String of Life

Today's entry will be rather serious as I need to keep my recent realization in my journal here.

Especially aftermy return to Japan where I do not freely express my deep internal thoughts (such as fear) openly, I think I have been shaped not to think about the life changing experience, because of my fear. It is like myself chopping this string of life that connects my past to the present whenever a thought of the experience occur in my mind.

I thought that it was a healthy way to deal with it, as my focus was to maintain a sense of peace and positive attitude during my stay here in Japan. But I realized that it had a negative effect on my mental health: I could not draw a line from the present to the future, and as a result, I often found myself getting panicky whenver my concern towards myfuture arrived in my mind.

As I used in my analogy of life as a string, as long as I continue to chopping the string (chopping the past experience from the whole) by not accepting it, I obviously would not be able to draw its extension to the future.... Right?

Well, there are reasons to why I did not (and still do not) want to remember my past experience (it's a painful memory to remember, obviously! duh) and my natural reaction to chopping the string off my present, but I realized that I can not just erase what happened, because it is a part of my past and my life after all. Although it may bring some bitter feelings in me, I think I need to learn how to accept it as an important lesson of my life. So I have been working on letting my thoughts flow whenever my memory of the past occur in me, but with a control and in a positive manner. I feel like putting myself on a psychology lab examination figure, but it's okay. It's been cool learning myself by psycho-analyzing my human responses/behaviours.

In my past entry, I noted how I lost my ability to trust myself (my judgement) and confidence
due to the life changing experience. I have been having trouble making significant decisions that involve a lot of responsibilities. So this has often put me in such troubled emotional/mental state, and gave me a fixed belief that I am not able to make a decision, and this had an another role as a fear stopping me from taking actions to *move on* for my future. But while reading a book that was given to me from a great friend, I realized that my fixed belief can be fooled by a
word-definition game.

Although I had a trouble getting rid of this belief that I won't be able to make a decision (because of my inability to trust myself etc), I could still make a commitment to myself because of the respect that I have towards myself. A funny thing I realized was this equation: "making
a decision=making a commitment". So what this means is that, I can make a commitment; therefore, I am able to make a decision as well....haha!

So I have been focusing on making small commitments (I am good at making commitments and sticking to the goals) now, and have gained some strength to facemy fear dealing with my future :)

Anyhow, although this content maybe confusing to some of you, this has been an important realization for me, so I decided to keep it here :)

Thanks for reading~~

Oh I was almost going to end my entry. Well, I have something new to note in my journal.
I was recently given an assignment to conduct a 1 day 3 hr lecture (instructing tips on International communication from the x-cultural perspectives) for freshmen of an engineering company. A couple days after myself accepting this offer, I was like, what kind of challenge
have I involved myself in?? LOL But I thought that this has given me a good excuse to get back on track with professionalism, and more reasons to make commitments to achieve goals (to provide professional and successful course for the vendor that provided me the offer), so I see it as a great way to gain some self-confidence. :) so I plan on spending at least a few hours of my day preparing for this assignment :) werd.