Tag: challenge

Roaring 20’s

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Julia Magsombol (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

 

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 20s, it’s that there are only three things that last long in this lifetime of ours: taxes, change and problems. Think of a time when you never had any problems? Nothing. Problems come in all forms every day—whether they’re small or huge. We just carry them somehow. I may have not lived long enough to know everything, but as a young adult, I somehow realized how problems are inevitable—and I learned it the hard way.

 

Sometimes, you eat alone at your dining table at night. And you question things, “why on earth your family is not your number one supporter?” or “why can’t they accept me?” Thoughts like those slap you in the face (and maybe your heart too).

 

You have to get a stable job soon but first, to expect a lot of job rejections. What is the other way to support yourself? What’s the other way to survive capitalism?

 

You learn more about friendships—that all of you are different. All of you grow in different ways. All of you go in different directions.

 

And what’s worse, you also learn that love is not simple as it is. You learn more about relationships—that they can be very messy and fixing them will make them worse. Love and relationship are swords that can stab you in the heart in the best way possible.

 

You tend to compare your life to others. Trust me, this is wrong and toxic, but even if you don’t want to compare, you end up being that way when you see yourself stagnant in one place.

 

Finally, before sleeping, you somehow learn that uncertainties kill. The future can keep you up all night. You wonder what could’ve been like in the next three or four years. Will I be in a better place? Will I finally like where I am? You want everything to be answered. You want your life to start as soon as possible. You want your time to rotate fast—to happen quickly, and to skip its fleeting moments.

 

You learn more about yourself. You realize your faults. You hurt the people you love.

 

And even if you read thousands of self-help books, it just doesn’t feel right. Even if you listen to podcasts or watch YouTube videos to solve your problems on becoming better, it doesn’t help. You are as problematic as your problems. And worse, you face all these problems alone—not having anyone to talk to. Maybe there is, but their comfort is not enough because you know they can’t solve your own problems. It’s painful, but it doesn’t stop. It’s like a food cycle. It’s tiring. You just want to float.

 

But guess what: problems may become worse when you get older. Problems are forever and there’s nothing we can do about it. We may solve some of them, but also not. That’s one thing I’ve learned the hard way during my sleepless nights. The problems that are not fixable just come and go. We have to deal and learn with them, but it may also be better to just accept and let them go.

 

In the end, there’s only one thing I can say: Let it out. Scream. Be angry. But my friend, still try to smile and to be happy once in a while because that’s how we will survive and live long.

—

Julia Magsombol is currently a journalism student from Edmonton, Canada, who desires to bring hope to people through her writing. When not writing or reading, you can catch her sewing clothes, painting nature and drinking instant coffee.

Sooth the Smarting Wound

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Eri Ikezawa (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

 

Peering over the edge of a 40-foot cliff. Sitting in a crowded plane, rocking from side to side, trying to stomach the nausea from turbulence. Feeling faint as I watch blood pouring copiously from an open wound. These are all legitimate fears, personal ones that I have, ranked highly on my list of things that frighten me. But above those has always been my great and appreciable fear of failure. 

 

Since having been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, my reaction to the unknown has started making more sense to me — that crippling, debilitating sensation of terror, causing me to freeze on the spot, like dipping my toes into an icy pond with regrettable haste. 

 

Although it might be a stretch to say that I regret certain events in my life — living by the philosophy that anything that happens is a lesson to be learned — I must confess I do occasionally feel a twinge of wistfulness for the opportunities I have missed in my life due to my anxiety. 

 

Before, the notion of failure itself was enough to completely paralyze me into inaction — worse yet, I couldn’t find the words to articulate the barrier between myself and any goal I wanted for myself. All I knew was that I felt like a microscopic entity, craning my neck backwards until it felt unhinged, feeling doomed by the towering partition between me and my aspirations. And this applied to so many areas of my life — grades I wanted in school, friends I wanted to make, hobbies I wanted to invest more time into. 

 

Back then, I didn’t realize that the root of that cacophonous buzzing — the angry voices in my head susurrating, “You’ll probably fail anyway, what’s the point in trying?” — was my anxiety.  To me, that feeling I experienced preluding the ultimate outcome, whether it was failure or success, was so unbearable that I would talk myself out of even taking a stab at whatever I wanted.  

