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Break Outside your Comfort Zone

comfort zone

When you change nothing, nothing changes.  When life reaches a point where every day is like the day before, things get comfortable.  You know what is expected from you, what you expect from people, and what you will achieve that day.  But in the long run, your achievements will be minimal in relation to the number of days you lived.

So why wait for the change to happen when the factor that is needed is you.  You need to change to enforce change.  You need to do things differently to get higher results or, at least, something else.  Yes, we are all guilty of taking the back seat in our lives but we shouldn’t settle because there are many things out there that can be achieved.

Things you wanted to do before you turned 30 shouldn’t be a list thrown away.  Even though 15 year old you is only living in the past, you owe him/her some respect towards their desires; he/she is still a part of you.  When change happens, everything happens.

Your comfort zone is like your home.  You feel comfortable in it and you stop growing.  You stop learning, and you stop expanding your horizon.  The world is continuously changing and people who follow these trends and accept these changes are no longer prisoners of their fear.  Fear of change and fear of growth.

But how can you be the factor that induces this growth?  Takes you from one phase in life to another?  First, you need to accept the challenge and know your strengths and weaknesses.  You need to identify what you want done, face your biggest fear, your demons, head on.  You need to take one step outside your comfort zone.  Feel uncomfortable: it won’t kill you.

There are many cliche sayings such as “think outside the box” and “there is no box” and “be the change you want to see in the world,” but in my opinion, the best is “There is no spoon”.  Yes, there is no spoon because the boundaries and your fear is all in your head.  For example, let’s assume I am afraid to present in front of a big group.  It’s not an impossible task; many people are capable of doing it and yet my speech starts to slur and I feel like I’m having a nervous breakdown.  Now, this contains me in a little bit, taking away possibilities and choices, and reduces my skills by one skill.  Imagine that this goes on to include more skills: networking, socializing, report writing, too scared to watch movies that have to do with death, too scared to read books that have more than 300 pages.  These are all restrictions on ME.  I am actively putting myself in jail and making it smaller by these ridiculous constraints that nobody placed but myself.

So why do it?

Because it’s too scary?

Well, outside is where the magic happens.  Where possibilities are infinite and everything is within reach.  Stepping outside your comfort zone may be hard to start, but after a few steps and familiarizing yourself with your new surroundings, you have a new bigger comfort zone.  One that may have included one thing you consider “magic.”  And you take another step out, and you grow your comfort zone, thereby including more magic in your life.

Stepping outside your comfort zone doesn’t necessarily mean meeting new people, it could mean doing something different.  Skiing, skateboarding, traveling, meditating, taking a journey inwards, taking a journey outwards, reading a new genre, it doesn’t matter.  It only matters that you made the effort to change your days and understand that perception is everything.  You are the only one binding you with unnecessary limits in a place where there are no limits.

Think.  Step outside.  Grow.  Find your magic.  And remember, there is no spoon.

photo_movieMatrix-quoteSpoon

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Wabi Sabi: The Beauty of Imperfection

ea62da77856181cf02ae1e2027f16b79

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but when many eyes are watching you, the definition of beauty changes from one person to the next.  Nowadays, we are being watched and judged by the way we look, how we present ourselves, and who we know.  When society provides us with the mold we should abide by, what is our net worth as individuals?

With the advancements in medicine and technology, we could be faced with the choice of having a genetically enhanced designer baby free of ailments and closer to perfection than we ever will be.  (Ted talks: Paul Knoepfler: The ethical dilemma of designer babies – TED.com)  My question is, however, what kind of life would a designer baby have?  A child, and later on an adult, who can do things easily, doesn’t feel the need for competition because he/she is the best anyway, looks amazing, and doesn’t have to put up with acne, lives an empty life.  Some people might say that yes, this is the life they want for their child and why not give them a step up in life while they can?  If I had to choose, I’d rather not.

We meet people who have great skin, who have great hair, and who are more talented than we ever dream to be but it does not make us any less.  In a life filled with perfect people there will be nothing to do.  No feelings to feel, no issues to solve, and the easy life will be boring.

An empty life.

Beauty in life comes from our imperfections.  Our uniqueness makes us who we are.  Our different levels of talent, our different skill set, our different backgrounds, merge to an ocean of possibilities.  Possibilities of meeting the right person, making friends, fighting with someone who doesn’t believe in what we do.  Differences in people are what makes life what it it.

A life that is meant to be lived.

Heartbreaks make the heart beat stronger… scars make us who we are.  Subjecting ourselves to the confusion of not knowing, of searching in the oblivion for a clue as to who we are and what is our purpose in life gives life meaning.

Our learning curves when we were babies are beautiful.  Watching a six month old try to talk to beautiful.  A preschooler not knowing the difference between the colors orange and red is beautiful.  A seven year old finally understanding the concept of fractions is mind blowing.  The minute our brains battle to understand and conceptualize life around us makes us humans who we are: knowledge seekers.

