Understanding Introverts

Marius Ziska (Live on KEXP)

Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

Pointers gleaned from John C Maxwell's book - How Successful People Think.

1. Cultivate Big Picture Thinking
- What are the needs? And their causes?
- Who are the stakeholders? What are they thinking or doing with respect to the needs?

2. Engage in Focused Thinking
- What goals can be identified?
- How to achieve them?

3. Harness Creative Thinking
- How can we see/do things better?
- Who can we learn from?

4. Employ Realistic Thinking
- Face the facts
- Identify the pros, cons, worst case & resources needed

5. Utilize Strategic Thinking
- What's your plan?
- Who are you teaming with?

6. Explore Possibility Thinking
- Dream bigger & more fantastically
- Learn from achievers

7. Learn from Reflective Thinking
- Spend time reflecting
- Reflect in terms of what matters to you
- Make real changes

8. Question Popular Thinking
- Think for yourself
- Do things differently
- Do new things

9. Benefit from Shared Thinking
- Value others & enjoy interaction
- Plan for meetings: What's your agenda? Invite those who can contribute.

10. Practice Unselfish Thinking
- Give to benefit others
- Give anonymously if possible
- Check your motives

11. Rely on Bottom-Line Thinking
- What are your purpose and goal?
- How's your daily progress?

Changing The World

Two books have been on my desk: How To Change The World: Social Entrepreneurs And The Power Of New Ideas and Half The Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity For Women Worldwide.

They report numerous accounts of individuals (from the past and more recent) who aren't famous but yet are worthy of remembering because of how they worked against immense opposition and deep-rooted resistance to, well, change their world. They've effected changes that remove or reduce discrimination against groups of people like women and disabled people, that provide them the means to survive, that bring a sense of near-normalcy and deliverance to places of oppression and helplessness.

Change starts with...not so much the idea, but with men and women who dare to envision a different, better circumstance. Social change, business change, culture change...whatever it is, they see it and actually live it.

What gives courage to pursue change and to keep pursuing it through one's life? The deep burden to see the lives of loved ones, fellow ones removed from suffering? Anger at the ineffectual institutions that don't seem to care enough to bother? The will to believe that things can get and will get better?

It doesn't have to require a noble, grand cause and a huge effort to get started. Just meet one need at a time, around you and me. Little needs, not-so-little needs... And don't do it for recognition or affirmation, but do it simply knowing that you tried to make a difference.

Hanoi Trip (Oct 2012)

The Sound Of Two Songs (by Mark Power)

The Sound Of Two Songs is a photo-project by Mark Power spanning 2004 to 2009. He documents and presents his take on Poland, its landscape and people.

...instigated by Magnum Photos to document countries joining the European Union that year. Despite having no familial ties to the country, he soon became fascinated by Poland. Over the next five years he made a further twenty visits, often accompanied by Polish photographer Konrad Pustola who generously shared his knowledge of his native land. Over time Power’s focus shifted from an investigation into the effects of EU membership into a more subjective, poetic and autobiographical response to a country he grew to love...

Power’s images exemplify his belief that ‘ugliness can be profoundly beautiful’. They present Poland as a land ‘bursting with visual contradictions… like listening to several melodies at once to the point where it’s difficult to hear anything clearly’, a notion which inspired the title of the exhibition. It is a place seen by a foreigner, an outsider; a position Power has resolutely maintained throughout. A highly personal body of work, The Sound of Two Songs nonetheless remains an important historical document of this fascinating period in Poland’s history.

Thai Photography Of The Past

74-year-old Pornsak Sakdaenprai talks about his photography work half a century ago in a small Isan town. Video courtesy of Bangkok Post. In Thai with English subtitles.

Thinking About Consumption

Caught DIVE! a documentary by Jeremy Seifert on America's food waste problem. Proving that dumpster food can be safe for consumption, he along with others rifle through dumpsters regularly--not compelled by poverty but by a reluctance to see valuable food go to waste.

