Why am I angry when receiving feedback?

1.5 week ago I could not control myself after receiving feedback. It was just a normal meeting and discussion where at the end I felt stressed after looking at the reality that I was not doing well. That I took too many things which make me unable to complete things. My friend reminded the need to change. That night I did not feel like talking. Then the next day when I shared my wife, I could not control my words. I fell again to the same pit where I protested why I need to change if I don’t see other people able to change.

The hard truth is that I do need to change, not for others, but for myself. And secondly, it is also false that other people do not change. Somehow I need to admit that I have seen people change.

Last week, I was also shocked when I see in the mirror that there are several stains on my teeth. Again, I felt sad when receiving feedback that I do not want.

I guess I am angry when receiving feedback because I do not like myself. I could not accept that I am now what I think. That is a challenge, I need to like myself no matter how I fall short of my own exception. Myself is the gift that God has entrusted to me.

Secondly, I am angry because I do not have hope. I have the tendency to think that if I cannot change now, that means I could not change forever. In reality, there is progress over time, this is not counting the possibility of having tipping point somewhere along the way.

Now I feel tired, that is also feedback that I have done probably near to my limit. There is a feedback to say to slow down. So I need to acknowledge and practice listening to the feedback. Remember that there is no need to build an unnecessary rule to follow the feedback. As an adult, we have the freedom on how we process the feedback and act accordingly.

How to get myself threatened?

Thank God for the insightful experience today where I can see on how often I threaten myself by desiring to be somebody else and or to have perfection. 

This morning there was a meeting at 10 am. So I tried to squeeze some time to follow up on the task I promised to do 3 weeks ago with another intern, also to practice for the way to measure which may be helpful for my own intern of which last day is this Friday. 

But somehow I was stuck in a step, a step that was even earlier at the place I am usually stuck. So I was frustrated. 

Then there was a sharing session at 10 am, a very insightful sharing by a great engineer. But somehow I became stress, probably because I come to a realization of two things. One is the gap with him is very big - of course it is big - so perhaps it is more that it is difficult for me to know and accept where I am. Secondly is that I realized that there are a lot of things to do for my own work while I keep trying to take extra job and help others in office beyond my scope of area. 

So my mood changed, I didn't talk much during lunch. And after the lunch, I was still moody. To make things worse, a colleague asked something that I borrow, and I realized that I haven't done another thing that is long overdue. I had to learn the humility to say that I haven't done what I wanted and return her the materials first. 

By that time, I tried to encourage myself that I can stand that feeling as previously shown. I felt bad when I need to quickly learn something again which I have postponed. Then afterwards attend another meeting. There were the time where God reminded me again, that I may be slow in some thing, but I can be average or faster than average for another thing. 

Afterwards, I was still stressed as there are many things to do. Thank God that I can decide and try again the things I couldn't do this morning. Surprisingly, I managed to find my mistake myself, something that is very simple. And afterwards, I managed to complete that task. 

I am happy with it. But at the same time, it realizes how heavy I put my worth on the achievements of my work. So I need to learn to let go and focus on giving our part, solving the problems we have as my calling instead of something that I use to define myself. 

It may be a deception when you say you are doing it for someone

In a film called FAN with Shah Rukh Khan, the young Gaurav worshipped his idol, Aryan to the point that he beated another artist who tricked Aryan to a problem. The young Gaurav insisted that he is doing it for Aryan and therefore Aryan should appreciate his wrong doing.

That is a good portrayal of what we, or at least, I have been doing. I often say I do this for God where it is actually for my ego and impulsiveness. There are many times as well where I try to do things that I thought I am helping my wife while actually my act made things worse. In office, I also often portray myself as someone loyal and dream to maintain the original vision laid by the founder, again claiming for the sake of the company and its people.

The question is how do we know that we are not deceiving ourselves? How do we know that what we think is good is really good for God, for someone we love, or organization or country?

Or is it that we just want to use that as an excuse of our immaturity? That we don’t want to take the responsibility ourselves. There is a saying that sincerity is not enough. That is because it is hard to know what someone really want. So do we spend enough time to understand what is really needed?

Often we bypass that difficult process and replace it with our idealism of what should be good for others. I am lazy to find it out more. I am also reluctant to acknowledge that my perception may and can be wrong.

