Knowing your why reduce odds of depression

Making goals in life is a very human thing. A goal is something that allows one to live a better life than before or to be happy. It could be as simple as, “I want to make x amount of money by x”

However, what most people failed to realise is that a goal is finite. It’s temporary. Most people don’t ask themselves what would they do next after they reached their goal. As a result, when they finally achieved it, they feel like there’s nothing else in life for them to do. They are lost. This is when the people lose hope and slipped into depression.

But it’s important not to confuse this kind of depression with clinical depression. This is a situational depression. And yes, the symptoms are alike but the point of origin is different. You can get out of situational depression by reevaluating what you are doing with your life and taking actions to redirect yourself without relying on medication.

For me, I have been diagnosed with depression. Now I know it had always been situational and not clinical. I’m grateful that I never went on medication nor was I prescribed any. I managed to get out of those episodes by changing my perspective of things in life with the help of friends and family.

And you know what?

I can’t guarantee that situation depression won’t strike again. What I do know is I can minimise my chances of suffering from it in the future.

It is by knowing my “why”. To know why I exist in the world. To know what’s my purpose and my vision of the world. You may be wondering how does those help with minimising situational depression. Well, you have to know what’s the difference between a vision vs a goal? Having a vision and working towards it is a form of infinite goal. You don’t win the vision because the things you need to do is never one time deal. Sometimes you will fall short in terms of results and sometimes you will achieve better results than previously. But you will always have something to look forward to.

It’s like life. You have a finite lifespan. You probably would die anytime between now and one hundred and twenty-five. But you have to live an infinite life. Life still goes on despite whatever happen. Right? There’s no winning life. And when you lose life? It simply means you are dead. Or in other words, drop out of the game.

So now, do you see?

By playing the infinite game of life and knowing your vision for the world, you reduce the odds of suffering from situational depression. It’s all because there’s always something for you to do to achieve that vision of yours. You don’t lose hope nor purpose of life.

I’m sure you will be wondering how the hell do I know my “why”? Or know what’s your vision. I also didn’t know my why for a very long time. All I know is I was happy when I’m left alone to do my own thing, to create something for another person that make them happy. But I always forget about that specific aspect of myself when life hits me hard. As a result, I’m always making short term goals to feel good.

It wasn’t until I discovered the book called, Start With Why, written by Simon Sinek that I found out what’s my “why” and have been actively to keep it in focus while I navigate life.

Here’s one video that I have watched which I hope can help you to figure out your “why”.

In addition, I would recommend that you check out the book, Find Your Why, written by Simon Sinek, David Mead and Peter Docker, after you are done with the first book.

When you neglect your body, everything else suffers

The market moves very fast because of technology. It has given people access to things almost instantly. In the past, they had to wait for days if not weeks before getting their hands on it.

Because of that, as a creator, you find yourself working almost non-stop just so that you don’t get drown out by the market.

Or maybe that isn’t even the real reason or excuse. It could be the fact that you are just lazy and couldn’t be bother.

In either case, the one thing that gets neglected is the body. You eat junk food because it’s cheaper and faster to get. You don’t exercise because it requires a lot of willpower for you to get out of that chair, couch or bed.

Over time, the body becomes weaker, prone to sickness and pains. Not only that, it gains more weight. With more fats, the body becomes inflamed. Before long, your body is fighting off infections and inflammation. And that affects your brain and mental health. You get depressed easily. You can’t tolerate work and life-related stresses well anymore. Tiredness and sleepiness also become very common.

And making things even worse is age. By the time you get to your thirties, your metabolism drops even more, compounding the weight problem. And failure to take care of your body leads to even more problems.

I know because I’m dealing with them now.

My lack of physical activities the past few months (especially ever since I turned 29) has given me a ton of allergies. My tummy and overall body size have become rounder and bigger. I get tired more easily. My body aches and hurts like there’s no end because of the amount of time I spend in front of a computer or a digital device. And it’s nobody’s fault but mine.

