Phobia. Claustrophobia, thanatosphobia, agorophobia,arachnophobia etc. Do you know of many people with a phobia? I have met quite a few and given therapy successfully to them to. However I have to assure you all that not all of your fears can be considered phobic. A phobia is an irrational, intense, persistent fear of certain situations, activities, things, or people and it is beyond the control of the person. Many people mistake their fears for phobias.

Is there a need for fear? Fear is a natural defense mechanism in all of us that helps in our survival by preventing pain or the threat of danger . For example the fear of a tiger will prevent us from walking towards the tiger and risk getting mawed. Fear is a natural part of us and having fears is a very normal thing. We all have our qwerks; I used to fear really tight places due to my size( tight places were bearable but not comfortable) and eating bananas because I found worms in a banana I was eating when I was 6. However, even with the fears that I had, with a bit more caution, I could enter tight places and small rooms and I could ensure my bananas were always clean of worms. A fear is just a warning system.

How does it become a phobia then? Well to put it in another way, our fear is like a little tiger cub inside our minds. Have you seen a tiger cub? It’s absolutely adorable. Its claws can still scratch you if you are not careful, but other than that it is absolutely cute and cuddly. Each time we get the emotion of fear from a thought or an impending event and we react to that emotion by giving in to it, it is the same as throwing a slice of meat to the little tiger cub and feeding it. When I mean giving into your fear it would be like how a person who is afraid of lizards enters a room with a lizard on the wall. That person’s mind would think: The lizard is going to get me. His choice of actions would be: 1) Ignore the thought, 2) Get out of the room quick! . Well choice number 2) would be giving into the fear. Fear grows on fear. Each time we feed our little tiger cub, it grows. And on one fine day the tiger cub will grow into a fierce tiger inside us. From this time on, each time we see the triggers for our fear, it’s like getting clawed by the huge tiger in our mind; We just breakdown.

How then do we deal with it? There are many ways to do it but in my opinion, the most permanent way is to starve the tiger. Stop feeding it. Let is starve and shrink back into the cute cuddly size that it once was. We all learn through positive experience. I know that a lizard will not harm me if I watch my tv. What can it do? Bite a chip off my fingernail? Nonsense. Accept the fact that our fear is irrational and gently ignore it. By starving our fears, they will gradually shrink. Each time you do not give into your fear and realize that nothing bad happens when you do, you are helping to rid yourself of the fear. Just take a deep breath, close your eyes and think happy thoughts!

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Hello every body, it’s been a while since I last wrote; I’ve been busy with the renovations at my clinic. Anyways, I was walking around in the malls last week when I came across this piece of writing in a joke store. It might make sense to some while irritate others, either way, I think its rather meaningful:

A boy once asked his teacher what is love. The teacher gave it much thought and he finally replied: “Go to the corn field behind the school and pluck me the largest corn you can find before I give you a reply. There is a catch however, you cannot turn back and pluck the one those that you have past.”

The boy ran out into the cornfield. Upon entering the field, he saw a large ear of corn. As he was about to pluck it, he thought that since the first corn was this large, it was very possible that there could be larger corns inside the field. So he entered the corn field.

An hour later, the boy returned to the teacher. He looked up at the teacher in dismay for he returned empty handed. The teacher smiled and replied, “Love is just like this. You enter into the field thinking that you can always find a larger ear of corn but when you moved on, you realized that the corn you walked past was still larger. Unfortunately for you, just as in life, you can never go back to pick that corn.”

Food for thought for some of us (:

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This story wasn’t written by me. It was written by a very dear friend of mine. With his permission, I am placing this essay on my blog to share with all of you. Stories are told to convey a message. It could be as simple as in the story of the boy who cried wolf, or as deep as it is in this one. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Luke, great work you have (:

The Stolen Freedom of the Colourful Lorikeet
By: Lukeno Ribeiro Alkatiri
This piece is dedicated to my dear niece Kaiya Genevieve
- Kaiya:”Uncle Luke. Why can’t the bird fly?”
- Me: “Because someone cut off the tips of its wings.”

Tell me. Have you seen the caged bird? No, not just any bird. The bird. The lorikeet. Have you seen the caged lorikeet? The red and yellow lorikeet. with white rings around its black eyes?

