Eating in Bathrooms

There are a fair few things in this life that are not okay. That list seems to be getting exponentially larger with every passing day, but currently includes the likes of; kicking people in the face (unless you are a professional face kicker), driving as fast as humanely possible (unless you are a professional fast car racer), and being an ignorant bigoted racist dickhead (unless you are Donald Trump). Now another thing I would throw in there, and I’m sure you would too, is eating sandwiches,Fries or So called KDF in public bathrooms…



DISCLAIMER: Although I’d rather you didn’t – you are free to eat in your own clean bathroom. The world will still judge you harshly for it, but then again – you are probably not going to tell anyone are you? It’ll be your little secret held away from the judgemental eyes of the world’s media – fearful you will be nicknamed “The Pee-Pee Pepperoni”, “Ham and Cheese Bare Knees”, or “Ugly Naked Person Eating a Sandwich”.

The point is it’s weird. But there’s just something about public bathrooms that makes the act way more weird. Most of them I have ever been in scream: “GET IN, GET OUT. DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING. NO CRUMBS ON THE URINE!” Don’t misunderstand me, apart from the grunting guy in the stalls there isn’t much noise; I was simply suggesting that the oddly sticky floor, the foul stench, and the altogether horribleness of the environment makes for internal screaming so loud you can almost be deafened.



All of that also makes for a place not okay to munch on a Matatu Fries. Especially if you have another hand steadying the ship (I mean penis.) as you wolf down your lunch.

If it isn’t already obvious I witnessed this, and I still don’t get it. How busy are you mystery stranger? What is going on that you need to multi-task to such a degree?

I really wanted to know, but he already had so much going on.

God's Gift

I don’t know what it is lately, but all of a sudden I’ve been getting friend requests from countless stunningly beautiful women! Perhaps they dig my dark skin, or they’ve heard about my flat feet…maybe huge noses are now thought to be attractive? I’m not really sure what I have been doing differently, but whatever it is – it is working!



Some like the very lovely Krista are just looking to have fun, which is absolutely fine with me…I mean who doesn’t like fun? She hasn’t really put forward any ideas, but I thought we could go to see Black Panther on 16th February when it is half price – would be nice right?

Or perhaps she is more of a home-bird…so we could stay in and play a board game? Charades? have Drinks? Whatever. I suppose it doesn’t matter, as long as there are good people, good company and good laughs.

But not all have been as cool as Krista: some seem slightly deranged in fact…as if they have had a few significant heavy knocks to the head and have been taught butchered English by highly sexualised versions of Yoda and Jar Jar Binks:



I mean I’m flattered and everything – certainly don’t want to seem ungrateful but; “narrow vagina and fragrant”, and “white liquid of boyfriend”…not exactly the best way to make pals online. Most people lead with something about their lives (this does not include news of vagina freshness) like where they have travelled to, or where they would like to go…music preferences, what they like to eat and drink. (Again, leave the white liquid of boyfriend off that description too.)

On a not too serious, but a bit more serious note…I get quite a few of these a DAY – at first it was amusing but now it is slowly driving me insane. I hoped this blog post would help me vent.

Hope in my Darkest Moments

The first time that I noticed something was wrong was on a normal day. I was in my final year of university, on a bus on my way into town. I started to feel strange and shaky. I felt like I was going to faint. I felt hot all off a sudden and everything in me wanted to get off the bus.

I saw a doctor who said it sounded like a panic attack. I thought it wouldn’t happen again.

But it did. Soon they started to happen most days – in everyday situations like on buses, walking around town, in shops and supermarkets. At university, I found it really hard to go to lecture halls, and to sit through lectures. I discovered that when you’ve had quite a few panic attacks you start to worry that you’ll have more so it becomes a vicious cycle really. I’ve been trapped in that cycle of panic attacks for 10 years now.

During these 10 years, I've experienced some very dark days and many sleepless nights. I’ve become depressed and life has felt frightening, and the future has looked bleak.

I watched people going about their normal days, going into supermarkets and looking happy and coming out with all their shopping but I couldn’t bring myself to just nip in to buy a couple of pints of milk but instead I would just hope it to a pub and drink myself silly.

I knew what I was dealing with but I didn’t know how to get help. I’ve tried medications and I’ve tried counselling but I’ve found it hard to sit in a small room to talk to someone – I couldn’t stay calm as I was always scared I’d have a panic attack. And for this reason it has caused me my relationship simply because I didn't talk about my depression and they didn't understand my silence either.