Emotions of love, pain, pride, despair all contribute to the journey of self discovery.  The uniqueness of each person, the imperfections, the not too straight nose, the frizzy hair, the gap in the front teeth all make us unique… and from this uniqueness, from this diversity emerges the beauty of humankind.  The beauty of life and its many quests inwards and forward towards our end.

Wabi Sabi: (Japanese) a way of living that focuses on finding beauty within the imperfections of life and accepting peacefully the natural cycle of growth and decay.

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In Your Mind, How Old Are You?

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Age is nothing but a number.

A number that defines the days we spent living in the world.  A number that defines where we are, or should be, in our lives and maturity levels.  A number that defines how we should think, act, and be.  A number that restricts our being into being what it should and shouldn’t be.

A number.

Some people perceive themselves younger.  Some believe their minds are older, probably even think they are wiser.  Born wise, they say.  But what ages us?  How many years have we spent not learning, not living, and not growing where the only difference is the number of candles on our cake.  So if we didn’t grow, how can the number go forward?  And if we forget and change our perspectives, why doesn’t the number turn back?

Back in time to what was.

But can you un-see what was seen?  Can you unlearn what was learnt?  Can you spare yourself the heartbreak and the major lesson that you still hold onto.  The lesson that gained you ten years or more.

When a person chooses to live shut away from people, does he grow?  When time ticks and nothing happens, does time proceed or does it stop?  When we are still, why does time pass us by?

In our minds, the age we see ourselves is the age that mattered most to us.  The time we peaked (and hopefully we shall peak again), but in the meantime, our memories from that age live on, so technically, if you see yourself as an 18 year old and can swear by the moon and the stars in the sky (I swear- Boys2men), then you are living in that era.  In that age.

Time should not pass.

In the mirror, do you see who you are or do you think you see what is?  Do you exist now or then?  And if time has passed, shouldn’t you have stayed with time?

Living in the past is never the best place to live, but to question every decision made helps clear your way forward.  Nostalgia for what was should fuel what is and what should be.

But when your mind and soul are living in a different era, how can you pull yourself forward?  How can you pull yourself back to your age?

Age is nothing but a number.

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رسالة إلى زوجي الشرقي المتحضّر

eyes

رسالة إلى زوجي الشرقي المتحضّر

زوجي العزيز

لا تسيء الظن بي وتحسبني جاهلة، فأنا لست بجاهلة.  تربيّت في منزل محافظ، نعم، ولكن ذلك لا يعني بأني على جهل بالدنيا وأمورها.  فقد انتهى زمن أن تكون الزوجة تمثال يخرج من منزل والدها ليزيّن به الرجل مملكته.  لا، انتهى زمن الماضي الجميل، كما تحب أن تردد، وها نحن في زمن تستطيع فيه المرأة أن تستقل بذاتها

لا تظن بأني لا أعلم أين تذهب وماذا تقول، ومع من تجلس، فأنا أسكت بمزاجي

زوجي الشرقي المتحضر

كفاك العيش بازدواجية، تجلس في ندوات وورش عمل للتطوير من ذاتك وقدراتك وأنت تخالط النساء وما أن تعود إلى المنزل لا تتذكر الكلام البسيط والعادي الذي تناولته معهن وتفتعل معي أي شجار لأن كبريائك الذكوري الشرقي لا يتخيل أن أكون، أنا، زوجتك، في مثل هذا الموقف

كفاك العيش بازدواجية، تناقش مواضيع المرأة وحريتها الشخصية وعقليتك المنفتحة نحو اختيار المرأة لشريك حياتها، وملابسها، وصديقاتها ، وتنسى كيف وقفت يوما لتختار “ملابسي” وصديقاتي و”زوج ابنتي المستقبلي”

زوجي الشرقي المتحضر

أراك منهمك في الشؤون الدولية ناسيا شؤون عائلتك

أراك تتهجم على طريقة تربية البعض لأولادهم وخطورة الضرب وأنت لا تجلس مع أبنائك، كأن ما تفعله أقل قسوة من الضرب

زوجي الشرقي المتحضر

لا تنسى بأن كما لك حقوق فعليك واجبات

وكما تعلم

فزمن ان تكون فيه النسوة اكسسوار قد انتهى وأنا ارى الكثير ممن اتخذن الرجل اكسسوار لحياتهن

فكما أنك شرقي متحضر تنسى معدنك الشرقي الأصيل فأنا على أتم استعداد أن أنسى معدني الشرقي الأصيل وأريك شخصيتي الجديدة: زوجتك الشرقية المتحضرة جدا جدا جدا

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Fragile- Handle with Care

aging-central

We humans are more fragile than we think.  We believe  the world is ours to conquer, that the human race was able to evolve over time and is now in control of the world.  The human race was able to land on the moon, discover nuclear energy, find cures for many sicknesses, and converse with other human being on a different continent with a simple call.  We humans believe that the world is in our hands but what we fail to consider is that all the accomplishments done by humans and those which we are so proud of are a summation of many years and many steps and many mistakes.