I saw it once. I could tell that it was young bird. Still trying to dominate the wind and master the skill that identifies its gorgeousness. Like most birds that leave the nest for the first time, the graceful lorikeet gained its independence. It learned to guarantee its survival by its own means. It tasted freedom, even if it was just for a little while. And I fell in love. I fell in love with the colourful lorikeet.

I heard that the bird was caught. I could not believe it. “They caught it. The men suppose to protect it. They caught it and then they sold it”- my friends told me. It seems that they sold it to someone who was willing to pay a “fair” amount for it. He put the lorikeet in a cage. A big cage they said. So that it does not feel imprisoned. Ironic, isn’t it? An irony emphasised by his decision to cut them off. HE CUT OFF THE TIPS OF THE LORIKEET’S WINGS, just to be sure that the bird would not fly away.

He feeds it every now and then. “So that the bird does not die on me”- he says. He hangs the cage where everyone that visits him can see it. So that the humiliated animal, forced to contribute to arrogant pride of his new master, becomes the topic of a conversation as the owner shows off the grace of his latest achievement. He shows off the beauty of a bird that is not allowed to take advantage of one of nature’s most unique gifts – the ability to fly.

I have been looking for it. The lorikeet I fell in love with. I have been looking for it every day. They say the bird is near the place where we live but very far from where it belongs. At night, sometimes I can hear it. I can hear the sad bird sing. The bird sings either desperately or about its desperation. For what other reasons would a beautiful and colourful bird sing in the middle of the night? I think it sings so that I can find it. Because it only sings when I yell out its name. Yes, its name. The name given to the bird since before the time the bird was born. It was named after the sacred land we call our own. The land of the rising sun -Timor Lorosa’e.

So tell me. Have you seen the caged bird? The one with the broken heart and unable to fly. The red and yellow lorikeet with white rings around its black eyes. Yes, the one with the colours that represent the flag we hold up high. Can you tell me where it is? I have been looking for it and I need to find it. I need to break it. The big cage I mean. I need to break it and heal the bird’s damaged feathers so that it can once again experience the wind against its wings. For there is nothing more humiliating and painful than taking away the earned freedom of a being. Even if its freedom had only been enjoyed for just a little while.

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I just read in the chinese papers today about our nation’s junior athlete write in. She wrote about how our nation loves to invest in our athletes only a few months before an important sporting event and not from the very beginning. Our nation often boasts about our ability to hosts international events and how we want to be a sporting hub and the best in the region. But when we look deeper at the nation’s culture, there isn’t a single incentive to pursue a sporting career here. How are we going to be the  ”best” when none of us locals have the incentive to best ourselves.

Basically, every one’s about grades here. The government, the industries, the civil services and of course the education system. No one cares if you are a top class athlete. Being a top class athlete does not guarantee you a job, not to mention a place in our local universities. You still need the grades.

With this culture in mind, which parent would logically invest money and their child’s time in to training for the sport?

When a big event is coming up and participating in it would bring a hope for fame and prestige, we would then actively encourage our children to train up. Well sad to say, Rome wasn’t built in a day. You can’t run like Usain Bolt by training for months. It takes a lot of foundation building to get there.

Now let’s bring this into our lives. How much preparation do we put into the things we do? Some of us prepare for our presentations the night before, rehearsing infront of a mirror. Some of us prepare for our exams by studying a few weeks before the exams. Most of us have dreams but we do nothing to build it up.

It is good to have dreams and goals to achieve. Just as in the story of the 3 brick layers, when a man walked by the first two brick layers, he noticed that they stopped working after a while because they said they were just laying bricks, where as the last brick layer kept going on and on because he said he was building a cathedral. Yes it is good to want to build a cathedral, but then your cathedral has to start with a brick as well.

For some of us, even me, we sometimes overestimate our abilities to perform and believe to much in ourselves. We would leave the hard and tiring stuff to the last and try and rush them through when we should have and could have started working on them from the start. It’s just like people who are chronically late. They always believe that they would be on time and fail to put into calculation road conditions, leeway for Murphy’s laws etc etc.

With every thing you do, please make sure you start it with a solid knowledge of what you want and how to do it. Don’t overestimate your abilities even if you are fully confident of them. Remember Murhpy’s laws.  Then build up your foundations steadily and do not attempt to leave things to the last minute. The guy who built castles in the air tend to see his castles crumble when the winds blew by.

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When you are feeling in the dumps and you want to climb out of it but don’t know how, here’s a quick tip: look back at the past few years and find out what has not changed. It is very likely that either a habit, your outlook or image or maybe even all three are causing a problem.

