with chasing individualism that we’ve forgotten the purpose of chasing it. The whole purpose of being yourself was to be able to chase the values in your life that you believe in even when others tell you not to.

When you want to be unique just to be unique, then you purposely take the road less travelled even when it goes against your values. Even when it goes against what you want.

That’s when you have that niggling feeling. That feeling that maybe I went a bit too far in distancing myself from what others expect of me. That maybe I did that, not because I wanted to, but because they didn’t expect me to. Maybe I’m not chasing my own dreams now.

And this happens.

This happens especially when you start worrying if you’re going to be defined by something, whether it’s your school or friend or university or family or club or degree or neighbourhood. And you start moving away from them, perhaps ashamed of them, or perhaps just not wanting to be defined by them, wanting to be “your own person”.

Perhaps you can relate to what I’m saying? I’m guessing it’s happened before in your life. It’s happened to all of us.

We try sooooo hard not to fall into stereotypes, that we fight it even when we really do fit those stereotypes. We fight our own nature because we want to be unique.

I believe that we should stop trying to be unique, and instead focus on trying to bring meaning into our own lives and others. Forget “finding your passion” as if it’s only one possible thing and instead just do anything that you are passionate about, that can also bring meaning to your life.

Because “passion” and “being unique” are only worth it if they help you make the world better.

The second layer is so hard to see because most people don’t want to see it. To accept this second layer is to also accept that some principles in your life that you feel are instinctively true… would be false.

So what is this second layer that holds such deep implications?

The second layer

The second layer of meaning is that: the path of success and failure are one and the same.

The opposite of success is not failure, it is inaction.

If you don’t want to succeed, the only sure way to do it is to not do anything at all. When you don’t play the game, you can’t win. If you don’t go to the exams or don’t bother answering the questions, you definitely can’t get a good grade.

The meaning of the previous sentence is much deeper. It means that the path to success is the same path as failure. To fully accept the meaning of the second layer, you also have to accept that life is ultimately unfair, that if you go on the path to success, you can do everything right until you almost reach the finish line, then still fail. You have to accept that people who succeed and fail may put in the same effort (or the ones who fail may even put in more) but that ultimately it is luck that decides whether you fail or succeed.

Hard to swallow isn’t it?

If you mind is already rejecting what I just said, don’t bother reading further. I understand that for some (most people), it’s very hard to accept that we don’t have full control over our own lives. It’s weird though. I think everyone always says:

Life is unfair!

but they don’t actually mean it. They don’t actually accept that it’s true. Rather, it’s more of a complaint. If everyone is saying this (perhaps multiple times), then perhaps there’s actually some truth to it? And if it’s really true, the next question that you should ask isn’t about how to fight it. The next question is what you should do once you realize you can’t change it. You should aim for success anyway.

So why do I say that the paths of success and failure are the same?

Here’s a short example. Avoiding failure, Case #1: There’s a guy who runs a business. It’s a nice business and all, and has quite good demand because he’s a nice guy and everyone trusts him not to cheat them. But he has a mindset of avoiding failure. So even though he has good demand, he only hires 10 people to work for him because he’s worried that hiring more would bring extra costs that he might not be able to pay. So his workers are kept fully busy the whole day, and he makes full use of his workers. However, it also means that his customers often have to wait due to the backlog of orders. One by one, they start moving away because of the slow customer service.

On the other hand, he could also have hired 30 people and made sure that the orders were processed extremely fast. But in his mind, he starts thinking that:

if the orders are solved so fast, then my 30 workers will be sitting around doing nothing for a few hours every day. That’s a waste of my money!

That mindset is a mindset of avoiding risk. It’ll be a risk on whether he’ll generate enough business to compensate for hiring 20 extra workers, but if he doesn’t he’s already doomed himself. He CAN’T succeed when he only has 10 workers. And it’s all because of his mindset of avoiding failure.

This means that if you avoid failure, it also means that you avoid success.

The best way to go towards possible success (and possible failure) is to hire more workers.

 Why can’t I just avoid failure, then work harder later?

