Life's Slot Machine

Let's play a game! The LIFE'S SLOT MACHINE game!

First, replace each slot with the people in your life. Slot#1 can be your dad. Slot#2 can be your mom. Slot#3 is your spouse. Slot#4 is your child. Slot #5 is your boss. Slot#6 is your best friend. Slot#7 is your next friend. And so on, and so on. You decide. The number of slots are infinity. The slots represent each people that have ever come to your life, still in your life, and possibly will appear in your life later. And the last slot is you.

In this game, not all slots will be stopping at the same time. Some slots will stop first. some will stop later. Some will slow down. Some will spin faster. Some will stop temporarily, but re-spinned again. Some will stop for good. Some will never stop.

Since you are the last slot, the game will always keep spinning. But you can't control when each slot will stop. The time the slot start spinning represents the time they start appear in your life.

The time the slot stopped represents the time they are out of your life. Whether is due to death, loss of contact, or permanent goodbye caused by unresolved conflict. If it's due to death, obviously the slot will stop for good. If that person still alive, there's a possibility that the slot will re-spin again.

So here's my result:

Slot #1 is my dad. Start: The day I born. Stop: The day he died.

Slot #2 is my friend A. Start: The day we met in kindergarten. Stop: The day we graduate high school. Start again: The day we met on Facebook, 10 years later! Till now!

Slot #3 is my coworker B. Start: The day we met in office cafetaria on date xx/xx/20xx. Stop: The day he got relocated to East coast on this date xx/xx/20xx. Start: The day we reconnect via LinkedIn.

Slot #4 is cousin C. Start: The day she was born. No stop since we still in touch.

And so on, and so on. I have a long list and it's probably wise to not list them one by one here. But I know for sure, the last slot is myself. Start: The day I born. Stop: The day I die.

Try this exercise on a piece of paper. And list everyone. You'll see a pattern here. Some relationship ends. Some doesn't end. Some is re-lived. Some re-lived to be lost again.

The point of this game is, that no matter what happen, you as the last slot are still spinning. There will be people that eventually will be part of your history, and they remain in the past. They will be people that will come and make new history with you. As long as you still "spinning" aka alive, you won't run out of list of "slots" (aka people) to share this happy life with. And sometimes surprisingly, some people that out of touch do come back! Whether because there was a crisis in your life, or fate met the both of you again, you'll get reconnected and then their slots start spinning again.

I need to accept that there will be some people that will never come back to my life anymore. Sad, but it's life. It is what it is. It's not what it has been. It's not what it will be. It is what it is.

But the good news is, just because we lost some people who hold near and dear to us, doesn't mean that life is ended. We must still continue to do what we supposed to do in this world. Our purpose. Because life is big. It's not just about people. It's not just about a relationship. It's everything! Family, home, work, health, finances, leisure, love & the matter of the heart, and everything in between. Just because one aspect of our life is unpleasant to us now, doesn't mean that we have to throw everything away. There's still good things in this world. Not all is lost.

While I'm grieving for some people that I've lost recently, I am also at peace knowing that God will take care of them better than the way I take care of them. I just have to trust in Him. Knowing that He sees everything and He knows all. He will arrange the best for each of us, His children. So my job is to let go everything that need to be let go. And keep walking towards my future. Until my slot stop spinning for good.

Focus Forward

Sometimes things happen unexpectedly.

Sometimes things happen the way we don't predict.

It just came out of nowhere.

The last 12 months have been rough.
The last 6 months have been horrible.
The last 3 months have been challenging.
The last month have been intense.

I've been walking on a shaky ground for a very long time. I used to be so optimistic with my future, but I forgot that this future I imagine, is involving other people. And when you involve other people, you'll risk uncertainty. Because people could be unpredictable. Their nature could change, evolving into something that you never see before. And now suddenly, we're at the point where that future is compromised. Is tainted. Is going to be replaced with something totally new and unclear.

Basically, simply put, the life I hope and dream, is gone. It's not going to be there anymore.

Now I'm going to have to paint a different mental image of my future. It could be scary. But exciting at the same time. I could be creative. I could throw different alternative and scenarios. Or I can just let the future envelop into something that will surprise me.

I learned that our struggles reveal who we really are. I keep thinking and feeling the pain that has been caused from those uncontrollable situations I'm in. No matter what I try and do, it seems that it won't change the outcome. Since I don't have any control of what the outcome will be, I'll just focus on what I can control. On what I can do.

In the midst of all these drama, I found an inner circle of friends that were there and are still there to support me in daily basis. They continue to cheer me on, remind my self worth, and just being there for me. I will be forever grateful for their presence. Their attention and their love for me are just so many things that I fortunate to have! They lend their wings to me, lift my spirit up, and don't let me fall back down to the bottomless pit of despair. They encourage me to keep focus forward on what lies ahead. Don't linger in the past too much and just use the pain to make me stronger. I am very surprised to see so many willing hearts opening up to me, and so many strong hands extended to me. I am so lucky to have them in my life, at the right moment.

Life is a balance of everything.

It's not one aspect of my life is more important than the other. Everything need to be balanced. I used to think that family is more important than work and friendship. How I was wrong! These past times had proven to me that family could be the very resource of your downfall. And when that happen, somehow my work and my friends save me from keep falling deeper. I don't know what I would do without them.  So now I learn to value things they way they are. Not placing more priority over another. Everything is important. Family is important, so does work, and so does friendship.

And so does self-love and self-improvement. I think sometimes I neglect this area so much because I was so consumed on what's going on around me. I forgot to focus in me.