Yes, people put goals and strive for excellence.  Everyone wants the best for themselves and their loved ones and thus we are working hard to accomplish our dreams.  We wake up everyday thinking of a game plan: what needs to be done, who needs to be where, and who will be benched for the first few hours.  Sometimes, we bench our heart alongside the many feelings that proved time and again that they just get in the way.  So we run alongside our brains with the goal in mind forgetting our heart benched for a bit too long.

And yet we forget that it takes one wrong step and it could all be over.  Life as we know it can take a different route towards one we don’t recognize as our own.  The problem with “givens” in our life is that there are no givens.  In computer programming, we make sure that “if sun rises and the alarm clock rings at 7 a.m., we wake up.”  Life is not as easy as a computer program.  Many people had the sun rise and the alarm ring at 7 a.m. but woke up different.  Woke up with a headache, woke up with a sprained neck, woke up an hour earlier, and some never woke up.

It takes a small spike in the blood pressure to change things.  It takes a small aneurysm, a growing mass we never knew was growing, or a simple quitting by the old ticker.  A clot in the wrong place, a sneeze in the wrong time, or a handshake filled with a virus.  We are too fragile to take life for granted.

There are no guarantees.

No reason to take your days for granted.

Everyday is a blessing.

 

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Gratitude- Happy New Year

gratitude

Happy New Year!!

With the beginning of the new year, resolutions take an interesting place in our lives.  People who have not considered goals for the past 11 months have typed up or wrote on a piece of paper, using great penmanship, their goals.  I have also typed up different lists in previous years but this year, I thought I would approach the new year differently.

In my mind, I know what I want.  I know what I’m aiming towards, and I know what matters to me.  I know my shortcomings, I know my strengths, and I know the people I’d like to keep in my life and those I would rather not have around.

So it’s the first day of the new year and I haven’t written my resolutions, didn’t update my vision board, and didn’t set deadlines for weight loss and schedules for play dates.  I would rather spend the first day in gratitude.

This may seem to you as a very cheeky post as many people are so keen on starting something new, new challenges and new hope, whereas here I am trying to pull them back, pressing the break, and asking them to breathe.

Yes, breathe.

Breathe in the air.  Feel the air around you, you are alive.  You are alive and conscious.  You are in this world aware of what is going on, that’s something.

Gratitude.

Gratitude for being alive and well.  Gratitude for a good year, gratitude for not having lost anyone this year.  Gratitude for having my parents and seeing them everyday.  Gratitude for two healthy boys, gratitude for a loving husband, gratitude for wonderful siblings.

Gratitude.

Gratitude for not living in a war zone.  Having a safe place to sleep and not having to worry about starving.  Gratitude for running water.  Gratitude for all my accomplishments.  Gratitude for being able to wake up, move my arms and legs.  Gratitude for the ability to take a deep breath and gratitude towards having the ability to think.  Gratitude for all the days I spent, however they were, in this life.

Every day is a blessing.

Thank you, Lord, for a great year.

footprints-in-the-sand

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Too Much on YOUR Plate?

multitasking

A couple of weeks ago I met a young ambitious gentleman who was feeling anxious about starting a new job and complaining about how the 6 days a week/8 hours a day job will take him away from his passion in writing.  Take a moment to digest this: the 48 hour week will take him away from his passion.  Um, have you met mothers?

Mothers, God bless their souls, have the ability to juggle a million things a day.  They must be on call all day, everyday, regardless of what they are doing or what they would like to be doing.  They must be available for any kind of emergency ranging from a sudden hunger pang at 4 a.m. to a temper tantrum in the middle of a family gathering.  On call ALL the time.  So when a mother chooses to spend the last few hours of her day in exercising, reading, chatting with her friends, staring into nothingness, and living her life just a little bit then she is compromising actual sleep time for the sake of life.  Please let her do what she wants.

Life, as you know it, is different with mothers.

I read once that a mother is living proof that human beings don’t need actual sleep and can live on coffee.  I cannot be held accountable for the seriousness of this point but it makes sense to me.  It all comes down to choice:  would you rather sleep or would you rather feel like a person?

You see, regardless of common belief, mothers are normal human beings with hopes and dreams.  They realize that they should exercise, have friends, and go out but sometimes they are not in a position to do so.  Sometimes, life has to be put on hold for a couple of years to enable the caring of a baby and thus ensure the continuity of humankind.  Yes, I am trying to sugarcoat the first few months of a baby’s life just to reassure myself that there is light at the end of the tunnel and honestly, I have seen it before.  It takes almost a year for the phoenix to raise from the ashes.

