A senior still working on the beautiful carvings (Thailand)

Many seniors who have retired from their jobs still choose to work a less paying job to pass the hours. And they give exceptional and personalized service. They worked with their heart and do the little extra things that warm the heart of a customer, often a total stranger.

 With years of working experience, seniors indeed have so much more to offer to society. Some of them embody the meaning of genuine service that is becoming increasingly difficult to find in the fast paced businesses of today. 

Quite often, I visit a pharmacy chain where I would often see this cheerful senior lady on duty. She is special in the sense that she is very warm and friendly towards the customers. As she knew the items sold there very well, she would often offer hints and also advice the customers on offers on similar items. For instance, let’s say a customer picked up an eye drop and proceed to pay at the counter. If another eye drop brand is on discount, she would inform the customer. 

On the eve of Chinese New Year this year, I needed to purchase something urgently and so I went to that pharmacy. I was surprised to see this lady on duty at the counter. She was cheerful, greeted each customer and give took time to chat a little with them. Normally, the eve of Chinese New Year means a lot to the Chinese community as we will have our reunion dinner with our families. No one would want to work on that day. 

As I paid for my purchases, I queried asked the lady why she was working on the eve? She told me that her children are now overseas and could not come back for Chinese New Year. And she had nothing better to do so she would rather pass her time working in the pharmacy. She would work till the fourth day of the Chinese New Year and go back to her hometown that day. At her usual cheerful self, she wished me a happy new year. The pharmacy chain is fortunate to have a staff like her- I have watched many staff come and go but she had stayed for a few years. And recently, the pharmacy even expanded by purchasing the store next door. Business must be blooming. 

When I visited Singapore recently, I saw many seniors working well past their retirement. They would work jobs like cab drivers, cleaners, mall salesperson and food court worker. I was told that most of the time it is out of necessity because the standard of living in Singapore is so high. But often, these seniors display a lot of dedication and friendliness in performing their duties. 

One wonders why can’t the young people today display the same kind of patience, calm, contentment as these seniors. My former colleagues used to complain to me that a number of younger generation whom they are hiring in the service industry often make them ‘vomit blood’ and give them lots of headaches. When these staff are corrected, they get upset and take medical leave the next day. 

If many seniors who are educated and do not mind working in a job that they are obviously overqualified for, and yet dedicate themselves to their job, why can’t we? Being nice and helpful does not cost anything but makes a difference. It makes whatever job we are doing more meaningful and additional skills that we picked up along the way may well serve us well in our next job.

Further reading from the internet:

• Many Older Workers Plan for Non Retirement by Anita Creamer
• Planning the Golden Years (The Star paper, 17 Jul 2010)

Related Posts:

• The mark of an excellant salesman
• To get ahead, help others to get ahead first
• Being mindful when working can increase your performance and job satisfaction
• What to do if you cannot find a job after college
• Overcoming Bullying- in workplace and in life
• From bad boy to successful businessman to a contended salaried worker

This blog has been around since 2006- but as a personal blogs, it talks about almost anything under the sun- entrepreneurship, working life, crafting, creativity, blogging, family life, personality. Previously this blog also contained a number of travel articles- but I have since started specific blogs that focus on travel. 

At first, I was very reluctant to create specific blogs to cover specific topics such as creativity and travel. But the blogosphere had debated largely on niche vs general blogs and many bloggers had shared their personal experiences on why niche blogs does better. In the end, I created specific blogs to deal with specific topics after considering my audience- they came to this blog because of certain articles that I wrote- they may come to read about working life and would look forward to the next post about the same kind of topic. Imagine instead in subsequent topics I started writing topics about craft business, blogging and travelling to certain places. In the end, they may stop coming. 

Furthermore, if the topics covered in the blog is so diversified, it confuse readers with short attention span who have so many other blogs and sites to choose from. 

Therefore, last year, I started creating specific blogs on topics such as travel to Malaysia, Thailand and creativity. Initially, there was not much organic traffic but as I add more blog posts, the traffic start to build up. This blog has been around since 2006- and yet, my Visit Malaysia blog (started in Oct last year) attracts much more organic traffic and Adsense earnings within 6 months of its creation than this blog (which has been around for a few years). My Health Blog itself provides more than 70% of my total Adsense earnings. 

