I have an important team presentation to our clients this week. After our dry run today, some of my teammates suggested adding some more materials to my presentation part. It was a good suggestion, but I felt an increase in nagging self-doubt in me.

How can I gain my confidence back before the presentation? According to the neuro cybernetic approach, mental rehearsal may be the best bet for my presentation success.

The mental rehearsal technique is often used by athletes to achieve their optimal performance. You visualize your performance in moment-by-moment details to the point in which you can almost feel the actual sensation.

Before doing the mental rehearsal, however, you must genuinely believe in a successful outcome of your performance. In my case, I am envisaging how I stand in front of the customers with the beaming positive smile, clear articulation of each word, pointing and explaining the figures and diagrams in a convincing manner, seeing the customers’ nodding, and responding to some tough questions.

Through the rehearsing exercise, one thing I am mindful of is that I visualize myself enjoy every moment of the experience. The more I do this rehearsing, the better I get. More to learn.

How wonderful would it be if you have only positive, happy feelings inside? Unfortunately, that is not the case for most of us.

There are some techniques to deal with negative feelings. Some suggest that you keep quantifying the level of the negativity (e.g., the scale of 1 – 10) and name the negativity like resentment, anger, jealousy, and hatred.

Once you identify your negative feelings that way, you need to get them out of your system. Never try to forget/forgo them! The best way is to write down your feelings toward them on a piece of paper and shred it.

I did this exercise the other day. Instead of a piece of paper, it turned out to be a 10-page essay that I had to shred. But it felt good. Unfortunately, the efficacy of this exercise lasted for a couple of days. I should buy more paper and keep doing this until there is nothing I can get out of my system. More things to learn and do…

No one is free from failures and setbacks. I learned this fact in my late thirties. Don’t get me wrong. I had many setbacks but I always worked hard to achieve my goals. And I was getting what I want until I hit my late thirties.

By then, I had my own family, and I realized that there were many things beyond my control. And many unexpected curve balls started happening in my life. I was busy taking care of my family and was working hard to keep the normalcy in our lives despite the unexpected happenings. Recalling those days, I was not leading my life but was just going along with where it took me.

Now I am facing another challenge in life. I felt as if someone knocked me out with an upper-cut punch right at my jaw. I felt a TKO for the last couple of days, trying to move, but all I could do was to lie down on my back, looking up the bright ring light thinking, “Am I done?”.

After massive soul searching, I heard my inner voice finally said, “I’m not done yet. Get up and fight again. Fight tooth and nail.” That was the moment I started positive energy flowing inside me.

You cannot hide from your failures and setbacks. You cannot avoid them. They are part of our lives. Then face them straight and fight them tooth and nail. That is the only way for our salvation and a road to our victory.

Today I noticed that someone I care seems to care more for someone else. I was consumed by the jealousy feeling and could not shake it off.

Out of my frustration, I searched for ways to deal with jealousy. It turns out that such feelings are rooted in our early childhood experiences from our parents or people closed to you. We tend to unconsciously replay old, familiar behavior in our current relationships. This was a shocking discovery.

Another essential factor is insecurity attributed to our harsh critical inner voice. It’s telling us that we are doomed to be deceived, hurt, or rejected. Unless we deal with this feeling in ourselves, we are trapped in feelings of jealousy, distrust, or insecurity in any relationship.

While reading articles about jealousy, I discovered that such raw human feelings could be explained logically. Observing my current jealousy feelings, it was true that I was feeling insecure about myself lately. I have to face my inner critics and stand tall against it. I love who I am – I need to give me self-acceptance and self-compassion more often to remain secure.

The remedy for jealousy is to love ourselves more. When the jealousy rears its ugly head, place our focus on US, not them.

One of the qualities I like myself is tenacity. I don’t give up easily. I am like a snapping turtle: once I engage in a thing, I won’t let it go until it completes.

