Twenty Seven

Welcome back!

That’s right, I’m turning 27 today! Just thought I’d share the first some thoughts and feelings before heading off to celebrate :)

This last year had been quite a ride! I enjoyed it a lot, and can definitely say that the years to come are going to be even more interesting and exciting.

What made this particular year of my life stand out? I think, it’s been so great because our little family has grown in a most miraculous way – it’s hard to believe that for the past 8 months we’ve been parents to a little wonder called Elizabeth. I’ve read the birthday wishes card from my wife today, which was signed with their both names, and I suddenly realized that soon enough our little girl will be drawing me cards herself, and it’s amazing how quickly time flies when you’re happy.

I’m also very happy today because we have managed to bring both our mothers to Ireland this year. Firstly, my mother-in-law had spent 3 months with us earlier this year, she came over for the whole summer to help us take care of Elizabeth. And now, my mother came over early September to stay with us till December, and I’m really happy to have her here for my birthday.

There were also a few more changes I’ve been a proud part of:

• I’ve changed jobs, finally getting back into my strongest area – Unix systems administration. It’s been quite an effort, as I was looking at 25% increase to my salary, which I have finally secured
• We have moved from Dublin city center to a much nicer area called Cabinteely – it is one of its suburbs with lovely fresh air, and the seashore is very close. Our apartment is much bigger too – we had to plan for our little princess to have a room of her own, and also decided to finally establish our home office which we share with my wife
• We have finally bought a car. Living in the heart of Dublin, with our apartment being in the same building with one of the biggest shopping centers in the city, we really had no reason to get a car. My commute to work was impossible by car, and it took only 10 minutes by bus. Now that we’re in a less congested area and with my company offices located outside of city center, it makes perfect sense and gives me a pleasure to drive.
• I got interested in personal development (who wouldn’t?! it’s personal – meaning you are the one who gets most of the benefit from your efforts), and started this blog. It’s been one of the most exciting and rewarding projects of my life so far – I’ve learned a lot, had obtained some great habits and improved skills, and most importantly – I’ve got to talk to some very interesting people from all around the world, both learning and sharing personal development wisdom.

It’s been a great year. Twenty seven might seem like much to many, but it will seem like the very beginning of an exciting and happy life to many more. I’m happy to be alive, I’m happy to have my family, and I’m happy to learn and teach something new every day.

 

Part of this happiness came from Personal Development Ideas project, and with this in mind, I THANK YOU for your interest and patience, your time and help, your support and advice.

Have a nice day! I know I will! :)

Have you got anything to say or ask?

I’m currently looking for ways to improve my communication with all the readers of this blog, and one thing I’ve noticed is the lack of opportunities I give you to ask me all the questions you might have.

Surely, I would prefer a question on personal development, but since I haven’t told you much about any aspect of my life, you may as well ask just about anything. I love being asked for help or advice, because every question, even the simplest one, is a challenge within itself, which makes me think and look for answers.

I don’t have a separate section of this website for questions and answers, but I’m slowly building its future content up – I’ve already got some really nice questions and advices emailed to me and I will definitely share them with you soon enough.

For now though, let’s just use this post to ask me anything or give me a friendly advice.

As always, I thank you in advance! Your attention and participation had been very motivating for me so far!

Saturday Links – 23/09/2006

Starting today, I will be sharing with you some of the best links of the week I have come across. I’m subscribed to quite a number of blogs, and this makes sure there is at least a few really interesting articles you will find useful.

 

Here are the links I really liked this week:

1. Scott H Young has a great article called The Confidence Myth, where he explains why self-confidence isn’t crucial to your success:

The confidence myth is simply that self-confidence is an incredibly critical ingredient to success. That is, the belief in your own success, is necessary to harness and in some cases outweighs other attributes such as skill, experience or talent. So much self-help has been spun about the necessity of confidence, that I think it is finally time to put it to rest. You don’t want or need self-confidence.

 

While I don’t wholly share his opinion, I really like the article because Scott goes into great details explaining various ways of (re)gaining your confidence.