Sometimes the problem is manifested as a mild feeling of depression, or feeling low in esteem or just simply feeling something missing in life. Well, it’s time for the winds of change.

As the age old cliche saying goes, change is the only constant. It applies to us as well. Let us picture ourselves as a river(70% of us is made of water anyways). Imagine what happens when the river stops flowing…the water stagnates. It starts to smell and very soon it becomes undrinkable, poisonous: Well that’s you when you feeling low.

So I recommend you this; It might cause an impact on your comfortable life; it’s meant to. Go for an image make over. Change your hairstyle. Change your wardrobe. Throw away your old shoes. Enroll in a fitness class. Basically discard all your old stagnated stuff and make way for the new. Pick up new activities, meet new people, do something different with your loved one. Get out of that comfort zone. Break down your fortress walls.

It has worked for me, it has worked for my clients, it will work for you. The only reason why it isn’t working is because you’re still clinging on to the old and familiar, all that you’re comfortable with. Well, break out of that comfort zone because that old zone is no longer big enough to hold you. We grow at every stage in life. It’s only natural (:

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Today a friend of mine asked me how to help his buddy break out of his shell. How to persuade him to put on a new thinking hat and look at things from a different perspective; basically, how to get an apple to think like an orange. It’s hard, yes I agree. The age old saying says that a leopard can never change its spots…But a leopard can learn new ways to survive in a new world!

How do you do it then? Remember when mum told us the story of the boy who cried wolf? When was it that our parents stopped telling us bed time stories? I know from my children clients that their parents stopped telling them bed time stories a long time ago, some never even did. In fact from what I gather from the parents, when it comes to the children’s education, topics such as maths and science a placed first before values and character building. No wonder so many kids these days turn out so bratty.

It is very much a pity because the art of story telling is as old as the human race. People told stories to entertain; People told stories to describe things that happened to them; People told stories to communicate. In fact, our brain excepts information from stories so much more easily than just information told straight to the face. We tell stories all the times, when we recount our days over beer, when we talk about old times over a meal, we do it all the time. But when it comes to dealing with communication issues, we just try and force feed the facts to the other party hoping that they will expose their necks in submission. I know because I suffer from that too, especially when it comes to little squabbles with your loved ones.

Well the secret is to tell them a story. Not when they are raving mad and their barriers are so high up. Just give in a little to let their moods get back to a neutral state. Then when their walls are shorter and their guards lowered, use the story to weasel your way around the wall and into their heads.

How to tell the story then? There are a few methods, the simplest being tell them a story of Mr A ( who so happen to resemble them in every aspect) who came across a problem and somehow solved it. Make your story as believable as possible and make it as clear as possible. A story that is too short lacks the drive to get past the wall while a story that is too long actually helps to build the wall. Use all sorts of material for your stories, such as success stories like Steve Jobs and Apple, Thomas Edison and the Light bulb etc etc. Just remember to keep it light hearted and easily acceptable. To help you on your quest to tell the perfect story, there are a few authors who tell stories that change lives: Paulo Coehlo (my personal favorite), Mitch Albom, Dave Pelzer, Napolean Hill etc etc.

Be creative, Be interesting, and, most of all, tell your story with life and as if you mean it.

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Ever since I was young, I have always loved stories of gods and legends. They are however fading amidst our new digital world. I hungered and would read extensively in mythology, folklore, any books that could contain a thread of silk leading to the gods. I was insatiable. Well, as I grew up, all these gently faded. I became part of the grey binaric world, locked into maths, science and logic. I was satisfied with the new. Well it never occurred to me to read fiction anymore since because fiction could never bring me to greater heights.

I only started reading fiction and stories yet again when I got so bored of my studies then when I was in college, studying psychology. How dry and unimaginative it was. I read mostly Murakami and Coehlo then. These books set the spark in me. I started practicing Hypnotherapy soon after and only when I started practicing did I realize the importance of stories. Stories are like fruits for the soul. A good one will highly enrich yours. Before long, I picked up first, Lucifer by Vertigo comics, which led me to Sandman. That’s when I got hooked. I hate that addiction. Before long, it was Mirrormask, Stardust, Smoke and Mirrors, The Graveyard book, Coraline and finally, the book that I always saw sitting up there on the shelves but never ever reached out to grab for fear of the addiction – American Gods.

