Choices

Choices are made everyday – some more important than others, some more difficult than the next, some more impactful than most.

When you make those choices, there’s no turning back, they become part of the past and you are left with the consequences of your choices. Drive what can be done next, rather than holding on to the past. Savor what is here rather than wishing for what could be or what could’ve been.

Remember that there is no ego here (as there is no ego on the mat). Compete only with yourself and surpass only your own standards. What the world thinks does not matter as long as you are grounded in what your truth is.

Love, because there is no other way.

Leave, because there is nothing left.

Let go, because everything is ever fleeting.

Trust, because there is no cure.

For this day will never happen again, yesterday can not be relived, and tomorrow is inevitable uncertainty. 

Your words can only do so much, and actions are never real until they matter.

One day, the world you are in will make sense but that only means that you will be in a whole different world the next moment.

To learn something new

Always make new mistakes, so that you learn something new. Old mistakes are evidence that you never got it the first time.

Don’t expect others to love you the way you want to be loved, but try your best to love them the way they know how to be loved. Take a balance of selfishness and selflessness – one shouldn’t live without the other.

In pain, find solace.

In troubled hours, find solitude.

Through fleeting feelings, ground yourself to your roots.

Through questions and doubts, create definitions. 

Flying without Wings

As kids, we’ve always wanted to learn how to fly. It’s an insatiable urge to discover how it is to glide through the clouds and move with the wind, to see everything from a different perspective, to be an observer of the world and driver of your own speed. Maybe this is why we loved swings and slides, airplanes and rollercoasters.

As teenagers, we yearned for thrill and adventure – to run wild and free with a new sense of freedom and personal strength. We seek out new forms of craziness from death-defying stunts, sneaking out of the house, and getting into fairy tale relationships.

As we grow older, our lives begin to revolve around dreadful realities, our urges moved by physical senses, and our thrills turned misadventures. We learn then to hold on to things and people, grab hold of fear and anticipate failure. Slowly, we forget how it is to dream – we forget how it is to dream about flying.

Maybe that was why I got so ecstatic when I was first introduced to Anti-Gravity Yoga at I Go Beyond Yoga. As I looked at photos, read through magazine articles and watched YouTube videos, I already felt like a child again – I was a kid inside the house watching my peers play at my own backyard. My feet were tingly, my stomach was upside down, and my eyes were sparkling – and I was not the only one.

On Chinese New Year afternoon, I stepped into my first Anti-Gravity Yoga class with Monica Manzano. As I held my first hammock, it was like taking a hold of my baby blanket – smooth and comfortable, it felt like home. As Monica guided us through a basic sequence for AGY, my mind flew with me to the memories of childhood – of being free of worries, never holding back, and thinking playfully.

As I flipped and flew off the floor, I grew closer to the sky and moved with the momentum that my hammock and body had created for me – I was a child again. I experienced the world in a different movement and a different perspective. There was no up or down – just center.

Admittedly, it was a scary feeling at first. I didn’t want to let my body go in the fear of falling off and hitting the ground. I was afraid to hop in and flip out. In my head, I was almost definite that I would hit my head and the hammock could not support my weight. I was afraid that I would twist my ankle the wrong way, or the hammock would twist my leg in the wrong direction. But the energy of Monica helped me through it. She walked us through every motion, and her energy assured us that we could let go. “Trust the hammock” she said – and I heard it as if she said “Trust your spirit”. And so I let go of that fear, and I had the ride of my life.

It was as if I freed my spirit and let the air take me where I had to go. It was a familiar safe house – the feeling that once in my life I was in this free space and I could soar.

After an hour on this hammock, I took the feeling of freedom with me for the rest of my life.

Discovering your Practice

Since I’ve already started talking about my whirlwind romance with Yoga, here’s another entry on discovering my own practice, why I practice at I Go Beyond Yoga and how I learned to deepen my practice.

First things first, I did not get into Yoga for the right reasons. For one, I used yoga as a panakip butas to my heartache and frustrations about my work. I needed something to keep me busy during my down time – usually in the evenings. Second, I used yoga as a means to simply lose weight on top of other exercises I did during the day. Third, I used yoga as a way of getting close to someone else. In short, my yoga practice and I “got off on the wrong foot” – but somehow, it all worked out.

