What I've Learnt About Motivation

1. Achieve the state of 'flow'
   Challenge and ability have positive correlation. The optimum point is met when the challenge you're facing perfectly matches your ability. When the task is too challenging, outweighing your ability, do something to upgrade yourself. In other words, be more hard-working.
   

    Csikszentmihalyi's flow model

   (Source: Wikipedia)
2. To have, or to be?
   Do you have a lot of desire to own many different things, or to be someone different? Think about it.
3. Delayed gratification
   An old study found that people who are willing to delay their gratification for long-term rewards will be more successful in long term. Researcher distributed two marshmallows to each child experiment target, told them that they would leave for awhile and would give them two extra marshmallows if they did not eat it before the researcher came back. As a trace study, researcher followed up on the targets after several years and discovered that the children who did not eat the marshmallows turned out to be more successful in general.
4. Happiness or satisfaction?
   Every one craves happiness, but it only has short term effect, unlike satisfaction.
5. Live in the present, not the past nor future
   People who live in the past tend to have a lot of grudge; while those who live in the future tend to be anxious and worried, yet they do not act on it.
6. According to the official standard, each degree credit accounts for 1 hour of class per week, and the suggested time for revision is 2 hours per 1-hour-class.
7. Think of your role model
   Or just anyone you admire in any aspect.

7 Quick Fixes to Combat Fear

1. Arrive on site earlier than usual
   Inspect and feel the environment. Then choose an area which particularly makes you feel comfortable and safe, and stay there.
2. Feel your body and use your senses
   Make yourself comfortable by finding support for your body, like a chair, and adopt a relaxing and securing posture. Then feel the weight and warmth of your body where you feel most relaxing and secured.
3. Breathe using your stomach not lungs
   Breathe all the way into your stomach, and you should feel your stomach moving if you do it right. Then breathe out, and it should last longer than your breathe-in. Indeed, the more we breathe into our lungs deliberately and rapidly, the more nervous we are making ourselves.
4. Tell your problem to your friends, and seek their immediate support when in fear
   You'd feel more resolved if you tell your friends about the fear you have. Also they can help you when your next panic attack comes. Tell them immediately when you're frightened, and seek their comfort and support.
5. Soothing visuals
   Find something visual that appeals to you and make you feel comfortable, be it a laughing puppy on a poster, or a meaningful bookmark of your own. Focus on it so that you'd be less affected by the threats around.
6. Acknowledges your fear and physiological reactions
   It's okay to tremble, has intense heartbeat and random involuntary movement when we confront with our fears. It's normal and human. But then you begin your road to healing and overcoming it by having your own inner peace of mind and thus regaining control of your mind and body.
7. Know that life is about ups and downs and, most importantly, balance
   We all have our ups and downs. It's life. To stay sane and move on, we need to strike a good balance between the two ends. As my counselor said to me, 'good food, good friends, good sleep.' Treat yourself properly so that it'd better counteracts the negative side of your daily life.

Transforming our minds to overcome fear

We all have our own demons and I know it's hard to overcome them immediately. But we need to take our first step to at least try and confront with it. Below are some of my delusional self-talking that I want to document and hopefully will also help some of you struggling out there.

1. Stop comparing ourselves with others, especially those we thought are doing better than us.
   Our life is ours, not any one else's. If we are slacking behind the group that we're in, don't panic and don't give up. Just do our best. Meet our own standard, not the others'. As long as we're doing our best, we don't need to bear their judgments.
2. Let go. It's okay to relax and go wild a little. Everyone needs a break. It's okay to suck sometimes, we don't have to be the hero/high-achiever/the best/the beloved all the time. It's okay to be hated and judged. Just ignore how others view us, and be ourselves. What really matters is not the view of theirs but ours. Everyone can despise us, talk down on us, but never us doing it to ourselves.
3. Put the problem matter in perspective. Most of the time, when we compare our problems to other serious world problems, we realize how trivial our problem is in comparison and feel more competent in handling it.
4. Do what we love. Spare some time to do something that makes us happy, be it listening to music, doing karaokes or sports, or watching movies... anything. We need a balance in our emotions and an escape from the hectic, depressing work that we do everyday.

Avalanche

This is it. I'm breaking down. Would I still do so if no one cares?

I'm blaming it to all my past life experiences and will merely stand here watching it all collapse, watching myself dissolve. I'm gonna make it dramatic, as if it's as traumatic as those who went through serious tragedies.

Disorganized, disoriented, detached; headache, insomnia, fatigue, unmotivated, aimless, ashamed, embarrassed, withdrawn, depressed, loss of appetite, anxious, intense heartbeats...

I don't know anymore. What am I supposed to do? How did I end up here? What do I even want?

One voice says I should runaway and heal in a secure place, another says it's not worthy to give up now and I should confront with my fear.

These voices are tearing me down. I really don't know what to do.