Still, I continue to update this blog because it is a labor of love- and some of the posts have benefited others. But I now understand that so long as I keep any blog on very general topics, traffic and earnings would not equal to niche or blogs on specific topics. Of course, unless you are a well-known public figure, only then can your blog attract lots of followers.

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 Some came from rural areas and are too poor to afford roof under their heads. These people actually have day jobs. During the day, they go to work and at night, the sleep on the streets. They go to shelters to have their daily meals. 

A section also captured my attention- that some of the homeless who are housed in welfare homes actually chose to go back to the streets. This is because even in uncertainty, there are more freedom. Sometimes, even though a homeless person has nothing, his heart is more at peace compared to a rich person housed in a big and beautiful mansion. 

When I was young, I have a friend who came from a very rich family but with parents who were controlling and emotionally manipulative. One day, my friend told me that her beautiful house is nothing more than a cage. She felt trapped in that beautiful home. 

About 10 years ago, I became very drawn to the ascetic practices of the monks in Thailand that went and lived in the forests, caves and cemeteries. They had nothing with them except an almsbowl, tent umbrella, an extra set of robes, some matches, candles and other essential requisites. They do not carry any money with them and do not even wear slippers. They walked for miles every day, under the hot sun or heavy rain and sleep wherever they stopped. Every day, they went for almsround where lay devotees would place food on their bowl- they would eat whatever that they were given. Sometimes, they went for days without food- especially when going through deep forests without any habitation. 

And yet, their hearts are peaceful. They preferred that mode of life compared to the comfort of a lush temple building. Unfortunately, due to deforestation, this tradition is dying out in Thailand. Still, during my frequent trips to Thailand, I had been fortunate to have met those who have really that mode of life. And they are the most peaceful people that I know. Their lives are light not only in worldly poccessions but empty of thoughts and worries. Life could go any moment (ie being attacked by fierce wild animals or die from illness) and so they make sure of everyday for their striving and practice. 

That I would think would be a marked difference between the life of a homeless ascetic and a homeless lay person. A homeless layperson who sometimes separate from the family due to deep conflicts that could not be resolved may carry a lot of bitterness, resentment, unresolved grief. 

For anyone to be able to live with that kind of uncertainty- unsure the next place to lay down the head at night, it takes a strong degree of courage and letting go. There is nothing left in life to lose and that danger can be everywhere. It may be inconceivable to those of us who never spent a day in our lives sleeping on the floor or a non air con room.

But to those who are living this life, it’s probably not as bad as it looks. 

It is not about whether we are rich or poor, famous or unknown, healthy or sick- it is whether our hearts are contented with what we already have. To quote Dr Dean Ornish, the doctor who have scientifically proven that heart diseases can be reversed by lifestyle and attitude changes:

 Real power is ours already- when we stop giving it away.

Real happiness is ours already- when we stop believing it’s something we have to get outside ourselves.

Real peace is ours already- when we stop disturbing it.

Real freedom is ours already- when we stop limiting ourselves.

 Here’s the list of online articles published in The Star about the homeless in KL:

• Homeless in KL-Scores sleep in parks and five-foot ways in KL
• First census to have a category for people living on the streets
• Many rejected by their family and society
• Labour Dept helps 175 homeless folk find jobs
• Getting up close and personal- JOSHUA FOONG and SHAUN HO took to the streets of Kuala Lumpur for a week to see for themselves what it was like to be homeless.
• NGOs show their care for the homeless by offering free food
• Children who leave elderly parents homeless will be named and shamed

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• Even though the job sucks, give it your best
• From bad boy to successful businessman to a contended salaried worker
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• How to forgive your parents and your incompetent boss
• Do you still want to be a hawker…or are just burnt out from your job?

On the other hand, there are those who are intend on find fault with you, downplay your performance so that you don’t get that bonus or promotion. During appraisal time, they bring up your ‘mistakes’ but only briefly highly your achievements (that is if they highlight at all). 

Over the years, I have worked under various bosses- those who have given me breaks and took it upon themselves to guide me have left a deep impression in me. Till today, I still think of them with gratitude. The strange thing is that, leaders like these tend to get ahead. They grow with the resilience and is often unfazed at the face of adversity. And like the help that they extend to others, they are also given breaks. Today, they have gotten into high and recognized positions. 

Whereas those who are not really doing their jobs properly and downplay others tend to encounter various obstacles and difficulties. If it is not their working life, it happens in their personal lives- at where it hurts the most. 