I took my first Yoga class at I Go Beyond Yoga in Tomas Morato, Quezon City. That 7am class was entitled “Power Yoga” with Rianna Gatus as my first yoga teacher. I was half awake and half pushing myself into the room. As my teacher got into the room, I was so glad she wasn’t skinny, tall and engraved with tattoos otherwise, I would’ve felt strange and out of place. And as we took our first asana and closed our eyes, she uttered words that put me into my place on that mat – “Take this time to look into yourself. This time is the time to focus on yourself.”

That first class in itself was a breakthrough. It was an hour and 15 minutes of sheer sweat, physical struggle and mental endurance. It worked more on the core muscles, muscle endurance and strength – literally Vinyasa Flow on steroids. In every asana, I had to convince myself that I could do it, and do the next one right after. In every asana, I had to learn to let go of the previous asana and move on to the next. There was nothing else there – just me and my mat. I had never taken a Yoga class in my life, and I survived it… with difficulty.

Being a sucker for challenges, I took another class the next day. It was a Yin Yoga class with Monica Manzano. I thought I was prepared for this one after taking Rianna’s class. A Yin Yoga class takes you through less number and less dynamic asanas, but the asanas are held for 3 – 5 minutes. They supposedly target the fascia that lay underneath the muscle tissues. I was ready for this, I thought… until the hip-opening asanas came.

On the first few seconds, I thought, “This is it? This is too easy. Let me push further.” On the first minute I thought, “When do I let go?” At the top of the second minute, I was already inching my way off the pose; and at the bottom of that second minute, I was already agitated. At the top of the third minute, I closed my eyes and let go, tears fell off my closed eyelids. More than the asanas, this was a test of my emotional strength – my patience with my body, and endurance of my mind. I had to let go and breathe through that sweet pain and gentle struggle. The asana was over, and we had to move on to the next.

Such polar experiences between two classes, all in one studio. This brings me to why I practice at I Go Beyond Yoga.

Primarily, it was to address a practical concern – the studio had a very convenient location. Located at Il Terrazzo, Tomas Morato, Beyond Yoga is near my place of work. Since I go to work every day, I had no excuse not to go to practice every day as well.

Since I work a 9 – 6pm job, I also only had my early mornings and evenings free. Fortunately, Beyond Yoga has a 7am to 815am class, which gives me enough time to take a shower and dress up afterwards in time for work at 9am. If I still miss that, Beyond Yoga also has 630pm and 8pm classes, which I could inevitably take after work. In short, no excuses for practice. What got me hooked to Beyond Yoga though, is that they have a good selection of yoga practices – from Hatha yoga, Vinyasa flow, Hot Yoga and Ashtanga, one can explore what type of yoga tickles your fancy. Even if you take just the 630pm class every day, you would’ve already taken at least 2 of the 4 different types of yoga available. This provides for variation and a more dynamic practice, which battles against boredom and plateauing. It also helps that they also have a good number of teachers, who have different teaching styles and sequence.

Needless to say, that Beyond Yoga’s overall feel is very comfortable and homey; and its staff is very welcoming and accommodating. The environment is not “in-your-face-hardcore-yoga”, but they definitely take their practice seriously.

It was a starting point to have been able to find a studio that welcomed the “newbie” yoga that I was and from there, I was left with the task of deepening it. As I said in the beginning, I did not get into yoga for the right reasons. I needed a distraction, a cover up and a means to get close to another person.

As I said in my previous blog, Yoga is more than just an asana practice. It is not just exercise and a way to sweat out. It is a practice of the mind and spirit; and how one can overrule both of them.

I needed a distraction – I got a focus.

I needed a cover up – I learned to let go.

I needed a means to get close to another person – I found myself.

How did I do it? I breathed through it.

