Thursday, July 29, 2010

The Power of Positive Thinking

The Power of Positive Thinking
by Neal R. Karski

I have read a substantial amount of literature in the last few months that generally spoke about the matter of positive thinking in daily activities, relationships, business and other challenges we face in our lives. Positive thinking has said to be a powerful force in progressing, moving on, succeeding and conclusively, being happy. It’s the factor that triggers the connection we develop with our dreams, goals, people and objects of desire. In the book “Secret,” the authors described the mind and its engulfed thoughts as the most helpful tools to achieve one’s plans of being financially independent or having a loving marriage, when fully utilized and targeted. Many millionaires and billionaires have also stressed the importance of focusing one’s internal wavelengths in the direction of the path one hopes to take with his or her life. Then, we face the issue of alignment. Alignment particularly applies to matching up one’s thoughts with his or her beliefs, values, characteristics, habits, etc. to establish a compatible and continuous pattern [which is said to bring more balance into one’s existence].

Let’s not exclude two very significant elements that allow one to exercise the power of positive thinking. Those are imagination and optimism.

Imagination is the source of one’s ingenuity and creativity. It’s what motivates one to go above and beyond, “up and high in the sky,” and even farther. This element engenders motivation, which consequently also acts as the driver for positive thinking in a specific task or idea-in-works. The authors of the books from which I’ve gathered my knowledge about this subject insisted that one should and must dream and imagine better living conditions, a pleasant vacation or simply a well-paying job at a higher position. Imagination will provide you with ideas you want to pursue and positive thinking will link you to them; all you have to do is act upon it.

Optimism stems from one’s inner ability to perceive positively, with taking into consideration a logical analysis of the circumstances. Optimism also acts as the supporter of the motivational force that is created by imagination and executed with positive thinking. Sometimes, instead of taking a cynical approach, one ought to look on the brighter side (Half Full vs. Half Empty) to see the positive end of the spectrum and learn lessons that can, with time, improve the mood, overall well being and decision making. Optimism is the critical element of positive thinking, because without such thinking would solely remain stagnant… or negative.

Stay Tuned. God Bless.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

A Poem

The Recesses of My Consciousness
by George A. Miu

A barrier,
Breached in the night by whispers of a promise
Can never be recovered.

Men and women,
They cannot know what is forbidden – merely pleasant
That is why we fell, after all.

Secretively,
I become the interest and the interested,
My patterns change, and torturous early mornings –
they become blissful as the furtive glances
exchanged over the candlelight.

Fear infects me:
for what has passed and is to come,
for my ambitions and desires.
I fear that I will fall, after all.

The present cycles through stress and relief
I cannot make up my own mind and
I dig deep, dissecting words and motions
awaiting with dread the next unknowable cycle
the stress, relief, then stress again.

External view
accounts for little; I appear cool, detached
and they gaze at their facades in the tint
that protrudes from my own masquerade.
Inside I melt.

I am determined, certain there will be a way,
a reconciliation that solves the amalgam of obstacles
that sneer at me from farther away than I can see.

I pick up my pen to pen a poem:
“My mind springs forth a sweet aroma,
Its recollection uncontested,
Substantially permitting me to roam
A memory of the soul well-rested.

Reclining and lethargic,
I look to speak with her adistant,
Provocative, laconic and
Madly reminiscent.

Tenderly, we make ourselves so very insecure
Precarious, excited, outlandish and demure.
But I find the words within…”

… I try to find the words within.
But I cannot – I am affected. Is that why I will fall?
No, say I resoundingly; tomorrow I will be a king.

To be happy, my friends, is to allow your barriers to be breached in the night,
engulfed in the whispers of a promise.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Personality Types

Day and Night
by Neal R. Karski

As I am a big fanatic of the psychological realm, I decided to write a short piece in which I would compare the two sides of the personality spectrum. Most of my knowledge about this particular field comes from self education, books and personal experiences; the latter which really inspired me to talk about the Type A and Type B classifications. Personally, I find it quite intriguing and at times miraculous how divergent from each other these specific types can become. I happen to fall into the A category: hyperactive, dynamic, “go-go” (seriously), yet my brother, whose personality resembles the passive and introspective model, quite often may be just the exact polar opposite of me (seriously, again).

Thus, I will attempt to portray both personality types in a manner I find suitable for both myself and the readers.