Well, the good news is, now with the new situation ahead of me, I will have plenty of time to self-reflect and really think of what I'd like my life will be. I'm going to use the pain to help me focus forward. To keep moving on. Understand what's my next goal I want to achieve, and working towards it. Understand that I need to be kind to myself and not let me keep pushing for something that will drain my energy. I need to stop obsessing of the event of the past. Put one feet in front of the other and keep walking towards my destination.

No use crying over a spilled milk.

Average of 5 People

Jim Rohn once said that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with.

It's true, isn't it?

The more you hang out with certain type of people, the more habits you pick up from each other. The more you mirroring at each other. We're getting comfortable and complacent. Imagine if this happen for a long time.

Have you given much thought of who the five people who could influence you the most? Do you want to surround yourself with people who will bring out the best in you? Who challenge you to grow? Or same people who in stuck in the rut with no progress and have been stagnant for years?

Now I'm not saying that we should let go good relationship with friends or family that we've been together for ages. No way! However, we should always attempt to grow ourselves to the next potential level where we could be headed, wherever it is. With you getting better, you'll make your surrounding better too. You influence your circle to step up to the betterment.

This is a great video to sum up this principle.

If we want to be better, we need to expand our circle. We need to meet more people, broaden our network, hang out more with interesting new people. We can always learn from each other, and be a support system in a time of need.

So if you want to be more positive in your life, get in touch with 5 people who are more positive than you so you can learn from them. Get some exposure.

If you want to be strong, surround yourself with 5 stronger people.

If you want to be better, then you know what to do, get into that better circle. Find your mentors.

It is exciting to expand your network. Suddenly you find yourself in a place where you want to be, because you choose to grow and learn from other people who has walk the path before you. They could give you insights, motivation, and guidance to the better you.

Strong Woman

A strong woman will say her goodbye differently as she is not just a woman. She won't cry for a long time, she won't blame on your previous mistakes, and she won't force you to stay either. She is familiar with separation as she is stronger because of it.

She will let you leave as she knows exactly that people are temporary and most of the times, life goes on with or without the one she has loved. She will respect your decision to leave because she understands that you deserve to be happy and explore this whole world as long as you possibly can. A strong woman knows that she has to survive alone and she will never rely on others just because her heart was broken.

A strong woman will always remember that attention and affection are the things that shouldn't be asked from other people because love should be simple and easy.

She is the kind of woman who truly understands that the right people will always stay and if you decide to leave, she believes that she will meet countless new people along the way. She knows that every ending will always be followed by a new beginning and she is not afraid to start over. This kind of woman is tired of always being left behind and taken for granted, but she will never regret her decision to love you back then.

She is fearless and she knows that she will be brave enough to open her heart again, even though she has been hurt for million times. This kind of woman will always keep her hopes alive as she believes that there are some people out there who won't leave her side whatever happens. Your absence will teach her about her own worth and she will eventually realize that she will always be herself, with or without you.

Thus, rather than saying goodbye and mourning her loss of you, she will raise up once again and she will try her best to go through one day at a time.

Your absence will be her fuel to pursue her unmet goals and dreams. She will not only survive, she will achieve her dreams. Despite the fact that she is broken beyond repair, she knows exactly that she will grow stronger than before as she always learns from pain and you gave her so many lessons.

Rather than saying goodbye and asking you to come back, a strong woman will learn how to forgive herself. She will learn to love herself more than before as she realizes that self-love is the key to make her survive. She will try her best not to blame herself upon your decision to leave. She will convince herself that she had done her best to make you stay, yet you've left her anyway.

One thing for sure, when a strong woman says goodbye, she will never turn back.

So, when you come to your senses and realize that you've made a wrong decision to leave her, it will be too late as she has already moved on. A strong woman will always keep moving forward as she will never live in her past.  You are just a part of her past and she will keep it that way. She will forgive you, but she will never forget what you did.

When a strong woman says goodbye, that was the exact moment you will realize that she didn't lose anything; you lost her instead.

Cut It Loose

You know my favorite phrase: Past performance doesn't guarantee future results. It's so true. Just because someone was good for the last decade or two, doesn't mean that he/she will be good in the future. They could become bad, corrupted, and fall into an unreachable lowest level.

To sum it up, for recent events that have been ongoing in my life for the last half year, I finally decided to treat all these situation as if I was to handle a bad investment. What will you do in a bad investment? Are you going to hold on to it forever? Hoping it will one day rebound back? Or are you just going to cut it loose?

I'm going to cut it loose. Just like a bad investment. Cut it loose and move on. Find a better deal somewhere.

I think this way we can cut the cancer of our lives and move on to a brighter future. Not saying that the grass will always be greener on the other side, but at least we can just remove ourselves from all the negativity and toxic situation that suck away our energy level. I've tried and tried and tried. And finally I decided to just call it quit. Better stop the loss now rather than bleed more and suffer more in the future.

Sometimes I feel that the world is really unfair. Oh I know that the world is always unfair. The reality is never the same of what we want it to be. You work hard, you live right, you do everything according to the highest moral standard, but somehow you're not getting the result you should get. There's always people that cut corners that somehow get ahead and get rewarded with everything. There's people that work half as hard as you do, and get everything they want. It's a double standard world. The world expect us to deliver our best, while the world doesn't have to behave the right way according to its own standard. How unfair.

Ok, let's stop this pity party now. Nobody likes a debbie downer so I rather cut myself short now. Before I got sucked in to more and more melodrama of my life.

Maybe one day I'll see the reason why everything has to happen. Maybe I won't. But for now, I need to continue to move on with my life. Forget everyone who had disappointing me. Forget everyone who had betrayed me. Forget everything that happened. Forget all the nightmares. Forget and just focus forward.