When I get into that studio, I let go of everything that has happened and will happen. No work. No worries. No issues.  When I get on that mat, there is nothing else and no one else but myself. Once I did this, I learned that there is nothing in this world I can control but myself. I can’t control the circumstances I am put in, just like I can’t control the asanas that are given in the sequence. I can’t control the people around me and they are none of my business, in the same way that I cannot hold on to the poses for my classmates and their practice is none of my business. All I can do is look inward and scan my reaction to these circumstances and these people.

Once I was able to acknowledge these reactions, I was also able to rediscover my own power. Slowly but surely, I discover that I can reprioritize my life and reevaluate my issues. I can look at things a different way and find creative ways of dealing with them. I had the power to create and redirect my energies toward things that would make a difference to my actions. I could feel agitated yet stay still. I could be struggling, but not burst into rage. I could be in doubt, yet take calculated risks. My practice on the mat soon translated into my practice off the mat.

How Do I Do it?

In time, I learned how to fly my own wings – literally. Soon is my blog entry about Anti-Gravity Yoga, which helped me deepen my practice through the principle of letting go of fear and going back to the child in me. 

Yoga will Wreck You

There’s been a fuss recently about an article that came out in the New York times entitled “How Yoga can Wreck your Body”. The article details statistics about injuries caused by practicing Yoga, seemingly going against the common idea that Yoga is a healing and rejuvinating practice. The article also cited the “expert opinion” of Glenn Black, a seasoned and traditional yoga practitioner and teacher, about Yoga being a practice only for “people in good physical condition” and even asking some practitioners to “stop doing yoga” altogether.

I got into Yoga practice about 4 months ago as a form of physical exercise. During those months, I take an average of 2 classes a day, 5 days a week – there were a few days I’d spend over 4hours a day in practice. I do different types of yoga, depending on available classes at I Go Beyond Yoga – from Vinyasa flow, Ashtanga, Hot Yoga and Yin Yoga, and tried a week of Bikram Yoga practice at Bikram Yoga Greenhills.

I learned to love my daily practice and am slowly learning even more to live it’s principles. I have learned to accept that Yoga is not just about the physicality of the practice but more importantly, about spending time with yourself, in yourself, for yourself.

I’ve had my fair share of physical injuries and mental roadblocks, and have overcome them as well. I have torn my hamstrings, sprained my knee and twisted my ankles. I have my favorites poses and fear of others. I’ve had days when I could spend the whole day at the studio, and days when I’d rather not be near a mat at all.

I don’t, however, claim to be an expert – I’m definitely far from being one, in fact. But for what it’s worth, here are my two cents about the controversial article.

If there is one basic principle I learned in Yoga, it’s that, as a form of exercise, Yoga is about being one with your body. Yoga is not just about the asanas (physical postures) and Pranayamas (controlled breathing), but really more about the mental control and centeredness that come with executing them.

When I practice, I become conscious about the only two entities present on my mat – my physical self and my consciousness (ego). These two are ideally unified during the whole practice, and more especially even off the mat. Most times, however, these two are at a power play – the body wanting to push itself to it’s physical edge, but the mind has not prepared itself; or the mind wanting to move toward a challenge, but the body unable to execute.

I remember not worrying about the poses that required flexibility during my first week at class. I could bend over and touch the floor and my toes without struggling. My ego was definitely in agreement with my body. There were times, however, especially when I’m having a bad day, that my mind belittles my body in those poses. The mind makes you believe you cant do it today, not today. Makes you believe you’re too tired or drained, and it just can’t take the pose any longer. I let go.

Then came the hip opening asanas, and my body was aggressively negating what my mind wanted to do. At one point, I even shed a tear in frustration – I wanted to hold the pose for as long as I needed to, but my hips and legs were in pain. I let go.

It happens. I let go… I can allow myself to let go.

Moreover, being in a class of varying degrees of practices, it takes a lot of effort to focus on just yourself and what happens on your own mat. Once you see others lowering down further than you, sustaining the pose longer than you and taking the pose to another level of difficulty – your ego tells you that you want to be better than the next person or be at that level the next time. But this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. As my Yoga teacher would say, “No one else’s practice should matter to you except yours”. Yoga is not being about being better than the person next to you, or trying to be just like someone else in terms of strength, flexibility or endurance. Rather, it’s about being a better self both physically and mentally. It’s about pushing yourself toward your personal edge rather than against someone else’s resistance.