 

Unsurprisingly this led me to playing it safe, like walking a tightline — only it was 10 centimeters off the ground. If I believed that whatever I wanted to attain was more or less guaranteed, then I would give it a go. I felt as though anything I achieved was to be expected, while everything else was unfeasible, and thus not worth trying at. 

 

Obviously, this led to minimal personal growth. I was sitting in a cozy refuge, barricaded from discomfiting experiences, idle in my comfort zone.  

 

Once I was formally diagnosed with anxiety, every jumbled puzzle piece in my discombobulated brain began to gradually fall into place. I could finally make sense of my mental hieroglyphics — what once seemed like illegible scrawl was decipherable language, and the storm thundering in my chest came to a manageable simmer. 

 

It wasn’t so much that it solved all my problems, but rather I felt as though I finally had a starting point to work from. Through cognitive behavioral therapy, I could better discern moments where I felt as though I might succumb to my anxious thoughts. Then, instead of allowing myself to be plowed over by the drum of the road roller and compressed by the weight of my inferiority, I would try to ground myself again. 

 

I remind myself that failure is a natural staple of life, that all successful people have taken shots and missed, the arrow throttling through the air at the wrong angle, missing the target at the last second. I coax myself off the ledge of self-pity, uplifting myself with the knowledge that whatever happens, I need to keep laboring through the dirt until I find myself at the other side. After all, rejection is not a reflection of my self-worth. 

 

I have also learned that if I maintain and nourish the internal image that I hold of myself, I am able to stand firm in the face of slights and rejections. Now, I ask myself, “Is it worth tarnishing my own self-value because of someone else’s impression of me?” Just because I am not what someone is looking for doesn’t mean that I am worthless. It does not mean that I am a failure in my pursuit for self-actualization and success. 

 

I won’t lie and say that it doesn’t still sting when I apply for a job and don’t get selected. Nor is it satisfying when someone doesn’t like me — it still hurts when people hold negative views about me. I still struggle with the desire to people-please over prioritizing my own needs as a person, but at the end of the day, we must make small sacrifices in the process of self-development. In striving to better myself, it is inevitable that I will “fail” to meet someone’s expectations of me — especially when it doesn’t benefit them. 

 

These days, for me, it’s all about recalibration. I allow myself to fully acknowledge the pricking sensation of failure and rejection; I don’t delay the healing process by trying to euphemize or sugarcoat how I really feel. If that means sulking for a few days, that’s just my process — as long as I know I am fully committed to picking myself back up, rebounding from lying face-flat on the ground to hiking back towards the peak, it’s okay. A few days to reset is okay. 

 

Once I feel as though I’ve recovered enough, having soothed the smarting wound until it’s a faint throb, I just pick up right where I left off, recognizing that one small defeat in the grand scheme of things is nothing but a lesson. I realize now that tenacity and determination to triumph are the true hallmarks of successful people. And even if I am not quite at the destination I wish to arrive at, I am always immensely grateful to have transitioned from my former attitude and fear towards failure to my composed acceptance of it now. 

 

These reactions, pragmatic and tranquil, help me from permanently floundering after any blunder — they are what keep me moving forward.  

 

—

 

My name is Eri Ikezawa and I have an extended minor in psychology and a major in linguistics. I’m still on the path to quelling questions about myself and the direction I want to head in, but in the meantime, I have always wanted to find a way to help others and contribute to a community dedicated to personal development and self-love.

The Lost Sun

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Cristina Crescenzo (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

 

I remember one day when I was a little, I walked into the front entrance of my school as the sun was shining behind me, casting my shadow along the carpet. There was a teacher standing by the door, smiling at me as she said, “Cristina, the sun follows you wherever you go.” As a naïve kid, I believed them, so I made it my mission to have the sunniest disposition possible. Unfortunately, as time passed I struggled into adulthood, until one day I turned around and the sun was no longer following me and all I had left was despair. 

 

All I can do in the absence of light is try to sleep the day away, because when I open my eyes all I see is grey. The sun and everything beneath it is artificial and has no real meaning for me anymore. Obviously, I don’t go around stating that fact. I am disillusioned not only with my life but the whole world, so I often wear a manufactured smile and I play pretend the best I can. Moreover, even though I would never want anyone to have to bear witness to this endless spiral, sometimes the mask does slip and the tears start to flow onto the paths of others. Yet, one thing I will say that I have discovered is that everyone deserves to be selfish once and a while and look out for themselves. 

