Archives for the Month of July, 2013

It’s Not You, It’s Me

Purple-Cow

Where’s the milk?

It’s a beautiful summer Sunday morning. You’re looking forward to breakfast. You open the fridge and discover there’s no milk. Your eyes continue to scan the other shelves in case it has been misplaced. Like the shelves before you, you mind goes blank with silent rage.

The Blame Game

Then all the clamourous voices in your head complain as reality sinks in.

“Who’s drunk all the milk without replacing it? How can this have happened? I was having a great day and now it’s spoilt for good… Who’s to blame?!?”

Perhaps you keep your cool better than I do. May be you even stay cool for longer. One thing’s for certain. Everyone’s got something that makes them tick and go “Boom!”

What’s the one thing that drives you mad about a certain someone? What if the only thing you could change is yourself in a Boom situation?

Missing Me

By going from Denial, Blame, Justification, Shame and Obligation, we can all eventually arrive at Responsibility where the Good Life happens.

How can you transform a situation by taking responsibility and applying The Responsibility Model before all hell breaks loose on account of a bit of missing milk?

The Missing Piece

Gingerbread Being

Becoming Whole

In Chinese, there’s a saying “Learn to become a whole person”. Growing up, this is the single phrase that sticks most in my memory.

“So-and-so doesn’t know how to behave like a whole person,” I’d overhear one auntie tell my mother, implying that someone hasn’t done the “right” thing.

“You’ll understand, when you become a whole person,” my teachers would say to many an enigma I stumbled upon.

“It’s important to learn to become whole, little one,” my father would remark, whenever I stamped my feet, impatient to make sense of the game of life.

I can’t help but remember fondly Shel Silverstein’s story of “The Missing Piece“.

Now that I’m grown up, I continue to ask myself: Why whole? How do we know which pieces are missing? How can they be obtained? How long does it take to become whole? What does it really mean to become a whole person anyway?