Tag: reflections

  • Valentine’s Day

    I am a sucker for Valentine’s Day. If I am in a relationship, and we are not celebrating – that’s like not celebrating love. So, I had everything all planned out what to do on Valentine’s Day. It fell on Friday and I taught double classes that day. I wore all pink to class. After class, I dropped by the usual shop I go to, to get a Valentine rose for me. It was nice also that the ladies from gym treated me with Dunkin Donuts, I didn’t need to buy chocolates or desserts for myself.

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    Beforehand, I just came across with really wise relationship content by Lewis Howes which I am going to share here. First one it talks about 5 wounds from childhood trauma that need to be addressed to be in a healthy relationship. To cut short, these wounds are:

    1. Rejection wound
    2. Abandonment wound
    3. Shame/humiliation wound
    4. Treason/betrayal wound
    5. Injustice/unfairness wound

    Martha happens to be an eldest sister and pretty much had same wounds with me, especially the fixer helper stuff. I can totally relate to what she had faced. So seeing her ending up with a very healthy man in relating with others, made me feel so happy and hopeful. The next video, she talks about the key elements from her perspective, to have a great relationship.

    What I took the most from this conversation is that we all often have distorted view on what romantic relationship should look, be and feel like based on movies and the feel good happily-ever-after stuffs. But yeah, I definitely want to be with someone I have good friendship, passion and chemistry with and also someone that I am madly attracted to; however, it’s not enough to build a lasting healthy relationship. She talked about her relationship acronyms BALANCCCED:

    • Be your authentic self. Be yourself. Get to know yourself. Get to know how you do like to be loved and how do you like to love.
    • Acceptance. Accept the other person for who they are. Take time to know the other person. See if values, vision and lifestyle match with yours.
    • Laughter. Have lots of them. Joy, play, appreciation of one another.
    • Allowance. Flexibility in allowing another person to make mistakes and living their own human experience, freedom to choose how one lives his life. Make the other person feel safe by allowing the person be his own authentic being and not trying to change him to make you feeling safe and secure.
    • Nurture. Have a nurturing life separate from partner’s
    • Commitment to the vision of the relationship
    • Compassion. When somebody is being vulnerable, see them as the wounded inner child and have some compassion for them.
    • Curiosity. Approach conversation with curiosity. Avoid inclination to assume the worst or that someone is out to get you.
    • Education. Educate yourself on who your partner is. Their inner child wounds, incidents when they were hurt in the past, their past lives, struggles, and compassion to understand. Care to know the specific things the other person needs. Personal growth.
    • Dios. Or God. Solidifies and binds all the things together.

    And the last one with Jillian, so much sense in this one. The key points I take from here are:

    • Your relationship reflects the relationship you have with yourself
    • Relationship killer – 1) not knowing how to manage chronic stress (so guilty of this!), 2) taking relationship for granted, 3) not knowing how to have difficult conversation on boundaries, expressing needs, vision, mistakes etc
    • Take time to get to know someone before deciding to commit – am I feeling safe, seen, free to express myself as I am, respected, accepted and appreciated?
    • Women do not need to be rescued. We can save ourselves by having confidents and self-worth – having the strength and courage to face own problems
    • Don’t fixate yourself to change the other person – no one likes being asked to change. It has to come from the other person. Give them the opportunity to work on their own struggles. Demands are like building a cage to the other person to make you feel safe. Sense of safety should come from within, not from other person or circumstances.

    I learn a lot in one day. Most of all to believe the information you are seeing and receiving from the other person as it is, not seeing from a place of potential from your perspective. Don’t add, don’t subtract.

    The right person will know how to hold your love. The right person will choose you just as deeply you choose them. You will not have to quiet the way you care. You will never feel like you are too much. You will not have to beg for the love you deserve. One day, you will be met where you are. One day, you will be someone’s favourite person and you will not feel confused. You will not feel like fighting for someone who is not fighting for you. One day, you will understand that it never mattered, how tightly you held on to the wrong people, or how intensely you tried. The right people were always going to stay.

    @rainbowsalt

    What’s for me, will be with me. Cheers to that, just focus on what I want to develop at the moment and enjoy my solitary life. Happy Valentine’s Day to me. I love you.

  • Year End Review 2024

    It’s a week away before 2025 comes and I have not yet come up with my plan for next year. It’s just that my mind still has so much clutters and I can’t really point out what really is keeping me busy or unproductive (the magic word – I can’t really live without being productive). Maybe I should quickly sort out what’s going on recently.

