Define Success
Posted in Angel 24/7

One of the most important career and life-planning activities you can engage in is finding your own definitions or models of success. This is vitally important for a number of reasons: If you haven't done this, how do you know what's best for you? How can you make career decisions if you aren't crystal clear about how you define success? How can you be happy if you don't know when you're successful?

There is never a bad time to discover and be clear on your definition of success. Today's economic realities make the timing even better. If your career hasn't gone according to plan, or even if it has, reexamine what it is you actually want. Doing so can make you a lot happier.

Successful -- on Whose Terms?

If you haven't taken the time to define it, success has already been defined for you. You're already following models of career and life success. The question is whether they are your own, or ones you inherited. One of your greatest career challenges is identifying goals and definitions of success that are true to you rather than ones you inherited from family, society and other outside forces. Your current model of success may or may not work for you. The important thing is understanding your assumptions and questioning them.

If you follow a path to success that isn't your own, you may achieve your goals, but when you arrive at your destination, you may not feel successful or fulfilled at all.

Keep in mind that your existing job may hold the key to your happiness. For example, if you were to discover that making your customers happy was the one thing that defines and inspires you, what would that do to your focus and state of mind?

Choose Your Own Definition of Success

You have the power to reaffirm existing models or adopt new models of success. All it takes is some honest thinking, clarity of purpose and the discipline to stay true to your values in the long run.

Accept There Are Always Alternatives. The very fact that so many of us have not questioned the paths we are on speaks to a lack of awareness or acceptance of alternate paths. There have never been more options or valid ways of defining career and life success.

Examine Your Path. Do you love what you do? Do you do fantastic work as a result? Does your work complement your personal and family life or detract from it? Are you excited about your vision of the future? Is this your best use of your precious gifts and time?

Create Some Quiet, Introspective Time. Ask yourself these questions: What makes me happy? How do I feel? What do I want? And then, answer a question from the coaching school CoachVille.com, "I know how successful I am by how (fill in the blank)." The answers to this question will point you in the right direction. You can have several definitions of success as long as they don't contradict each other.

Refine Your Responses. Ask yourself "why?" and "is that what I really want?" after each response to the statement until each rings true. For example, if your first response was, "I'll know I am successful when I am a millionaire," ask yourself why you want to be a millionaire. You might, for example, find out that success for you is to have the freedom to use your time as you wish, or the ability to travel or be rid of financial worries. This process may lead you to make other decisions in your life that will help you reach your goal.

Test Your Responses with People Who Know You Really Well. Do they ring true?

One definition of success that puts this philosophy into simple words comes from American author Christopher Morley, who wrote: "There is only one success -- to be able to spend your life in your own way." Being clear about how you define success will reap immeasurable rewards.

Feeling Free
Posted in Angel 24/7

By Ferida Wolf

I woke up feeling cranky.  I didn't want to do housework, though the laundry was piling up.  I didn't want to read the work I brought home from the office.  I didn't want to do anything that resembled responsible behavior.  It was that kind of day.

As I drank my morning tea, I thought I felt a headache coming on.  Yes, there it was, a dull throb just behind my eyes.  Maybe I should go back to bed until it subsided.  As I put the dishes in the sink, it seemed that my muscles were beginning to ache.  Or was the ache in my joints?  That could mean I was coming down with the flu.  Everyone I knew had the flu this year.  Why should I be the one to escape it?  I absolutely should be in bed.

I shuffled back to bed, wiggled under the covers and shut my eyes.  Another couple of hours of sleep would be so nice, only I was now completely awake.  I ought to get up.  But no, there was that headache and the beginning of a sniffle.  Better get the tissues.

On my way back from the bathroom with a family-sized tissue box, I stopped to grab that big new novel I had bought but had no time to read.  I opened the book and settled against the pillows.

The morning was moving along and so was my reading.  Another twenty pages and I was stretching.  I should try to crack the report I was working on.  I should at least get up and do the wash.  What if I was contagious?  I certainly didn't want to spread any germs.  The wash could wait.  My family was resourceful enough to scrounge clothing for the next day.

