Motivation needs a spark

 

“The strongest enemy in your life that hinder you from change is you”

How many times we are so passionate in making a change in our mind, but little chance that we have brought that into action. We have fantasy picture in our mind, thinking that if I have done this, I would have blah blah blah.However, in all these time, we are in lack of a spark to bring our thoughts into action. It is because the strongest enemy in your life that hinder you from changes is you, if you can step out of your comfort zone, you can start to change.

“The greatest hold up to your healing of your hang up is you”

We always have a lot of things that we are planned to do, for example, learn something new, expand our social circle, pick up a new habit. We know that these things are good to ourselves and we “want ” to make a change. However, take these thoughts into action require a spark, which provides you enough determination and strength to make a difference. I have been thinking to start a fitness-Instagram page for months, because being fit becomes my passion and I want to motivate people around me to stay healthy and fit. During these months, I cannot take this thought into actions because maintaining a page is sort of tiring, and requires you a lot of energy. Until this week, I realized that my befit journey actually can influence people around me to pick up their fitness journey, and some of my friends message me and asked where can I gym, how can I lose weight. Even more, one of the studio re-posted my workout photo in their Instagram page, and at that moment, I felt like what I am doing is worth it and actually can make a difference to myself and to others. Although I am not qualified to say that I am a professional trainer, I feel so satisfied about my gradual change physically and mentally. You do not have to compete with others about how far you go, because you are the only one you should be responsible for, not others. Until yesterday, I summoned up my courage, I opened a fitness Instagram for myself. I do not know if I can be successful in maintaining the page, but I know that if I do not try, I can never succeed. No matter what the result is, at least I tried and paid effort, I will not feel regret in the future of not doing that.

“No amount of darkness can hide a spark of light”

Sometimes, a spark in the darkness can light up the sky and give you direction about where you should go because with a tiny spark may burst a mighty flame. Whenever you get the spark and hold on to it, it is easier for you to follow the sign of light of your journey. The beginning is the hardest part because you have no idea about where to start. Bu when you have started, the rest become easy as you know the direction of where to go. But before that, find your spark, find the passion in your life that can keep you growing and glowing. A spark can come from the people around you , the places that you have been to or the message that you have read. The more you get in touch with various things, there are more sources of spark that you can explore. Trust yourself, and trust our Father will guide us the way that we want to go, he can give us strength and faith if we put our trust on him. John 8:12-  Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.”

 

 

Let Go Of Your Feeling

Hang on to a balloon, when you would prefer to see it in the sky, and it’s obvious that you are not going to get what you want. Imagine yourself holding a urchin with bare hands, and you do not want to let go of the yummy urchin. The harder you hold, the more injured your hand is. Sometimes we are so stubborn to let go of our feelings and thoughts, which in terms create more pain in our heart.

Letting go pain in your life does not mean that you have to erase the memory, in contrary, you should confront the situation. Forgetting all the pain does not mean that you have overcome the difficult situation, instead you are still being hauled by that feeling. You escape from facing the problem because you know that the pain still can make you feel devastated. Some of us will turn the pain into other emotions like anger or grief to make ourselves feel better, in such a case that the problem is thrown to him/her, and I can forever be the victim. However, these emotions will cloud our mind and hinder us from recovery. Before I was so mad at my ex bf of doing a lot of terrible things to me, which I cannot even accept how he can react like this and broke all the promises. I felt heart broken and felt so mad whenever I thought of him and the words that he said to me. However, since yesterday, after I found out that we are disconnected spiritually [please refer to my previous article Connection], I suddenly had a feeling that I should completely let go of this person. Even if he come back to me, I would never ever be together with him because we are a mismatch.

By realising such a mismatch, I started to forgive what he did, not because I agreed with what he did, but because those acts mean nothing to me already. There is no point that I should feel mad towards a man who did not understand you. Before I was holding too hard, causing much pain in my heart and made myself so much wounds. When you release something, it is no longer in your grasp. When you’ve thrown a ball, you expect it to travel in the direction in which it was propelled. Furthermore, you are aware that there is nothing more that you can do to help its journey toward its destination. How well you formulate your intention can be likened to how well you throw a ball; if you do so well, it is likely to go exactly where you want. Nonetheless, it will not go anywhere if you continue to hold it in your hand.When you can truly let go of the situation, my heart is so relieved and I do not feel pain whenever I think about him because it is a proof that I have moved forward to pursue my fruitful and promising future.