So the next time I say it again, let’s be careful, let’s ask deeper on what is our intention. So at least when we still do that, we can say that we are doing it for ourselves and not for the sake of others; acknowledging that we can’t read people’s mind. And at the end, we need to make sure that we can help ourselves progressing as we try to help by giving what we can and not what we cannot give.

Overwhelmed by notifications

Everyday I receive so many notifications on my handphone. The world has so many interesting things that we need to manage in order not to be overwhelmed. News, calendar, e-mail, whatsapp, and social media compete with each other for attention. My struggle is that I don’t decide fast enough on what to care and what to ignore.

So combined with perfectionism that lead to procrastination, I have so many unopened notifications. I keep dreaming of the free time when I could open the notifications one by one to sort which one is important. But as we all know, that time will not come. And even if we have free time, by that time, the unopened notifications are too many that we cannot handle them.

As like food and other things, we need to know when to scrap. And like food, we also need to know what we can take in. No matter how nice the food is, we are only able to take certain amount beyond which it is detrimental for our health. In other word, we need to ignore certain attractions and remember our limits. By this, we can take the things within our reach and ignore or scrap the rest.

For example, now I try to see my e-mail and delete the things that seem not important. Also, if I have unopened mails for too long not being opened, I just then skip it or take the time just to open it at a glance. This is because unopening a notification is also distracting in the sense that we build up an assumption of the contents of which may be very different once it is opened.

Again, this has to work in hand with the effort in managing the procrastination. One of the thing that makes me afraid of opening notifications is the obligations that followed after opening such as the need to follow up. So I need to be courageous and also be firm on what are the things to follow up and what to let go. Even sometimes when the notifications are too many and seem not that important, it is ok to use the clear button to clear all notifications instead of opening one by one.

And as yesterday’s learning, to avoid being overwhelmed, one needs to prioritize. It is good that I start to rank the priority today and start from the first one. At the same time, I need to improve as the 2nd and 7th task today is not touched while I tried to address a new problem. But it’s ok, today is first day trying and the more important thing is to progress instead of comparing to others or our ideal-self which may not be ourselves.

Diandin Leluk

It is an interesting lunch today. I didn’t expect to go far from office for lunch, but I met my friends right after a meeting and joined them for lunch at Golden Mile Complex. It was my first time going inside there and was impressed on the amount of Thai food stalls there. We decided to eat at Diandin Leluk and ordered many food as there were six of us.

Initially there were four of us and each of us is asked to choose one dish. I was thinking about green curry. But I just eat it yesterday at Anchor Point. So I was hesitating to mention when at the end my friend mentioned it. Since we already ordered tom yum and green curry, I started looking at the veggies side. I was thinking to order sambal kangkong but hesitated as one of us could not eat spicy food. Soon my friend ordered it. Then I am the only one left to choose. I was then thinking about Basil as it is quite unique as a Thai food. But I am not sure again since it is still meat and whether people want to eat chicken again aside from the green curry. At the end my friend could not wait and ordered it. It is interesting to see how long I need to make decision and at the end what I was thinking is the same as others for three times. The difference is that I do not have self-confident as I think from too many angles.

Nevertheless, it was a great lunch, great food and filled with laughters.

False Hope in Stoning

When I am stressed or too tired, I will stone, namely just stare or let my mind fly somewhere. Probably it is not wrong, but it does not work for me. My organization skill is not good without writing or talking aloud that the ideas come in stoning just would not be optimal. In addition, I am also not someone who can brainstorm while stationary - a trait of kinetics learner. It is also not a mode of rest for me.

So why do I choose to do that? I think because I have a false hope. I am so frustrated that I want to give up in doing things, and by not doing anything, I hope that there can be miracle, that somehow the problem is fixed by itself. Well, this is not impossible as our God is gracious. But at the same time, He is also God who said seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened. In other word, we need to be active in seeking for solutions, in seeking another door that will be opened when one is closed. What if we are very tired? He is also God who said come to Him and He will give us rest. This means that there is actually no point of stoning and staring for blank. We are encouraged to pray and say anything that we worry about. And if we are really tired, it means that we need to do other activity such as a break by doing something else, or sleep.

