Love

First of all, I want to say Happy Valentine's day to everyone! Let's share some love to people around you. I don't know why, suddenly I'm in the mood to write something today, in the night of this Valentine's day. And today I'm gonna talk about something different. Since today is the day of love, let's talk about love! :)

It's not just once or twice I got a question like this, "Why did I never see your quotes about love? You often talk about life, problems, motivation, but I can't find your perspective of love."

Well, the answer is very simple. I didn't have much experience in this area. So, I don't want to talk about something I don't really know. You can't inspire something to others when you can't reflect it to yourself. But today I'm gonna talk about it! First, don't expect me to talk like "Love is everything, blah blah blah.." That's too common. That's too cliche. Let me talk from different perspective, since today I'm in my room alone when many couples out there are celebrating their special days. Haha. Not so bad, actually. Some people are just too dramatic.

Okay, about love. One thing I believe about love: it always makes your life better. If it doesn't make you better, it's not a true love. Actually, love is the most powerful thing in this world. I agree love is beautiful. I agree that love is the greatest thing in life. But it's not always the case.

I saw some friends of mine who were so depressed because they're single without someone to celebrate Valentine's day with this year. Haha. It makes sense. Everyone wants that someone to share some love on this special day. But the funny thing is, they act like their lives are too miserable. It's like life is frustrating except they have a boyfriend or girlfriend.

One thing I believe about love: it always makes your life better. If it doesn't make you better, it's not a true love.

That's my point of view today. Being a single is not always worse than being in a relationship, and being in a relationship is not always better than being a single. The thing is, true love always makes you better, but love is not always true. If you can't love someone in a right way, it's not just "not better". It's worse. Then, what's the point of love?

Some people will say, "Love needs sacrifice. You're selfish if you just want to accept good things in someone, but you don't want to accept the bad ones." Okay. That's true in some cases, like when you love someone, you can't just expect your partner to be like what you want. You always want  a perfect person, but everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses. There should be a room for understanding each other and learning to accept weaknesses of each other. In the end, it's always good to build a better and stronger relationship.

However, I also find many people who let themselves be lost and suffer in love. They use "love needs sacrifice" as an excuse for letting themselves be bullied by love just because they don't want to let go and move on. I don't say that you should easily give up on love, but people need to love in a right way. I see many people who sacrifice everything for love. They may not lose their love, but they lose themselves. Then, back to my first question, what's the point of love?

What I'm trying to say is, if you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend but you're never happy in your relationship, why are you stuck in that miserable place? If being a single can make you feel better, why do you still choose to feel worse in a place that's not right for you? Take some time to enjoy yourself. It's worse to lose yourself than to lose someone you love.

What's worse than losing someone you love? Losing yourself just for someone you love.

Once again, I'm not against love. Instead, love is the most powerful thing of all. But, there's always a right time and a right person for this. Don't be naive and sacrifice yourself just for love which may not be true to you. When you find the true one, you'll realize and understand how beautiful it is because it can make you feel better when you're with the one you love than when you're alone.

Love the right person, at the right time, in the right way.

Inspire people with your imperfection

"Let's inspire each other!" That's what I always tell to myself, and that's what I encourage people around me to do. I believe this world can be a better place if we can inspire each other.

Most people think the only people who can inspire others are people who are perfect, or at least well-experienced. They think it's job for motivators, leaders, or pastors. No. Everyone is an inspiration. That's one thing I believe for sure. Everyone makes mistake. Some people are good in one thing, but not in another thing. In fact, there's no one can be good in everything. That's why you can share what you have to others who don't, and in return, let others do the same for you.

When we inspire each other, life is much more interesting. I love to do this with my best friend. I and my best friend are two people with different backgrounds, different characters, and different stories of life. We love to sit in Starbucks and talk for hours just to share to each other. It's nice I can learn a lot from what he got in his life, and he learned a lot from mine.

You may be thinking like "I'm an imperfect person. I don't have something good to share to others. How can I inspire people?"