There is, however, a fine line between completely letting go and not even trying. To allow your mind and body accept that where you’re at is where you will always be. To allow yourself to believe that being calm is simply being comfortable. There is always dynamism in being still – as my Yoga teacher says, “There is no complete Yin, and no complete Yang”. Even in the most difficult asanas, there is a peaceful place. And in the easiest asanas, there is struggle.

They say, for example, that the most difficult pose is the Savasana or Corpse pose. It Is basically lying on your back with your arms and legs spread out and your eyes closed. Simple enough. We do this when we sleep, and is best when we’re exhausted from a long day. This is supposed to be a restrorative pose that allows us to let go.

It is the most difficult pose because despite the stillness of your body, you have to battle it out with your mind. In this pose, you let go of all that has been and all that will be, and you completely put yourself in what is here and now. The tendency is for us to think about what we did right and wrong in our practice, how our day went and how it will go, what we do next etc. To be in the present means just accepting what is here and now – which is, at this point, you and your mat still on the floor. As much as I want to, I find I haven’t been able to “perfect” this pose.

Once you learn to let go, the next difficult step is learning to get back on track. To refuse to be enclosed in your comfort zone, and to refuse to be confined in what you were able to do previously, is one of the biggest challenges in any practice – To make yourself believe that the next step is a leap you can’t take, is the biggest trap. If you’re not going to try, then it’s not going to come.

Therefore, I agree that Yoga can wreck your body – but only as far as you allow yourself to. If you push yourself too hard, and let your ego drown out the cry of your physical body, then you’re definitely putting yourself in a compromising situation. Once you refuse to listen to your body and focus only on being competitive, then you allow yourself to contain the pain rather than work through it in incremements.

I remember taking a special workshop of headstands and arm balances by Alex Roberts during my first month at practice. Naturally, I wanted to at least complete one headstand asana or an arm balance – I failed miserably. To make a 3-hr class short, I wasn’t able to mount anything fully. It was almost embarrassing. But what kept me from wrecking my body was what Alex repeatedly said during the workshop - “If you don’t get this pose right this time, doesn’t make make your practice less effective. It’s just yoga after all, we’re here to have fun.”

Your asanas don’t make your Yoga. And your Yoga doesn’t make you.

I think too that, More than anything else, Yoga can wreck you. More than just your body, yoga can completely breakdown most things you thought you knew about yourself. In my few months of practice, I have come to several realizations about what I allow my mind and body to do, and what I allow myself to believe. The power of Yoga, I have learned, is not really just “mind over matter” rather “self over matter” – to empower yourself to breathe through the struggles of the mind and the struggles of the body. It’s not only about letting your mind take over your body, but sometimes even allowing your body to take over your mind, but always allowing the self to moderate the struggle between both.

You define what your Yoga is about, and how far you’re going to take it.

Motivation

Happy New Year!

I received an email earlier from a reader named Christine and I realized one important thing – I actually have readers.

Ok, obvisouly WordPress allows me to view statistics of my blog. However, I never realized that I actually have readers apart from my family, friends and acquaintances. So for those who read my blog, a big big THANK YOU! My apologies for not being able to update this for over 2 months now, and I resolve to write more consistently and regularly.

Anyway, Christine talked about Motivation in her email and I privately gave her my opinions on it and how it relates to living healthy and losing weight (which, for the most part, is what I have been talking about in my previous entries). However, I would like to expound on them here as well…

As a Psychology major, I have been taught that motivation is a very basic, almost primitive, aspect of behavior. It is literally what drives us to live the way we do, act the way we do, and say the things we say. Our motivation is what determines whether we go straight to work in the morning or take a yoga class prior. It is also the reason behind taking that extra shot of tequila before leaving a party or pushing 10 more minutes on the treadmill.

In my reply to Christine, there were two items about motivation that I tried to emphasize – (1) that motivation is most effective when it is intrinsic, and (2) that the best way to strengthen or deepen motivation is to break “dreams” into bite sized goals.