    Last week was busy, like back to back preparations and attendance for Christmas parties and meetups, like from 14 Dec till 20 Dec, I attended 6 events, including dinner and my Christmas party classes. I think most of my energy went for the preparation, being socially present and I rest very little that week. Despite that, I really had a great time and the things that I prepared for went really well. I am so proud of myself for the courage to go out there and enjoy festivities with people I am not really close with. One thing that I noticed is that people really appreciate me and my presence. I don’t feel alone anymore. Best thing ever, a class participant told me, she said something like this, “Nurul, you are one of the best instructors that we’ve had.” I am so thankful with the opportunity to be around with such quality women.

    I am also worried that I spent so much on food these days. Like I ate a lot! I mean I really need food more than I used to have, but I don’t know if I am overdoing it or not. I also feel that I am heavier and have grown bigger – my waistline expands a bit cause my abs and obliques have grown a lot, but my body fat has reduced only a little. My lats are bigger as well as my arms and shoulders. My chest pecs are more visible now. I have not checked my measurement for a while. So, it’s pretty confusing to me. To be fair, I did a lot of gymnastics drills last week, maybe I need to recover and nourish myself a lot more. I also covered a lot more classes last week and this week. What makes me unsettled is that I now have to buy new sports bra as the ones that I have feels tighter than usual and at times I feel it’s hard to breathe. I can barely fit into my weightlifting belt – still can manage if I squeeze hard into my torso. Sometimes I look bloated from my side profile, the muscles just make my belly fat more apparent.

    I still have not finished my assignment and done with my viva presentation slides. I must do it latest within 1st week of 2025, otherwise, things are going to be so chaotic. Also, I got to pay my semester fees by then, and claim from EPF at least I can reinvest the money.

    The minor ones, my kitchen drain is stuck for a few weeks already. I thought I had it sorted out but the blockage just reduced a little bit after a few interventions. Options would be to ask my brother, ask the management or buy a temporary portable sink so that I can do my dishes outside. My plants are not doing well, some died and I killed my mom’s dying orchid. I feel so sad. Though it’s not my fault, I just want to do something nice for my mom cause according to her, my grandma had the orchid since my mom was a kid. Imagine how long had it been alive! I’ll buy her a new one with flowers. My car air conditioner is being erratic, still bearable but I got to sort this out because it’s dangerous to drive when it rains heavily outside.

    These are all my worries for now (that I can think of now). I feel that my body is inflamed and dysregulated with all these functions and worries. On top of that, I am also upset that my siblings do not acknowledge that we have to step away from the dysfunctional family dynamics that I am seeing and are accusing me of trying to break the family apart. That is the least of my intention. Of course I love my parents and all, but I don’t appreciate being treated the way everyone does – lacking in empathy, care, kindness and respect. They never take me seriously anyways, so might just focus on myself. What matters is I tried. I have to set my boundary and limit my interactions with them.

    Okay, that is a whole lot of stuffs to process and feel within a week. On towards what I want to work on in 2025. The focus is in generating wealth and creating stability; also building meaningful connections and relationships. So, areas that I am going to think about financially is on the targets and goals for my earnings, investments (set aside RM500 for year-end shopping), savings (at least RM2,000 ready) and debt management. Keep tracking my expenses so that I know how to configure my resources optimally. And then come up with figures and my plans on how to achieve my financial goals. Next one, strategies to manage AFC more efficiently – how can I use tools to simplify my processes while building more numbers. And then, start to think on my consultancy firm – core service, team and stuff, just about setting up, not even talking about earnings yet. I want to sharpen up my technical knowledge and find time to build a simple cloud solution for sale and subscribe. To manage my time and energy wisely, with teaching, training and recovery – pair with adequate nutrition, hydration and rest. My fitness goal would be to reduce my body fat percentage and progressing on skills. Finally, I have to set the timeline to finish pending projects.

    On personal level, I would like to treat myself a bit better and be more in control with my time and energy. Find time for creative hobbies, improve my living conditions, declutter and invest in skincare, haircare and quality clothings. Schedule and prep my nutritional needs ahead, and a lot more. Be mindful with my expenses, home and car maintenance; as well as get ahead of bills. Anything at all that will help myself to heal and become better. I want to be that person who enjoys fashion and the finer things in life again.

    Reflecting back, I have achieved so much this year. My income increased, and I actually hit my target set earlier. My competence and fitness level has grown a lot. I am a lot fitter and stronger than I was in January this year. I actually managed to finish my thesis – all the difficult stuffs; data collection (I still can’t believe I was so shameless with the whole thing, asked for help, travelled all over the place for this, like not overthinking if its logical or not – like just wing it!), data analysis, thesis writing – I managed to overcome. I pushed my limits. I stood up for myself a lot and had the courage to have difficult conversations. I practiced my set boundaries. Less of people-pleasing. I created a community of people who are loyal and value fitness. I was comfortable being and showing my true self. On love relationship and family front, not progressing so well but there were efforts made, and I did my best, which mattered. Best thing I could do is just let go and accept people as they are. Be at peace with it and just remain respectful and kind.