But now I felt that the quality put me in misery I never know existed. I clung on to something that was non-existed for so many years. When the truth got revealed, I felt how foolish I have been. I wanted to laugh at this travesty, but, instead, I felt tears rolling down my cheeks. Did I choose to ignore the situations, or was I so naive not to know what’s been going on?

Either way, I am finally walking away – walking away from something close to my heart. I need to walk away. I need to learn when to walk away and how to walk away. Sometimes it is more courageous to walk away.

In my household where I grew up, we seldom said, “I love you.” to each other. We felt that you need to express love through your actions, not through mere words. Our parents worked hard to provide us with a comfortable living because they loved us. They felt that just saying, “I love you.” did not get a roof over our heads and meals on the table. Without saying anything, we understood how much they loved us.

But not everyone was raised the way I was. Recently I realized how important it is to vocalize your love for someone: spouses, family members, and friends. I do say so to my kids often as part of everyday greetings, but I wonder if I say it in a meaningful way. So, from now on, I am going to have a reminder every day to tell people who I care how much I love them with my sincere feelings.

I am losing my focus lately because my mind is preoccupied with a dramatical event in my life. I want to be able to focus with a clear mind. I need to, but I cannot!

I searched the web to find out if there are some techniques to gain focus. Some supplements can increase focus and clarity. Also, there are some breathing techniques to calm our mind so that we can focus.

But what I need is a way to silence my inner voices and thoughts. Then I should be able to concentrate on my task on hand. This endeavor may take some time. More to learn.

Throughout my life, there was always someone in my life from whom I tried so hard to obtain approval or recognition. At this time of my life, I am finally free from all the meagerness.

Now it is time to accept who I am. Nobody is going to judge you or criticize you for what you believe and what you do.

The hindsight of this self-liberation is that now I have to assess what I am pursuing is what I genuinely want to do. Was I doing it to please someone else? Or is it my real need and desire? It is the time to evaluate my values and belief and reacquainted with who I am rather than who other people wanted me to be.

The journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance has just begun. I want to get to know me, want to love me, and accept me for who I am.

Come to think of it, I have done my share of socializing and making friends whenever I enter a new environment and a new phase of my life. But lately, I was too comfortable in my current environment and communities and stop socializing. When was the last time I put my forth effort to socialize with people?

After college, I started to work in a small town in the midwest, where I did not know anyone. Luckily the company was large enough to have many college graduates who started at the same time and attended basic training classes together. All of us were new to the workplace and eager to make friends. We socialized every opportunity when we gathered.

The 2nd time around when I tried to socialize with zeal was when we became parents. We wanted to make a good friend for our children and get to know the other parents. We had wonderful family friends and supported one another to raise our children.

Now I am embarking on a new stage in my life. I am trying to socialize again. However, the socializing skill is similar to a muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it. I attended my friend’s party. I was drawn to the group of people I knew and shied away from the strangers. I need to work out my socialization muscle – another learning effort on the horizon.

There are many books about gaining good habits. It is always easy to acquire a bad habit, such as eating junk foods, but why is it so hard to make a simple good habit stick? For instance, practice something every day.

Two years ago, I picked up the violin for the first time, but never consistently practiced it, still putzing around Suzuki Violin Volume 1. About a month ago, I got together with another friend who has been practicing flute for a couple of years but lost interest in playing it lately. Both of us needed some impetus to come out of a funk and play the instrument again. So, we decided to gather our friends and have a holiday concert in 2020 to play our music together.

After our meeting, I was on a roll. I started to practice 15 minutes every day, no matter how tired I was. These days I am looking forward to the practice. With this experience, I realize that the key to practice something every day — If you have a creative, clear goal, we feel positive feelings toward practicing. Furthermore, if you have someone else involved, we feel the obligation, pushing us to practice every day.

It has been four months since I have been keeping up the routine. Even though I could not play the violin for a week during that time, I was able to ease back to the practice routine. With this success, I gain insight into how we practice something every day – have a creative, fun goal with your supporter!