Intrinsic motivation is the type that does not rely on external rewards or acknowledgement. In the context of losing weight and living a healthy lifestyle, being intrinsically motivated means that one does not intend to do lose weight for the sake of winning a contest, or simply looking good unless winning a contest means self affirmation or looking good means gaining self confidence and control. Being intrinsically motivated means that you are driven, not by others’ recognition of you and your capabilities, but of your own recognition and appreciation of your own capabilities and achievements.

The first few steps I took towards my own losing weight, was driven mostly by the idea of wanting to be “marketable” after getting off of a long term relationship. I wanted to look good in order to gain the attention of others, particularly possible partners (preferably men). This extrinsic motivation got me through the GM diet, two week cardio workout, the first 3kilos off, and one failed date. However, when the physical challenges got tougher, when the weight was harder to lose and the resistance of the workout became more difficult, I would easily step on the breaks and throw my intensions off the window. Almost immediately, I would say, “Well, if a guy would really be interested in me, he shouldn’t care if I was 20lbs overweight. He should accept me for who I am”.

I had a pretty valid point, actually. But that wasn’t the bottomline. The bottomline was that being overweight was not good for me, and I was getting sicker and less healthy by the day. Fortunately, I had recognized this and had taken time to reflect on it. Only then I turned to myself and asked, “Can you accept yourself for losing yourself this way? Can I live with my unhealthy body? Can I deal with my own illnesses?”.

In trying to lose weight, I think the best motivation comes from the concept of putting value to your life and acknowledging that if you are to live in this body for the rest of your life, you have to take care of it and really own it. Living healthy doesn’t mean just keeping up with the crowd, or getting approval from your parents or the community. It doesn’t even mean just able to keep up with aN aerobic class or finish 26poses of Bikram yoga. Living healthy means investing on your own body so it could give you back the benefits of living a good life. Of course, getting noticed by others is a good thing and finishing a whole Bikram sequence is a big deal, but it should be a plus rather than the reward in itself. I find it was more rewarding to realize I could walk up 12flights of stairs easily (knowing that anytime, in case of an emergency, i could easily do it as well and probably save a life in the process) rather than being noticed for being able to fit a size 0 (which didn’t mean anything because a size 0 costs the same as a size 8 anyway).

But the trick is really how I got from wanting to be “marketable” to wanting to “stay healthy”. The key,I found, is to break down the “ideal” to more specific, measurable, attainable and controllable milestones. It was no longer about a far fetched ideal of weighing 110lbs by October, or a vague perception of looking good for Christmas photos. By this time, I finally realized the truth behind what my father used to tell me, “Inch by Inch is a since. Yard by Yard is very hard”.

With losing weight, as with most “hard sell goals”, it is always an difficult climb up a steep mountain. Ask any runner or mountain climber, they would agree that it is easier to climb with shorter, faster steps rather than using big strides. In the same way, breaking down big goals into little achievements not only makes the goal seem easier to reach, but it could even actually make it so.

I had a goal of weighing 110lbs by October, and I failed. It was the end of October, and I was still at 112lbs. 2 more pounds, and I still couldn’t lose it. Almost there, but not quite. To lose the next 2lbs, and the rest of the 10lbs, I had to be more specific with my checklist. Take one yoga class before November, check. Eat not more than 1800cal a day for two weeks, check. Take another yoga class, check. Eat just one cup of rice, noodle or potato in a day everyday, check. Take two yoga classes, check. Take an advanced yoga workshop, check. Drink 3L of water a day, check. And so on…

Then living a healthy lifestyle becomes a series of simple daily choices. It is no longer big and vague, rather, concrete and palpable choices of black or white. This was no longer an essay type questionnaire, rather simply a multiple choice test mostly consisting of yes or no choices.

Since the last time I wrote in this blog, a lot of changes have happened and I’m at a point where I am trying to maintain this kind of lifestyle. In the next few days and weeks, I will write about such changes and how I have learned to sustain the lifestyle change I have made for myself. My motivation no longer rests on what others expect me to be or do, rather, what I know I can do and achieve. As one of my Bikram yoga teachers say, “If you can then you must”.