Maybe I wasn't actually getting the flu.  I didn't really want to be sick.  To be truthful, all I wanted was a little time off.  I needed to nurture myself away from people, chores, career and the outside world.  Did I have to wait to be sick to do that?  As a child, the only respite from school or family chores was illness.  But I wasn't a child any more.  Did I have to manufacture symptoms to provide myself with an excuse?  No, I decided, I didn't.

I talked to myself.  Okay, I said, you need a day off.  Admit it.  Accept it.  Toss out the guilt and enjoy a mini-vacation.  What would you like to do?  Read?  You're already doing that.  Pamper yourself?  Take a bubble bath.  Be a hermit?  Let the machine answer the phone.

I poured half the bottle of bath gel into the streaming water and added a hearty handful of chamomile bath salts.  Then I lit a vanilla-scented candle and gingerly stepped into the bathtub.  With a grateful sigh, I immersed myself in my homemade spa.  I heard the phone ring somewhere off in the distance and smiled.

Funny how the aches subsided in the heat of the tub.  They just slipped away with the last of the bubbles down the drain.  My head felt just fine, the throb replaced by a sense of well-being.

By late afternoon, I was back at it, refreshed physically, mentally and emotionally.  And rather than feeling helpless, I felt empowered.  I had given myself permission to listen and respond to my needs, to care for myself the way I tended to my family.  I didn't need the crutch of illness to justify a rest. 

It was such a simple awareness, but then isn't it the simple things that set us free?

The Leopard and the spots...
Posted in Angel 24/7

Haven't posted a decent blog in ages. Mainly because I didn't want tangible proof of the thoughts that have been randomly generated in my head. 

But like the proverbial leopard who couldn't hide his spots, I resort to writing in order to clear my head. *sigh* It's been a crazy, hectic last couple of months, so much so that the OC in me was barely able to keep up. And I'm not referring to just work, because frankly, that's one aspect where the flurry of activity slackened up a bit. 

It's the other areas that I have relegated to the backburner that have come back at me and bit me in the arse.

Yeah, my health. Lazy thyroid at 12 o' clock and confirmed polycystic ovaries at 3 and 9, respectively. Bummer.  I had initially thought that the weight gain was secondary to my craving for comfort food at the height of last year's career focus.  During late nights, Beng and I would pig out on tapsi...and I've always known that friend rice was my kryptonite.  But after the holidays, and despite consciously cutting back on carbs and sweets, the weight kept piling up! Seriously. And the cramps and migraine attacks during the time of the month kept worsening.

I sought help, and rightly so. 

Okay, so I've missed seeing my endocrinologist for more than six months. BUT that was only because he gave me a clean bill of health and got me off my meds.  Turns out that my thyroid left me hanging in mid-air and is now only functioning at less than half its expected rate.  As a result, my ovaries, already polycystic mind you, got agitated by the lack of errr for lack of a more appropriate term, stimulation.

To cut the long story short I've been in and out of my OB's clinic so many times in the last three weeks. And if it were possible, I would have maxed out my lab test limit on my HMO!

A transv ultrasound yesterday and a repeat set of lab tests on Monday. Add to that I now take drug cocktails morning, noon, and night.  The first couple of days left me feeling nauseous and absolutely cranky and emotional. And even now I swear I still get hot flushes...makes me wonder what state I'll be in once I start taking those hormone pills.

It's not so bad, really.  I mean, at least my doctors have (thank God) ruled out the need for surgery or any other invasive procedure. And I would, at this point, like to thank everyone for praying for me and holding my hand through this.

It wasn't easy. 

Not that having PCOS is the biggest storm to hit me, but those who are really close to me know that above everything else I would like to have a family. So having this strikes me at a really vulnerable spot, because of course, my condition would make it doubly hard for me to conceive a child. And, treatment and medication always has its accompanying risks and side effects.

I was really sad for a while. Especially now that a good number of my friends  have kids or are expecting.  Ymie just gave birth a couple of weeks ago, and I couldn't bring myself to visit her at the hospital. Cel and Jen are also pregnant (hey mga sis, really happy for you!) and Alex's wife is due to give birth soon. *smiles*  Yeah, I am surrounded by babies, friends with babies and friends who are going to have babies.  And while I have always been happy for people who are happy. I of course can't help but wish that God willing, my time would come too.