 

2. Brian Kim reveals The Secret to Creating Lasting Change, explaining how you can change anything by forming a positive self image:

Your self image dictates your every action and is pretty much responsible for everything in your life right now. It is essentially how you view yourself mentally, which then manifests itself on the outside. Your every action is based on that self image.

 

3. Matt explains How To Keep Your Relationship Healthy With Your Wife:

Women need to be loved through thick and thin.
Women need to be surprised and pampered.
Your wife needs to feel secure.
You wife may just want to have fun.
Help your wife with the household chores.

Falling In Love Again

On my way back home yesterday, I’ve seen a duck leading its ducklings to the nearby pond. The happy family (a mother duck with 4 tiny ducklings who apparently were just learning to walk) strolled along the local road. The mother duck had been both careful and alert to make sure no harm would come to her ducklings. This scene made me smile and gave a start to a very interesting series of thoughts.

When your first child is born, you learn to see this world differently. You start noticing some things you thought never existed, you learn to appreciate even the smallest joys, and you wonder about so many things it feels as if you’re growing up all over again. There as so many discoveries to be made, it’s simply amazing!

But one feeling simply overwhelms you with joy: falling in love with your child.

 

Children Make You Notice

It’s incredible, how many things you start noticing with the birth of your child! From the day one, you are flooded with powerful impressions of every little thing around you which you may have never paid attention to.I remember the day when our little Elizabeth was born. And I think I will remember it for the rest of my life, because the miracle of her birth left me in astonishment. I also had shocked me to see the pain my wife had gone through bringing a new life into this world. I suddenly felt that I love her more than ever, and I was happy to be beside her to comfort her and to hold her hand.

I never thought so many tiny things would matter. I’ve paid attention to every medical observation and comment the staff made. I’ve read through the progress journal as they have been updating it. I have learned to notice even a small change in a baby’s heartbeat just by the sound of it. All of this was very new to me, yet I eagerly learned and processed new information and stayed alert for the whole 8 hours we had spent in the delivery.

From another hand, once the baby is born, you immediately start noticing any possible sources of danger or disappointment. You notice the temperature of the water when preparing a bath for the baby. You notice if it’s too warm or too cold outside, trying to guess how it would make your child feel. You notice things you pack when you’re going away for a weekend, making sure your baby is fully equipped. You do the same even if you’re going for a 15-minutes walk, because anything could happen: your baby may get thirsty, hungry, sleepy, warm, cold or anything else – and you need to be prepared for this.

What you also notice is love. Every morning I walk to our daughter’s room just to kiss her and say hello. She’s well awake most of the time, and now that she’s mastered hugging last week, she hugs me and returns my kisses. When I take her out of her cot and bring her down to our bedroom, I usually put her beside Jane so that she could wake her mother herself. These 5 minutes my girls have together are the best start of any day for both – they smile and laugh, cuddle, hug and kiss each other.

And in the evening, the first thing we do after we get back home, is to kiss our little girl with she sits in her grandmother hands. And then we rush into the bathroom to wash our hands and hug our girl ourselves. You notice love. And you realise suddenly there’s much more of it around you.

 

Children Make You Appreciate

I can’t say I was completely disrespectful to mothers before. I always suspected it was hard enough to carry a baby for 9 months and then to give a birth. But I never thought it was as hard as it really is! So this made me appreciate the sacrifice every woman makes in order to give a birth.Today, our little girl makes us very happy, and we appreciate every moment spent together. She’s a very keen learner, she grows quickly and she’s happy to play most of the time.

Before Elizabeth was born, we were not sure how it all will eventually work out. But she had won the central place in our family so easily and so quickly, that we can’t even imagine our lives without her being with us. She’s most loved and adored for us, and seeing her unconditional love and happiness makes us appreciate our lives even more.

There’s obviously a different side of how children make you appreciate things: by taking away opportunities! For instance, you appreciate a quiet and romantic dinner together with your better half much more when you have to plan for it few months beforehand! The same goes for any night out or late visit to your friends, because unless you have someone to mind the child, one of you won’t be able to go.