Christmas comes immediately after my birthday and is meant to be joyous but some years it has been one of the hardest times for me. Mostly because of all the celebrations and the pressure to socialise. I’ve always been very sociable by nature but it became really hard because I didn’t know what was coming. I’d worry about all the social events, the restaurants being busy, where we’d sit, and if I had a panic attack, would I be able to leave.

You think “I’m supposed to be enjoying myself like everyone else.” I feel the pressure of everyone feeling happy throughout this period, it’s hard as I think I should feel happy like everyone else.

At times like these I’ve felt really alone and isolated.

The depression would be really bad at night and I’d often sit in my room and couldn’t sleep at all. In the middle of the night when all my friends were asleep with their phones switched off, those are the times I’d feel completely isolated. I’d sometimes go on Google. There are some really strange things on there and you don’t know if what you’re reading is true.

 There’s medical and support information available but also other people’s stories – which is so important. I felt like I wasn’t alone.

On a couple of occasions,  I've been close to ending my life, and just reading a story online of somebody in a similar situation has given me a small glimmer of hope, to keep going... to try again the next day... to choose hope, despite the darkness. It’s been a vital lifeline to me during my darkest moments.

It's also given me wise, clear information, when I've wanted to make sense of my debilitating condition and tips and advice on things that might help. I’ve changed the way I eat and I’ve started running. Having the fresh air and playing Playstation is lovely because it calms me down. If I’m starting to feel down I do something I love, like something creative or drinking and I start to feel calmer and feel more like myself because when my mind’s engaged in something else and it takes the edge of a bit.

I’ve visited several website a lot over the Christmas period on my worst days. On one of these last year I read a story by someone else who said they found Christmas hard. It really reassured and comforted me. Knowing I wasn’t alone was such a relief.

But then AGAIN I had lot of friends around which numbed down issues.

Faith, Hope And Action Will Get The Job Done

Visiting Mwangaza Childrens home with Spencer, Emily and Crew

                       

Many of us are dreamers, in 2018 become doers.

Make your thoughts actions and become pursuers.

Don't make resolutions without an action plan.

The secret to success is right in your hands.

Thomas Edison discovered more than 1000 ways, to not invent a bulb of light,

But eventually, through perspiration, he found the solution to get it just right.

If he had stopped at nine hundred ninety-nine,

You'd be reading in the dark, and might miss a line.

Take the first step, do something outrageous,

The act of doing, will become quite contagious.

Accomplishments will come closer each day,

Don't just wish, but act and pray!

Don't let pride ever cause you to stumble,

Baby steps are still progress and keep us humble.

It's better to move slowly then to turn or hide,

Keep your eyes focused, let God be your guide.

At the end of the year, you'll discover you've been moving,

Much closer to the goals, you have always been pursuing.

It won't all happen on January one,

But with faith, hope, and action, you will get the job done.

The One New Year’s Resolution That Creates Lasting Change.

“If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results.” ~Jack Dixon

I originally started to write a post offering tons of different New Year’s resolutions and tips to stick to them to create lasting change.
After all, that’s what bloggers do around the end of the year: share our best practices for improving our lives as December rolls into January; compile well-researched suggestions to change, and do it consistently, despite knowing most people give up on resolutions within weeks of setting them.
Then I realized that didn’t feel authentic to me.

I don’t actually believe New Year’s Day is any different than any other day. I don’t believe a random point in the time measurement system we’ve created requires us to make a laundry list of things we need to change or improve.

New Year’s Eve is, in fact, just another day, and the next day is one, as well.
I don’t mean to minimize the excitement of the New Year, or any of the days we’ve chosen to celebrate for religious or honorary reasons. I love a big event as much as the next person; in fact, I sometimes bust out the champagne for parallel parking well or using a really big word in a sentence.
What I’m saying is that New Year’s resolutions often fail for a reason, and it’s only slightly related to intention or discipline.

Resolutions fail because they don’t emerge from true breakthroughs. They’re calendar-driven obligations. and they often address the symptoms, not the cause of our unhappiness.

Some resolutions are smart for our physical and emotional health and well-being. Quitting smoking, losing weight, managing stress better—these are all healthy things.
But if we don’t address what underlies our needs to light up, order double bacon cheeseburgers, and worry ourselves into frenzies, will it really help to vow on one arbitrary day to give up everything that helps us pretend we’re fine?

It’s almost like we set ourselves up for failure to avoid addressing the messy stuff.