“But wait“, you think, “if I’m avoiding failure by doing just the bare minimum, all I have to do to reach success is to just work harder right?”

Sorry bro. That’s a myth. Let me break it down.

Avoiding failure, Case #2: The strategy to avoid failure in class is very simple. Study for your exams. That means taking past year papers and doing them until you know exactly how to answer those questions. That should easily get you past 60% of the questions in your finals. This is avoiding failure. This works because when your mindset is to avoid failure, the strategies you use are ultimately shortcuts, trying to just do the techniques without bothering to understand them. So you’d think that to aim for success, you should then just do even more of those past year questions right? Not so. If you do that, you’ll never be able to answer the higher level questions that require you to fully understand the context of the question.

When your strategy is to aim for success, then your goal is different from the very start. You want to know exactly why you’re doing these things and when the best times are to use the techniques you learnt. You’ll then be able to answer the tough questions (that test you exactly for that).

To compare that to the businessman just now, if he had a mindset of aiming for success, his goal wouldn’t be to ensure that his business just survives. His goal would be to make his business so big that he can open more branches in the future. In that case, hiring 30 workers is a no-brainer (a choice that is obvious) because he can easily use them in his new branches in the future.

When you avoid failure, the strategies and the very mindset you use is different. It’s extremely hard to change someone’s mindset (even if it looks so easy to change). Ask anyone who smokes how hard it is to change your mindset.

So it means that you can’t just “work harder” to achieve success. I’m sure you’ve heard of the quote:

Don’t work hard, work smart.

Well… this is kinda what it means. If you use the strategy of those who avoid failure, it doesn’t matter how hard you work. The most you’ll ever do is avoid failure.

To reach success, you’ll have to take some risks, work smart and ultimately use the mindset of those who aim for success.

Minimizing risks

Risky risky risky! It’s so risky to aim for success if you say it’s the same path as failure!

So if I say that the path of possible success is also the path of possible failure… then what do I do?

What you do is you maximize the chance of success while minimizing the chance of failure. This can happen through so many ways. All the ways that you’ve traditionally learnt. These include learning new skills, doing research on the subject, asking insiders for info about what’s really going on, etc.

I won’t go too much into that. The main idea though, is that even if the path of success and failure are the same, and luck ultimately decides if you make it or not, there are many things you can do to improve your chances. But you HAVE to understand that you are only improving your chances.

There is no guarantee that you’ll succeed even if you work hard.

This is not to stop you from working hard. Rather, it’s for you to realize that the world is not fair and therefore there is no point in complaining. Don’t complain the world isn’t fair. Don’t complain that God isn’t fair. Don’t complain that you deserve something better because you’re such a nice person. Life is NOT fair. Death is.

The only thing to do when you fail is to get back up and try again.

So don’t avoid failure. Aim for success. And if you fail anyway? No worries bro. I won’t blame it on you. Good effort. Try again. Let’s meet up when we both finally succeed.

It’s like changing only for someone else. If that person is your only reason for motivation, your motivation is gone the moment they go away. That’s why you can’t use pain as motivation.

Moving away from pain can’t give you lasting motivation. Let’s face it, most of us don’t have very good long-term discipline. In fact, it’s proven that the best way to keep someone motivated is to have a continuous feedback system where you continually feel rewarded for the improvements you’re making.

Now, what if you’re improving against a standard where the standard is avoiding failure, and not success?

Moving away from failure

When the standard is to avoid failure, to avoid pain, you will continuously compare yourself against that. When you’re in pain, you’ll have a lot of motivation to do something about it. As you move away more and more, you start forgetting your pain. And how much it hurt you before. It also means that you start getting less and less motivated.

It’s very hard for someone to keep in mind how they felt when they first made their New Year’s resolution. Most of us will then start forgetting what exactly pushed us to make that promise in the first place. That’s why, as time passes by, your promise loses urgency. New Years’ resolutions are often made to move away from pain. And that’s why they usually fail.

This is where a more permanent reminder has to be there.

