I like what he says. Its strange how this messages only strike us so much more when the speakers are nearing the end of their lives. Kinda like Tuesday’s with Morrie.

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The following is something my little client, aged 13, showed me during one of our sessions. The English had been improved on and edited by me but the crux of it is still there. Something to share

“Dear Mum/Dad,

I love you, really, but sometimes I’m not sure if you do love me in kind.

I know you do love me and want the best for me, but breathing down my neck and wanting to micro-manage my life won’t get my or your life anywhere. Whenever I come with an idea or an opinion, more often than not it will be met with a remark that neither acknowledges what I say or show the slightest encouragement, and if I’m lucky, I might get sarcasm. It does make me want to wringe your neck.

Whenever I do or learn something new, you have this uncanny ability to belittle me every time. I sometimes wish I can just stomp on you when you do that.

When we talk, you tend to bring up your friend’s children and my cousins, and tell me how much of a better student or kid they are. I suspect you are trying to drive some learning point into me but I feel like putting myself up for adoption. Do I tell you how good my classmates parents are?

You provide me with all the things I need, a roof to sleep under, a nice bed, education and clothes; I’m very grateful for that. But it’s not just not that; I need to know that I am loved not through these, but from the way you behave and talk and listen to me.

I try to point out some of these to you, but the irony is, you say you do all these for the love of me. Can you blame me for feeling the way I do? (I think you probably will).”

*I can relate to what my client feels. Parents tend to mean well but they just can’t express themselves well. They might wanna try this out. The site is very plain, but the content of it speaks for itself. Parents, lets try a little change (:

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Yes! Finally our new center website is up. I’ve been busy working on the website and our latest workshops and therefore have not been able to write.

Please visit our new website! (:

This was written in the month of November but due to a busy schedule I posted it up late ;P

I met an interesting client today. He came in looking for a lost object, in particular a little black bag. Well we spent two long sessions and what we found was pretty interesting.

The subconscious mind is such a magnificent thing. We both dove into it all the way to a month before today and he could recall aost every detail with picturisque quality, even what he ate and who he called on the phone.

And so the two of us time travellers went forward and backward in time in his mind and after double checking we found the place where he last misplaced his bag.

Now here’s the interesting part, when I asked him to recall those incidents before the therapy he could not. But when therapy started, I asked him to remember the fabric material and used the feel of his fingers as a guide. This was because our muscle memory is much stronger than our visual or audio memory and true enough on the day that he misplaced it, his fingers twitched quite a bit.

It’s a very interesting case and it was reallly fun playing sleuth hehe. Anyways here’s a video to help you guys find your lost items

I met an interesting client today. He came in looking for a lost object, in particular a little black bag. Well we spent two long sessions and what we found was pretty interesting.
The subconscious mind is such a magnificent thing. We both dove into it all the way to a month before today and he could recall aost every detail with picturisque quality, even what he ate and who he called on the phone.
And so the two of us time travellers went forward and backward in time in his mind and after double checking we found the place where he last misplaced his bag.
Now here’s the interesting part, when I asked him to recall those incidents before the therapy he could not. But when therapy started, I asked him to remember the fabric material and used the feel of his fingers as a guide. This was because our muscle memory is much stronger than our visual or audio memory and true enough on the day that he misplaced it, his fingers twitched quite a bit.
It’s a very interesting case and it was reallly fun playing sleuth hehe. Anyways here’s a link to help you guys find your lost items

http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-find-lost-objects

Tk

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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