In summary, there is no point for me of not deciding what to do and just stay stationary. I need to move on and choose what to do next and what to let go. This is a habit that I need to build on.

Why do I hate problems so much?

I originally planned to write something else. But just now I was so distracted with a problem that changed my mood. So I think I need to reflect on why I hate problems so much. The one that I just experienced is simple. The finder window in my macbook turns to be blank or hang after I switch window with another application like chrome. It irritates me very much as I could not play around with the finder such as finding some files.

After much cursing, then I decided to find in the google. There are several suggested applications. I decided to try one and somehow it worked! I was so happy for few moments to find out soon that the problem comes back whenever I switched an application. In other word, I get the workaround to make the hang finder window to work again without restarting the whole computer. But I have not found the solution that sticks. I need to repeat the workaround everytime I switch the window.

I guess there are several reasons that I am very upset when i see problems. First, it highlights my inability on certain things in life. I tend to only work on the area that I can do well. So when there is a problem that I cannot solve immediately, I become upset as it highlights my weaknesses. Second, I like smoothness in the sense that I only appreciate the result rather than the journey. I just want everything to be what I imagine. So I don’t like it when the plan is disturbed. Because it requires flexibility and by nature I am not flexible intellectually, emotionally, and physically. Third, because I lack of time. I want to do so many things that I lack of time. I am always rushing. So I cannot afford to have a delay that is caused by unexpected problems.

So how do I handle this tendency to be frustrated by the problems? Let’s change my perspective. First, let the problem highlight the importance of learning which I like. Consider problems as something interesting to solve with a safety net that it’s ok if we couldn’t solve it. We may be able to solve it at a later date or find a friend who can solve it. Second, consider problems as exercise where I can use my emotional muscle for being flexible. Third, treasure time and use it optimally so that we can have some buffer when a problem comes.

How long have you been doing this?

How long have you been doing this?

It just comes to a light that it is time to face one of my biggest problems: setting boundary.

It came up to my mind after losing control of my emotion three days ago. And while I am already aware of that problem, I just fell down again. I wanted to read football news only for 10 minutes, but end up I binged into a 47-minute of browsing and browsing trying to quench my emptiness and my desire to be fulfilled. Which is stupid as I am already blessed with many times. This shows the severity of the problem of boundary-less life. Slowly but sure it eats up our life and destroying whatever we have.

Now, let’s repeat the process of overcoming anxiety that started last January. If overcoming something that I have been doing for 8 years require patience and commitment, how even more they are to overcome something that I already have from childhood.

It’s hard, it’s tough, it’s almost impossible. But that is a real problem that I want to address. A problem frustrating enough to make a change. So practice the awareness when it creeps into my life like what happened just now; make commitment to get back up whenever I fall, ask whether it’s useful if I am just angry with myself; and find or create a small good habit to build up the ability to set boundary, bit by bit.

Empathize and being overwhelmed

Somehow it is difficult for me to empathise without being overwhelmed. In a lot of areas, my mind is still binary or a black-and-white thinking. This is one of the area which I need to improve.

This is because it causes me to ignore many things that happens or it causes me to be overwhelmed where I don’t ignore. When somebody is having a struggle, I often put my position in their shoes. But because I am not them, I may not have the same readiness or strength as them that I felt overwhelmed or stressed. Or maybe I have the same strength as them but I am more sensitive that I dislike any kind of challenge.

This means I do not fully empathise other people. I only look at their problems and imagine how does it feel if the same thing happens to me. But I miss the part on how it feels for them given their unique background. This is a reminder as well that something that I think is ok does not necessarily mean if the other person is struggling on that due to certain reason.

For example, if I see people are scratched or wounded, somehow I feel pain or scared. This is not because I empathise, but I just project their wound to me and then mistakenly think that I empathise with them.

So, I need to learn not only to think how does it feel to me, but how does it feel to them. Also, I need to learn not to jump to the solution, but to think what are their needs, and what’s best for them, which sometimes mean for me to just listen and pray instead of quickly do something to try to address it without knowing the negative consequences of doing that both for me and them.