Seifert reports that America dumps 96 billion pounds of consumable food every year, which takes up 20% of landfills. Key fact to remember: there is a cost, i.e. resources, that's expended to produce food, although it's not visible to the consumer. So throwing away a single pound of food means we actually waste all the resources that went into putting it on our dinner table.

It's not just a film that aims to change consumer behaviour, but more than that, to highlight how food companies have a crucial role to play in deciding how to manage excess/expended food.

Something to seriously think about as we bite into our foods, not just our favourite but also those that we don't fancy and would feel nothing about letting it go to waste.

Which leads me to...



In Must-Have: The Hidden Instincts Behind Everything We Buy, Geoffrey Miller breaks down how consumers' display of their lifestyles, through the cars, music, clothes, books, foods, life partners, opinions etc. are all driven by innate evolutionary desires to appear more attractive and therefore better able to mate and find success.

Miller offers many ideas and explanations for our consumer behaviour--he can be tongue-in-cheek at times--including "Central Six" attributes and not demographics that can fairly accurately predict behaviour. He concludes with suggestions to change social norms such as imposing extra retail taxes on brand new products to curb consumption, raising the prices of products with intangible costs (e.g. social costs such as ammo for guns).

The main takeaway: Consider and weigh our own motivations for lifestyle choices.

Food for thought: What motivates people to give or get involved in charity? If it's sympathy-inducing situations coupled with latent desire to do good without being too inconvenienced...why do most of us brush aside people who beg on the streets? Do givers/carers need to have positive giving experiences in order to encourage them to continue giving/caring?



e² design by PBS features inspiring projects and architects/designer who have consciously implemented designs that are--here comes the E word--environmentally conscious.

Key points: Good design requires forethought and consideration of context and culture. Implementation of bold ideas requires willingness and flexibility to try. See the larger picture in order to appreciate various factors at work.

It's not about tree-hugging sentiments, but actually about practical concerns such as how to save costs in the long run, how to reduce energy usage, how to create a conducive, comfortable and culturally-relevant social space etc. If only we can just stop and ask ourselves them questions.

Rethinking & Reusing

A house that took just 3 days to lay its two-ton concrete slabs and structural steel beams that were disposed from Boston's Big Dig.





Reusing something that's trashed--disposed highway parts in this case--to build your own house, is seldom the first thought that comes to mind to most of us. How do you incorporate such materials with a design that fits its neighbourhood and surroundings?

This project was featured in e2, PBS' documentary series on green architecture design. You can read more about its development here.

Rediscovery & Remaking

I just finished reading India Calling by Anand Giridharadas, an Indian native who as a youth moves to America with his parents and later decides to relocate back to his homeland, I suppose, to rediscover his roots. He writes about India's transformation in its social castes & the relationships in-between and its values towards success in life, towards family & marriage. It depicts each new definition through various characters he recalls through his family lineage such as his parents and their parents as well as those he encounters who each represent the old and the new India and the tensions therein.

You can read a review as well as an excerpt of this book here by NPR--it also includes an interview with the author as he talks about changes he witnessed.

And now I'm thinking about my own place in my country: a dwelling place where social ties and fond memories reside, a marketplace of making a living and pursuing aspirations, and a place of belonging where my loyalty is demanded.

One can lament some things, yet one can also be grateful--for those same things and also for others. Perhaps the crux of our identity lies in how we choose to make a place: Do you choose to belong and to contribute to shaping it? And if you do nothing, you either shape the status quo or you allow others to shape it along with you in it.

Questions that are being asked today: Where do we want to head and at what cost? Who should bear responsibility for each aspect of the systems we're building? Should we allow age-old institutions to adapt to modern lifestyles?

As a friend recently responded to my suggestion for him to join the national conversation even while he's abroad, how can I who am currently out of the system voice out for a matter which the local actors have the say and probably already had theirs?

In short: First, choose to be a stakeholder. Then, choose how you want to remake your place.

Awareness

Half The Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn is an immensely sobering and absorbing read because it puts the spotlight on the gritty issue of the sex trafficking of women. I'm a quarter through it...