    I believed in myself more and trusted my abilities to overcome adversities. I can say that I have had a fulfilling year so far; and I have only God to thank for.

  • Unmet Needs

    So, had a disagreement again. It is really stressing me out whenever I reach out to him without being reciprocated. When I call his behaviour out, he threw tantrums and then finally proceeded to explain himself. He also said that I am stressing him out. For real?!!! What am I supposed to do, I am not a mind reader. He then proceeded to mention how different we are, I don’t know it is a bad thing or he is just stating a fact. So I stated again, that I have needs and they are not being met right now. I’ve got to explain why I do things and what I needed from him. This, for many times already. I was close to calling it off but decided to think and process why this happens and what he was telling me about.

    My initial response was, OK, I am stressing him out, and he obviously sees us as two individuals running different lives. I don’t know what that means and it hurts a little. Maybe I am in denial too. Again, I took my time and told him how was I supposed to understand his actions if he was not communicating well with me and that I truly don’t know him very well. I stated that I have my needs with him and gave him space to sort himself out. I don’t know the outcome of my actions but at least I don’t stay silent of things that I am not OK with. If it’s meant to be, it will. If it’s not, I will meet someone else – leave it to God.

    In between my anger and tears, I read about anxiety in relationships and came upon a podcast by Dr Sharon Martin and on awareness of highly sensitive person (lol another diagnosis) which I can resonate well. I have always been expressive when I feel things. I just can’t keep it down to myself. I have to share my experience or feelings with someone – ideally someone I care about and accept me as I am. The problem happens when I translate it out with asking for what I need – I am not used to it and those around me often disregard or feel uncomfortable with my requests. So the podcast talks about setting boundaries and be okay with who I am; and that there are many more people just like me. Even with varying degrees of compatibility, things can work out between 2 people. If he read my words with an open mind to understand, we may have another shot. I think I am progressing well with this and managed to better communicate if I don’t want to participate in anything.

    There is also a post on anxiety and relationship which has a lot of good points too. Another post that helps me to understand my feelings and response is this one – 12 Things Highly Sensitive People Love in a Partner (highlysensitiverefuge.com). And this one, too – Blog-Happy Highly Sensitive Life. I obviously have a lot to learn about myself, my wounds and triggers. I mean if I take him out of the equation it is going to be a lot easier and just find someone that is compatible with me. But it is not as easy as it sounds, especially when dealing with the agony of a heartbreak. I am just going to take my time to process what has happened and discern of what to do next, rather than hurting him and saying things that I might regret later.

  • Happy New Year 2024!

    OMG it’s the 2nd week into the year 2024. So much things going on, and there are so many I want to write about but couldn’t get around to.

    Among the things that I wanted to write are on:
    – My first CrossFit competition
    – A lot on teaching reflections
    – My progress in DBA
    – Tips on delivering a good research proposal defense presentation
    – New package for PT 2024

    I’m just so excited, but afraid that I’m just pacing myself too fast. On relationship front, I’m getting more stable and I got triggered less now. Finally feeling safe and secure, but at times I just got annoyed with my man – I’m seeing he’s making effort as well so, not complaining now.

    My goal this year is to strengthen my financial stand, I have developed a system (so proud of myself). Now I need to remain steadfast and stick to it for a year. May God bless! Till next time!

  • Offbeat

    I am feeling horrible these past few weeks, despite of new positive changes I am making. I don’t know how to make the sense out of it. Emotional regulation is hard, moreover when I have to do it alone. I love myself, but there seem to be a lot of insecurities felt. What happened the last few weeks and this week?