Years ago,  I used to work under this particular supervisor who I felt is a very kind person. We were in the service line and our calls were often monitored- the score would go into our scorecards. Sometimes we are tired- after taking calls for many hours, it gets exhausting when we get a call relating to a long winded complain. Few times when the supervisor got a particularly bad call, he dropped it and pick on another one. He said, “well, I can always drop this bad call and take another one.” 

But he will not just let us off the hook like that: he would tell us that he heard about that bad call and request that we do not repeat it. He also gave advice on how to handle the situation in future and told us that if we repeat the same mistake, he would not drop that bad call. 

During that period, there was a particularly nasty supervisor who seemed to enjoy picking flaws of some of us. I was unfortunately one of them who was being picked at. She wanted to put in a recommendation to mark me down because I was not ‘visible’, ie I was not active in other activities out of work like organizing the teambuilding, department activities, etc. It was implied that if I continued to be that way, it will affect my scorecard that year. 

That period of my life I was working but was very active at an external Buddhist community. We were bringing in overseas speakers and I spent a lot of my after work hours helping out the committee. I have no interest to get involved in department activities. 

When I brought up this issue to my supervisor then, he told me:

“Yin Teing, most important thing is that you need to do your job well. You main duty is to make sure you help and service the customers. I can see that you are very diligent and spend a lot of your after work time following up on the customers’ cases. These other activities are up to you- if you don’t feel like doing it, then you need not get involved. I understand after 8 hours of taking calls non stop and then having to do follow up later, many people just cannot wait to get out of this building. There is no point that you do a great job in decorating the department but your service is bad to the customers.”

With his assurance, I continued to give the best I could. Eventually, when I assumed more senior position, I followed the footsteps of these good superiors. I learnt to give others a break and at the same time, be firm. 

Whereas as for this supervisor, he eventually left the company and helped a overseas organization set up their call center. He then moved to another huge call center and was working in a senior position there. When I need to call the callcenter to check on something in my account, I would ask if this guy is still with the callcenter. And the staff would usually answer, “yes, he is still with us.”. Then I would say, “please send my regards to him- I used to work under him and he was a very kind boss.” And the staff would agree with me, that indeed, he is really a kind person. 

It is so easy to just look for flaws in others and to mark the staff down based on this mistakes. Or to make a halfhearted attempt to change someone and expect overnight miracles. Changing a person’s character takes time, and lots of skill and patience. If we were to invest time and effort to groom someone, who knows, that person may just end up becoming a somebody, because of us. And he/she would think of us always with gratitude. 

And in life, even when we meet with obstacles and difficulties, we would find people coming to our aid. Or we will find the solutions. And by the very nature of having the intention to bring out the best in people, we are by default more at peace, sleep better and have more friends. That itself, is a reward.

Related Posts:

• Why Not Everyone Chooses to be Workaholic or Performer at Work
• Being mindful when working can increase your performance and job satisfaction
• What to do if you cannot find a job after college
• Overcoming Bullying- in workplace and in life
• From bad boy to successful businessman to a contended salaried worker
• When you are just too burnt out to even smile

For instance, at this blog, you can see that there’s a sidebar content of “More Recent Posts from My Health Blog” and “More Recent Posts from Other Blogs”. Not long after a publish a new post at another blog, it will automatically be populated at my blog’s sidebar. I need not manually link and update the title on my sidebar.

Benefits of installing the RSS Blogroll

After in installing the blogroll, I have find an increased number of traffic brought in by my other blogs. For instance, the traffic for this blog had grown because my health blog was referring traffic to this blog. When visitors  like the topic of some of my blog posts that they have seen via my blog’s sidebar, they will click on the topic to come to the blog.

And not having to manually login and update the new posts myself have been a great relief.

 How to locate the plugin:

1. After you login to Wordpress, go to Plugin> Add New
2. Perform a search by the keyword “RSS Blogroll” by Greg Jackson
3. Install the plugin and activate it at the Plugin section
4. Go to Appearance> Widgets. You will see the RSS Blogroll under the list of “Available Widgets”. Drag it to your blog’s sidebar at the Widgets section

 The widget will look like below:

How to fill up the RSS Blogroll widget:

Title: <enter the title you want- for example, I put in ‘More Posts from My Health Blog’ >

RSS URLs: Get the RSS url for the blog that you want to link to. To get the RSS feed of the url, go to the RSS feed button that you can usually find in most blog. You can put the RSS urls of a few blogs here.