TYPE A

Have you ever found yourself rushing, pacing and sometimes losing focus? But then, that sometimes would transform into a daily occurrence and embark itself as part of your lifestyle – of who you are. Restless, busy, occupied, dynamic, curious. These are just a few adjectives describing the type to which you could relate to. Have you woken up one morning and felt like there was so much in life to explore, to learn, to talk about? But then, there were never enough hours in a day for that, and there were not enough accessible means of transportation to all the places you wanted to see, and you were not satisfying your curiosity cravings up to your par. Type As are hungry for life. They are hunters for thought, idea, entertainment or results. They reject the status quo and wish to progress at a fast, sometimes inconceivable pace. The everlasting driving force keeps them out of their homes, desiring to socialize with others, and interact in many countless activities that can be difficult to manage.

TYPE B

If Type A is the day, then what is Type B? Night! Yes, you’ve guessed correctly. Although the scale on which I’m making this contrast may not present such a drastic differential, frequently it’s a close call. Type Bs tend to be like night… calmer, more peaceful, situated, quieter, still (you get the point), but their introspection allows them to explore individual issues on a deeper level. Relatively, it also directs their attention to a particular task or idea, rather than splitting their stream of consciousness into a multi-dimensional wave of thoughts. Have you ever found yourself acceptant of your current financial, social, occupational, or academic situation? And change wasn’t necessary. Have you ever found yourself comfortable with a small circle of friends rather than being concerned about a popularity trend? And those friends were simply enough. Type Bs like to conduct their lives at a slower pace, and in their own ways. They are lurkers of the quiet sphere; explorers of their own emotions, tied to artistic interests or specific hobbies, unwilling to take a huge leap or make a substantial difference… and usually quite amicable.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Depression, Part II

Pariah – A Personal Story of Treatment
by George A. Miu

In my last post, I wrote about how I feel depression is a human calculation that needs to be resolved. Unfortunately, modern society is ill-equipped to handle the rigorous arithmetic that this human calculation entails. In my own experience with depression, the greater vast majority of my friends harped on and on about how my “Trigger” was trivial and therefore not a legitimate cause of my internal commotion. Expressions such as “drama queen”, “attention seeker” and “nobody cares” circulated, which (one can imagine) did not sit particularly well with me. That was okay, I told myself. All of my friends are mere products of a system that disregards depression, and most were not suited to hypothesize about its causes and symptoms.

A month into the whole fiasco, and people began to avoid me. Soon enough, nobody would listen to my litany of concerns, except for a couple of homeless chaps that roamed the nearby intersections. Driven to desperation, I acted in the only way that I thought would yield improvement – I went into therapy.

For weeks, my therapist and I painstakingly combed through my past and present, scoping out the minutest details in an over-arching process of learning and understanding. Medication was brought up, but not directly recommended by any of the involved parties, and I was not inclined to ask for it, despite its elevated chances of success. My task, as I saw it, was to gain the skills necessary to combat depression in the future, and to undo the effects of the initial trauma that had kept me at its precipice for so long.

Improvement, as a goal, will only ever come gradually. There are no “a-ha” moments, no simple instances of the mind reversing its condition instantaneously. For a while, depression may even get worse during treatment. The only thing that matters is that your vision of the future is corrected, and you are capable of living life as you once did. To me, counseling and force of will were natural solutions, while medication was artificial.

Most importantly, nobody can beat depression without help; some may suppress it for a while, but it invariably returns. I won my mental war because help came at the right moment, from the right people and in all the right ways, not because I am somehow special.

A year later, I have made progress on all fronts – academic, professional, social, emotional – to beyond pre-depression levels. By all accounts, I’m doing better than ever. Still, most of my old friends never came back. Society considers any affliction of the mind to be highly embarrassing. Thus, individuals do not fully understand depression. Consequently, people laugh at it. What they do not know is that therapy helps the multiple aspects of the individual – addresses far more than just their depression. Hence, people emerge from the darkness with abilities they did not previously possess. This is the ultimate vindictive reward of a post-depression life: you, the “drama queen” or “attention seeker”, get the last laugh.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Depression, Part I

A Word on Depression: The Rocky Road to Closure
by George A. Miu

Depression. It emerges from the depths of the mind, latching on to our memories and eventually infesting our present with an outlook that is pessimistic and skewed, never truly permitting us to operate with the efficiency we had always taken for granted.

As depression is becoming more and more prevalent, we have a whole host of doctors, professors and distinguished misters who tell us that the problem evolves from chemical imbalances in the brain. Being a veteran of the mental war that is depression, I find that I disagree with this assessment. If depression was, indeed, a chemical anomaly with no external causes, its rates would never rise or dip beyond a negligible point – namely, the percentage of brains in which the aforementioned anomaly is likely.

My experiences indicate otherwise, at least insofar as I am able to decipher them. Depression is first and foremost a disorder that must be associated with sentiment, as opposed to concrete physiological function. The order runs thus:

One. Genesis: We are traumatized.

Two. Dormancy: We live with the trauma that has not been fully processed.