Heavy and stirring it is. Its real life accounts of women coerced and trapped in prostitution illuminates the complexities involved in efforts to liberate these poor women. It also inspires how women, whether victims themselves and/or community heroes, are trying to help others.

Awareness is the first step. I'm not sure what's next...because I'm just learning about a whole lot of world issues demanding our attention.

Stay tuned and continue this journey.

Selecting

When deciding on a major decision and direction to pursue, you have to weigh what matters to you. Not pragmatically or directed by other's expectations, but being true to yourself.

Perhaps look at the examples of those around you. Are they doing what you wish you were? Can you see yourselves in their shoes?

Sometimes you hit a bump and you gotta make a change to find that breakthrough you been dreaming about. And sometimes no one can really help you; they might give you advice but you're the only one who can try it for yourself.

Keep looking forward, pressing on. Only you can forge the future you want.

Making Room

Been clearing my room progressively. All useless things of no sentimental value must go.

Photos & journal entries hark back to days long past. Of earlier thoughts, events and seasons.

Oh how we move on...

We all have memories we want to discard. We thought we already did, but they bubble up, sometimes unexpectedly, from the recesses within. Perhaps memories are as powerful as you ascribe them to be.

Whatever's happened in the past, don't be beholden to it. It doesn't determine your future. Today's choices do--unless you choose to do nothing.

How do you know you've room for new things in your life? It's certainly not just about diving headlong into them and expecting instant adaptation. It's not about juggling more and more things together, because some will quickly fall from the lack of focus. So what is it?

Accomodating through space and behavior seems to be it.

Without the new, the mundane & routine dominate.

Make a choice.

Mentalist

Homeland - Putting your finger on suspicions

Though a drama, yet the terror radicalist situation it depicts feels real and quite believable. Because the issues are close to its nation's heart: of war veterans and their psychological wounds and of a war that is ongoing as shown by recent events.

What captivates must be its 2 central characters: an CIA agent battling externally through rogue means and also battling internally as well to keep herself together and functioning; and a soldier recovering from terrors of war whose malintent is played out gradually and whose tortured mind is revealed through flitting memories and demons.

What gives us tenacity to cling on to a mission of eradicating an elusive enemy through all possible means? Is it loyalty to a cause and to one's country? Is it to vindicate one's hunches and actions?

Stay tuned as more is revealed next.

Breaking Bad - What your gut is capable of

Pressed by circumstances in life, it seems everyone and anyone can turn to the latent dark side. Life can be tough and cruel. It's all about how we choose to respond, isn't it?

Unmet needs feed our addictions which some try to hide and deny when confronted. The need to be accepted, affirmed and loved. The need to do something purposeful in life employing your abilities. The need to fight on when your survival is threatened.

The line on morality is drawn into question: How far would you go to save yourself and to give up what you've tried to hold on to?

Plans

Change comes about when you take action. Progressive change is when the action is according to the plan you have determined.

What's your goal? Are you convicted that it's a worthy one and your motivation is right for you?

Have a plan of action.

If it's a problem to be solved, you need a plan.

If it's to enhance your quality of life, get a plan.

Even if it's to discover something completely novel and untrodden, I'm pretty certain a plan is still essential.

Plan practical steps to break routines, change ways of thought, learn new ones, form new connections, explore new places...

You'll get there. You only simply have to get started.

Change

(chānj)
• To undergo transformation or transition.
• To go from one phase to another, as the moon or the seasons.
(Courtesy of www.tfd.com)

If we want to move into a house that is bigger, better & more posh than the previous one, I guess we'd better leave our baggage and old keepsakes behind. Wouldn't want the clutter of old to come along with you, would you?

With each change in life, there are uncomfortable moments of uncertainty and perhaps anxiety. But better to be drawn and motivated by new opportunities than to dwell on the past. It's not easy to unshackle mindsets and familiar ways of rationalizing and doing things--sometimes it takes another to point it out--but if we don't try...what if we end up like the frog in the slow-boiling pot, or worse, flash-fried frog! 反求诸己 or self-awareness and self-checking is definitely a good thing to have.