With those issues, I find myself sometimes unable to concentrate on my tasks, lacking excitement in what I do and I just want to sleep more. Now even my fiction writing also grind somewhat into a halt because my brain just isn’t able to work efficiently.

And I know now it’s not the holiday season that’s making me so lazy. Being overweight and lacking physical activity is what make me lazy and sick more often. It’s a vicious cycle really.

So what I have to do is exercise more. Get out more.

And it’s important to set goals that are more sustainable.

So my goal won’t be about losing certain amount of weight by certain time. And I know that alone isn’t sustainable for me because I tried. My goal now is that I want to feel better about myself in terms of energy level and overall health so that I can do my best work.

Now you see, don’t ever neglect your body. Treat it well and treat it right. In turn, it will treat you good.

P.S. I’m actually using the lump that is my tummy to prop up the laptop I’m using to write while I’m lying down on my bed because my back, especially the neck, is hurting. It’s embarrassing really.

How writing consistently makes you better…

…in your ability in reading, critiquing, and writing.

These days, I have been writing quite a lot. A lot more than I ever did during my early days of blogging. And to me being a consistent writer isn’t so much about publishing something everyday but rather where you put your mind and how you spend your free time.

So that means even if I’m physically there, my mind is actually off looking at things from a writer’s perspective and what lessons can be drawn from there. There will be a lot of idea generation there and then. Sometimes I will daydream and train my ability to live the lives of my characters. And sometimes I will think of plots and sub-plots for my fiction writings during my downtime. Then there are days when I am simply focusing on drafting fiction and didn’t have the capacity to write something for the blog.

And let’s not forget the importance of taking a break and simply just chill or play.

So with all that out of the way, how does writing consistently make me a better reader?

Let me share what I realised today.

My colleagues knows I’m a writer because of the amount of attention I put into it and how much I talk about it. They have also seen some of my writings but I don’t share everything with them.

As a result, one of my colleagues would always get me to read her daughter’s english essays and compositions. But I suspect the other reason was I’m born here in Singapore and have been trained in both English and Mandarin since young. Therefore, I have a better command of English than my colleagues who are all from mainland China.

Today was one of those days. I had to proofread the daughter’s essay and it allow me to realise a bunch of things.

The first thing I realised was how I could intuitively pick up on and point out poor flow of an idea between any two sentences and paragraphs. From there, I was able to suggest possible fixes almost instantly. It was something that I know I couldn’t do very well in the past.

The second thing I didn’t realise I had developed was my ability to somewhat reverse engineer and figure out what was the main objective of a given piece of writing just by reading the content and without being present when the writing task was given. For example, I kind of figured out one of the essays was about having the student practice writing an opinion or commentary piece to the newspaper in the form of a letter without even seeing the homework task. In comparison, my colleague doesn’t even know what her daughter’s homework is about.

And best part about that was how I could suggest a better way of writing to meet the objective.

The third thing was how I could easily determine a piece of writing have lost all its credibility just because it started off wrongly without reading through the rest. And even after reading it through, my initial judgement remain unchanged. From there, I find myself being able to suggest alternative way of writing that presents the writer as more professional and skilled at putting across his or her arguments.

Lastly, I realised how I am able to shrink a wordy paragraph of around five sentences down to maybe one or two sentences that present the same idea. This ability to think and write concisely was something that I struggle tremendously until recently.

Time is painfully limited but…

We all got the same 24 hours.

It is easy to lose track of time when we are busy or when we aren’t being intentional about how we spend the time. For most of us, we probably are like that. And so, we would probably complain about the lack of time to do the things we want. It’s painful for us to realise one day gone just like that.

By we and us, I mostly refer to myself.

And that probably will get a certain judgmental look from highly-productive people because they are able to get more things done during that 24 hours and get sufficient sleep to repeat the cycle the next day.

But you know what?

We are all different, have different strengths and weaknesses. So it’s okay that we probably won’t be able to be as effective at certain task as another person. In fact, it’s stupid to compare ourself with another person. Always do you. If not, you are going to make yourself miserable as fuck.