Why We’re Really Unhappy

• I can’t say this is true for everyone, but my experience has shown me that my unhappiness—and my need for coping mechanisms—come from several different places:
• I’m dwelling on the past or obsessing about the future.
• I’m comparing myself to everyone else—their accomplishments, the respect and the attention they garner, and their apparently perfect lives.
• I’m feeling dissatisfied with how I’m spending my time and the impact I’m making on the world.
• I’ve lost hope in my potential.
• I’m expecting and finding the worst in people.
• I’m turning myself into a victim or a martyr, blaming everyone else.
• I’m spiraling into negative thinking, seeing everything as a sign of doom and hopelessness
• I’m assuming there should be a point in time when none of the above happens anymore.

The last one, I believe, is the worst cause of unhappiness. All those other things I mentioned are human, whether we experience them persistently or occasionally.
We’ll do these things from time to time, and they’ll hurt. In the aftermath, we’ll want to do all those different things that every year we promise to give up.
We’ll want to eat, drink, or smoke away our feelings. Or we’ll want to work away our nagging sense of inadequacy. Or we’ll judge whether or not we’re really enjoying life enough, and in the very act of judging detract from that enjoyment.
So, perhaps the best resolution has nothing to do with giving up all those not-so-healthy things and everything to do with adopting a new mindset that will make it less tempting to turn to them.

An Alternative to Resolutions
Maybe instead of trying to trim away all the symptoms of our dissatisfaction, we can accept that what we really want is happiness—and that true happiness comes and goes. We can never trap it like a butterfly in a jar.
No amount of medication or meditation can change the fact that we will sometimes get caught up in thoughts and emotions.
What we can do is work to improve the ratio of happy-to-unhappy moments. We can learn to identify when we’re spiraling and pull ourselves back with the things we enjoy and want to do in this world.
Instead of scolding ourselves for all the things we’re doing wrong and making long to-do lists to stop doing them, we can focus on doing the things that feel right to us.
This may sound familiar if you’ve read about positive psychology.
I’m no posi-psy expert, and to my knowledge no one is since the industry is unregulated. But it doesn’t take an expert to know it feels a lot better to choose to nurture positive moments than it does to berate myself for things I’ve done that might seem negative—all while plotting to give them all up when the clock strikes tabula rasa.

4 Simple Steps to Increase Your Happiness Ratio

This is something I’ve been working on for years, so it comes from my personal experience. As I have worked to increase my levels of satisfaction, meaning, and happiness, I have given up a number of unhealthy habits, including smoking, overeating, and chronically dwelling and complaining.
That all required deliberate intention, but it was impossible until I addressed the underlying feelings. I still have some unhealthy habits, but I know releasing them starts with understanding why I turn to them. Starting today, and every day, regardless of the calendar:

        1. Recognize the places where you feel helpless…
…the housing situation, the job, the relationship, that sense of meaningless. Then plan to do something small to change that starting right now. Acknowledge that you have the power to do at least one small thing to empower yourself.
Don’t commit to major outcomes just yet. Just find the confidence and courage to take one small step knowing that you’ll learn as you go where it’s heading. As you add up little successes, the bigger picture will become clearer. This isn’t major transformation over a night. It’s a small seed of change that can grow.

      2. Identify the different events that lead to feelings that seem negative.
Like gossiping with your coworker, overextending yourself at work, not getting enough sleep, drinking too much.
Whatever it is that generally leaves you with unhappy feelings, note it down. Work to reduce these, making a conscious effort to do them on one fewer day per week, then two, and then three. The key isn’t to completely cut out these things, but rather to minimize their occurrence.
     

     3. Identify the things that create positive feelings.
Like going to the park, painting, looking at photo albums, or singing. Whatever creates feel-good chemicals in your head, note them down and make a promise to yourself to integrate them into your day. As you feel your way through your joy, add to this. Learn the formula for your bliss.
Know that these moments of joy are a priority, and you deserve to receive them. When you’re fully immersed within a happy moment of your own choosing, you’re a lot less likely to get lost dwelling, obsessing, comparing, judging, and wishing you were better.

      4. Stay mindful of the ratio.
If you’ve had an entire week that’s been overwhelming, dark, or negative, instead of getting down on yourself for falling that low, remind yourself that only your kindness can pull you out. Tell yourself that you deserve to restore a sense of balance—to maintain a healthy ratio.
Then give yourself what you need. Take a personal day at work and take a day trip. Go to the park to relax and reflect. Remind yourself only you can let go of what’s been and come back to what can be.
It’s not about perfection or a complete release from all the causes of unhappiness. It’s about accepting that being human involves a little unhappiness—but how often it consumes us is up to us.
This might not be a lengthy list of unhealthy behaviors you can give up, and how, or a long list of suggestions for adventure and excitement in the new year. But all those things mean nothing if you’re not in the right head space to release the bad and enjoy the good.Resolve what you will this year, but know that happiness is the ultimate goal. It starts in daily choices, not lofty resolutions—on any day you decide to start.