So that's where all the mushy and anxious text messages came from.  And yes, please be assured that I have a slightly better grip on things now, hehe. But I am not promising that there wouldn't be any more depressed messages.

My doctor says I start on the hormones in less than two weeks.  That's a six-month treatment plus the handful of pills I have to swallow each day.  Treating PCOS is a long and painstaking thing, and she was kind enough to warn me that I would need to invest on a lot of patience and more importantly, faith in the days and months to come.

Oh but I am not worried. I have my family, my friends, my church community, and an extraordinary God to back me up.

Smile. It's still is and will always be a wonderful world. God Bless ya'all!

From the Inbox: The Emperor
Posted in Angel 24/7



An emperor in the Far East was growing old and knew it was time to choose his successor. Instead of choosing one of his assistants or his children, he decided something different. He called young people in the kingdom together one day. He said, "It is time for me to step down and choose the next emperor. I have decided to choose one of you."

The kids were shocked! But the emperor continued. "I am going to give each one of you a seed today. One very special seed. I want you to plant the seed, water it and come back here after one year from today with what you have grown from this one seed. I will then judge the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next emperor!"

 One boy named Ling was there that day and he, like the others, received a seed. He went home and excitedly told his mother the story. She helped him get a pot and planting soil, and he planted the seed and watered it carefully. Every day he would water it and watch to see if it had grown. After about three weeks, some of the other youths began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow.

Ling kept checking his seed, but nothing ever grew. 3 weeks, 4 weeks, 5 weeks went by. Still nothing. By now, others were talking about their plants but Ling didn't have a plant, and he felt like a failure. Six months went by, still nothing in Ling's pot. He just knew he had killed his seed.

Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing. Ling didn't say anything to his friends, however. He just kept waiting for his seed to grow.

A year finally went by and all the youths of the kingdom brought their plants to the emperor for inspection. Ling told his mother that he wasn't going to take an empty pot. But honest about what happened, Ling felt sick to his stomach, but he knew his mother was right. He took his empty pot to the palace. When Ling arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by the other youths. They were beautiful in all shapes and sizes. Ling put his empty pot on the floor and many of the other kinds laughed at him. A few felt sorry for him and just said, "Hey nice try."

 When the emperor arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted the young people. Ling just tried to hide in the back. "What great plants, trees and flowers you have grown," said the emperor. "Today, one of you will be appointed the next emperor!" All of a sudden, the emperor spotted Ling at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered his guards to bring him to the front. Ling was terrified. "The emperor knows I'm a failure! Maybe he will have me killed!"

When Ling got to the front, the Emperor asked his name. "My name is Ling," he replied. All the kids were laughing and making fun of him. The emperor asked everyone to quiet down. He looked at Ling, and then announced to the crowd, "Behold your new emperor! His name is Ling!" Ling couldn't believe it. Ling couldn't even grow his seed. How could he be the new emperor? 

Then the emperor said, "One year ago today, I gave everyone here a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds, which would not grow. All of you, except Ling, have brought me trees and plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Ling was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new emperor!"

If you plant honesty, you will reap trust.
If you plant goodness, you will reap friends.
If you plant humility, you will reap greatness.
If you plant perseverance, you will reap victory.
If you plant consideration, you will reap harmony.
If you plant hard work, you will reap success.
If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation.
If you plant openness, you will reap intimacy.
If you plant patience, you will reap improvements.
If you plant faith, you will reap miracles. 

But 

If you plant dishonesty, you will reap distrust.
If you plant selfishness, you will reap loneliness.
If you plant pride, you will reap destruction.
If you plant envy, you will reap trouble.
If you plant laziness, you will reap stagnation.
If you plant bitterness, you will reap isolation.
If you plant greed, you will reap loss.
If you plant gossip, you will reap enemies.
If you plant worries, you will reap wrinkles.
If you plant sin, you will reap guilt.
 