Cache Period: You can put up to any period you want. If the other blogs are not updated often, you can have a longer cache period.

Once you save the changes, the blog recent blog posts from your other blogs or from your favourite blogs will appear on your sidebar widget.

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Some of us may do things like ‘going the extra mile’ in order to impress our bosses and colleagues. The problem comes when no one seemed to appreciate our hard labor and may even end up taking us for granted or throwing even more work along our way. We would end up feeling frustrated, angry, stressed and taken for a ride. That explains why many people are really stressed out in their jobs. 

But it is not unusual to find that two people doing the same job often reacts differently. Same job, same hours but different attitude. One is more relaxed and have high levels of energy by the end of the day. The other person may feel drained, stressed, frustrated at the end of the day and end up releasing their frustration on their family. 

Take for instance some cleaners who are cleaning my office. One of the cleaners had complained to me that the management is really working them up like slaves. You see, there are only about 5 or 6, and due to high turnover, sometimes only 3 or 4 are working in day. They are required to clean many floors in the building- wiping desks, sweeping, vacuuming and mopping- once a day. They also need to empty the wastepaper baskets (there’s a lot of wastepaper baskets) twice a day. Aside from that, a lot of office walls are made of glass. And both sides of the glass must be constantly cleaned. And there’s the walkways and the toilets that require constant cleaning. It’s a lot of hardwork and labor and the pay really sucks- it will not be enough for me to survive on their pay. 

Yet, there’s this particular Indonesian – most of the time, she had to mop the floors. And she would just mop slowly but thoroughly- and she seemed to be focused entirely at the task on hand. She does a good job- the floor is cleaner and she only took at most about a minute or two compared to some of her friends who just did it with a sulking face. At the end of the day when her complaining friend looked drained and tired and was gradually gaining weight, this girl still have energy and is able to smile when she sees us. 

So, it makes a different- from a toilet cleaner, a checkout cashier to a senior executive. The attitude and outlook makes a whole world of difference. If you do your job well, because you give your heart in whatever you do, there’s less effort involved because there’s no negative emotions. And labor of love always have that ‘personal touch’ that stands out- and with it, comes recognition, even when we are not looking for it. 

If we are stuck in what you considered to be a ‘death-end’ job, our attitude towards how we spend that 8 hours or more during weekdays doing it makes a whole world of difference. The term to use is to be mindful in the task we are doing and attempt to block your mind from darting to everywhere else. 

As we are working and you spend time dreaming of that dream job, we will soon find ourselves tired and emotionally drained because we can see the huge gap between where we are and where we want to be. So we would likely do our work half heartedly and with a little resentment. And when our boss receives half hearted work all the time, he/she may criticize us or give us a poor performance review. This further fuels our anger and frustration. We end up complaining and cursing about our work instead of seeing how that discontent was the source of all the unhappiness. 

In other words, being mindful when we are working actually requires less energy and effort once it is cultivated. In the beginning, we may find it hard to keep our mind focused on the task at hand. 

The best way to cultivate mindfulness is through meditation- start with daily short sittings of 5 to 10 minutes in the morning or right before you sleep and slowly progress from there. There are a lot of books out there that teaches relaxation or meditation. In today’s fast paced world, learning to relax and meditate is no longer a luxury- it is now a necessity for our peace of mind. 

It is worth cultivating our mindfulness because once our mind is present at whatever we are doing, we will see improvement in other areas of our lives and our relationship with other people. The reason is because when we are with our family, our minds will learn to really be with them instead of drifting off to that meeting or that business venture we are meaning to start. And people can sense if you are really in the present or if your mind is somewhere else.

Related Posts:

• Overcoming Bullying- in workplace and in life
• When you are just too burnt out to even smile
• How to forgive your parents and your incompetent boss
• Do you still want to be a hawker…or are just burnt out from your job?
• Quit the rat race, but have a day job to pay the bills
• Are you unhappy at work because the job clashes with your personal values?

Consider jobs that are out of your scope of study

You may have a science degree, but if you are unable to find a job as a molecular biologist, chemist or physicist, have you consider jobs in sectors such as customer service or sales? Many companies are constantly looking for staff due to the high turnover rate.

Please don’t underestimate these sectors. You may begin as a front end sales or service that probably required lower qualification than a diploma or degree. But with your academic qualification, you would be able to move further up the ladder once you have developed sufficient job experience and have favorable performance review. From a front-liner, you can gradually climb the corporate ladder and assume managerial and leadership roles. 