Falling asleep while standing

There are several occurrences that I struggle from falling asleep while standing. Yes, it happened to me several times. During my internship 11 years ago, there was once that I almost hit a metal rack because I almost fell asleep. As for now, thankfully it does not happen at work. But there are several times when my wife needed to watch me from falling as I was half asleep while standing in the train. 

During those period, somehow I could not hold my sleepiness. I was just sleepy that my own control of the body is reduced. Well, I may not fully control this kind of thing from occurring. But at least there are several things I need to do to reduce its probability: sleep enough every day, take action when feeling sleepy - whether to take a short nap or to drink coffee instead of doing nothing, and to manage eating - not to eat too much that the blood flow is not normal. 

Likewise, in life, we need to be aware that we can fall even when we look like standing tall. We need to watch out and establish good habit so that we can be fresh and ready instead of losing the control on ourselves. In addition, when there is a problem, we need to decide quickly on what to do including waiting instead of not making decision and be torn apart from the different possible options. 

Getting used to fragrant smell

I am actually lazy to write. I feel tired and there are still so many things to do. My handphone is also full of unopened notifications. Nevertheless, I realize that I need to hang on in the good habit. And although I struggle to keep the good habit, I want to keep fighting.

The topic on the waiting list is getting used to fragrant smell. It came from an encounter in a mall where the shopkeeper told that if we want to be able to smell the fragrant, we need to alternate the fragrance. This is because no matter how nice the smell is, we’ll get used to it and think that there is no special smell or ambience anymore.

To think about it, that’s true. For example, I have made a lot of progresses since my wife encouraged me to start writing this. As I achieved more, I get used to it and started to put higher expectations myself. In other word, I stop counting the blessings and keep pushing too hard. So one way to alter the ‘smell’ is to stop, to slow down, to rest, to remind us that it’s ok to have a good rest. It’s ok that we can’t finish many things. Then tomorrow we can start fresh and give best. And then remember to alternate again by providing enough rest. By that, hopefully I can remember that we are actually called to be joyful continually, not a temporary condition where after some time, we get used to it and lose the joy. So, let’s always remind myself to rest, not just working hard, and that my joy ultimately come from God, not from completing the tasks in my long to-do-list.

When we have temporary blurry vision

Back to a Korean drama again, I was inspired by the scene where the patient experienced temporary blurry vision during a deep brain stimulation, a form of awake surgery.

The patient had a hand tremor problem of which solution was to have a deep brain stimulation. So the patient was awake when the brain is under surgery. As the surgery is a complex process, the patient was scared as her vision went blur. She couldn’t see things anymore. So she was afraid, not only her hand tremor was not solved, she also couldn’t see. A vision is key to life. Once we lose our vision, we will regret of not seeing things which we want to see.

It is very easy to doubt the surgeon. Even the surgeon can doubt himself. But the surgeon was confident as he knows what he is going to do and soon, the vision was back. Not only that, the hand tremor was also healed.

In life, we may have problems where we can’t have any other option and solution but seek God for a ‘surgery’. As He fixes our problem, we may have temporary blurry vision. That’s when faith comes. Although we can’t no longer see and the problem seems to be more and not less, it is important to remind ourselves that God knows what He is doing. He knows us and our problems. So, let’s learn to trust to Him, make sure that we don’t react negatively that is not useful in fixing the problems, and choose to rely on His providence and expertise.

What are my real interests?

Recently I am stressed again because I have so many things that I want to do and learn. I want to do several improvement projects in office. I wish to take several more interns. I want to learn Python programming language. I want to learn the stuffs in the new roles I take on. I want to use the social learning platform. I want to learn about color science, image processing algorithms, statistics, data analysis, and so on. The problem is that I am a slow learner. It's quite difficult for me to learn very fast. Also, I am easily distracted. So it's hard when I want to learn so many things. This is not counting those outside of office where I want to learn setting up a business, learn music, learn about C#,  want to do research, and still want to mentor other people.

The problem is that it is too much and my real interest is not clear. One said that if we are really interested in something, we will put efforts to learn and have the desire to keep using it. But now it's as if I do things for the sake of doing, or learn for the sake of learning. After learning something, I don't put it in use. So I end up with still being unable to do it. Or when I really need it, I already forget.