Moving towards success

When you move towards success, the opposite effect happens, the more you progress, the closer you get to the source of your motivation. Rather than losing motivation, you start to feel that your goal is in your grasp. This can actually increase your motivation the longer you’ve done it.

When your standard is to avoid failure, you’ll stop trying the moment you’ve avoided that failure (and afterwards just fall right back down again), but when your standard is success, you can only stop trying when you’ve achieved success. And that generally takes a lot longer to achieve.

It motivates you longer.

It brings you to greater heights.

“Avoiding failure is not the same as aiming for success.” – Lutfi Torla

P.S. This is planned as part of a short series on how aiming for success is not the same as avoiding failure.

http://dirtsimple.org/2005/08/doing-it-anyway.html

But let me summarize it and say it in my own words too.

Do you have to force yourself to do something? Do you have to destroy all other options, drive yourself into a corner, and then (and only then) be able to go through with your decision?

I used to be like that (and I still am sometimes).

But which way is better? Doing something because it’s the only option, or doing something because even though you have ten options, this is the best one?

It’s apparently rooted in the idea of not giving in. That if I gave in, I was weak. Sometimes, when you’re making a decision, when you’re choosing to change, you don’t want to give in, even to yourself.

And that’s where the whole idea of “being yourself” has been misunderstood to mean “don’t change”. Because when you change, it means you’re giving in to what you’re pressuring yourself to do. And it’s somehow “wrong”.

Let’s look at it in a different light. What if you want to change, but it’s because someone told you to do it? Is it “wrong” to change then? Almost unanimously, everyone will say yes, it’s wrong to change for others. Why? We change due to the influence of other people all the time. A friend tells us to try a sport and we like it. We then change to become a fan of the sport. What’s the big deal?

Being true to yourself is to be able to do what you want even if people tell you not to do it. And more importantly, even if people do tell you to do it. Sometimes, we fight peer pressure and influence so much that we rebel without thought. We say ‘no’ even though we secretly want to say ‘yes’, because saying yes would be seen as weak and losing face. Our ego is more important than doing what’s best for us.

We’d rather do something that’s wrong for us and show how “unique” and “special“ we are than do what’s right for us if it looks like it would be seen as giving in.

I’m not saying that we should all be mindless sheep and follow everyone else. I’m saying that if you were truly strong and believed in yourself, you would follow what you yourself wanted… even if it was exactly the same as everyone else.

Changing my mind and my mindset

As long as I had the mentality that I was somehow “giving in” when I changed myself, I would always have to force myself into a corner. That’s where I slowly tried to evolve my mindset. I really like teaching, but I had an Engineering degree. To change to the academic field would’ve meant that I was mindlessly following in the footsteps of my father and sister… right?

But luckily, I caught myself in time. I was thinking nonsense and I blame society for teaching me a false meaning of being unique.

Why should I have to force myself to be different when I didn’t want to be? Why did I have to follow the footsteps of my friends who became engineers? Why did I have to feel as if I was wasting an engineering degree if I went into education?

In fact, it was the opposite. I would waste my degree if I went into the industry because I would probably be selling or maintaining technical products instead of designing them. I wouldn’t be different because I would be following in the footsteps of my friends and classmates. I wouldn’t be unique because I couldn’t bring myself to do what I wanted to do.

So I slowly changed my mindset. I had people wondering why I would torture myself with Masters (in Engineering of all things!) and probably proceed to a PhD in the same field later. Well, it’s because I like it. And why would I continue studying when apparently most people wanted to start work as soon as possible? It turns out I hate not having a flexible schedule.

This particular time, I wanted to change myself without having to put myself in a corner. I didn’t have to “give in” to myself. Rather, I could clearly see that it was what I myself wanted, and I didn’t need to force myself to accept it.

Needing a reason to change

I suppose that my last post sounds like it makes so much sense is because our society is oh-so-logical that we need reasons for everything. We especially need reasons for change.

So the moment that I wanted to make a change in myself, because I felt it would be better for myself, I also felt like it wouldn’t be accepted by society and the people around me. I needed to make a reason/excuse. I needed to force myself into a situation/corner to make that change.