 

I wish I could lie and say I have obtained the tools to help get me out of this sinking pit of hopelessness, but I can’t. However, I can finally start to accept that Little Miss Sunshine isn’t coming back, because I am not a kid anymore, with childish dreams and priorities. I can’t afford to keep stressing myself out searching for the old me, the Cristina that was young, ignorant and had never been hurt, because that’s not realistic. Time has passed and I have learned some hard truths about life that I was sheltered from as a kid, many people also have hurt me and I have even beaten myself up to the point of no return. Hence, I have had a lot of time to contemplate possible ways out of the darkness, but sadly I have come up with nothing concrete to put into action.

 

But I do have one theory I have ruminated on for awhile. In a nutshell, it’s all about trying to accept who I am today, because whether or not I want to admit it, I am more vulnerable and likely to get sunburned. And, what is wrong with spending my time in the shade while I’m working on it? 

 

In the end, I have no idea what I am doing. I am really just trying to survive from one day to the next, but I don’t think that has to be a bad thing. So, though it can be scary at times, I have to stop being afraid of the dark, because I still have so much time to spare. That is not to say I am going to automatically have a better opinion of the world or myself and that I am not going to enjoy an occasional nap, but I hope if I wait long enough, the sun will return to my side again, brighter than ever. 

 

—

 

My name is Cristina Crescenzo and I am an English major and aspiring writer just hoping that my words can help someone in some way, and that I can always strive to increase awareness for mental health and the disabled community.

Wounded Child

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Ling-Yee Sze, Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

 

I personally think that I am quite experienced in feeling lonely. The feeling of loneliness was most pervasive in my teenage or adolescent years.

 

I have always enjoyed alone time. A lot of activities that I enjoy – drawing, reading, playing music, etc . . . are usually conducted independently.

 

When I was a kid, I lived with my grandparents in a small village in a southern province in China. They were quite permissive and busy with physical work. I had great fun playing by myself alone. I did not feel lonely at all; my parents’ love for me was always in the back of my mind. One of my most vivid memories from those years was sitting in the middle of a motorbike, between my grandpa at the front and my grandma at the back.

 

Then many incidents that I would now define as traumas happened after I went to Hong Kong at the age of five that created some negative emotional imprints on me. As a sensitive child, I developed a lot of negative beliefs and coping mechanisms in interacting with people, which resulted in me feeling lonely in or after social interactions.

 

A big wound I have is in my social ability. When I first met my mum at five years old, she perceived me as self-centred and lacking discipline. I do not remember what I did, but one night she beat me and dragged me to the garbage room. That is by far the biggest trauma I have around being rejected and unlovable.

 

Later, my belief of not being social enough or unlovable was reinforced when some teachers indicated that I should spend less time being an observer in group activities. On Parent’s Day, my teacher asked if I was an only child because I didn’t participate in as many peer groups as she thought I should.

 

I carried this wound of feeling socially inadequate into interacting with others. In order to manipulate people into liking me more and appear to be more engaged in groups, I tried very hard to people-please and read others’ minds, and did not dare to push any boundaries. I used this mode to interact with my peers and teachers in my primary school years, then every day after returning home I felt alive and able to be myself again, and not wear the mask of a temperless good girl. I enjoyed a very intimate, sharing, vulnerable relationship with my grandma.

 

The real challenge for me came after my grandma passed away when I was 14. Suddenly my world collapsed, and I felt the intense belief that no one really respected, accepted, loved and made me feel significant other than my grandma. Coupled with some other wounds, such as believing that I was weird, unorganized and timid, or that only outgoing girls were deserving of love, or that my sexual desires made me unlovable, my adolescent years following her death were very rough emotionally.

 

I sought validation and love in indirect ways – I tried to be perfect in every drawing I made so that my peers and teachers would praise me, I tried watching 10 hours of Korean TV series nonstop to immerse myself in the world of the main female characters and feel undivided and loyal love from the main

male characters. These ways to meet my needs for love and connection helped me to forget about the pain for some time, but they were not helping me at the root level.