Things start to look bleak again. But the difference is that this is not the first time. Remember, being sad or stressed about this is not useful. We need to find a small new good habit to implement. Write down the purpose before doing stuffs, stick to the allocated time, and focus at one thing at a time.

Stop whining and let’s do the useful things

I struggle again with my procrastination. I have been delaying a task that was given on my first day after coming back to office on 27 June 2016. Initially I followed it up closely. But when it comes to putting all the observations in the slides, I delayed. I then promised that I will finish it on 20 July 2016. But there was no presentation and then I delayed it again until now.

It is already a grace that my team lead set the upcoming meeting agenda for me to share. So finally the benefit of doing it is much higher than the cost no matter how high the cost is.

But it is not easy when we do last minute with the expectations are still high up there. I tried to do it today but the progress seems to be very slow as the things I did are all scattered around. In other word, I could not decide on what to put and what to exclude. Then I started whining.

Thanks to my wife who reminds me to stop whining. This also reminds me on my counsellor’s question, is it helpful by doing this? Also, when I whine, it seems as if I can’t stand this feeling or situation. The question is that is that really true? I have been in similar situation before and I managed to go through it. So now I have a choice again, whether to continue whining, or continue finding ways to complete it - which often translates to just do it and accept the consequences and see that our fear is most probably without basis.

The danger of putting threshold on standard deviation

Let’s go back to the topic of standard deviation. As mentioned here, the aim is to measure the dispersion of the points with respect to the average value. As a data point can be below or above the mean, we need to make sure that they should not cancel each other. Two possible ways to do this is either taking the absolute value or taking the square of the difference. Standard deviation is then defined as the square root from the total sum of squares of the difference between the data point and the mean.

Why taking squares? This is because if we take the absolute, there may be same values of total absolute between the scenario where the data points have similar distance to the mean and the scenario where some data points have larger distance to the mean. So we want to solve this problem by penalizing those which have larger distance to the mean. This is the purpose of taking squares of the difference instead of taking its absolute.

In any case, we need to be careful when putting threshold on standard deviation even when we already take squares of the difference.

This depends on how we come up with the threshold on the standard deviation. If we just check on several cases, we may be misled. This is because the same standard deviation can still produce quite different scenario. If we happen to approve certain threshold by looking at the case where the distance is quite uniform, then we may be thinking that certain standard deviation is ok. But the same standard deviation can be achieved when the majority of data points are quite close to the mean and then few are far from the mean. The latter case is undesirable especially if each data point should not exceed certain threshold. In this case, it is better to do some kind of automation to ensure that all the data points should not exceed certain threshold, not just the summary of the dispersion.

When we have so many things to do

Recently my minds are full of thoughts with what to do next. My to-do-list is very long. Interestingly, I don't do any when I finally have the time to do.

There are several reasons. First, I am overwhelmed. Sometimes I see movies where the character is trapped wit huge amount of money loans. The feeling is full of hopeless. It is as if no matter what we do, we still cannot clear them all. In my case, my list of things to do is more than the budget in terms of time.

Second, my priorities are not clear. Every thing seems to be important. I can't decide which one to do first and then bear the consequences in doing others at a later time.

Third, I expect too much of myself. I want to do things very fast, at a rate that is unrealistic. Or I want to do multiple things at the same time such as listening to online course while checking my e-mails or whatsapp. I also tend to accept other requests even though I am already full.

I am not sure which one to act upon. But it is important to change at least one habit. Focus on something small first.

Move your finger

In Doctors movie, there is a scene where a patient could not move his body after surgery to treat the brain damage from a life-threatening accident. Although the surgery was successful, the patient became sad as he could not move the whole body. It was not a permanent disability but rather an experience where he needs to start over. He needs to re-learn to walk.

But that objective seems to be far away. He can't even move his leg and arms, let alone walk! But the doctor said to him, move your finger. He then gathered all his strength to move his finger and then burst into tears of happiness as he realizes that he can successfully move his finger.

Likewise, when we feel down, when we need to start over, when we need to re-learn, when we start to give up because the objective is just too far away, look for the smallest objective as possible. Convince ourselves that we can do it by the grace of God. Celebrate the little success and move on. I think that is faith in work.