Category: Time Management

Life is like a buffet, it is abundant.  If you have been to a buffet, no matter how plenty and limitless the food is, you can only eat so much.  Our stomach can only digest so much.  It varies of course between people.  When you have eaten enough, your body will tell you to stop.  You will probably experience tightness in your stomach, shortness of breath, nausea or even dizziness. When you experience this, it is actually too late.  When your body experiences threshold level, it sends signals to your brain to stop.  Your brain takes time to respond.  The lag, which is the equivalent to the excess food that you’ve taken, can lead to high blood, hypertension or even heart attack.

I believe God designed life to be abundant for us to enjoy it.  But He also placed a built-in regulation mechanism everywhere to maintain balance.  Maintaining balance is elusive but should never be ignored when we look at the world in general and in human life.

The World

God made the plants, birds, insects, wild animals, hills, valleys, air and human beings and placed them in one planet to coexist.  In Genesis 2: 15,

Then the LORD God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it. And the LORD God commanded him, “You may eat freely from every tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”

The story of the Fall of Man tells us about our greed.  There are probably a million trees in the Garden of Eden, A MILLION TREES, yet we still ate the fruit of that one tree, ONE TREE, God forbade us.  Look at what we are doing now.  There are literally thousands of varieties of plants and fruits that we can eat.  There are tons of fish and rice that we can make.  Yet there are people who eat cockroaches, snakes, monkeys and bats.  This virus that is currently rampaging the whole world came from bats.  God made bats look scary and hid them in the darkest corners of the world to tell us – YOU SHOULD NOT EAT THEM.  Yet we ate them.  So now this is what is happening, “for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”

This is the built-in regulation mechanism of the world in action and we are paying the price for it.

Bullying is a hot topic nowadays in school.  As the dominant species in this planet, we are acting like bullies.  Not because we are more intelligent and higher in intuition doesn’t give us the right to impose our will to everything in this world.  We separate the baby cows from their mothers the moment they are born and put them in cages, disregarding the cry of the mother without remorse.  We pollute the air to create toys for our enjoyment.  We destroy forests and cut the trees that serve as homes of several species of birds, to make our coffee table.  The thing that bothers me is that we are all part of this.  Human beings have built systems that integrate this inhumane and disrespectful acts.

If we don’t clean up our acts together, the world will always self regulate and the price could be greater.

It is our greed that is killing us.  This pandemic is telling us that the world can exist without us humans and grimly it seems it is better off without us.  As the dominant species, we need to be RESPONSIBLE in taking care of this planet. There are currently 7.5 billion people in the world.  The population is increasing at an alarming rate of 7 to 8% per year.  The emphasis on nurturing essential skills like respect, responsibility, and self-control has never been more urgent than this time.

Fortunately, there is still time.  We still have our chance to make this right and to be better stewards of the world.

(Part 2 soon.)

There is an artist in all of us. I met a lot of people in the corporate world who wished they could pursue their artistic inclination like painting, acting, making music and dancing, but don’t know where to start because they are stuck in a vicious cycle. These people are rich and empty as well.

I am in a process of recovering my creative self and I would like to share with you how it is working for me so far.

Twenty five years ago, I was searching for my identity. I was already a CPA back then, and working in one of the prestigious Auditing firms in the country. But something was missing. I was not creating. I remember during my childhood days, I love drawing and doing artworks. I used to win poster making contests in the schools I attended. It was not big a deal but I remember every time I draw or paint, I felt so aligned with the cosmos.

So I took up Advertising Arts at UST to pursue my dream as an artist. Aside from dreaming to be a painter and a designer, I also wanted to be a writer. One of the first books I bought, which was recommended by my brother Rommel was the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. It’s a book about discovering and recovering your creative self. It is also a 12 week program that gives you specific activities every week. It has helped thousands of people who became novelists, painters, scriptwriters and more. I can’t remember anymore if I finished the program but I remember that I started writing my Morning Pages. Morning Pages is a 3 page of non stop, no editing writing. Whatever comes to your mind you write it. For a time I religiously did my Morning Pages, filling out notebook after notebook after notebook. Then I stopped. Got busy with work and with a lot of things. The dream of becoming an artist and a writer got lost in the daily grind.

Two weeks ago, I attended a Writing Workshop organized by the people of Kerygma Books. It was their first time to organize such an event. Thank God for that. One of the speakers, Karren Renz Seña, author of the Lost Chronicles of Eden: Champions, recommended that we should do the Morning Pages.

So here I am, after 25 years, bought the book again and restarted my Morning Pages. And what a joy it has been to write and allow those thoughts to flow freely into my notebook.

This week is about recovering a sense of safety. One of the activities I need to do is to list down old enemies of my creative self-worth, people who served as building blocks, people who gave negative beliefs that I am not a good artist. You know what, I can’t think of any. Thank God no one really told me I was a bad artist or a bad writer. A lot of people told me I’m a bad photographer but that’s another story. But for visual arts and writing, nobody. If you happen to have people who bombard you with negative beliefs, just remember those are just their beliefs, not facts. In your pursuit of discovering or recovering your creative self, you should PURSUE PROGRESS NOT PERFECTION. Julia Cameron suggests that we should be willing to be bad artists, and with constant progress, someday we will become great.

In my case, I was blessed not to have old enemies. So what was my building block. My building block was myself. I did not believe in myself enough. I needed affirmations.

Another activity that I need to do is to look and write AFFIRMATIONS. I have a little reminder in my desk that I read everyday. One of the statements I wrote is that I always believe I am a great artist. Lately, I took out the first plate I did during my Advertising days and it wasn’t bad for a beginner. By the way, I got a grade of 1.0 for this plate. I suggest you write down your affirmations and post it somewhere that you can read everyday.

If you have a dilemma like mine, surround yourself with affirmations. This plate of mine is placed on top of my home desk to remind me that I am capable of doing creative work. If I did it before, I can certainly do it again.

The last thing I want to share with you today and the most important is MAKE TIME. If you don’t make time, nothing happens. Your life will be full of what-ifs and could have beens. Stop making excuses. J.K. Rowling wrote the Harry Potter series when she was rearing a child single-handedly, living on food stamps and with no support at all. I now allot three hours of my time, every morning in doing the things I need to do to become a good artist.

Now is the time to discover the artist in you. If you have dabbled into arts before like me and somehow lost it, no matter what age or state you are in, it is not too late to recover it.