But what if I could freely change myself at any moment, always improving who I was and removing the parts of myself that were bad? It’s a pretty scary thought to be a person who could continuously improve and grow to my true potential.

And that’s where I had to stop for a second and wonder… why is it scary?

And I suppose it’s because… well, it’s because I liked being handicapped. I liked having a reason to fail. I liked being a person that wasn’t at my full potential yet, because if I failed when I wasn’t at my full potential, then I wouldn’t truly fail. If I failed when I was already at my best, then I’d be a true failure.

Giving myself a reason to fail

I handicap myself. At least I used to. I had this odd notion that if I gave myself a handicap, and I still managed to win, then I must be awesome. After all, if I could do that much in 10 minutes, I must be awesome if I had 3 hours. Not true.

At least then, if I lose, I have an excuse.

I had a conversation with a friend a while back where he confided in me and said he was planning to start a business, and he’s going to do it in…bla…bla…

Something sounded off to me when he was explaining all this until I realized what was bothering me. I asked him then, “You’re expanding from your dad’s business right?”

“No, I want to succeed on my own.” And that shocked me. I’m still not entirely sure now why it shocked me so much. The sheer absurdity of wanting to succeed while not using everything that was at hand sounded so odd. Sure, it was fine while doing things for fun, or during practice, but when you actually want to achieve something, why not use everything that you have?

It was only later that I made the connection to how I’d been living my own life, proud to have a “problem” that gave me a reason to fail.

I was giving myself reasons to fail, handicapping myself, driving myself into a corner, because if I failed after doing all that, it wouldn’t be my fault. I could just say that I “hadn’t put my all into it, but I could totally do it if I had to”.

And part of giving it my all also meant that I needed to use everything around me and not just rely only on myself. Because apparently accepting help is also another version of caving in and giving in to others. Almost as if you’re too weak to handle the problem yourself. But in truth, it’s just another way to give yourself a reason to fail. It’s so that I can say, “of course I lost to him, he used his family money, while I did it with my own sweat and blood“.

Ridiculous. How arrogant!!! Why then didn’t I just use all my own resources instead of handicapping myself?

So here it is,

You don’t have to succeed on your own

Because if not, it means the purpose of your success is to prove your own ego, rather than wanting to actually succeed. That’s right, we don’t want to succeed. We usually want to fail. Or at least, we don’t mind failing as long as it’s not “our fault”. In fact, failing is usually easier since you don’t need to put that much effort into it.

Succeeding is so much harder. You actually have to take responsibility that it is your own fault when you fail and that you’ll have to try harder next time.

So I finally learnt my lesson(s):

1. Change whenever I want to. I don’t have to wait for something to push me along.
2. Never give myself a reason to fail.
3. It’s ok to accept help to succeed.

Of course, I wanted to change that. However, sometimes the conditions just aren’t right for you to change yourself  even though you really want to. Even though I wanted to change myself, I couldn’t. And the reason was simple, my environment was the same. There were the same people around me everyday. The same people who already had expectations of me and ‘knew’ how I behaved. The same people who would think it weird if I suddenly changed. The same people who wouldn’t let me change.

Mind you, these were good friends. But even good friends have expectations of who you are and how you’re supposed to behave. If you suddenly act all social where you used to be shy, they’ll start wondering what’s wrong with you, to the point where you’ll just turn back. The same goes for the reverse, if you act calm and collected where you used to be all loud, then again they’ll think there’s something wrong with you and slowly pressure you back into your old behaviour.

It’s just hard to change when everything around you doesn’t.

Changing my environment

Because of that, I had to forcibly change something. I needed a trigger, something to push me towards change. I needed to force myself into a corner and put myself in an environment where I had to change.

University life was my platform. But even though university was a change in environment, that wasn’t enough to make a change in me. I needed to force something. I did.