    • I made a decision to discontinue powerlifting training – it’s just now working for me for the time being. So maybe I am feeling negative because I am letting people down, and there may be potential for me to be good at this and the recognition and validation that may come out of this. I love how the training gave me strength and focus. But the time it takes to recover and potential injuries just don’t work with me right now. I am already suffocating from balancing my body with current schedule of teaching, working and training.
    • I teach more classes – 2 HIIT class and 1 intermediate intensity class. So this might trigger something in my body because I have to do more preparation work and part of my resting hours is used for further exercise. I might say I feel that I only add extra 30% load on my body with this new schedule.
    • I am not OK that I am ‘gaining weight’. This is really unnecessary, but can’t help feeling that cause I like to look lean and proper. It is gonna be ok. I will easily shed them off when I start training again.
    • Hard to me to sleep well at night due to weather and not wanting to skyrocket the electricity bills up. Without proper sleep and rest of course, one can go crazy.
    • I need better nutrition planning and preparation. So tired to cook these days. Good thing that my body works well with oatmeals and coffee, just basic things to function well. What I need to plan further is for big meals like lunch and dinner. Meat might work for me and its cheaper options for protein intake – maybe I need to include more fiber based protein. And eat more fruits and greens.
    • Family relationship, I think we all are getting along better now. But still I must not give up my identity to fulfill especially what my mother wants. If she’s confused of her roles, that’s on her. Only relate when necessary and don’t overextend myself. Now she wants me to help on the little shop. It’s not hard work for me, but it’s not what I want to do and if I run it successfully, it’s likely that I will not be so much prouder of myself than what I have built now for myself.
    • Closure of old stuffs from MYJN and Navy painting work. OMG still a lot to handle. Yes, I totally forgot about them.
    • Maybe I need to detox from social media – just triggers my anxiety. But I need to do promotional work also. What could work is to limit my access to them.
    • Love relationship is not doing well again. I am just so done to make things right for now. What is it with men. I am so confident that I don’t rely on them to make me happy. I just want to relate with the person I love so bad, maybe like I do relate with myself? Might be our depth of awareness is different? I don’t know what is happening and he is not willing to clarify himself either. Sod it. Suck it up.
    • Financially insecure but I already took actions for this. It’s the unforeseen things that makes me stressed out. Like car maintenance, food cravings, also I need to upgrade my wardrobe and the things at the house.
    • Technically the weather and consistent water supply disruption also bound to make me feel unsettled.

    Most important thing is, what I listed are all external. I gotta respond and manage myself to them accordingly. Above all, I truly believe God is looking after me. Nothing will go wrong. I am safe. Take the plunge.

  • Lessons from Dr Jonice Webb’s 10 Days Awareness Challenge

    I subscribed to Dr Jonice Webb’s work in Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) which I came across in the early stages of my realisation that there was something wrong with me, sometime in 2018. I related to it instantly and bought 2 of her books. The emails she sent weekly at first triggered my past hurt. But over time I don’t know when, I stopped taking it personally and started to read them with an open heart and mind.

    So, recently, she created this 10 Days Awareness Challenge for free. I immediately signed up without hesitation, and followed through along with my own time. If any of you are interested to find out what it is all about, you can enroll yourself by going to this link here.

    My main learning out of this are the 10 affirmations that I could use to reparent myself (these are my favourites) and three steps that I can do to begin my CEN healing. The video of the affirmations is available on YouTube, here on this link. Such an important link. I would like to write to her one day on how much burden she had lifted from me, from all the feeling of unworthiness and consistent gloom and doom feeling.

    Back to the affirmations, the 10 main affirmations to reparent myself that I could use are:

    • No feelings are bad, it’s what I do with them
    • It’s only a feeling, I can handle this
    • Pay attention to this feeling, it matters
    • My parents can’t give me what they don’t have
    • I can do this
    • Stop with the self-doubt – it is not helpful
    • I’ve proven myself before, and Icould definitely prove myself again
    • It’s just a skill, and I could learn it
    • Asking for help is a sign of strength
    • I am not responsible for the things I cannot control – I’m not in charge of the whole world, let it go!

    The good thing is, it affirms me that I have already started healing because I use some the affirmations myself consistently. I wish I could cut and paste these affirmations somewhere in my brain for quick access whenever I am feeling inadequate.

    Another thing that I learnt from this awareness challenge is to practice these three things to heal my CEN. Those are (as in my notes):

    • Learn everything I can about CEN
    • Change my relationship with my emotions and feelings – it is valuable, tells me something about myself, holding good or bad memory about something, warning, information, message of something that I need – be curious about my feelings
    • Start paying attentions to my feelings – do this drill 3 times a day. Close my eyes – turn inwards, ask myself what am I feeling right now? – feel the feelings in my belly, chest, throat or in my head.

    It feels so good that I can now see another move forward in healing my childhood trauma. Please have a go at the challenge, who knows it might change your view about yourself and ultimately your life.

  • You are the By-product of the People You Surround Yourself with

    Taken by my friend, when I saw this photo, I saw myself as a different woman!

    One of the things I appreciate the most these days is having close friends who see me in the best lights despite of my flaws.