You don't need to be a pastor, a motivator, or a leader to inspire others. Let's inspire each other.

To be honest, I personally think that professional people like motivators are boring. It doesn't mean they're fake or not good in inspiring people. I still love to learn from them, but people like them are more likely to give advices and motivation about what we should do, but we can't directly see what they've experienced in their lives. In the end, it's not really inspiring for us because we think it's easy for their lives but not in our lives. It will be more inspiring to see it from what we see everyday, from people around us.

Well, just for sharing, I had a friend who lost her mom. I knew she's very close with her mom. She was still young, and her mom was even still younger than my mom. It must be very hard to face this in her young age, but I saw she tried to be strong, and she still smiled though her life was very challenging at that time. For me, that's much more inspiring than a pastor who can use most beautiful words to tell you to stop worrying about your problems.

One of my followers on Twitter once wrote to me, "Can I have your brain? You're really good in managing your life. Your life must be full of happiness." Maybe not. Ok, I'm grateful and happy with my life, but it's not always the case. I'm a person who is very easy to worry. Sometimes I worry too much. Once a problem comes into my life, it can drive me crazy. This is my imperfection. But, I learn from this. I reflect about my life. I reflect from my problems. That's why it turns into some quotes you read on my Twitter. If you read them, those quotes aren't about things I've already done in my life. They're what I learned from my life and what I reflected. If I don't worry too much, maybe I won't learn. And if I don't learn, I can't make some quotes and share what I've learned to people. So, I can say this is one of my ways to inspire people with my imperfection.

Last, I believe that God can use our weaknesses for something really good, and I believe that our weaknesses are actually the biggest assets we have that we can inspire to others. It's hard for people to get inspired from perfect people, but it's very easy to get inspired from imperfect people who can still be strong, never give up, and live their lives though problems keep coming. And the best thing is, you can be one of them.

So, be an inspiration. Let's inspire each other. Make this world a better place! :)

It's just your feeling!

You know what's real problem with this world? It's not from outside. It's from inside. A problem is not a problem until the inside of you makes it a problem. Some things like stress, worry, and anxiety. It's all from the inside. It comes from your feeling!

Do you ever feel like everything is not gonna be okay although nothing bad happens? Are you ever so afraid that bad things are gonna happen when everything is just okay? Or, sometimes there's only a very small problem but you take it as a big problem and it makes you stressed? If your answer is yes, sometimes I feel that way, too. However, after I think again about it, actually it's just a feeling.Your feeling makes every thing a problem. It is something inside you that always tries to affect your emotion, and in the end it makes you feel stressed or worry.

The truth is, feeling is something inside you that always tries to let you bother every single thing in your life, so everything looks complicated.

Don't you think it's very funny when your feeling always "plays" you? You can be happy, then sad, then suddenly happy again, and then suddenly sad again. It's natural. Everyone has feeling. But, you should not rely on it. Your feeling is not your boss. Don't let everything depend on it because it's not always right.

The thing is, feelings are soft. It's fragile. If you keep saying yes to your feeling, it's very easy to bring you down. It's true that feeling can make people happy too. Happiness is also a feeling. But, everyone has problems. Feeling is more likely to lead people to bad thoughts than the good ones. When there's nothing bad really happens, your feeling will try to tell you "What if tomorrow something bad happens?" And when there's only a small problem, your feeling will tell you "It's not small. You should not take it easy. It's gonna be worse if you don't do this or do that." I can say that your feeling always tries to "bully" you.

Sometimes everything is just okay, but your feeling makes it dramatic, then you become worry.

So, one thing you can do is to stop letting your feeling make your life a mess. Start to be relax in thinking and making decision. Use a right attitude to lead your act. It's not your circumstance or things around you that you should control. It's the inside of you, because a problem is not a problem until the inside of you takes it as a problem.

Don't let your feeling tell you that it's not okay when everything is just okay. Learn to control your feeling and not be controlled by it. It's you who should control your feeling, not your feeling who controls you.