I recently read Entrepreneurship: From Idea To Success by Farhad Foroutan-Esfahani. An anecdote about seeking answers in the proverbial "Book of Answers" struck me. Its moral summarized: The learning and discovery is in the journey--no one can tell you the answers from the onset.

With our each moving on from one [blank] to another (replace [blank] with job, life stage, marital status, social group etc), uncertainty is always present. Hopefully it is the new pasture that's beckoning. Or if you can't see it, then start taking steps to find it. At least I know I will--gonna take 1 step, and another, and another. And if I take the wrong step, God help me.

It is better to finish a matter than to begin one... For now, all I can simply do now is to close the previous chapter, however it happened, and move on. Self-berating helps no one, I've found, and least of all, yourself.

Look ahead. Look up. Look far! The rest of the journey's just begun!

Life Mission

Why would a man risk his own life just to capture tumultuous events on film?

Watched a documentary on photojournalist, Philip Blenkinsop, and was struck by his lack of fear and trepidation. What drives him?

"It can be depressing. You spend time with people under constant threat, but once you've actually spent time with these people, and you have put the pictures out on the world stage through magazines, and you have actually arranged to draw attention to these people and bring them to the politicians who you think it should matter to, and make a difference, you realize it doesn't change a damn thing." ~ Taken from here

See his work here and here (warning: disturbing graphic images)

Reel Ideas

1. 那些年，我們一起追的女孩

Romance and aspirations of your youth, remember them? Of doing silly things that you don't really regret?

Feels like a while back.

One character in the show said, "我想成为一个很厉害的人，因为有了我，让这个世界，而有一点点的不一样..."

Whatever life throws at you, just hold on. Does your heart bury one thing while in pursuit of another?

Well, gotta realize what matters to you. Else regret is inevitable.



2. The Amazing Spiderman

Having already decided to take a beginning leap of faith towards a mission to save the world (literally), things can line up in your favor to aid you along. And if you don't take that step, you won't even know this and experience this.

Perhaps lack of success and even failure can happen. But in the eyes of others and especially the One, we want to see you keep on going. Our hearts are sustaining you.

Well, there are heroes in this world. There are also hero-supporters and enablers in this world.

Take a leap...at the right moment.



3. Bernie

Do many good deeds negate a wrong? Does it matter how a person lives his/her private life if many people around are being helped?

For sure, what takes place in the dark eventually comes to the light. Fully revealed, do you even like what you see?

Live a life that is true to yourself and to the right values.

Happiness & Mystique

Consumption

Finished reading "Freedom", a novel by Jonathan Franzen. Meet 3 characters who fell for each other in their own way and even as they grew older, they never saw what it was that truly brought them joy and acceptance. It's a book about, well without saying enough, finding love, parenting, holding on to ideals, self-discovery... These folks never quite gave up their pursuit of that thing till resolution does come many years later. The amazing scene for me was when P made a desperate attempt to get back together with W and they finally saw eye-to-eye with each other. Everybody makes mistakes in life, but it's how you learn and move on from them that matters.

Also read "How Starbucks Saved My Life", a short autobiography by Michael Gates Gill. Was touched when Mike persisted in calling his doctor to help his boss's uncle who was having heart difficulties. I think meaning and purpose really do come from everyday moments where actions meet needs. I'm not writing book reviews here. That said, if you need a jolt on which direction to pursue in life, you should pick this book up.

Watched "Cool It", a video about Bjorn Lomborg, a gutsy yet sounds-sensible environmentalist cum professor who is controversial for disputing with recognized bodies on the cause and seriousness of global warming. What seems most sensible in the video is simply that we should put things in perspective: For the solutions that we want everyone to implement, what are really the benefits and necessary costs, and could we better invest these resources elsewhere? And go back to your motivations: Are they more fear and emotion-driven than being rational to examine other possible causes?