I joined the public speaking club, and trembled in front while I spoke for 2 minutes in front of 10 people. I joined the debate club, and trembled while I spoke for 7 minutes in front of 50 people. I joined theatre, and trembled while I spoke for 2 hours in front of 400 people.

I forced myself into those situations and signed up without giving myself a chance to back out, because I knew I was too scared to do it otherwise.

University life was my platform, but it could be something different for you.

But I’ve repeated this experiment a few times in different situations.

The last minute effect

Ever had an assignment or deadline that came closer and closer but OHMYGOD you still hadn’t done anything yet? Yeah, I think we all have. Ever felt yourself suddenly become uber productive and able to finish it at the last minute, right when the project is due tomorrow? You’ll work through the night and come up with work that’s not exactly amazing but acceptable. And you’ll wonder how you managed to do it, and you’ll think that if only you’d done it a bit earlier you would’ve done a much much better job.

This ‘last minute effect’ seems to show that when you’re forced into a corner, you’ll discover that you are much more capable than you thought you were. I believe that this is true for most things.

The simple truth is that:

You are more capable than you believe

It’s the mental blocks in our mind that limit us more than our inherent abilities or intellect. Most times, our survival instincts kick in, and we don’t go close to our limits because we’re afraid to fall over the edge. Mastery is merely the training you go through to find your limits so that you know exactly how far you can go without falling.

The person who hasn’t trained himself doesn’t know where his limits are. The fear of that unknown keeps him far far away from the edge and well within his comfort zone.

You are more capable than you believe

Even when you’re scared and believe that it’s impossible for you to do something (who would’ve thought that I could one day speak in front of 1000 people without breaking a sweat when I once couldn’t speak in front of 10 people!), it’s sometimes more a case of how far can you push yourself.

And sometimes, the way to push yourself is to use what’s around you. To make sure that everything around you makes you do it.

I mean, I definitely can’t take the full credit for my own growth. I signed up for a public speaking class, then simply attended. It was the people in the class who forced me to go in front and speak. I forced myself into that corner, into an environment where I knew I had to speak even if I was scared. Even if I didn’t want to.

And that’s the problem. There are multiple versions of ourselves, and there was a version of me who wanted to able to speak well and a another version of me who thought that it was madness, and that I could live a very full life while pretending to be a mute. So I had to trap the other version of myself in an environment where I couldn’t escape speaking, so that I could train it and teach it that it is possible.

So I trapped myself into a corner to grow.

Some might call it weakness. Weak in discipline, weak in conviction. But truth be told, you can’t be strong in every aspect of your life. When you like something, it’s very easy to be disciplined about it. But there will be times in life when you hate something that’s necessary. I see this as knowing my limits. Knowing my weaknesses and working to overcome them.

Guess what? It’s ok to be weak. We’re human. We’re not perfect. But when the issue is an important one, would you be willing to force yourself into a corner to make sure it gets resolved?

Here are the prices for OEM Windows 7 in Malaysia :-

RM 108 - STARTER (OEM)
RM 225 - HOME BASIC (OEM)
RM 275 - HOME PREMIUM (OEM)
RM 349 - HOME PREMIUM (RETAIL)
RM 365 - PROFESSIONAL (OEM)
RM 549 - PROFESSIONAL (RETAIL)
RM 599 - ULTIMATE (RETAIL)

See the difference in prices?

Well, if you’re like me, then the whole point of the upgrade to Windows 7 is for Themes and Aero Tabs. Yeah, the fancy effect you get when changing programs. If you already have Windows 7, you can test it by pressing Win + Tab. All the other stuff in Professional And Ultimate are mostly for corporate-type people. It’s stuff like encryption and connecting to business networks/VPNs and switching to 35 different languages (I just need English).

The problem though is that you don’t have both these awesome things (Themes and Aero Tabs) in the 2 cheapest versions of Win 7 (Starter and Home Basic).  So you have to splurge for at least Win 7 Home Premium. And that can set you back quite a bit.

