Category: Realizations

My key realizations along my journey

[Aug 2013] Denial and Forcing

I didn’t go to work today. This was the third day this week when I stayed home. I am writing and answering e-mails, arranging a few things, but I don’t have any errand to take care personally or any meeting to attend, and I don’t feel like meeting people anyway, so I rather stay home. Besides, the temperature outside is extremely high, that convinces me even more not to leave the apartment.

Continue reading [Aug 2013] Denial and Forcing

[May 2013] Negative Thoughts

I’ve read an interesting thought in Kabat-Zinn‘s book “The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness“. He is writing about the mechanisms of depression, that our problem-solving capabilities can prove ineffective, or rather counter-productive when dealing with feelings, especially with negative feelings. Because the more we ruminate – trying to stop an otherwise fleeting feeling – the bigger problem we generate for ourselves. This hit me as a revelation because this is exactly what I am doing very often. I am trying to figure out and solve things, and keep ruminating about as if there was a rational solution for them.

Continue reading [May 2013] Negative Thoughts

[May 2013] The Options We Have

In the last year or so, during my father’s cancer, I didn’t really have any options. I had to be close to my family, there was no question about it in me. I had to fight along them, together, day after day, hoping for the miracle to happen, and then accepting the inevitable.

Was I unsatisfied with my job? Of course I was, but I wasn’t even thinking about this, I didn’t have the energy or time to deal with such questions. I needed the money, and I definitely didn’t have the energy to change anything. Was I unsatisfied with my love relationship? Yes I was, but I wasn’t thinking about this, I might have not even known I was unhappy with it. I knew that this was not the time for dealing with these kinds of matters. I had to be frugal with the finite amount of energy I had. I wanted to focus it to my family. Everything else was only working at a minimum level. I had no other choice if I wanted to preserve my health and sanity.

Since my father died, and things have gotten settled slowly, I started feeling that I am gradually climbing out of the deep pit I was in. And with that emerged the feeling that I am unhappy in my work and in my relationship as well. And along came the realization, that this time I have options again, and these options are limitless. Nothing is obligatory now, for nobody am I responsible, I am my own boss now. My well-being and happiness is in my own hands. I do whatever I want with my life. Every choice is on me, more than ever before. It is my choice what I do about my unsatisfactory job and my unhappy relationship. This gives me big challenges, but on the other hand huge opportunities!

[Febr 2013] Lessons of a Difficult Day

It is Monday morning. I went to sleep yesterday with the feeling that I am going to have a great day today. And it all started accordingly. I woke up nice and refreshed. I arrived at work on time, everything went perfectly. Until my stomach flinched, when my boss asked me about the delay of my document-management project, for which he hadn’t given me enough people to work on it for a year now. It was really hard to keep calm and balanced, but after that everything went back to normal.

I came home late to work some more, then two colleagues came to me to talk about our private little business venture. I went down to open the garage for them, and I saw that they had put a wheel clamp on my car, in front of my own garage. I saw that someone had put a black bag on the table that permitted parking. I went completely out of my mind, I lost the ground under my feet, my heart started pounding. I spent the whole meeting not really knowing where I was. Even an hour later, when I was going to the post office to pay the penalty, I had to take deep breaths to be able to control myself.

All this on a day that seemed to be so perfect, for a while…

Continue reading [Febr 2013] Lessons of a Difficult Day

[Febr 2013] Work Issues

It is mid-afternoon and I am sitting idle at work, thinking with emptiness on my face. Why am I here? What am I doing? What’s the point? It’s been months since I have felt doing anything meaningful, making any value, producing or creating anything. I don’t feel that me being here means anything to the company. It’s not about creating anything, it is not about that for a long time. The enterprise sucked me in completely. I am just pushing papers and e-mails around, doing administration and bureaucracy, fighting people, doing politics. I am trying to get things done with little success, with lots of struggle and with impenetrable resistance. What’s the meaning of all this? Another few years and I myself will be one of the corporate-idiots, who adapted themselves perfectly to the system, who gave up doing anything meaningful for a long time, but learned perfect survival, self-defence, shifting responsibilities onto others and doing politics all day long. That means death to me, maybe worse than death. On the other hand, I am too weak to stand on my own feet, besides I am paid too well to just leave mindlessly. It wouldn’t be reasonable now anyway. But I don’t want to give up the possibility to make something meaningful in life!

Continue reading [Febr 2013] Work Issues

[Jan 2013]: Am I already Whole?

I woke up early morning for a very long Monday. I meditated a bit, while my girlfriend was still sleeping next to me in the bed. I did my morning routine, I had a quick breakfast, then I left to the hospital where my father and my brother were waiting for me. There was snow on the streets everywhere, that had fallen during the night. I was already tense before leaving, even more during my way to the hospital. It usually comes and goes in waves, just like now. I tried to listen to the radio in my car, then I turned it off, because it disturbed me. Then I turned it back on, while time was passing, and I was sitting in the traffic jam. It took me an hour to get to the hospital. I wanted to arrive, but when I finally arrived, I felt I was unable to pull myself together to get out of the car and go inside.

Continue reading [Jan 2013]: Am I already Whole?

[Jan 2013] Mindfulness in Panic

I’m having these panic attacks sometimes, and meditation seems to teach me things that can be useful in those dark moments. The only thing is that most of the time I get so overwhelmed and frightened during a panic attack, that I lose sight of what to do and how to handle the situation in a mindful way. It is really not easy, even if I know I am in the middle of a panic attack, and I won’t die or something. It is still very scary and difficult, and I am also very confused about the right attitude.

Continue reading [Jan 2013] Mindfulness in Panic

[Jan 2013] Meditation and Acceptance

I think I just found something important in my meditation practice. Kabat-Zinn had a metaphor in his book, that I really liked but then I completely forgot about it. He said that meditation is like sitting out to the banks of the river of our thoughts for a while, instead of flowing with the river. Just watching and listening to the river and its constant flow, without letting it carry us away. Whatever happens inside the river, it is nothing more than a thought, not the absolute truth. When we feel something, it is not more than just a feeling. When we think something, it is not more than a thought, generated by our mind. And it really is possible to look at thoughts as mere thoughts, feelings as mere feelings, just watching them, accepting them just the way they are, and not letting them have too much power on us.

Continue reading [Jan 2013] Meditation and Acceptance

[Sept 2012] Fears, Thoughts and Writing

Just like I realized it years ago, I am unable to honestly recall and experience feelings much after I experienced them. That’s why I think it is important to write them down when I am right in the middle of them, or at least as soon as possible. Because if I don’t do that, later I won’t be able to recall and describe them half as genuinly as before. On the other hand I have a strong tendency to forget or minimize them, just as if they weren’t serious at all. A totally hopeless and desperate situation can seem completely different and harmless to me the next day. Sometimes I can’t even take my own feelings seriously after one day, except if I am able to read my painful thoughts and feelings from the previous day. That’s why it is important for me to write of my thoughts as much as possible these days, because I feel like there are wars going on inside me, and I am going through the most important transformation of my life, day by day, week by week.

Continue reading [Sept 2012] Fears, Thoughts and Writing