Together with many of my former colleagues, we had started off as front-liners. Today, a number of them have moved up to managerial and decision making positions, leading huge teams and drawing huge salaries. If you are ambitious and capable, there is a bright career path awaits you- in industries such as banking, insurance and telecommunications. 

If you don’t try, you’ll never know. Sometimes we tend to make assumptions about ourselves, such as ‘I am not good at servicing’, ‘I hate to sell’, even though we have not really tried doing the thing ourselves. Unknowingly, we box and limit ourselves based on our own perception of who we think we are. People who achieve success beyond their wildest dreams are those who are constantly able to challenge their limitations. 

In life, we need to tell ourselves that ‘we can!’ and not ‘we can’t’. There’s a lot of things we can do if we set our minds to it and is focused in achieving it. 

Volunteering

Years ago, through Buddhist volunteer activities, I got to know a new friend who was just out of the local university. For quite sometime, he had problems finding a job and there was tremendous pressure because he is the eldest child and his family is not really well to-do. He was starting to feel really down. His friend then recommended that he came to help us out. 

When I first met him, he was painfully shy and is not a person of many words. Because the whole bunch of us were around the same age and were local graduates, we did have a lot of fun in the process even though we were involved in very mundane work. We organized a talk from an overseas teacher who was so famous that we have to learn to manage the shoes from people who came to attend the talk. The center, with its usual capacity of just about 100 people would need to accommodate more than double of visitors. On the second floor of a shoplot, we knew it would be a total disaster if few hundred people were trying to look for their scatterred shoes in the narrow stairway. It was then we devised a simple system where we would wrap the shoes in plastic bags and then give up tags- similar to when you leave your bags at the entrance of a store and given a tag. These shoes would be tagged and arranged neatly in an extremely limited space. When the visitors wanted to leave, they would pass back the tag to us and we would return the shoes to them. For a few nights, it was tough work for the three of us- including the guy and me. We were constantly outside the hall, sweating buckets and trying to coordinate everything. Yet, he carried out his job earnestly. 

Within a week, he got a call for an interview (even though he had not been able to get an interview for quite sometime). And within 2 weeks from that event, he landed on the job. From there, he steadily climbed the corporate ladder and for a few years, he continued to help out. 

The same happened to me. After 9 years of working, I took one year off and went travelling. In Thailand, I did a lot of volunteering work- including helping non English speaking kids from rural area learn English. Most veteran in Malaysia would view this as career suicide- because people tend to think that a person who just quit the job and went travelling could be suffering from some serious mental problems. And yet, when I interviewed for my current job, my interviewer (now my current boss) asked me what I was doing in Thailand. When I explained to him, instead of thinking something is wrong with me, he was instead impressed. The next day, he called me and offered me the job. And it turned out, he has been a good boss- because he is the type of person who understands that life’s about living it the way that brings out the best of your abilities and to keep an open mind. The kind of unconventional boss that is suited to my unconventional temperaments. 

I am not saying that miracles will happen when you volunteer. But at the very least, when we help others, often the person who benefits the most is us. The act of giving have a very nurturing effect on our hearts. If we are feeling down, we would feel better- and the overall change in our expression and positive energy would have a positive influence in our interviewer.

All the best, and remember, whatever you do, don’t allow yourself to lose your optimism. 

Some past articles I have written on this that may help:

• Article Series on Holiday/Summer Jobs for Students/Teenagers
•  How to Build Up a Passive Income Stream from Young
• Why holiday/summer jobs can give you a clear insight of what you want to be

Related Posts:

• What we can learn from Eli Stone
• How to know what your dreams are and pursue them
• Finding the courage to pursue your dreams
• Should you quit your job to pursue your dreams?
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• Do you still want to be a hawker…or are just burnt out from your job?

TO ALL PETS OWNER WHO VISIT AND LIKE TO COMPLAIN ABOUT OUR PETS:

1. They live here. You don’t.
2. If you don’t want their hair on your clothes, stay off the furniture. That’s why they call it ‘fur’-niture
3. I like my pets a lot better than I like most people. To me, they are adopted sons/daughters who are short, hairy, walk on all fours and don’t speak clearly.
Remember, dogs and cats are better than kids because they:

1. Eat less
2. Don’t ask for money all the time
3. Are easier to train
4. Normally come when called
5. Never ask to drive the car
6. Don’t hang out with drug-using people
7. Don’t smoke or drink
8. Don’t want to wear your clothes
9. Don’t have to buy the latest fashions
10. Don’t need a gazillion dollars for college
11. If they get pregnant, you can sell their children.