But it’s that first year that tests what a woman is made of.  How agile she is, what are her goals in life, how she thinks children must be raised, and what comes first in her list of priorities.  Many women choose to put themselves first and foremost and I have the greatest respect for them because I believe in the freedom of choice.  Do I support it?  Does it matter?  I’ve heard a blogger I highly respect repeat that women need to stop putting each other down when it comes to motherhood because each and everyone of us is doing her best as she sees fitting to her lifestyle.  I would really like to believe that all women love their children regardless of how naive it makes me sound.  Knowing that the most sincere and pure kind of love is emitted from every mother is a very calming notion and I choose to cherish it with all my heart.  (tangent, I know).

Back to the chaos behind the love and the background mechanisms working to maintain the family life.  Let’s compare a man’s morning and a mother’s morning.

Man

It’s 7 a.m. and the man is fast asleep.  He hears the soft jingle of the alarm from yonder and quietly opens his eyes, his hand reaches for his phone and automatically snoozes the alarm, getting extra minutes of sleep after deciding that he is too tired from the day before.

Mother

It’s 6 a.m., there is no alarm clock because the mother is relying on her biological clock and/or her children to wake her up.  She wakes up on a wailing child ranting about something that just doesn’t make sense.  The mother wishes to put the child on “snooze” but sadly children don’t come with a snooze button.  So the mother burpees her way out of bed to quiet the baby down.  In the meantime, all other children wake up and start talking at the same time.  Noise takes its form of insanity and the woman tries hard to maintain a smile on her face.

Mothers fight through the pain of sleeplessness, the pain of not being appreciated, and the pain of not knowing when her next shower is.  This is not a joke, showers genuinely make people feel better.  They fight through the screams, fight through not being respected and listened to, and fight through the physical exhaustion.  True fighters, mothers still manage to fill their plate with ways to prove herself independent and amazing to act as a role model for her children.  In the 24 hours a day, mothers manage to cram extra hours to give even more to her family.

So with the nearing of a new year, all mothers will consciously decide to take it easy while their subconsciousness will stand proud, chest puffed and ready for more responsibilities, more obligations, and more love.

Grabbing life by the horns.

Bring it on.

giphy

 

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Family Matters

o-addams-family-facebook

Growing up, I was fortunate to be around my cousins.  Yes, it was great sharing those wacky years where we made up names for scary monsters and scary things that didn’t exist.  It was also great losing our minds and acting all silly.  Yes, I am glad to say that Royal Rumble was an expected game regardless of our gender and acting out dares almost always ended up in tears.  I went through times when I felt out of place and unwanted and at other times, I felt adored and looked up to.  Sitting down with my cousins and talking about the good’ol’days always warms our hearts.  These are the cousins from my mother’s side of the family.

Now my cousins from my father’s side are a different story.  Back when I was young and arrogant, I didn’t think that these cousins mattered.  In fact, I didn’t even know who they were if I were to meet them in the street.  I know that there were ties once as I have some vague memories of running around in one of my uncle’s house and a video taping of other cousins playing around in our house.  After that, we seemed to have lost touch.  Now that I’m older and a bit more humble, I started seeing things different.  It all started when my father decided to have a small get together.  I was very intrigued because, you know, they’re my family.  I looked forward to the event and was shocked to see one of our relatives look very very very similar to my sister.  Hmm… I thought to myself, this is probably the “blood” they’re referring to in “blood is thicker than water.”  It was one of the greatest days in my life: a resurrection of something I never knew existed and a realization that these cousins, too, are a part of who I am.

What’s ironic, though, is that even though I grew up with cousins from my mother’s side, the similarities between my cousins (dad’s side) and I are more.  Have I drifted away from how I was raised or have I come home to who I really am.

Another situation that made me realize that I didn’t need to know my cousins to feel their pain was when one of them lost her spouse.  It was tragic and sudden.  To see my cousin (who had to be pointed out to me, I dare say) devastated and crying tore me to pieces.  I would have given anything to change this unfortunate fate.  I held her and cried.  Years later I saw her with her sisters.  By the end of the visit, I had to ask which one was the cousin who lost her husband.  It’s so sad that in all these years I didn’t contact her.  But, blood is thicker than water and I pray for her piece of mind.

Regardless of who our family is, family matters.  Whether it’s genetics or growing up with your family that ties the bonds, I am proud to say that I am honored to have such great cousins.  Cousins that I share stories of a “big green eye walking,” “picking jasmines and meeting the dreaded cat,” “ducky go down the hooooole” and all the jokes from Friends.  And cousins that look like me and surprisingly act like me although we’ve been raised differently.

Addams Family Theme Song

They’re creepy and they’re kooky

Mysterious and spooky

they’re all together ooky

the Addams Family.

 

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