Summary – Emotion accumulates

Duh! I wonder if this is your first reaction to the summary of this post. Of course it accumulates. Everything accumulates. Just like a coin, if you found one coin today, and tomorrow you found another one, that will make two coins.

But wait a minute, this post is meant for more than just compounding interest or wealth generation. It is one of the most interesting lesson I’ve learnt the past 2 months.

The story

I was very stressed that day. With all the problem I was having with work, one of my staff was giving me more problem. He did one expensive mistake and I proceeded by calling him up and showed him where he did wrong. Of course as his superior, I had to be slightly tough with him. It was a really serious mistake. He however didn’t take it that well. Instead he just walked out the door without saying a word.

With so many other problems, I chosed to let this one go. I just buried my anger and focused on other things at hand. The keyword here is “buried“.

This is where I make a mistake. It turns out anger accumulates too. That same staff was caught one day trying to steal scrap iron. He was caught red handed with the scrap iron in his motorcycle. Of course he denied putting it there. He even started shouting at other people angrily.

I was there. And even though this kind of things had never bothered me before, I felt an intense anger building up immediately at the staff. There was even one time, I almost slapped him. I’m stressing the word “Almost” here.

Lesson learnt

I suddenly realized. I never slapped anyone my entire life. That incident itself was nothing to be angry about. I could just bring the staff to the police, make a police report and deal with it accordingly. It seemed that the anger I buried was still there. It accumulated every time I got angry and in the end, it exploded.

So guys remember.. your emotion accumulates.

What ever your problem today, do something about it today.

• If you’re angry at someone, forgive him that same day.
• If you miss someone, call her and tell her that.
• If your friend keep telling joke about you and you hate it, show that you hate it.
• If you are stressed with your boss, talk about it with your boss.

– What do you think? –
Do you have any story that describe accumulation of emotion?

—— Personal Note ——–
I actually talked to my superior about the stress I’m having. This is his exact words – “Do you know why you are stressful? It’s because you don’t know how to manage the small things. Bla bla”. I ended up being more stressed.

But deep down, I know that I have attempted to solve my problem. That itself is a very comforting emotion.

Photo Credit – Darkpatator

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Summary – Use emotion
The following story is one of the many interesting stories published on the net.

The Story

Once there was a school with quite a unique problem. The girls at the school were beginning to use lipstick and like everyone else who just started a thing, there were lipstick prints all over the mirrors of the school bathroom.

This however was a problem to the janitor since he would have to clean the mirror every single day.

One day he reported the problem to the school principal and she immediately called up all the students to the bathroom (of course in groups). She then explained that the lip prints were causing problem to the janitor who worked very hard to keep the school clean.

She even asked the janitor to demonstrate how difficult it was to clean the lips prints. The janitor took out a long handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.

Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

/end story

As you can probably notice, the solution is so simple and effective, it is amazing why we can’t come up with it in the first place.

So how can we come up with an amazingly effective solution to other daily problems in our life?

I don’t know about you, but when dealing with people, I personally believe that any solution can be very effective provided we can tap into the people’s emotion.

Let’s look at the story for example. The janitor use the toilet water to induce the feeling of disgust in the students and in the end, he manage to solve the problem completely.

How I Apply It In Real Life

I’m having the same problem here in my mill. A lot of my workers prefer not to wear the safety helmet during working. Of course they will be wearing them when I’m around but I really don’t think they are wearing it during night time etc.

So what I did is to gather a lot of pictures from the internet on accidents that happened to people who did not wear their safety helmet. There are pictures of dead people with their head slice into two, iron rod penetrating the skull etc. Seriously, they are the kind of pictures you wouldn’t want to show your children or you will have to pay for their therapy for years.

Immediately after I show these pictures, almost everyone wear the safety helmet (day and night). I’m really hoping that the pictures can stir the fear inside the workers. It worked! Problem solved!

– I wonder –
How else can we use emotion to solve problems?

——– Personal Note ———-
You must not confuse this with emotional blackmail. Emotional blackmail is a method used to get what you want but via dirtier means. For example, using guilt to make your relatives become slave of the house or by using jealousy to ruin a marriage etc.

Like all other great tools, in the right hand, it will become a blessing. But in the wrong hand, it will become a disaster.

Photo Credit – Katie Tegtmeyer

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Summary – 4 tricks to happiness you can try immediately

“The newlywed wife said to her husband when he returned from work, “I have great news for you. Pretty soon, we’re going to be three in this house instead of two.”

Her husband ran to her with a smile on his face and delight in his eyes.

He was glowing of happiness and kissing his wife when she said, “I’m glad that you feel this way since tomorrow morning, my mother moves in with us.”

/end joke

🙂 Happiness is such a wonderful feeling. Out of a sudden, you feel energetic and excited as if nothing else matters in the world. You jump, you cry and you smile. It really is amazing.

However, just like most of other feelings, happiness will deteriorate with time. And the quest to maintain and find happiness is really a challenging task even for the most optimistic person.

Any tricks that you use to find happiness? These are a few of mine.

1) Outsource doing things that you hate

Let say you dislike doing laundry but your spouse is at neutral with that task (means no inclination to both liking and disliking), why not negotiate the task. She will do the laundry while you cook dinner. Provided that you love cooking, both of you will be relatively happier each day.