A cute doggie in Ngao, Thailand

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But the fact is, bullies are just insecure and fearful people who try to hide behind a fierce and tough mask. Usually they come from an environment of lack- whether it is due to lack of material wealth where they had to fight their way for, and/or due to lack of love (divorcing parents, busy parents with no time for them, etc). Deep down, they crave for attention, love and acceptance like everyone else. And they try to obtain it through their own misguided ways by raising their voice, belittling others or pushing others around- physically or emotionally. 

Not all bullies appear physically strong and ready for physical fights. They can come in any form and with slightly different modus operandi. They can be the manager with the huge beer belly who belittles you in meetings and coerce other managers to joint in- and the others, out of fear for their ricebowl had no choice but to get involved. 

The worst thing you can do when you find yourself being bullied or being put down repeatedly is to keep quiet and bear with it. Talking and cursing about the person with your friends and family helps only to a certain extend. It does not solve your problem but at least can help you let go of some of the pressure. 

It is equally unfortunate that studies of mind-body relationship had shown that people who allowed themselves to be bullied throughout their lives are more susceptible to develop cancer. Therefore, if you find that bullies repeatedly enter your life, you have to learn to deal with it head on- complaining to your friends about it will not solve your problems.

Being assertive and stand up for yourself

You must learn to be more assertive and stand up to yourself. Being assertive does not mean that you are aggressive. When you are assertive, you have the courage to look the bully straight in the eye and tell him/her that the request is not reasonable, and the reasons why you are not able to do it. Make sure you keep your cool and don’t lose your temper- because if you lose your temper, you lose the battle. 

Before you can do that, you need to address your worst fears logically. You could have been fearful that by standing up to yourself, you would be either fired or managed out. Due to legal implications, most companies will not fire an employee suddenly but there’s a way of making a ‘targeted’ employee’s life so miserable that he/she would usually resign voluntarily. 

What you need to do is really sit down in a quiet place in your home and go through the possible worst case scenarios and your strategies of dealing with them: 

Should you be fired from your job, what other alternatives do you have?

Do you have a second income or enough savings to live on while looking for another job?

Do you always wanted to be an entrepreneur, a freelancer, open your own business, etc but never got around to do it? Well, perhaps a kick in the butt by being managed out would all you need to take that leap.

Once you put all these little demons that are lurking in the fringes of your mind to rest, it’s time to focus your attention with dealing with the bully. Tell yourself, there’s nothing to fear. 

Usually, the bully may be shocked and then resort to turning everyone else against you through slander and intentionally twisting your words. 

You can attempt to justify with others but if no one’s believing you, then give it a little time for the whole thing to die down naturally. Things get worse if you give it strength through defending and justifying yourself. If you are calm, it’s hard for the issue to be prolonged because it takes 2 hands to clap. And, if no one believes you, it’s okay to be alone- after all, what’s the worth of selling part of your soul and dignity just to please those who are not worth pleasing.

In no time, the next office drama will catch other people’s attention. After all, life does not revolve around us- and it’s a fact that most people are more self absorbed in themselves than in others. 

Therefore, you must be strong and resilient when faced with this situation. If you do not have these qualities, this situation could be a potential catalyst that pushes you to develop these qualities. 

Once you do it a few times, the bully would back down. Bullies always search for an easy target- a potential victim that has “please bully me and make me feel unworthy!” written all over the forehead. If you are not that person, and display no fear (at least on the surface), you would, in turn make the bully fearful. 

After all, deep down inside, bullies have lots of fear and insecurities in them.

If you understand this, you may even begin to feel genuinely sorry for them. These people are so misguided and their hearts had hardened so much that they had to resort to such degrading tactics to get what they thought they want. Some of them actually do develop heart problems- an indicative that they’re so disconnected with themselves (I am not saying that all people with heart blockages are like that- but some are due to that). 

When you genuinely have compassion and acceptance for others, your heart would soften- and it would show in your facial expression, behavior and speech. Who knows, with time, you can also begin to touch that bully’s heart and turn him/her into your friend. 