“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice”.- Ephesians 4:31

Connection

 

So, you’ve been dating for a while now. Things have been going great. You’ve laughed together. You’ve had some lengthy conversations. You have plenty in common. You’re both very attracted to each other. You think the world of each other.And yet— something isn’t clicking. You just can’t put your finger on what’s wrong. On paper it’s a match made in heaven. Still, something is just not right. What you may be missing is spiritual connection.

“We often stuck in a relationship because we are unable to let go”

When two people come together, at first they may attract each other by appearance or other sorts of things. They feel excited and fun, and they do love each other. At first, you However, you can always feel that something is missing or falling apart because you two do not have the “click” feeling. The time you spent with him is long but it is not unique; The conversation is lengthy but not deep. You like to be with him, having fun with him but you feel like he does not understand you. At first, you won’t realize that it is a big problem because you believe you can overcome this by LOVE. However, when time goes by, you realized you are not really be in the relationship and feel yourself a bit disconnected from it. In order to keep the relationship going, we will try so hard to get the “click” feeling with your spouse. The more you do, the more you realize that you two are so different.And no matter how much you do, you still cannot click into the mind, click into the soul. When two people are not spiritually connected, let alone how many efforts you paid, you cannot get the “click” feeling. To be honest, being with a person whom you are not spiritually connected with is worse than being single. Even worse, you realize that he is not the one who can share the soul with you, but you still choose to stay with him because you are not able to let go.

Sometimes we allow reason to cloud our judgment so that we are unable to become aware of our true feelings. When we be with a wrong person in a relationship,  in every second, you try to convince yourself that maybe we can click someday or it is okay that we can be lovers but not soulmates. However, from my experience, it is not gonna work. In my past relationship, I would say me and him were actually never clicked spiritually and I did not feel like he really did understand me and accept me for who I am. When I shared some deeper feelings with him, he just did not understand and hardly could we have a deeper conversation. And then, I would not talk about that topic again with him because he could not give me a constructive response. Since then, I realized that we had so many things uncommon, different values and thoughts. I started to avoid sharing these topics with him and that was the moment I started to feel we are so far away spiritually. To describe our relationship, I would say, we were the closest stranger. I was stuck in the relationship for long time as I felt like he loved me and he was good to me, and that was everything that it mattered. Until a friend of mine asked, if he is not your boyfriend, will he be your soulmate/best friend. The answer is, no. This is a very good question to think about whether you two are right person to each other and if this relationship can be fruitful.

When two person are spiritually connected together, the feeling is great, even better, you no longer feel empty in your life because he fills every part of you. If both of you are clicked, you do not need to explain things or feelings by words, because you get his/her understanding already. It is just like jigsaw puzzle, you can feel you two are exactly connected and you two complete each others’ life. With this feeling, you feel like your inside is strengthening and growing big together with your partner. LOVE will fade and loss its passion, but if you two are spiritually connected together, the relationship will be long lasting and fruitful in your life as ⁹ Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. ¹⁰ For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! ¹¹ Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? ¹² And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken. – Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

 

Surrender

 

The world is a battleground, there are a lot of temptations which leads to taking mistakes and walk a wrong path. We realize that what we do are wrong, but most of us tend to diminish the fault which makes us feel better. Little of us will come to surrender to God, admitting all the faults and pathetic past that we had suffered.

Yet, we surrender is a painful process. We have to dig out all of our unwanted past, revealing every single details in your life that you want to hand them into God, as we human being have no strength in dealing them by ourselves. Those unwanted past consist of some emotion that we cannot corporate with, some pathetic unchanged memories which cause us pain and the act that we have done to hurt somebody which makes us feel guilt. Tackling any of them takes time and strength to do it, and most of us will give up in the mid-way of the process because direct facing those scars made us devastated and the wounds are still there. After a month since broke up, I felt like I had gone out of the past, I could finally forget the past that I had and can move on to my new life. However, I never thought that I was not actually fully recovered. Whenever there is a trigger, I actually will get emotional breakdown easily. My sister K in church told me, the scar is still here, just the wound now is recovered in the surface, but inside is still bleeding. What I need to do is to clear the deeply rooted dirt inside the wound in order to get myself recovered. The process is painful as we need to dig into the root of the problem first, bleed first, then the wound can heal. “Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”-Matthew 16:24-25 No matter how hard it is, I know that God will stay here with me if I can give myself completely to him.

