Monthly Archives: December 2015

2015: closing cycles

31 Thursday Dec 2015

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2015 ending

Hello everyone,

With today being the last day of 2015, I thought to share with you a profound and pertinent message, written by one of my favorite authors, Paul Coelho. I found it both insightful and I hope you do too.

Read below and have a pleasant New Year in advance:

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through.
Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.

Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?
You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened.

You can tell yourself you won’t take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that.
But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister.
Everyone is finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.

Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away.

That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home.

Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts – and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.
Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them.

Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose.
Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood.

Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.

Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the “ideal moment.”

Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back.
Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person – nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need.
This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.

Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life.

Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust.

Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

Culled from Paul Coelho’s Blog: http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2015/12/27/closing-cycles/

Image credit: www.interstaff.com

Reblog: How to Live in the Now

19 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by in Motivation

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Roxana writes about what she considers to be the now moment and offers a way to experience it and use it to manifest the life of your dreams.

Source: How to Live in the Now

5 ways to spot a catfish account on Facebook

12 Saturday Dec 2015

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catfish 2

As part of my marketing efforts to generate interest for my novel, Twisted in a Positive Way, I have been doing some social media promotion, as well as answering interview questions from other bloggers. As a result of this, I have also gained more Facebook friends and few more Twitter followers.

One of such Facebook friends was a man I will call Gerard Smith for the purpose of this post. (Apologies to all the actual Gerard Smiths out there)

So Gerard Smith added me on Facebook, I checked his profile and saw that we had two mutual friends so I accepted his invite. Not long after accepting his invite, he made a nice comment about one of my pictures so I checked out his profile and saw that he had only 5 pictures, all of which seemed very recent. I thought that was odd, but decided not to think too much about it.

Later, he sent me a message wanting to know how my day went and I replied, asking how he knew me because I could not recognise him.

Gerard responded stating he did not know me but saw my picture and “liked” me. In my head, I was wondering how someone could possibly like someone without knowing the person. Surely that person could turn out to be a serial killer. So I replied with “fair enough”.

One thing that was very obvious from our chat was that Gerard had a poor command of English, often using “were” in place of “where” and “your” instead of “you are” amongst other mistakes.

When I asked where he lived and he replied “uk”, I then checked his profile again and it stated his location as Clapham, Lancashire. Still something didn’t seem right so I asked what part of UK he lived in and he replied, “clapham”.

Now, I know of two different places called Clapham here in the UK. One in London and another, in the North Yorkshire region.

Still, I wanted to test Gerard, so I asked him where Clapham was located and he stopped replying.

He finally replied the following day with just one word, “south”. This got me thinking, surely someone who lives in Clapham, Lancashire should know that Lancashire is not in the south.

At this point, I had all the evidence I needed to prove that our friend Gerard was a catfish and an unintelligent one at that.

Based on my very brief experience, there are 5 quick ways to spot a catfish.

  • The person has only 4 or 5 pictures on Facebook

 

Facebook has been around for long enough for people to have more than a few pictures on it so if someone adds you and he or she has only very few pictures on it, this should be a flag. You should even be more worried if all the pictures appear to have been posted recently and within a short period of time. This shows that the profile was created hurriedly.

Dot Con: The Art of Scamming a Scammer

  • The person has poor command of English

 

If the person sending you messages on Facebook has a very poor command of English, this usually points to the fact that the person is located in a different region (perhaps a non-English speaking region) from where the person is claiming to be based.

  • The person does not appear to know much about his location

 

This points to the fact that the person doesn’t live there at all. Surely you should know where the city you live in is located.

  • The person uses endearing words too quickly

 

If a person you accepted his invite immediately starts saying he likes you or starts professing feelings for you, then this should be a massive red flag. I have heard of love at first sight, but surely not that fast.

  • The person has very little limited information on his/her profile

 

This point is self-explanatory.

In the end, use your intuition and if something does not seem right, don’t be afraid to use the block button because in the end, it is better to be safe than to be sorry.

Image credit: http://socialnewsdaily.com/11296/catfishing-infographic/

 

 

Addicted to Perfection

03 Thursday Dec 2015

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perfection
December is finally here! I can’t believe that it has been almost 5 months since I wrote my last blog post. “Where has all the time gone?” I keep asking myself.
You would remember in my last post I wrote about the crowdfunding campaign for my new novel, “Twisted in a Positive Way”. The campaign was successful and even though I didn’t hit my funding target, through the campaign, I was able to generate a lot of publicity and interest for it. It was finally published and is available for purchase on Amazon in both kindle and paperback format in the UK click here to buy, and the US click here to buy .

I would like to use this opportunity to say thank you once again to everyone who pre-ordered and spread the word on the campaign. I am humbled by all the feedback I have received so far. One of the funniest feedback I received was from a reader who said that she was quite cross with herself for leaving the book at home for one day and couldn’t wait to get home to continue from where she stopped.
If you have read the novel, please feel free to leave a review on Amazon website stating that you purchased the book through the crowdfunding campaign by clicking here.
Moving away from the subject of my novel, I had a discussion earlier this week with my friend who I would call John. Let me tell you a little bit about John.

John is a nice guy, has a good job working in one of the essential services here in England. He earns a very decent salary, has a nice two bedroom house and drives a good car. To everyone, John lives a comfortable life.
In reality, John is not a happy man because he feels he is overweight. This feeling has affected his ability to speak to women and has caused him to lose his confidence because he feels that they would not find him attractive on account of his weight.
Now, in the time I have known John, I have never really noticed the extra pounds. All I see is a nice, funny, hardworking and blessed young man.

When I got home that night, after my meeting with my friend, I pondered how we humans seem to constantly be obsessed with our idea of perfection. Like John, we think about the things we feel are not perfect in our lives and end up forgetting all the wonderful things we have going for us.

The TV and print media have not helped with this, every day we are bombarded with photo shopped bodies and filtered images subtly telling us what we should look like. Even when we are not are not trying to look like the models and characters on TV, we find ourselves sometimes comparing ourselves to our friends and colleagues.

Thinking about this reminded me of a story I heard years ago. A young man had sought a job for months and finally he got his dream job with the exact pay he wanted and was so happy. He called all his friends and told them of his news and they all congratulated him. He continued in this state of happiness until he spoke to one particular friend. This friend like others, congratulated him and asked him how much he was to be paid. Out of curiousity, he too asked his friend what his salary was. After the phone call, his mood changed because he realised that his friend was making more than him. The fact that he had sought this job for months did not seem to matter. He was no longer happy about it.

Perhaps it is time to stop this neurosis and start recognising all the numerous blessings we have. Whenever you find yourself thinking those gloomy thoughts, consciously stop yourself and instead, think of three things in your life which you are thankful for and dwell on those things instead. They may not be massive things. You could even be thankful for the nice cup of tea you just had, knowing that someone out there is craving for just that and cannot get it. Perhaps you could be thankful for the fact that you just had a nice hot meal knowing that someone out there would gladly swap places with you if they had the opportunity.
Now, I am not saying that you should adopt a lackadaisical attitude to life and not seek self-development and improvement, what I am saying is that it is better to take these steps towards improvement from a place of gratitude having it at the back of your mind that there is no such a thing as perfection.

Thank you for reading and please feel free to leave your comments. I look forward to reading them.
Love,
Chika

Image credit: jarofquotes.com