But wait!! It turns out that in the software world, it actually takes a lot of time to remove something from the program code while still making sure that it works properly. It’s therefore cheaper to just hide the functionality rather than remove it if you want to sell a cheaper version. And lucky for us, it turns out that in Win 7, Microsoft did the same thing. Instead of removing the ability for Starter and Home Basic to have Themes and Aero Tabs, they simply hid it.

Now, it turns out that when you legally buy Windows, then you own that software and can mess around with it however you want (as long as you don’t try to copy and sell/pirate it on to others). So it’s perfectly legal to unlock hidden features in your legal copy of Win 7.

So what do you do then? You buy Win 7 Starter or Home Basic, then use the following hack.

The Hack

Well, of course you could dig through the registry (What? What’s that?) or code something using vbscript (Uhm… I’m lost here) or perhaps change some .dll files (Ok, you’re still speaking nonsense) and unlock those hidden features. But this particular hack is so easy that anybody can do it. Somebody (not me) already made a program that you can just run once.

Panel Personalization 1.2

Download that, run the .exe file inside, and you’re done! Restart your computer and you can now download themepacks for Windows 7 and run them.

Save about RM100 or RM200 and get only the features you need. You can easily save 60% if you buy Starter instead of Home Premium and you can save more if you were thinking of buying the useless Ultimate version.

Of course, I wouldn’t recommend this if I hadn’t used it myself. I used it on my sister’s laptop to upgrade her Home Basic. It worked great and I didn’t have to spend any extra money. (The Home Basic came installed in her laptop). Yes Areej, I hacked your computer. *grin* I hacked it in a good way!!!

Please feel free to share this with your friends. It might save somebody some money.

We’ve been blinded by democracy. That ability to make our own choices and influence how our lives become. It had a noble purpose, once.

When the ages were dark and others chose how you led your life, people were miserable under kings who told them what to do without caring how it affected them. When others ruled your life and made choices, those choices were designed to be good for the chooser and left us, the common people, out of the equation.

We retaliated. We wanted freedom! Freedom to make good choices rather than be trapped in the bad ones of our kings and queens and dictators and freedom to live a happy life. But somewhere along the way, we forgot that we wanted to make GOOD choices and started to think that we just wanted choices. Now… now we want freedom for freedom’s sake.

Some would argue with me. They’d say that freedom isn’t just about making the best choice, it’s about making your own choice. And that includes making a choice that’s bad as well as a choice that’s good.

This line sums it up well:

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.

– Mahatma Gandhi

I agree. Kinda.

But you see, we’ve gone over the deep end. We want to reassure ourselves over and over again that we have this freedom and therefore we continually and purposely make mistakes. Worst of all is that we seem to think that this is somehow noble, to fight for freedom and freedom alone.

I say that the whole point of gaining freedom is so that you can choose what is RIGHT. Because sometimes those who have power over you will choose only what is good for themselves, which usually means something that is bad for everyone else. So the original purpose of gaining freedom isn’t just to make ANY choice, it’s to make the best choice. It’s to make the right choice.

I mean, have you ever thought to yourself that you want to ruin your own life? Never. It’s always been about making your life better, or making the life of your loved ones better.

I’ve spoken before about how I sometimes support making mistakes on purpose, but it’s clear that I mean mistakes that come as a result of learning a new skill, not mistakes that can ruin your life.

So I think that we all need a wake up call, to remind us that freedom isn’t there so that we can all strive to make mistakes, whether as a society or as an individual. It’s there so that we can do good, even when people don’t agree with us sometimes.

But wait, what’s the meaning of “good”? What’s the meaning of “right”?

Good is subjective

The evangelists (super strong supporters) of freedom, they call out loudly and say that good is subjective. That we have to preserve freedom in general because what I feel is wrong might be right for someone else.

Not true. I think that for the most important things in life, there’s always a “right” way. Yes, you can have different favourite colours, or different jobs and hobbies, but there should only be one correct way to treat your parents (with respect), and only one right way to do your job (ethically and responsibly). For me it’s quite simple. The “right” way is what resonates with my core values. The “right” way is what fits my religion.