In this period, I try so hard to change myself, through mindset to behavior. Until a point, I seem to lose a balance between creating the new path with new habits and the old one. The past is not always bad, the memories are not always torturing,  and when we are so focus on creating the future, we may have chance losing the people whom we care in the past, forgetting the good memories and experiences that we had. In order to keep getting better, I have to learn how to balance every parts of my life (my faith, my hobbies, my family, my work, my friends). If we can maintain good balance of life, we would never fall down again because all parts of my ME will inter-balance each other to make me in balance.  ^“13 Surrender your heart to God, turn to him in prayer,¹⁴ and give up your sins—even those you do in secret.¹⁵ Then you won’t be ashamed;you will be confident and fearless. “- Job 11:13-15

 

P.S. To my sister E, I want to apologize for the irresponsible action that I have made and I understand how bad it sounds like. You are one of the the important people in my life who helped me walk through the painful year, and I would never forget this in my life. With all the heartbreaking moment that I can have your accompany, and I feel so blessed that you are always here for me. You are in a place where nobody can replace, I know action speaks louder than words, and I will get better and better and better me! Love you forever 

Is the glass half empty or half full?

The expression “Is the glass half-full or half-empty?..” has for many years highlighted the tendency for two people to see the same situation in different ways. Which way you see the water level reach reflects what is your attitude towards things. Yet, for most of us, we see things in permissive way, we only see the cup is 1/2 empty instead of it is 1/2 full.

Imagine the cup is our energy, when you feel like you cup is 1/2 empty that your energy is halved in this case, you will feel yourself so tired to do anything because you are focus at the consumption of energy and you are diminishing. In contrary, when you feel like the cup is 1/2 full, you see the space to be filled with energy. In such case, you can see that yourself is getting better and growing stronger. The way of thinking actually affect what action we take. After I just broke up, it really seemed like the end of world for me and I was so reluctant to do anything. I just wanted to stay alone and lock myself in my own world and crying till the end of world and felt like I lost half of myself. However, this thought was not making me feel better, it just made me keep consuming remaining energy level until the cup is empty.

Since then, I realized I cannot be like that forever, I have to move on to my new page instead of being hauled by the past. After separated with my ex bf, I found that I have a lot of rooms for improvement to get myself become better. By change, I received god strength in helping me to fill in my energy cup. He provides me a lot of loving accountable partners in helping me get out of the shadow past, gives me strength in trying out new things, allows me to be a brand new ME. “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”-Isaiah 41:10 When your faith is strengthening, the way you see this world and the things around you is gonna change. When you see deadend, I see opportunities; when you feel hurt, I see recovery; when you feel defeated, I see improvement. No matter under what circumstances, see things in 1/2 full cup, and you will be motivated and know yourself is improving and heading to a positive way.

Influential Power

We, human being, are easily being affected by things happened around us, no matter it is good or bad. If we can make use of the influential power in a group, the positive energy in the group will power up; instead, if one of the people start spreading permissive message, the negative energy will also be spread around the group and causing the group spirit drops exponentially.

“Who you are with defines who you are” 

That is why our parents are so worried about the people who are around us, when you are with people who possess bad habits,  we have high chance in getting that bad habit too. Who you are with define who you are, it may not be true all the time, but it is a factual statement in most cases. When your friend circle is filled with people who like partying, having complicated relationship and crazy drinking habits, there is higher possibility for you to get into these habits. First, you have higher chance in knowing the existence of these habits, and in order to blend into the circle, you will try your first step in those activities. Sooner or later, the more you go to those activities, the easier you will get used to it and the less likely that you can get rid of those bad habits.

“Surround yourself with quality people can make you stronger”

Especially when you are choosing spouse, it is pretty important to observe his surrounding people, as like attracts each other, in order to be in the same circle, they must have basic common grounds to keep them together in the same circle. Also, when you observe his friend’s circle, you can better analyze what type of person he is in accordance to his criteria in choosing friends.This is an important factor which I have overlooked in my past relationship. Sometimes people can use words to cover their inner broken self, but action speaks louder than words, and it simply reflects what you think in your heart. In my past relationship, my ex bf friend circle is filled with party guys with complicated relationships, they always went crazy drinking and flirted with different girls. Even though he was not doing this, but his value would be easily being affected by his friend circle. One time he told me “I am already so good to you, I spend time with you every week. My friends always went partying and hooking up with few girls at a time, I think I am so good already”. I was like, isn’t it just basic commitment in a relationship, why you even put that on the table? The quality (especially mental quality) of the surrounding people is so important, in a a way that they will lift you up or pull you down.

When people of the same group are moving in the same direction, having the same goal, encouraging each other, it gonna pull everyone in the group up. Even if one of them is feeling permissive, he/she can be influenced by this positive energy and react positively. Instead, if some of the people in the group are easily give up and spread out negative message, these can affect the energy in the group and discourage the other people to react positively. A good accountable group can double up the power, whereas a bad accountable group can halve things down.