So be careful what you plant now, It will determine what you will reap tomorrow, The seeds you now scatter, Will make life worse or better, your life or the ones who will come after. Yes, someday, you will enjoy the fruits, or you will pay for the choices you plant today.

*I used to sing this song...
Posted in Angel 24/7, My OST

"All The Love In The World"

the Corrs

I'm not looking for someone to talk to
I've got my friends, I'm more than O.K.
I've got more than a girl could wish for
I live my dreams but it's not all they say
Still I believe (I'm missing) I'm missing something real
I need someone who really sees me...

(Don't wanna wake...) Don't wanna wake up alone anymore
Still believing you'll walk through my door
All I need is to know it's for sure
Then I'll give... all the love in the world

I've often wondered if love's an illusion
Just to get you through the loneliest days
I can't criticize it
I have no hestitaion
My imagination just stole me away
(Still...) Still I believe
(I'm missing) I'm missing something real
I need someone who really sees me...

(Don't wanna wake...) Don't wanna wake up alone anymore
Still believing you'll walk through my door
All I need is to know it's for sure
Then I'll give... all the love in the world

Love's for a lifetime not for a moment
So how could I throw it away
Yeah I'm only human
And nights grow colder
With no-one to love me that way
Yeah I need someone who really sees me...

(Don't wanna wake...) And i won't wake up alone anymore
Still believing you'll walk through my door
You'll reach for me and I'll know it's for sure
Then I'll give all the love in the world
(Don't wanna wake up alone anymore...)

Happy Valetines to all!

Differential Diagnosis: ahhh valentines!

Bagay sa akin ang kulot...
Posted in Love and other Disasters

Valentine's ...and I chose to stay at work than brave my way through couple-crowded thoroughfares.

Don't get me wrong, I do not belong to the jilted lovers club. And like Christmas, I love spreading around good cheer...chocolate and heart trinkets for everyone!  But today, supposedly the day of hearts, I fell into another one of my Carrie Bradshaw or Christina Yang moments. 

I couldn't help but think how love can make the world go round for most people...or make time stand completely still for others.

Me, im the curly Carrie Bradshaw who gets affected by the tiniest tiff with her significant other. I brood. I mull. I throw tantrums and hissy fits and swear over anything left to swear on that it would be the absolute last time.  And then, five minutes and one barely audible apology later, everything's all wine and roses.

Sissy? i hope not. I've observed that for most working women, an argument or a huge fight merits filing a day of "insanity leave".  It's one of those days when nothing on the lits of things to do gets done, work is sloppy, tempers are flaring and in between the nose-blowing and the mascara-dabbing, all the sins and shortcomings of men are broadcast to anyone who passes by.

Next day, you find her cooing over the phone or dressing up for a date with the hubby or erring boyfriend.

It's not that we women are push overs or highly emotional,I would just like to believe that we get affected by relationships a whole lot more and feel that as women, it is our responsibility to broker peace...patch things up and maintain an open line of communication, so often mistaken as nagging with men.  Seriously. The give and take scale should get inspected by the DTI because it is soo not balanced.

It baffles me how men could just shrug all of these off. Or manage to watch and game, sleep, play on the PC in the midst of a fight. Good if it's a conscious effort not to make the fire spread but most of the time, it's like it isn't such a big concern or worry for them. Unless i has reached critical level.

At that point, the roles reverse.  The men exhaust all possible means to get the woman to listen, forgive and accept.  And it is now the woman who does the shoulder shrugging, hair tossing, bonding with friends and ignore-you-til-you-go away dance.

They either break up or make up.  And the cycle repeats itself.

The point I'm trying to make is no matter how crappy or pathetic your relationship is, majority of us would rather still be in one. Even couples who have separated still try, as best as humanly possible, to get back together and work things out.

Men-haters, women haters, people who say they aren't ever going to settle down....still all bow and submit to the greatest force on earth. 

Valentine's may be over rated, extremely commercialized--true. But LOVE isn't.  It's still the single most beautiful gift you can ever give a friend or a foe, a family member or your significant other.

Happy araw ng mga PUSO at sana happy rin ang mga puso ninyo!