    Growing up consistently feeling not good enough despite of being raised in a socially well and respected family, attended one of the best schools in the country, receiving the best education, done this and that at national and international level, I often question what am I doing with my life even though things are quite smooth and steady at that moment. Imagine, if everything is stripped off of you, the wealth, the fitness, the youth and beauty, your careers, your family or spouse – everything that signifies status in today’s society – what is left for you as a dignified human being? For years, I was feeling worthless because I cling to these things to validate my existence and self-worth.

    My confidence and self-appreciation grew when I received positive validation like feedback from my peers at the gym as instructor, my friends who value me, like how is it possible that they see me like that. The only person that did not see how awesome I was, was myself. I am my worst critique due to how my parents taught me growing up, and because of the competitive nature at school – I never was the best in any category, and people abandoned me, so I figured I didn’t have anything special to have people sticking around by my side.

    As I focused inwardly, I started to understand more what really mattered for me. Having friends or surrounding myself with the people that see my light and the value I bring to the world, makes me value and respect myself more; and that all of us, our path, each of us is special, regardless of what the society or the ‘norms’ tells us. Thank you, my dear friends, for showing me who I am, and to myself, for believing that I am worthy and that I am good enough.

  • What It Means to be A Woman

    Relating back to my discovery about woman archetype in my previous post, I thought, “Wow, this is something new!”. Out of curiosity, naturally, I did one of the quizzes and the report showed that my archetype is mostly the Wild Woman, followed by Lover and Mother (both because same score). I did several other quizzes, the archetypes kept changing, but still revolve around Wild Woman, Mother, Lover and another one – Mystic Woman.

    Woman or feminine archetype originates from Jungian archetypes theory, and further expanded by a psychiatrist, Jean Shinoda Bolen. Screenwriters and writers alike used these archetypes to develop their fictional female characters in their stories. It is likely that, at a certain point, women radiate an archetype depending on their situations and what they are facing in their lives at the moment. A woman might have all the archetypes, but there would be a few dominant ones that would reflect on how she responds to the environment, and she lives her life. More about it is greatly summarised here in this post on Mindvalley, and an extensive list of archetypes also defined here. Some writers, or feminine coaches might term the archetypes differently, but essentially, they are consistent. There are typically 7 main archetypes and its essence (some expands to 12), which are:

    • The Lover – sensual
    • The Mother – nurturing
    • The Huntress – courageous
    • The Maiden – innocence
    • The Queen – charismatic leader
    • The Mystic – peacefulness
    • The Sage – wise

    You could try quizzes online. The one that I recently tried is this one. And this is what it says about me as the Wild Woman. It appalls me that my Queen archetype percentage is one of the lowest! The Queen energy is so much applauded and women everywhere are inspired to be one. What does it say about me as a woman? Maybe there is no right or wrong about it. Each and every archetype has its own strengths and weaknesses. The benefit of having the awareness I think is that I tend to be more understanding and have less judgement of why other women rarely think or behave like me. Each woman is unique which is why we need to be more curious of what drives a person or a woman to behave the way she does. It also could be useful to observe my dynamics in relationship with people, platonic or romantic. What my feminine energy says about a situation? How do I deal with it?

    Because of living and fighting in surviving mode, added up with demands from people around me, I might have repressed and lost touch with my feminine energy. I never thought myself as a feminine one. The more I untangle the emotional messiness and the effects of childhood trauma, the more I realised that most of my actions and judgements were reactions and responses caused by trauma. I know how to survive, but I did not know how to be myself, as a feminine woman. I also got to know that I am and have always been so feminine, only I did not know and did not acknowledge the softness and creative side of me (lack of validation). It is sad to think of it, but I am also grateful to discover it now at this age of 40. Now I understand, why I need to have my specific rest routines after work – I am exhausted being masculine, and need the space and time to tune back towards my feminine energy. I know now how to be in my power and be my most authentic and feminine self that I have neglected many years ago. Nevermind the Queen, I am fine being the Huntress for now.

  • State of Flow in Reflection

    I know right, this is like the third post I have written in a row. While typing this, I have three other posts in line as drafts.

    I miss myself in this state of being at this moment where I can just create and create with ideas overflowing out of me. At the same time, I am feeling general anxiety. It’s 1am and I am not asleep yet, I have get up early for morning class later. I am also feeling unsettled cause I did not finish my laundry – there were rats outside, I just don’t want to deal with them right now.

    It feels great to be able to reflect on what has been happening, like process on recent events, check on my feelings. Keep myself updated on happenings, making sense of things. It’s like, “Hey we’ve gone through this! How it feels like?”. Yeah, I don’t only keep my friends updated, but also need to tell myself to update on my take for each experience. Life is just too beautiful to let by without context. I want to tell myself more, but it’s already late. Thanks Allah for this privilege.

    Regroup and get ready for what’s to come.