I just finished American Gods today, I started it two nights ago. I hate that book. It got me so addicted from the 1st chapter, I couldn’t stop. While seeing clients, it would flash across my mind; While driving the car, I would wish I took the bus to give me time to read; While out with my girlfriend, I would search for a place to sit and read. It was bad. I really hate it and thank gods ( all of them in the book) its over.

I utterly dislike how he could so easily recruit all those gods from so vast cultures and mingle them in one basket. I was so disgusted with the ease of how the themes of Sacrifice, Betrayal, Loyalty and Faith was so obscenely plot. Most of all, I loathed how I clung onto every word and each time my eyes zipped past a sentence in speed reading form, I had to go back and read them yet again, like licking the left overs from my plate.

The reason why I hate Neil Gaiman, is because he is such a master story teller that merely the thought of comparing myself to him puts me at shame. I am not yet a story teller but I would be. I…

If you have never read this book, and you have a hunger for gods, myths and folklore, PLEASE do not touch this book. It will consume you. It unleashed my hunger yet again.

visit Neil Gaiman at: http://www.neilgaiman.com/

I met up today to have lunch with a dear friend and he was telling me about a certain character who whines all day long in his company. Well I know people who whine and complain much too; i admit, I myself sometimes complain about the most minute of things, but this character apparently whines almost all the time. So I was thinking, what are the benefits of whining?

1. When we whine, we draw attention to us, sympathy, disgust, concern, all kinds of attention and of all the attention we get, one of the people who notices us would likely stand out to help us (mind you I said would).
2. When we whine, we vent and let off steam about the issue or job at hand. This lets us focus more on the work later on.
3. Whining is a softer way to criticize an action or a command given to us. It isn’t as direct as harsh criticism and it gets the message through as well.

What then are the downsides of whining?

1. For every one person who sympathizes with you, you get one person who can’t stand you. That means lesser people are likely to help you with your task (remember, I typed ‘would help’ above).
2. For every minute that we whine and vent, that’s every minute lost when we could have done something constructive.
3. Whining is a soft way of criticizing something, but its a big ugly way to show how much you can only complain but not do anything about it, in other words, a load of hot air.

So by weighing the pros and cons….unless you are as hot as Megan Fox in transformers (mind you, in the movie she’s one tough chick who doesn’t whine), whining makes you look absolutely unattractive.

What can you do about it if its a habit?

Learn from Addidas and Nike cos impossible is nothing if you just do it. Practise moving more talking less for actions speak louder than words. If you really do need help over your problem, just approach a friend and humbly and kindly “ask for advice” about the issue. On most occasions, unless your friend is frantically busy, you’ll get all the help you need.Well I fully understand that at sometimes you just need that little space to expound your dislike for a certain issue, when you do it, please make sure your friend is really willing to listen (:

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There was once a man who moved into this new town. He bought a lovely place with a beautiful garden. On the first day that he arrived, people flocked to his new home and greeted him. He would respond with a warm smile each time. People would bring gifts, flowers, milk, food and wine to his house to get to know him better.

Well this man was pleasantly surprised at how much attention he got and so he would wait at his porch on most days to receive his guests. He hadn’t once stepped out of his house to visit other people because he thought that he needed to stay at home all the time just in case someone came by.

Gradually lesser and lesser people stopped by his house. He never wondered why. He just told himself that his new house is beautiful and there would be people that would bound to visit him. Soon it came to a point that only one person came each day; then each week; then each month.

One day no one stopped by anymore for every one has visited him before. He waited at his porch for days, weeks and months and finally he gave up and stayed in his house, minding his own business. Little did he know the town folk’s feelings towards him. Every one liked him at first until they realize that he will never visit their houses; he was too fond of his own.

Don’t be locked up in your home and see the world through your window. Many times, just simply visiting other people’s homes and seeing the sky out of their windows give you quite a different view! Let’s practice some empathy.

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Paulo Coehlo’s The Alchemist.

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it”. Dreams are what shape our reality and in this time and age, we often abandon our dreams to lead a “realistic” life. Most of us in fact lead a life that we once objected against. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

What happened to the dreams we had when we were young? Does being more mature mean you have to let go of your dreams?Wouldn’t you like to be given that chance to give your dreams another go? Then this book is for you.

This book takes us back to the time when our dreams were still alive and colourful as we accompany the little sheperd boy on his biggest journey, the journey of the heart’s true desire.

After reading this book, I rediscovered my dreams yet again and I hope it will help you too