Personal experience

Before you start to tell me that it’s not possible, I want to let you know that the above is shared from my own personal experience. A bully did come into my life- and I was pushed into a corner. I had to deal with skill and in the proccess, I learn to overcome some limitations in myself. 

Initially I was so angry with her that I gave her back the same treatment as she gave to me. The situation became very hostile.

I am not sure why, but one day I sensed the deep suffering and self hatred that she had in her heart. Not being fortunate to have good mentors and sufficient guidance in her life, this poor but extremely intelligent girl had landed herself in the life condition that she is in now. Life is totally not the way she had wanted- therefore the bullying others seemed to be the only way she could release that frustration inside. 

Suddenly, instead of being angry, I felt really sorry for her- and I told myself, we cannot change the world, but we can change how we respond to them. I also counted my blessings because I know that without sufficient guidance and mentors appearing in my life, I would end up many times worse than her. So I decided to stop reacting to her anger and started to treat her with more kindness.  And I also don’t expect anything in return from her.

It had not been easy- in doing that, I pushed my own limits. I was kind but firm.  You need to constantly balance being kind but not being a pushover. When need be, you must be able to say “no” to an unreasonable request.  Once you accomodate, you have to be prepare to do it all the time- so it’s better to politely decline something that you don’t want to do.

I told myself, I’ve learned so much about kindness and compassion- it’s time to practice on hostile and people that we dislike. I also learned to focus on her good points instead of bad points.

Then a strange thing happened- when I responded with kindness, it touches her heart after a while (that proves that everyone of us has some form of goodness in our hearts- if not, we’ll be long dead). Eventually that brought up positive qualities that actually she’d always had, but were suppressed due to her environment. This did not happen overnight- it took months.

Today, this person has become my friend- even though not a close friend but we are on very friendly terms. I am thankful that our paths crossed- because had it not been for me, I would not have been able to overcome my fears, know when I need to stand up for myself and have more compassion towards others (I had no problem being nice to those I like but it is through her that I could find in my heart to forgive and be kind to the hostile and back stabbers).

Endnote:

Here’s a postcard that is posted on the blog Postsecret.com- it states the remorse felt by a woman who used to bully someone else when she was young:

Note: PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people
mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.

Definition of trichotillomania as per Wikipedia:

Trichotillomania (TTM, also known as trichotillosis,[1] or more commonly as trich) is defined as “hair loss from a patient’s repetitive self-pulling of hair”[2] and is characterized by the repeated urge to pull out scalp hair, eyelashes, facial hair, nose hair, pubic hair, eyebrows or other body hair, sometimes resulting in noticeable bald patches.

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As time pass by, these ‘useful’ articles quickly work themselves up to a little nasty stack in the corner. Effectively, they become an eye-sore and when we want to look up some articles, we are confronted by a huge collection of paper that are fast turning yellow. 

Newspaper clippings that I was saving for later

Stacked newspaper becomes clutter and is not a conductive item in your living space. Reason being is that they tend to attract dust, some insects, smell and well…stagnant and negative energy. I have even tried to cut them out and stick them to printed business prospectus- but after a while, they have a stale smell.

Even though you do not believe in feng shui or positive energies, just ask yourself, do you feel re-energized looking at that stack of paper each time? 

Untidiness and disorganized objects create chaos- and when we look at them, somehow it makes our mind more muddled and less confused. So I would like to make a suggestion for those of you who feel you must have some kind of record to store expired newspaper articles:

Start a blog and record it

Most major newspaper have online versions that you can google and refer back to them again. I read The Star, the Malaysian local paper and have no problem finding the online versions- except for the few instances when there’re not there. 

Last month, I decided to clear out the stacks of newspaper that I have been keeping for a while. I did the following:

1. Logon to Blogger.com and create a new blog called http://resource-ideas.blogspot.com/
2. Take out each stack of my articles, and google them- usually type the paper name and the first few lines or the title or article- and they usually appear in the search results
3. Put into neat little categories- you may add a few lines to briefly explain the article to freshen your memories
4. As the title got longer, you may create sub-titles of your favourite topics under different posts. So about once a week or a month, you can reupdate the blog with new entries and delete old ones.

Neat right? I cleared piles of newspaper articles that way. I actually felt mentally lighter and even a little victorious after getting rid of the pile that had became everyone’s eyesore.

You can also use the blog to record online articles that you came across while surfing the net. With neat little categories, it makes it much easier to search for items that you want. 

Hope this help in the battle against clutter and a more paperless living.

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