Tell your heart to beat again

How long have you not felt your heart beating vigorously on someone or something? Can you still remember how great it is when you feel passionate on something, your whole body is filled with energy and satisfaction? Or have you shut your heart down after you get hurt? (I did) And after we shut the door of our heart, we prevent any emotion from walk into our heart, because it is better to feel no emotion than feeling painful in the heart.

There must be a moment when you feel like you are shattered, and your heart is broken into thousands of pieces and you feel so strengthless to pick up all the pieces back to one. Few weeks ago, my heart was in broken pieces, I felt so painful that I cannot even function normally. To make myself feel a little bit better, I stopped my heart from beating, to avoid it to get hurt again. I began to lost interest in many things, lose passion in my work and lose connection with the world. Everyday after work, I rushed back home immediately, shut myself in the room and cried for whole night. I could cry when I took bus back home, I could cry when I was watching comedy, I could cry when I was having dinner. Your tears just came out automatically from your eyes, they are like the blood from the shattered heart. Honestly, it made me feel even worse, because I felt like my whole world was collapsed and I could never go back to be the “happy” me again, I could never love someone and being loved again. But somehow, sadness has an addiction, you just cannot stop yourself from torturing yourself mentally like this and it made you feel like it is the end of the world.

“Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the LORD” – Psalm 31:24 

By coincidence, I went to a church group on a Monday night and I still remembered the topic that night was “healing night”. At that moment, I realised that I need to be “healed” because my heart was so broken. And I made my prayer again lead by sister J after leaving, I felt my heart is connected when J touched my hand and pray. My heart felt so peaceful and at that time being, I knew that I should not stuck in the past anymore and all I need is to move on a new life, and be a better me. Since then, I start opening my door of heart bit by bit, my heart starts to beat again. When blood is gonna circulate through my body again, I have energy and motive in my life again. I start to put everything pack to pieces again, even better, I want to make it a stronger heart than before. I give my heart to our Father God, let him guide me through my healing process and allow him to live in my heart to give me courage and faith to overcome all the obstacles ahead. Whenever I feel strengthless, I pray that he can give me strength to keep going. He always gives us hope when we feel hopeless, give us courage when we feel weak and embrace us with his love when we feel lonely.

This is my favourite song these days, to anyone whose heart are broken before or now and get your heart BEAT again!

 

“Tell Your Heart To Beat Again”

You’re shattered
Like you’ve never been before
The life you knew
In a thousand pieces on the floor
And words fall short in times like these
When this world drives you to your knees
You think you’re never gonna get back
To the you that used to beTell your heart to beat again
Close your eyes and breathe it in
Let the shadows fall away
Step into the light of grace
Yesterday’s a closing door
You don’t live there anymore
Say goodbye to where you’ve been
And tell your heart to beat again

Beginning
Just let that word wash over you
It’s alright now
Love’s healing hands have pulled you through
So get back up, take step one
Leave the darkness, feel the sun
Cause your story’s far from over
And your journey’s just begun

Tell your heart to beat again
Close your eyes and breathe it in
Let the shadows fall away
Step into the light of grace
Yesterday’s a closing door
You don’t live there anymore
Say goodbye to where you’ve been
And tell your heart to beat again

Let every heartbreak
And every scar
Be a picture that reminds you
Who has carried you this far
‘Cause love sees farther than you ever could
In this moment heaven’s working
Everything for your good

Tell your heart to beat again
Close your eyes and breathe it in
Let the shadows fall away
Step into the light of grace
Yesterday’s a closing door
You don’t live there anymore
Say goodbye to where you’ve been
And tell your heart to beat again
Your heart to beat again
Beat again

Oh, so tell your heart to beat again

Healthy in mind, Healthy in body

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” – Romans 8:18

When time goes by, you will feel like health, both mentally and physically, is so important in our life. Our mental health will reflect in our physical condition, how healthy you are mentally, how strong you feel physically. We ‘burn’ with anger, ‘tremble’ with fear, feel ‘choked up’ with sadness; our ‘stomachs turn’ with revulsion. Everyone tends to experience unpleasant emotions as unpleasant bodily symptoms and thus to feel physically distressed when emotionally distressed.” That’s why, in order to keep us physically good, we have to deal with our mental health first.