After all, I think that as humanity in general we can readily agree on most things. Murder and stealing are wrong. Education and children are sacred. Life is something that we shouldn’t just throw away. Don’t cheat. Be respectful. Be trustworthy. It isn’t so hard to find common ground on what is “right”.

Oddly enough, I think we spend a lot of our freedom trying things out so that we can find the “right” way of living our life. And sometimes, we spend a lot of our freedom trying everything wrong, with the excuse that we want to “experience life”.

Make no mistake, I’m not against having freedom. I am against misusing it and abusing it.

When given freedom and given the opportunity to make your life better, it saddens me that there are many people who misuse that freedom to do every mistake possible, just because they can. Just to prove that they can. You know what I mean. Even while knowing that cigarettes and drugs are bad for us, so many people still want to rebel and take it up, not because they’re trying it to find if it’s “right” for them. They know it’s wrong.

But they’ll do it anyway because they want to rebel, to reassure themselves that they are still in control of their lives, where they’ve lost control of everything else. When they’ve screwed up the rest of their lives, they feel that the ultimate form of proving that they have freedom is to make a mistake.

As you can guess, I don’t support this. I support making the right choices. But I also don’t support having other people controlling your lives and controlling what you choose.

Hmmm…. what now?

The middle ground

Surprisingly there’s a middle ground. It’s called guidance.

You can have freedom, but you can also be guided. You can ask. You can accept advice and you can hear people out when they tell you what to do. You can talk to family and friends. (Not friends and family. Notice which comes first. Family should always be first in that line-up)

Through all of that, whether people tell you the right thing to do or the wrong, whether people suggest things or aggressively force it on to you, remember that it’s all just suggestions. In the end you choose what you want to do. So don’t worry too much if they’re TELLING you what to do. If you don’t want to do it, don’t. If you think it’s good advice, then do it anyway in spite of them being so aggressive when giving the advice. Use that good advice even if it comes from someone you hate.

The idea here is that no matter what people say, you are the one making the choice in the end. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t get guidance and input from others.

There’s a small story that led to this post. Every once in a while, my mom or dad would suggest something to me. It used to be that my first reaction was to rebel in my mind. “They don’t own me! They can’t tell me what to do with my life!”

But it’s a stupid reaction. So I suppressed it. Instead, I thought about the content of the advice. It turns out that they were usually right and that their advice was pretty darn good.

So I think that we all need to be able to do that. To listen to people’s advice and hear their message for what it really is. Afterwards, you can do whatever you want and ruin your own life (just don’t ruin mine). But don’t go out and do something while ignoring everyone’s advice then act all surprised and sad when everything goes bad later.

Yes, you have freedom. No, you shouldn’t use it to do whatever you like.

So when your choices are suddenly limited and filtered out (whether by the situation or by other people), don’t suddenly get angry and complain that your “freedom is being taken away!”. Ask yourself if the good choices were the ones that disappeared. If the only things that disappeared were the bad choices, then perhaps it’s just a teeeeeeny bit useless to get angry about it.

I don’t really want all choices to be open to me. I just want the choices that are right for me to be open to me.

The paradox of choice

After all, it’s actually bad for us when we have too much choice. The paradox of choice states that when there are too many options available to us, we get paralyzed. After all, we want the best choice, right? That also means that we have to research EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. And that simply overwhelms us and paralyzes us.

So I’m actually fine with having my choices limited. As long as the choices that are limited are the ones that were bad for me anyway. So please please start limiting your own choices. The people who feel like they can do anything are the same people who are the dictators and evil governments of the world.

It’s my hope and prayer that when a bad choice comes along, my family and friends would be there to support me. But I don’t want them to support me in whatever choice I make. NO. I want them to support me in choosing what is right. And telling me what is wrong.

And hey, it turns out that I have an awesome family and awesome friends. It seems that it might just work out…

Conclusion: Summing it up, I know that there’s a gray area in making choices where no one is really sure whether it’s right or wrong. That’s NOT what this post is about. This post is about the choices that you know and that everyone knows is wrong, but we somehow want to defend anyway. I don’t think we should.