Buhay Adik
Posted in Angel 24/7

I pop a pill to speed up my metabolism the minute I wake up.  All major meals, which i am now forced to take by the way, is spiced up by 500mgs of Metformin hydrochloride each.  I just finished a week of antibiotics, 1000 mgs a day....and last night, after an awful bout with migraine, i took 500mgs of Tylenol just to be able to sleep.

I'm a junkie--and that doesn't make me happy!

Several days ago I noticed that it's harder and harder to get up in the morning. And the first couple of hours are either spent dizzy or nauseous, or both.  It's lack a bad case of morning sickness, except I'm not pregnant.  That's the icing on my cake---i'm going through all of these in the hope that one day I would be able to bear a child.

In other news, SPEECH CENTRAL, our new baby, is doing quite well.  It's another thing I'm hooked on nowadays. Between the reviewing, reading and all sort of odds and ends to help Miel and Rudolph get the business up and running, there isn't much room to do anything else.

No more time to mope, be sad or pick fights with Gabriel. Hehe, just kidding. Japanese girl Joniza chided me yesterday for not blogging about the relationship--which surprised her and my other officemates.  It wasn't my intention to keep everything hush hush...just that there was a lot of more important things to talk about recently.

But for the record yes, I am in a relationship.  Just a little over 5 months now. It's long distance. So it's difficult and very challenging and frustrating at times. 

And for the longest time it felt like it wouldn't work.

For some reason though, we're still together. Just don't ask me how many times we've fought or broken up and called it quits. Haha! I've honestly lost count already (peace tayo mahal!)

The good thing about it is that both he and I are workaholics. He has set up his own digital photography studio with his brother, and thankfully, it's also prospering. I, on the other hand, am pacing myself with my work at Teleforce (i'm still OC mind you...im just taking a breather!) and preparing for a part-time teaching stint at the Central. We both have our priorities set and our goals defined.

And in a nutshell people, that's my life...

24/7 Reading List: Ins and Outs of Prepositions
Silverscreen Pick: Grey's Anatomy Season 3 Episode 15
Differential Diagnosis: feeling preggers

LIFE IS A BAG OF FROZEN PEAS
Posted in Angel 24/7

By Michael T. Smith

A few weeks after my first wife, Georgia, was called to heaven, I was cooking dinner for my son and myself. For a vegetable, I decided on frozen peas. As I was cutting open the bag, it slipped from my hands and crashed to the floor. The peas, like marbles, rolled everywhere. I tried to use a broom, but with each swipe the peas rolled across the kitchen, bounced off the wall on the other side and rolled in another direction.

My mental state at the time was fragile. Losing a spouse is an unbearable pain. I got on my hands and knees and pulled them into a pile to dispose of. I was half laughing and half crying as I collected them. I could see the humor in what happened, but it doesn't take much for a person dealing with grief to break down.

For the next week, every time I was in the kitchen, I would find a pea that had escaped my first cleanup. In a corner, behind a table leg, in the frays at the end of a mat, or hidden under a heater, they kept turning up. Eight months later I pulled out the refrigerator to clean, and found a dozen or so petrified peas hidden underneath.

At the time I found those few remaining peas, I was in a new relationship with a wonderful woman I met in a widow/widower support group. After we married, I was reminded of those peas under the refrigerator. I realized my life had been like that bag of frozen peas. It had shattered. My wife was gone. I was in a new city with a busy job and a son having trouble adjusting to his new surroundings and the loss of his mother. I was a wreck. I was a bag of spilled, frozen peas. My life had come apart and scattered.

When life gets you down; when everything you know comes apart; when you think you can never get through the tough times, remember, it is just a bag of scattered, frozen peas. The peas can be collected and life will move on. You will find all the peas. First the easy peas come together in a pile. You pick them up and start to move on. Later you will find the bigger and harder to find peas. When you pull all the peas together, life will be whole again.

The life you know can be scattered at any time. You will move on, but how
fast you collect your peas depends on you. Will you keep scattering them
around with a broom, or will you pick them up one-by-one and put your life back together?

How will you collect your peas?

24/7 Reading List: Train Man
Silverscreen Pick: Grey's Anatomy Episode 17
Differential Diagnosis: picking up peas