Keeping Calm internally and Externally

Living on this beautiful earth is a gift but it can be emotionally exhausting when dealing with others, whose taste, values, and attitude, spirits and life views differ from your own. It make so much sense why most of us do seek to build communities with people we think are just like us.

I am a proponent of the sayings “You can’t control another person’s reaction, you can only control your own” and “It is none your business what someone else thinks about you”.


To follow these life tenets,  I am happy that the book “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz exists. I like that it exists because going to bed at the end of each day with a joyful heart and a peaceful mind is one of life's blissful gifts I want to experience.

My grandmother use to say that when she saw me angry, she knew I was always in the right because I only become enraged  when I know I am right and it is time to say enough is enough, especially in situation when someone is being inconsiderate towards me or others. 


As I got older, I learned to pick my battles and acquaintances carefully, while remaining open to interactions and ideas that makes me a well-round person. I have also been doing great at stopping the paralyzing worries of what others thought of me, worries that would keep me awake all night,  worries that would  stop me from experiencing life and from sharing my ideas and opinions.

As I go deeper into my spiritual practice, I am learning to create a world that I would love to live in, one in which I have a life that is respectable, happy, engaging, productive, and meaningful life. I am also learning to deal with life’s curveballs a fruitful way.

For a while now I have been going through a transformative period and as I near its end, and enter into another evolutionary stage, I am happy that Mr. Ruiz’s book came into my life. I have known about the book for years but it is only just recently that I read it. Every day before I start my day, as part of my Morning Prayer and quiet time, I recite the four agreements to myself. Thank you, Don Miguel Ruiz. I am looking forward to these agreements becoming part of my innate habits.


Since I am saying thank you, I want to thank my favorite Iconoclast, Cate Blanchett, to my friends on 12 and Beacon of light radio stations, because, of you all, I will  keep my light from under the bushel.

We've debated, now let's take action. Shall we?

I've been thinking about all the summits, seminars and workshops we organize to address societal and workplace issues. Every year, many of these events, attempt to solve the same issues that were tackled in past years or by other organizations in the previous months. In fact, I have gone to many and even helped organized a few and my takeaway has also been solutions similar to ones I have heard before.

Lately I am feeling the urge to move beyond just talking. I know for certain that we have come up with many great solutions, and I feel it is time to implement them.



In the past, whenever I am at a seminar, I usually think to myself, why am I here? What I am going to do with this information I am getting?
Lately, I have been using these questions to help me select the seminars, workshop or talks I take part in because I realized that after each event, when the exciting of being part of these engaging dialogs fade, I would tuck the solutions I gathered away because I don’t have mechanism to implement the solutions.

But now instead of refusing to participate or to listen because I don’t have the influence to move things forward, I need to fight to be heard; I need to keep asking, the question, ‘how do we move forward from just talking to taking actions?’ to others. I need push to work collaboratively with those who have the influence to create the vehicle for change to actualize.

So world, how do we move from talking about equality for women in the workplace and in life to taking actions to make sure it is a reality?




Update!!
Interesting development form UN Women's Global Innovation Coalition for Change (GICC). Please read.