Pic Of The Day

A child holds his grandmother's hand while walking past a stupa containing hundreds of human skulls and bones of victims in Khmer Rouge regime at Choeung Ek memorial outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia

16 Things I Wish They Had Taught Me in School

I am 29 now. I don’t think about the past or regret things much these days.
But sometimes I wish that I had known some of things I have learned over the last few years a bit earlier. That perhaps there had been a self-improvement class in school. And in some ways there probably was.
Because some of these 16 things in this article a teacher probably spoke about in class. But I forgot about them or didn’t pay attention.
Some of it would probably not have stuck in my mind anyway. Or just been too far outside my reality at the time for me to accept and use.
So here are 16 things I wish they had taught me in school (or I just would like to have known about earlier).

1. The 80/20 rule.

This is one of the best ways to make better use of your time. The 80/20 rule – also known as The Pareto Principle – basically says that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your activities.
So a lot of what you do is probably not as useful or even necessary to do as you may think.
You can just drop – or vastly decrease the time you spend on – a whole bunch of things.
And if you do that you will have more time and energy to spend on those things that really brings your value, happiness, fulfillment and so on.

2. Parkinson’s Law.

You can do things quicker than you think. This law says that a task will expand in time and seeming complexity depending on the time you set aside for it. For instance, if you say to yourself that you’ll come up with a solution within a week then the problem will seem to grow more difficult and you’ll spend more and more time trying to come up with a solution.
So focus your time on finding solutions. Then just give yourself an hour (instead of the whole day) or the day (instead of the whole week) to solve the problem. This will force your mind to focus on solutions and action.
The result may not be exactly as perfect as if you had spent a week on the task, but as mentioned in the previous point, 80 percent of the value will come from 20 percent of the activities anyway. Or you may wind up with a better result because you haven’t overcomplicated or overpolished things. This will help you to get things done faster, to improve your ability to focus and give you more free time where you can totally focus on what’s in front of you instead of having some looming task creating stress in the back of your mind.

3. Batching.

Boring or routine tasks can create a lot of procrastination and low-level anxiety. One good way to get these things done quickly is to batch them. This means that you do them all in row. You will be able to do them quicker because there is less start-up time compared to if you spread them out. And when you are batching you become fully engaged in the tasks and more focused.
A batch of things to do in an hour today may look like this: Clean your desk / answer today’s emails / do the dishes / make three calls / write a grocery shopping list for tomorrow.

4. First, give value. Then, get value. Not the other way around.

This is a bit of a counter-intuitive thing. There is often an idea that someone should give us something or do something for us before we give back. The problem is just that a lot of people think that way. And so far less than possible is given either way.
If you want to increase the value you receive (money, love, kindness, opportunities etc.) you have to increase the value you give. Because over time you pretty much get what you give. It would perhaps be nice to get something for nothing. But that seldom happens.

5. Be proactive. Not reactive.

This one ties into the last point. If everyone is reactive then very little will get done. You could sit and wait and hope for someone else to do something. And that happens pretty often, but it can take a lot of time before it happens.
A more useful and beneficial way is to be proactive, to simply be the one to take the first practical action and get the ball rolling. This not only saves you a lot of waiting, but is also more pleasurable since you feel like you have the power over your life. Instead of feeling like you are run by a bunch of random outside forces.

6. Mistakes and failures are good.

When you are young you just try things and fail until you learn. As you grow a bit older, you learn from – for example – school to not make mistakes. And you try less and less things.
This may cause you to stop being proactive and to fall into a habit of being reactive, of waiting for someone else to do something. I mean, what if you actually tried something and failed? Perhaps people would laugh at you?
Perhaps they would. But when you experience that you soon realize that it is seldom the end of the world. And a lot of the time people don’t care that much. They have their own challenges and lives to worry about.
And success in life often comes from not giving up despite mistakes and failure. It comes from being persistent.
When you first learn to ride your bike you may fall over and over. Bruise a knee and cry a bit. But you get up, brush yourself off and get on the saddle again. And eventually you learn how to ride a bike. If you can just reconnect to your 5 year old self and do things that way – instead of giving up after a try/failure or two as grown-ups often do -you would probably experience a lot more interesting things, learn valuable lessons and have quite a bit more success.

7. Don’t beat yourself up.

Why do people give up after just few mistakes or failures? Well, I think one big reason is because they beat themselves up way too much. But it’s a kinda pointless habit. It only creates additional and unnecessary pain inside you and wastes your precious time. It’s best to try to drop this habit as much as you can.

