HiFriends! Happy New Year!
Ihope that the year started great for all of you. For me, yes it did! I had agreat time in India with my family and friends and now I am back in Hong Kong,just in time to celebrate the Chinese New Year!
Andas the first month of the new year is coming to an end, I tried to retrospectthis morning if anything had happened worth noting down here. If I haddiscovered some pearls of wisdom to share with you all. And I realized that Ihad in fact understood a very important point.
Totell you this point, I will start with a short story which I had read in the SpeakingTree section of The Times of India newspaper. The story goes like this. A wiseman once told a joke to a group of people. Everyone was amused and laughed alot and appreciated the humour. After some time, he narrated this joke again.This time, people were slightly less amused and just smiled. He repeated thejoke the third time and nobody gave a reaction. When he tried telling the samejoke again for the fourth time, people got irritated. Someone shouted at thewise man asking why was he repeating the same joke again and again. The manreplied, "If repeating a joke ceases to amuse after a few times, then howdo we carry on with repeated remembrance of painful stories?"
Asper my last post, when I was noting my experiences of the last year and thedreams and challenges for the coming year, I was reminded of some of the sadmemories and unhappy incidents from my past. I realized that I had been carrying them with mesince many years and they had only accumulated and become a huge emotionalbaggage affecting my present and future. This baggage had only hurt me and givenme more pain with time. Many of us have been carrying the weight of theseunnecessary painful memories since ages. A lengthy warm discussion with my mum mademe see that it was time to let go, time to be free from this baggage. Time tobe free from fear, anger, hurt, resentment, guilt and all kinds of negativeemotions from the past.
Henceas the Chinese celebrate their New Year with fireworks today, and the worldrejoices with them, let us all decide to leave something behind in 2011 andstart the journey of 2012 afresh! Lets free the diaries of our mind and heart andfill them with fresh happy chapters. You might say that this is not easy. I agree. Iwish that the human genius would invent some device to retain only selectivememories in our brain. However until that happened, we would need to do itmanually. And this how I did it:
1. Free from Anger - Try to makeyourself free from all the anger, resentment, or hatred that you might havecarried for many different people since childhood. You are only doing a favourto yourself by letting go of these feelings towards them. Forgive them. I amnot asking you to make them your best friends. But rise to a level where it nolonger affects you. The moment is over. Now it is time to move on.
2.Free from Guilt - Quite often welife we blame ourselves for things which happened in our lives or in the livesof our loved ones. However, don't forget that we do not have control over everything.So free yourself from guilt. If you know you made a mistake, try to redeem it.But do not spoil what you can do today or tomorrow because of one wrong thingyou did yesterday.
3.Free from regret - Time machinesonly existed in fiction and hence there is no way we are going to be able to goback and change our decisions, our situations, our mistakes. Hence, believethat everything happened for a reason and learn from them. Live in the momentsof present and think of the dreams of future. Try not to regret the past.
4.Believe in yourself - Believe inyourself and believe in the beauty of your present and future. Just becausesomething happened once in the past or someone told you something, it does notbecome a reality. Trust yourself.
Ihad read when I was a kid, that every story has two parts. A beginning and anend. If you didn't like the beginning you could give it a beautiful end. Sodon't remain stuck on the beginnings which didn't start well.
I have decided togive some fresh endings in the year 2012. I have decided to forget and toforgive. All the best to you too!
KungHei Fat Choy