What you can do is to be very aware on how we spend the time and where did we spend it on. Then seek to improve on your efficiency at doing some of the tasks if necessary. It’s important to take ownership of what you have done and your failures. And never ever complain about your lack of time.

P.S. I was inspired to write this because I found myself spending way too much time on my Nintendo Switch playing Diablo 3, watching Netflix, and then realising I got about ten books that I bought but never got around to read. But it’s the holidays season. So I guess it’s okay to let loose a little.

The moment you realise…

As individuals, we are all unique. We got our own way of seeing the world, approach the world and behave. Due to that uniqueness, it can be quite hard to find someone you can connect with. When you do find someone who can, you wonder where has this person been and why he or she hasn’t enter your life earlier. And then, there are some people for some reasons just hate you as a person and their obnoxious interactions with you can make you wonder why do they exist. They just do and have their own clique in life.

And what’s my point?

I’m getting there…

Throughout my life, I have lived a pretty sheltered life and taking very little risk when it comes to my finances or education. As much as I tried to make my life my own, trying to be a trailblazer of sort, I kept falling back to making the “safe” decisions or choices because it all boils down to: how did it make me feel? And usually, after I made the decision, I feel like crap. When that happens, I had to backtrack to make another one. In part to make me feel good again. It’s especially so if it is a brand new decision that has repercussion on my life and it requires me to use information that I have yet acquired through experience.

For people who are more rational and has been through enough adversity tend to be able to stick to their guns and follow through on their decision. No doubt they have fears and anxiety of what the future holds, but they are better prepared mentally to deal with that due to what they have been through.

In my case, this flip flopping nature of my decision making process causes a lot of misunderstanding with people around me. And I don’t blame them. I simply don’t have the life experiences enough to toughen up my mind or gave me enough data points to make a good decision. And my mind never fails to worry about thousands little things that could go wrong…this is why I can suffer from insomnia relatively easy.

So if you don’t call that neurotic, I don’t know what to call it.

But that’s not to say I have not make decision that make me uncomfortable and then following it through. It’s just that I’m a little slower than most.

And you see what I just did?

Explaining myself to the world. Apparently, this act tend to piss people off. I have been told to just shut up and stop.

When it happens enough time, I have to wake up and realise I’m the square peg in a round hole due to my life circumstances stemming from nature and nurture. Most people, which isn’t a lot, I know found it irritating or frustrating when interacting with me. But that it’s all in the past. I have the power to change that.

For a start, I’m going to make a conscious effort to catch myself before I go on explaining my thinking to another person. It’s my life and I don’t need to justify the choices or decisions. No one wants to hear it and it’s not their fault. Everyone is a little busy dealing with their own crap in life. At the end of it, I only have to answer to my eighty-year-old self. As long as I don’t regret the choices I made (and I have that a lot lately but I can’t change those), I’m fine.

The other thing I also realise is that I have to stop. Stop announcing decisions I made with my emotional centre to other people. I’ll admit it will take a great deal of conscious effort not to make that mistake. Emotional decisions are fickle and can change very easily. In this hyper-pragmatic, rational world (roll eyes If it’s rational, we won’t have wars or that the stock market won’t fluctuate like it does), decisions have to be made with clarity and assertion. Once made, the person has to follow through till the end. The action taken has to either result in a success or failure before making course correction. Failing to do that, you don’t get to command respect.

And I’ve done emotional decision making for so long and often over the last few years that I believe I lost my credibility with people. It’s fine. No one is at fault here.

There are people who call me a fake news now, putting me as part of the global phenomenon just because of my emotional decision making process. But hey, it’s cool now that I have gone global.

Now, if there’s a genuine desire to understand me better because you care, then I will help you understand me better. And that’s if you ask me. Otherwise, I will keep my mouth shut. Or we can go on the journey together because I don’t understand myself fully either. But if you feel like the journey is taking too much of your time or energy, you are free to go. And I won’t blame you afterwards if you continue to misunderstand me or my intention.

All this realisation is actually pretty freeing and I finally can start being myself without worrying too much.