8. Assume rapport.

Meeting new people is fun. But it can also induce nervousness. We all want to make a good first impression and not get stuck in an awkward conversation.
The best way to do this that I have found so far is to assume rapport. This means that you simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one.

9. Use your reticular activation system to your advantage.

I learned about the organs and the inner workings of the body in class but nobody told me about the reticular activation system. And that’s a shame, because this is one of the most powerful things you can learn about. What this focus system, this R.A.S, in your mind does is to allow you to see in your surroundings what you focus your thoughts on. It pretty much always helps you to find what you are looking for.
So you really need to focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want. And keep that focus steady.
Setting goals and reviewing them frequently is one way to keep your focus on what’s important and to help you take action that will move your closer to toward where you want to go. Another way is just to use external reminders such as pieces of paper where you can, for instance, write down a few things from this post like “Give value”or “Assume rapport”. And then you can put those pieces of paper on your fridge, bathroom mirror etc.

10. Your attitude changes your reality.

We have all heard that you should keep a positive attitude or perhaps that “you need to change your attitude!”. That is a nice piece of advice I suppose, but without any more reasons to do it is very easy to just brush such suggestions off and continue using your old attitude.
But the thing that I’ve discovered the last few years is that if you change your attitude, you actually change your reality. When you for instance use a positive attitude instead of a negative one you start to see things and viewpoints that were invisible to you before. You may think to yourself “why haven’t I thought about things this way before?”.
When you change your attitude you change what you focus on. And all things in your world can now be seen in a different light.
This is of course very similar to the previous tip but I wanted to give this one some space. Because changing your attitude can create an insane change in your world. It might not look like it if you just think about it though. Pessimism might seem like realism. But that is mostly because your R.A.S is tuned into seeing all the negative things you want to see. And that makes you “right” a lot of the time. And perhaps that is what you want. On the other hand, there are more fun things than being right all the time.
If you try changing your attitude for real – instead of analysing such a concept in your mind – you’ll be surprised.
You may want to read more about this topic in Take the Positivity Challenge!

11. Gratitude is a simple way to make yourself feel happy.

Sure, I was probably told that I should be grateful. Perhaps because it was the right thing to do or just something I should do. But if someone had said that feeling grateful about things for minute or two is a great way to turn a negative mood into a happy one I would probably have practised gratitude more. It is also a good tool for keeping your attitude up and focusing on the right things. And to make other people happy. Which tends to make you even happier, since emotions are contagious.

12. Don’t compare yourself to others.

The ego wants to compare. It wants to find reasons for you to feel good about yourself (“I’ve got a new bike!”). But by doing that it also becomes very hard to not compare yourself to others who have more than you (“Oh no, Bill has bought an even nicer bike!”). And so you don’t feel so good about yourself once again. If you compare yourself to others you let the world around control how you feel about yourself. It always becomes a rollercoaster of emotions.
A more useful way is to compare yourself to yourself. To look at how far you have come, what you have accomplished and how you have grown. It may not sound like that much fun but in the long run it brings a lot more inner stillness, personal power and positive feelings.

13. 80-90% of what you fear will happen never really come into reality.

This is a big one. Most things you fear will happen never happen. They are just monsters in your own mind. And if they happen then they will most often not be as painful or bad as you expected. Worrying is most often just a waste of time.
This is of course easy to say. But if you remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life that has actually happened you can start to release more and more of that worry from your thoughts.

14. Don’t take things too seriously.

It’s very easy to get wrapped up in things. But most of the things you worry about never come into reality. And what may seem like a big problem right now you may not even remember in three years.
Taking yourself, your thoughts and your emotions too seriously often just seems to lead to more unnecessary suffering. So relax a little more and lighten up a bit. It can do wonders for your mood and as an extension of that; your life.

15. Write everything down.

If your memory is anything like mine then it’s like a leaking bucket. Many of your good or great ideas may be lost forever if you don’t make a habit of writing things down. This is also a good way to keep your focus on what you want. Read more about it in Why You Should Write Things Down.

16. There are opportunities in just about every experience.

In pretty much any experience there are always things that you can learn from it and things within the experience that can help you to grow. Negative experiences, mistakes and failure can sometimes be even better than a success because it teaches you something totally new, something that another success could never teach you.
Whenever you have a “negative experience” ask yourself: where is the opportunity in this? What is good about this situation? One negative experience can – with time – help you create many very positive experiences.

What do you wish someone had told you in school or you had just learned earlier in life?