2) Create a Survivor type happiness booth

Get an A4 paper, and write down all the emotion you can remember. Cut every words and put it into a box. Put the box in front of a mirror and every morning, allocate some time to be in front of the mirror and find the word happiness from the box. Show the word to the mirror and say it out loud why you choose to be happy today.

It can be exactly the same thing everyday, but subconcioiously this will help a lot in your quest to finding happiness everyday.

Whenever you are feeling “not happy”, you will immediately remember that ritual you do every morning, and you will know that that is the chance for you to choose happiness instead of other emotion. It is going to be easier to be happy if we have made that choice everyday conciously. Try it and tell me how it goes.

3) Set up secret journal of happiness

I’m not sure about you, but I always feel happier when I’m thinking about my past happy moments, like the first day I received the news that I’m going to be a father, or the day my daughter was born (Hm weird, it seems like a lot of my happiness recently comes from my daughter).

If you are just like me, I would encourage you to keep a secret journal of happiness. It can be a microsoft word file (password protected of course) with a few line to remind us of the event that make us happy.

Happy moments are like treasure. Treat it like one.

4) Do _____ just for fun

If you think about it, we never really do stuff just for the fun of it. I’m not talking about the things we like to do like football, or blogging etc. These activities usually have other benefits to us that we don’t really have fun while doing it.

Try to do one random things just for the fun of it. Go dancing under the rain, or go camera crazy at the zoo (Try to get every possible pictures you can), or sing a song at a friend’s wedding (make sure you don’t know a single word of that song)

You will be laughed at, that for sure, but you will also have a good laugh after that. And nothing brings out happiness better than a good laugh.

– I wonder –
Any secret tricks that will sure make you happy?

———– Personal Note ————-
A quick flash back to my Journal of Happiness,

• The day I was told I’m going to be a father
• The day I became a father

Photo Credit – Jaja 1986

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Summary – 6 most efficient anger management tips

If I ask you “Who is the strongest man on the planet?” I’m quite sure that the name Superman will come up. For those still not sure, Superman is a fictional character from comic books. He was described to be able to lift even a mountain. I’m not sure what good that may do to us. However, there are more than one way to define strength.

There’s a saying that the strongest man is not the person who can lift the heaviest stone, but the person who can control his temper.

Let’s face it, a man with temper is no fun. Most of the time they are plain dangerous to be around with. When asked, almost all of them will say that they just didn’t realize how such emotion build up. It just burst like an active volcano.

Imagine if you can stop an active volcano from erupting. Don’t you think that’s superstrong? Here’s a few tips that may help control one’s temper.

1) Acknowledge that you are angry
As easy as this sound, this is the hardest step of all. However this is also the most efficient way to control your temper. I repeat, it is the MOST EFFICIENT way to control your temper. Once you know that you are angry, you will be more conscious about your reaction and that itself cools you down drastically.

2) Set OK limits
OK limits are actual limits that you set beforehand on when exactly it’s ok to lose your temper. Now you may ask “aren’t we supposed to be controlling the temper, not letting it go?”. Believe me that when you have establish this limits, it will be so much easier to control it.

For example, Let us assume you set the limit as such – “it is ok to lose your temper if somebody is hurting your loved ones”. When you know your limits, you will know that all other incident will not be worth it. Why? because they are not in the OK limit list. Imagine how many time you can avoid losing your temper this way.

It is important to have these limits. Just as it is important to be angry in the right situation. For example, a wife / husband cheating on you. You have every right to be angry. In fact that anger will make it easier for you to take action and move on.

3) Create a mantra
This is my favorite method. Personally, the mantra I always use to control my temper is “Once I spit, I will never lick the spit back”. Roughly translated that whenever I lose my temper I will be responsible to anything that may happen. No regrets or apology.

What’s your mantra?

4) Change position
In Islam, it is proposed that to control one’s temper you should change position. If for example you are standing, consider sitting down. I’m assuming there’s a theory behind it. That whenever we are angry at something, it would be best if we just walk away from being near to the things / person we are angry at.

If you are angry at losing football team, consider walking away to maybe a park or a lake. The farther you are from the match, the more relaxed you will become. How can you cool down when you are still at the match watching your team play horribly.

5) Find a safer way to let it out
In some cases, even after we cool down, the temper is still there inside. It may lessen with time but it’s still there and anything can spark it back to life. You need to get it out of your chest. Talk to your loved ones about it.

How about setting up an email account specifically for you to pour in all your emotion. Write an email of anger to that account and tell yourself he/she is reading it. That should help. I wonder if be.angry.at.me@gmail.com has been taken.

6) Breathe
If all else fail, you can try this – Breathe in and out slowlly. Just focus on your breathing. Close your eyes and feel the air going in and out. There.. you are now meditating 🙂

Conclusion – There are a lot of technique out there for anger management. They even set up classes just for this. But I truly believe that these five are the most efficient method of all.

Controlling temper is never easy. Do not expect anything less. That is why when you can control it, you can proudly declare that you are the strongest man / woman in the world 🙂

– I wonder –
How do you control your temper?

————- Personal Note ————
I’m sorry for the long absence. Work caught up with me. The thing about my line of work is that, I’m on standby 24/7 minus the overtime pay. Sometime I can get very upset thinking about it. But I have made my peace with it.

How have you guys been? 🙂

Photo credit – hypertypos

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