Three. Trigger: We undergo an experience in which we realize that we are affected deeply by the initial trauma.

Four. Depression: We spiral downwards because we automatically identify all situations in which the previous trauma, as well as the “Trigger”, obstruct us from operating.

Okay. So I’m no psychologist. I know next to nothing about the intricacies of the brain. But I know well enough that a suspended brain can never be in a state of depression, no matter what its chemical composition tells us about it. For the disorder to occur, sentiment is requisite. Yes – there are chemical imbalances that are observed in individuals suffering from depression; these are natural side-effects of sentiment, not primary causes. I did not become depressed because my brain went gaga, but rather because I met my “Trigger”. Only then did my mind go haywire.

I urge all readers who are depressed: Do not look at your condition as a medical calculation to be solved. Look at it as a human calculation that needs to be resolved. Don’t regard yourself as a finite-combination puzzle. Instead, seek out closure so that you can learn to live with your perception of the past, your understanding of the present and your vision for the future. Then, decide on a reasonable way to treat it – more on this in Part II, I promise.

On a closing note, I would like to reason as to why I believe that counseling is necessary for depression treatment, while medication is not. Consider this analogy: sufficient pain medication for a ruptured appendix will cure all symptomatic elements therein. It will make even the most agonized human being believe they will be okay. But it does not eliminate the origin of the potentially-lethal condition. Similarly, medication may cure the chemical imbalance and shift the overall outlook towards the more positive end of the spectrum. Yet, it fails to address the reason it happened in the first-place: an intrinsic dissatisfaction. Of course, medication may be recommended, or even necessary, given the precise nature and gravity of depression. Nevertheless, careful introspection is the only way that a natural catharsis can come into existence.

Part II is on its way tomorrow.

Monday, July 12, 2010

15 Reasons Why the Recession Happened

15 Reasons Why the Recession Happened
by Neal R. Karski

A little bitter, a little sweet. Enjoy.

1. Eminem’s CDs stopped selling.

2. Lil Wayne’s sales and popularity went up… then he went to jail. Let’s not forget Miley.

3. Jersey Shore. Can’t explain what exactly happened there, but it did affect the economy.

4. Apple, and no, not the one at your local fruit market.

5. Welfare and employment played chess. Welfare won.

6. Facebook came out with the policy that does not permit any one to have more than 5000 friends. (Sad face)

7. Lots of homes; not enough landlords.

8. Chat Roulette?!?!

9. Tuitions rose up; IQs did not.

10. The big corporates took nice vacation trips and claimed that Santa did not visit the house on Christmas Eve with tax payers’ money.

11. The biggest “donations” went to the government funds.

12. Savings account and 401ks became unpopular.

13. What is a small business?

14. Kim Kardashian went shopping.

15. Business cycles… life.

Friday, July 9, 2010

Changes in the Music Industry over the Last 50 Years

How the Tune Changes – 50 Years of Music in Retrospect
by George A. Miu

The year is 1960. The Beatles are playing in some dodgy Hamburg nightclub without a clue of their impending worldwide success. Elvis is off making dreadful movies in Hollywood. Buddy Holly is not yet cold in his grave. Vietnam hasn’t started. The Summer of Love is unthinkable at this point.

The year is 2010. The Beatles are still selling million of records, even though they haven’t played a show in more than 40 years. The anniversary of Buddy’s passing still brings out mourners each year. Even Elvis’s movies are loved (which is a remarkable thing, indeed). And the music industry grosses billions upon billions of dollars – kids from LA to Vladivostok are singing Ke$ha’s new song, or googling Eminem. What in the world happened in this last half-century to catalyze such a shift in the importance of music?

Well, for starters, musicians upped the ante. The Beatles broke up in 1970; they played their last concert in 1966. History thus tells us that one of the greatest bands of all time did not perform live for over a third of its immensely productive career. I mean – Vanilla Ice still goes on tour with the same tired song time and again; why couldn’t the Beatles get it together on stage? Anyway – the point here is that, by playing more shows and doing a tour with every new album, modern artists enter the public consciousness a lot more easily.

Also, artists are increasingly built to target a specific audience; for example – Justin Bieber for the tweens, Michael Bublé for the modern Sinatra-lovers and the late, great Johnny Cash for the all-around hard-assed. They then cross-over into general audiences, but always have a specific fanbase, as opposed to the more willy-nilly marketing tactics of ages past.

Similarly, people are more responsive to music. Cliques begin forming around artistic tastes more than anything, and this, in turn, spreads the appeal of various genres to perceptive by-standers.

These three factors weighed in heavily from the 70’s onwards, and created memorable musical movements whose impact is still widely felt today. It also set the stage for technology to come to the rescue – from iPods to iTunes, music is now easy to obtain and to listen to. No more mammoth gramophones, bulky walkmen and chunky CD players. A laptop and small portable device are all you need to access pretty much all the music anyone would ever want.