Mental health is often being neglected by most of the people because they always relate mental health to negative things like emotional disorder, depression … However, mental health helps to strengthen our faith in our mind, and drive our physical action. Good mental health can be reflected in positive thinking, self control, strong determination and stress-less feel. When your mind starts to think positively, your body will react by doing constructive action , say exercises, healthy diet, get rid of bad habit because you realize that these things are harmful to your mental health. Of course, these physical action takes a lot of determination and self control, and these control are basically come from your mind. When your mental stage is healthy enough, you can identify good from bad, positive from negative.

‘Do not fear, for I am with you; Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’  – Isaiah 41:10

 

When your mental stage is unstable, you are putting yourself in danger and continue to dwell in into a stage which all things seem so negative to you. This thinking will reflect in your physical action. Two months ago, when my relationship nearly walked till the end, I felt so strengthless and always so stressful in my mind, I put so much burden in my mind and blame his fault and my fault in the relationship. I started to lose appetite (resulted in losing 2.5kg in two weeks), feel so tired (gave up exercise after work), bad quality of sleep (always had nightmare). My family doctor even suspected me having depressing and worried about my underweight problem will lead to disease. The more you think negatively, the deeper we dwell into a black hole of emotional disorder. I started to lose interest in things happened in my daily life, that I just want to lock myself up and did not want to hang out with people because I felt so tired in doing that. The less people I interacted with, the worse I was becoming because I felt so lonely. I felt so lonely that my ex-bf was not caring about me, people around me are not caring about me and everything just seem so dull and without color.

“I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” – Philippians 4:13

Until to a moment when God appears in my life, his glory shined in my heart. I still remember after my first night to Alpha, my heart was so peaceful and calm, which was actually the most peaceful moment that I have ever experienced in the past years. I felt like someone is taking my burden in my mind away, sharing all my bitterness that I experienced. I had a strong feeling in my mind that I should STOP hurting myself like that, everything is not worth it. Since then, I started to pick up regular exercises, writing this blog, reading more books, trying things that I have never tried before and I have good appetite (gain back 2.5kg in 2 weeks!!!) and sleep well now! When my mind starts to think positively, positive changes are happening in my body as well. However, to be honest, during the first week of changing, it is tough because it is the easiest moment for you to give up, and go back to where you were. That is why health mental strength is important that it gives you strength and perseverance to carry out all kinds of physical actions.

How To Have a Healthy Mind?

1. Being active

   Exercising makes you feel good and can help your mental health. It will also help you sleep better, and get the rest you need.

2.  
   

   Lower your alcohol intake

   Over use of alcohol can increase feelings of depression.

   Try not to dwell on past mistakes or negative things that have happened to you. We all make mistakes and stewing on things or worrying to excess will not change anything. Learn from the experience and be willing to move on.

   Be with people you enjoy being with and who make you happy.

3.  
   

   Connecting with friends and family

   Keep communicating and interacting, and tell those you trust how you are feeling if you’re going through tough times. Talking to others and seeking help early can be very helpful in reducing depression, anxiety and distress.

4. Keep learning

   To keep your mind both healthy and active learn a new sport, language, learn to play an instrument, read books and take an active interest in feeding your brain with positive information.

 

 

 

 

Hiding is never a solution

 

In the past, we often did a lot of wrong doings, that we felt so guilty about doing it but we have never confronted all the faults that we have done to ourselves. We always sneaked in a corner and turned ourselves away from all those problems, in the way that we do not have to deal with the problem anymore. However, as long as the problem is still there, we can never escape.

“Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters.” – Romans 14:1

Running away from the problem makes us feel better, because we can prevent ourselves from getting hurt when we have to confront the problem. I have been having some conflicts with my family since secondary school, but then when I moved to hall in university, I avoided direct conflict with them because I could always escape back to hall where I could hide all the problem which actually happened. But things just didnt get better because the problem has been there for years, and then the conflict is just kept rolling bigger. Whenever something irritate me in the relationship, I would get so emotionally unstable and this wound keep affecting me. The reason for that is I always felt like if I escape from all the problems, things might get better. However, the more we hide, the less courage we could have to deal with it. Frankly speaking, it is not a problem which can be fixed in a day or two, it requires me so many energy and faith in doing that.

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” – Galatians 2:20

When you are failed in one relationship, it actually has impact on another.It is because when you cannot deal good with one side of your emotion, you have high possibility in bring that thought or twisted mind into another relationship, which in turns hurting that relationship too. Change requires a lot of energy that it is not easily being done by one man, we have to give all of ourselves to god and he will guide us the way in making things back to right tract. For all the thing we need to do is to put our faith upon him.God always has his plan, for his people to put their faith on him and let Holy Spirit lives inside everyone of us.