You start appreciating clean tables. You learn to cherish the quiet moments when you don’t hear any squeaky toys. You admire the time when you can be on your own, because you’re not the master of your time anymore… There is a million of tiny things and details you very quickly learn to appreciate! :)

 

Children Make You Wonder

Oh yes, they certainly do! In the past, we wondered if we were too young to be parents. Then, we wondered whether it was going to be a boy or a girl. Now, we wonder if her eyes are going to stay as wonderfully blue as they are right now. Now, we wonder how soon she’s going to start walking. Now, we wonder what is going to be the first word she’ll say.Children make you wonder about all kinds of things: from guessing what is it that made them cry to finding out what is the latest t-shirt fashion for their age.

You always wonder, how your baby knows you’ve just entered the room. You wonder, whether your little angel realises how big you love is. You wonder, how you baby always can take away any problems of your day with just one smile. You wonder, how you could ever live on your own, without this little wonder which smiles and kisses you back, asks you for a bottle of milk and makes you cry with tears of happiness.

 

Yes, there are many ways of how children can change you. But if there is love between parents and their children, most of these changes are only for the better. You learn new ways of being happy, and some of them are so simple you’d never believe until you try and see for yourself.

Our little girl has been such an inspiration to us in the past half a year, that I only hope we’ll be able to give her all the love and attention she may need. It’s an exciting feeling we’re going through right now: it’s like falling in love again – falling in love with our little angel.

Six Months in Review

Exactly six months ago, on January 25th, I’ve posted my first article on this blog. Today marks the first step in my exciting quest of personal development.

Time flies!
Yes, I must admit it like everyone else: time flies!

It feels as if it was only yesterday that I’ve made a decision to document my personal development discoveries and achievements here in this blog, and yet here I am: some 50 articles and half a year later! Unbelievable!

As you remember, we’ve been blessed with the birth of our lovely daughter Elizabeth, and this tiny girl has brought such a happiness to our family that we can only be thankful. We absolutely adore her, and she seems to kind of like us too ;) She’s a wonderful baby and a great support and motivation to us. There is absolutely nothing our little girl cannot help us with by just smiling with her incredibly sincere smile.

I also would like to thank my wife for being so understanding and supportive during this time. We’ve been together long enough to built a wonderful relationship and she always supports me in every way possible, which helps a lot.

Half a year of happy blogging

I think 6 months is a long enough period of time to confirm the seriousness of my intentions, and it makes me feel incredibly grateful and proud that some of my articles were not only thoroughly read, but were also found useful by some of you.

I’m enjoying blogging about personal development so much that it feels unnatural if more than a couple of days passes without me posting a new article here.

I’ve made a promise to myself to only write on topics I feel really passionate about, and to my own surprise I not only got increasingly interested in the topics originally chosen, but I found many more fascinating ideas and experiences to write about! It is not very often that you find a subject you can talk about for hours, and the more you learn about it, the more it attracts you.

It seems incredible to me now how many techniques from personal development I’ve naturally used before without even knowing how far from being ideal they were!

Personal development pays out

I’ve seen numerous improvements lately – everywhere in my life. It’s like I’m leaving a wonderful dream – I enjoy self-growth so much that I find new ways of doing things every day and it simply fascinates me.

I’ve also found some great friends through this blog. There is no doubt that I will make friends with many more of my visitors, but even now I can say I’m happy.

Starting the blog, struggling through the fears of not being accepted or understood, and finding the courage to speak up wasn’t easy, but it was all absolutely worth it. I’ve found out more about my purpose in life in this half a year than I did in the past 25 years!

The joy of providing value

I’ve now realised that little compares to the joy of providing a value. Honestly, I’m absolutely conscious about my writing being far from perfect, and perhaps some of my topics are not the most important things to talk about… But I like being in a position to share my thoughts and make some positive difference for others. And I feel so passionate about it that I’m absolutely sure: I will get better!

I’m growing. I’m going to read books and write even more. I’ll follow your insightful advices and will find even better topics to discuss.

And if it one day it all makes a real difference for just one person in the whole wide world, I’m going to be more than happy! That’s the kind of attitude I got from maintaining this blog. And I’d like to thank each and everyone of you for making this difference for me.

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