Thoughts: Positive Attitude During Challenging Times

POSITIVE ATTITUDE DURING CHALLENGING TIMES

                                                                            

This is not a motivational crap, but it has been on my mind for so long. I need to write it out, so I could share my small key to happiness.

I know that I’m not a little kid anymore and people don’t care anymore whether I’m happy or sad. When you’re sad or angry, people don’t really try and treat you like a little kid anymore, you know, giving you a box of chocolate, a big warm hug or that kind of thing.

We all want to be a better person. Well, I want to be a better person.

To be a better person, I require myself to grow.

To require myself to grow, I should change the way I live.

I want to live positively. So I should live positively.

Things are tough sometimes and each time I’m having a hard time, I let it all out. I would cry if I could, upset a little or grumpy for a second. I mean, don’t be silly, of course, as a human being there will be unpleasant times whether it comes from inside of us or outside. But that’s it, with the peak of the negative feelings, comes another emotion: Gratitude.

Choose to see the bright side of everything and be positive through challenging times. If you want to be happy, choose to be one. It’s ok if you want to cry, but don’t let it get in you. The most important person who helps you in any kind of situations is yourself.

If you’re brave enough to choose to see the bright side of everything, I tell you, you will feel relieved and you will think that the problems you’ve been struggling with is nothing but a dust.  Be brave, clean that dust with your positive attitude.

Thoughts: Books. Reading

BOOKS. READING.

In my early teens I remember my first novel was the translated version of ‘Sleepover’ by Jacqueline Wilson, at first I bought it because I’m only interested with the cute cover. But turned out I enjoyed reading and I started to read more and more of Jacqueline Wilson’s. Not long after that, I really wanted to improve my vocabulary, not in Indonesian, but in English. At that time I knew that I should save some of my money to buy an English book. I was hooked with books since then.

But things changed. I lost it, my love for reading. It happened few years back, I stopped reading. I just did. I lost interest with books and reading. It’s not that I stopped buying book because I bought books occasionally. I even bought Murakami’s 1Q84 few days after I finished Murakami’s The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. Just for your information, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle was the last book that I read properly few years back.

But what happened exactly, what happened with me? Why the heck I lost interest on books and reading?

So here’s what happened…

I struggled on reading. Can you imagine? When you’re reading you should you’re supposed to have your own imagination about the characters and plots. Right? I mean, wasn’t that the purpose of books without pictures; to give readers a freedom to create their own ‘world’ of the written words. Well, it didn’t work for me that time. It was a ‘world’ of emptiness for me. I couldn’t concentrate, I forgot the plot easily and I couldn’t imagine everything.

I didn’t quit there. I tried a few more sentences and tried a few more and tried a few more. Still… No luck. It felt like a paragraph long for me is pages and pages of scientific research (meaning: hard to understand). So that was it, I thought my skill of reading was decreasing gradually (Pfft, reading skill? Yeah right). I thought I was stupid that I couldn’t even understand and concentrate on one paragraph! I am appalled of my own self. (Yes, I exaggerated, a little. But it’s kind of true though.)

You know what happened next, I gave up reading. So many books left unread. I neglected all the books I’ve bought. There were times where I really miss reading and most important, I miss enjoying it. Time went by, now that I understand completely I was unable to enjoy something that I love was because I was having a hard time few year back. Not that I’m sick or something. It was just that I wasn’t in my best time and a lot of things going on with my life.

You know what they say about ‘mental breakdown’? Yeah I experienced that too. When I stepped back to my past years, I realized, that moment I lost interest in almost everything that I used to enjoy. Reading was supposed to be a sweet peaceful escape for me, but that time I just couldn’t, it was a burdensome for me.

But that was that. I started to miss books and reading even more, so I told myself that maybe I should read something that wasn’t too demanding, something like articles in magazine maybe. I began to read again, my first book after years of absence was: Pengakuan Algojo 1965 by TEMPO. Now that I’m reading again, it feels like a part of me is healed. If I ever start to lose interest on what I love, I should remind myself that, I don’t have to push myself too hard on something that I should enjoy.