All of these developments, and many more, contributed to the radical transformation that the music industry has undergone in the past fifty years. I have to wonder, now – what will the next five decades bring?

Friday, July 2, 2010

Relationships and Dating in the US

The Game
by Neal R. Karski

The subject of relationships in the United States is one that I find very interesting and worth exploring in depth. Having lived in Europe, in the Southeastern and Midwestern parts of the US, I happened to acquire a lot of knowledge about the way in which social associations develop and fall apart. This knowledge was derived from a variety of unique experiences of my own and others in my surroundings, as well as the keen observations I’ve managed to store and ponder in my mind.

Let’s begin.

Relationships, whether it be a commitment between a girlfriend and a boyfriend or a friendship between two people, are what I like to call The Game. The Game implies that the process of dating [which used to be referred to as “courting”] has now become much more complex and at times perplexing for either or both parties involved. The simplicity-and-value ridden system of rules that guides the couples in their endeavors exerts a very unstable groundwork. *Think of the quote by Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers about dating. Social media certainly doesn’t make it any less difficult to maintain good relations with a friend or a significant other. Every day, we’re exposed to stories, movies and TV shows that display unfruitful relationships and compulsive issues that can impact our perception and even diminish hope.

Originally, I planned to compare the situation of the matter which I’m addressing in terms of the United States and Europe, but I will postpone this analysis in a form of a future post.

The Game is my own personal theory and does not constitute for the views of anyone but mine. Therefore, imagine yourself on a date with a beautiful or handsome person that you are pursuing. Great locations and meal choices, interesting and ongoing conversation, plus there is a positive tension. Now, be careful – Red Tape [or more closely known as Bureaucracy] kicks in when you haven’t realized it. Multiple complications arise at different corners, you or the other person is not capable of accepting something they do not approve of, this is going too fast, feelings, physical attraction, should I impress him [or her], where will this connection go, am I ready? Houston, we have a problem – the field of gravity is a bit “shaky.” Now, instead of pinpointing the significant values of the potential or existing relationship, we’re focused on what can be possibly wrong? Disvalues, not values, play the major role in this movie.

And we see that not every casual dating couple ends up together. Not every relationship [by all means] is a fairy tale we see in the movies – the good ‘ole “Hey-Climax-Rough Times-Love” kind of event flow. Pause for a second and think… Maybe we, ourselves, make dating and the relationships we have to complex and over think the meaning behind why we are here with this person and not another. Who knows… for some this way may be preferable.

Today’s Reality: Game Over.

The Realm of Romance
by George A. Miu

Everyone is looking for that special someone. Even after finding a good enough partner for the long haul, we continually assess and reassess one another in terms of compatibility, emotional security, physical attraction factors and a plethora of other categories.

In the USA, as far as I can tell, there are two major stages in this process: that of dating (i.e. being on the lookout for a romantic partner) and that of marriage/life partnerships (i.e. making the commitment to be with someone for the rest of one’s life, barring certain circumstances). Various individuals progress through these at various points at different speeds, or maybe even not at all. The important thing is that we have carefully defined social patterns that indicate, both to ourselves and to our significant others, certain levels of development in a relationship. For example, it is considered taboo to talk about, say, children’s names, on a first date.

What distinguishes modern times from ages past, however, is that the average childbearing age has risen by almost six years over the past three decades. This trend affects our romantic endeavors, as progressively fewer people are prepared to start families at young ages, thus lengthening the dating stage in the above process. In theory, this should mean that there are fewer divorces, since the maturity levels increase at the time of marriage. Yet, this is clearly not so, seeing as the divorce rate revolves around the 50 percent mark in the USA.

We can conclude that something is broken in the realm of romance. The way I see it, the major culprit is the modern job competitiveness. Most people have to go to college to make a good living, and that is no easy feat. It puts off having a family until at least 22-23 years of age. I mean, they call it a Bachelor’s Degree for a reason, people. Furthermore, the instability that follows graduation creates an unsuitable environment for a young family.

Women, too, are a resurgent and critical force in these times. Increasing numbers are postponing motherhood in order to pursue careers – and who can blame them? So, by the time we are ripe for matrimony, the social and economic stress levels are so high that disagreements are liable to take place between spouses, leading to our elevated divorce rates.

Don’t get me wrong: I’d be chuffed to the bollocks if everything could revert back to the old-fashioned ideal American family. But doing so would be causing a great disservice to our economy, to women and, ultimately, to our free will to pursue whatever we so choose. There is no quick fix to whatever is broken in the romantic world. It’s simply a necessary consequence of the times.