 

It has only been in recent years, when I stepped into personal development and self-healing, that I began to see my loneliness in different and much more empowering ways. Love and connection is vital to every single person at every stage of life. A lot of my false beliefs about my lovableness stems from the emotional imprints created when I was small. They carried into my adulthood because my brain at the time of these traumatic events perceived interaction and being vulnerable as unsafe, as leading to rejection and shame. In order to better be prepared and protect myself from danger and future interactions, I developed coping or soothing strategies to meet my needs for connection while keeping myself safe.

 

However, when I believed people around me were dangerous and interactions were unsafe, I was not present in my interactions at all. I hid the majority of myself – my traits, my needs and my emotions. The longer the interactions were, the more exhausted and drained and lonely I would feel after. I would then go back home and numb myself by watching television or listening to songs – only when I was all alone would I feel safe to fully be myself.  In those moments I felt so lonely and hopeless and trapped and empty.

 

Now I am working to reconnect with myself – my emotions, my needs and my boundaries – to see who I really am when there is no fear of being judged or shamed, shifting from critical self-talk to a more compassionate tone and replacing self-shaming with self-acceptance. When I fully accept and see and hear and respond to myself, I feel less lonely and I feel able to communicate to other people what I am about and what I need. Even if sometimes these interactions are not satisfying, I’ve started to trust that I can set boundaries and give love and connection to myself, especially my wounded child.

 

—

 

Hi, my name is Ling-Yee Sze and I am a personal development enthusiast who began a self-help journey four years ago. Along the way, I have met many inspiring people. I hope to share my personal stories and collected learnings with you!

Building that Bridge

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You can build it, once plank at a time: Low Entropy Volunteer Writer Kanak Khatri writes on how achieving confidence can simply be a matter of working your way toward it.

 

The best explanation that I have for confidence is that it stimulates a situation where there are admirers and a performer. A  performer can be someone who just does something better and, because of that, has more confidence. However, I have always felt that the difference between spectator and performer is the time and effort that anyone can put in to become better in something and, hence, more confident.

 

But why is it important to become more confident?

 

Imagine yourself mesmerising a crowd in a TED Talk in the future. That’s one way to envision the benefits of confidence in action.

 

You can seize opportunities that pass by, and the positive results will build your confidence. Ace that interview or climb that corporate ladder. Personally, I let a few opportunities pass by without even considering them, as I was not confident in myself. You, with confidence, will also be able to stand up for yourself, be it in front of a manager with unrealistic expectations or within a toxic relationship.

 

All in all, confidence might not prevent difficulties from occurring in your life, but it will equip you to handle them in more efficient ways.

 

Where is the handbook to become more confident?

 

There is no one method that can fit all different cases, because we all lack confidence in different aspects of our lives. The only fundamental technique that might apply is to get out of your comfort zone and start building the bridge toward confidence. When we see confident people, we do not see the trials, errors and failed attempts that led to their current positions. For instance, I used to be very unconfident when speaking publicly, be it in a school presentation or just answering a professor’s question in class. 

 

I came to a situation where I did not want to live without confidence any more, so I exposed myself slowly to speaking publicly. Working at a fast food joint helped a little, as it required me to constantly talk to customers. Whenever I had a presentation, I would put effort into preparation and practice, which also helped me be more confident. Practicing in front of two people, then three, and eventually a bunch more helped as well.

 

Similarly, if you’re not confident talking to someone, maybe practice talking to familiar, supportive people, and practice the conversation in your head before talking to them. One day, eventually, you will eventually be a pro without even realising it.

 

I also realised that my attire and the way I looked were also determinants that affected my confidence. If looking a certain way makes you feel confident, I would suggest you go for it.

 

Let’s take another scenario: say, for instance, I am not confident in my photography. I would take suggestions from someone skilled in photography and learn ways to improve. With that feedback, I would improve and become more confident.

 

Building that bridge

 

I realised that developing confidence was important to growing as a person, and the only way to do it was to get out of my comfort zone, as scary as it seemed. Failing and being nervous of uncharted territories are part of the process. The people we admire have been through failures, and we should look up to them for inspiration. Building that bridge and reaching your goal of being more confident may be a treacherous project but, in the end, is worth it.

 

In what area of life would you like to feel more confident? Share your ambitions with the supportive and positive Low Entropy community in the comments below, on any of our social media platforms, or in person at a Low Entropy meet-up!