Cheers and Namaste to all my readers!
Salamat!

Read on..

Breakthrough #3: Meditation

A few days after my recent break up, I took a two day silent retreat to center myself and gather my thoughts. It was a refreshing experience.Below is an excerpt from the journal I kept during that silent retreat:

I want to cry it all out – and feel with it the pain. And then I want to move on. I want my mind to soar then dive into the depths. And then I want to free myself. I want to fall in love again. I wanted to find someone who shares the same things and beliefs. I want someone who I won’t be ashamed to pray with, play with, and be with me all the time without judgment…

I realize the winds feel stronger when you are small. Like the grass feel the winds a little harsher, and a whisper to an ant feels like a hurricane. The more I insist on “being small”, the more I allow the world to beat me to my death…

I pray You help restore my soul. You know me like no one can – not even myself. Break me and take me into your arms, hide me in your wounds, and I will be strengthened. Move me for I have been paralyzed. Awaken me for I have been blinded. Let me see the beautiful and help me battle disorder and troubles…

Every Sunday, I take time to meditate. I head out to hear mass, and I take the day to keep silent. I have a lot going on with my life – as I’m sure everybody does. We have to work and play. We try to keep our minds and our body fit. We balance our private lives with our social lives. Really, it’s so much to ask for from one person – but that’s how we’re built.

There is struggle in every relationship. But in that struggle, we build strength. 

The magic of love is not finding “the one made for you”. The magic of love is really the serendipity of love - the paths of two “whole” people intersect at the right time, and it all makes sense. It’s literally like winning the lottery – and nowadays its like the odds are getting smaller. But in every relationship, we make compromises and changes in our lifestyle – enough to make the relationship work but still maintain our pagkatao and our sanity. We reach a point where the compromises should end – otherwise, we would lose ourselves in the relationship and we would be different people. Any further and we would be strangers in our own bodies.

I used to use the metaphor of drowning to express my struggling in life. I used to feel like there were heavy forces pushing throughout my body and I am left treading and whipping out all the energy I have only in vain. I surrender to the current. Now I don’t even understand why I wanted to stay in the darkness, when I could walk out of the door into the open space.

In the silence, we feel the pain but in that same silence our hearts smile. Meditation has helped me keep my head above water. Meditation gives me time to breathe out the negativity and breathe in more courage. Meditation has taught me to think before I react, feel before I do, and try before I give up. 

Breakthrough #2: Living Discovery

 I came to a point where I didn’t impress myself anymore. I didn’t push my limits anymore. I didn’t find ways to improve.

After losing some of the excess weight, I had a feeling of fulfillment. I was proud of myself and was determined to do more improvements. I knew that losing the weight was superficial, and that I had to put more things in my head, heart and soul. Exercise had given me the strength to move forward, faster.

I thought to myself, “Finding my center was the first thing in the agenda.” Honestly, I didn’t really know what this meant. What I knew was that I was not in control of my life anymore. My emotions were high and low – I was excited about one thing at one point, then lost the drive the next day. I was crying like a baby one night for no apparent reason. I went through the daily grind without knowing where I was going. I was partying for the sake of partying.

I was pretty functional for an emotional wreck. I was doing well at work, and I was making more acquaintances than usual, and I was losing weight the healthy way. I was bubbly on the outside but panting on the inside.

Questions like “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?” didn’t help me either. I was being drawn to motherhood statements that had no relevance in my day-to-day life. Instead, I asked myself, “What am I going to achieve today?” 

At first, the answer was just about work – I wanted to finish this project, lock in this deal, manage this issue etc. It was a good start because taking achievements day by day allowed me to appreciate my worth on a day to day basis as well. I was able to deliver better service, facilitate better decision making, recommend better options and help deliver business results. I was able to get back on track, and focus on what was at hand.

Then I started to look for other things that can fill up my day. I worked a regular 9 – 6pm job, I teach Mondays and Wednesday mornings (730 – 930am), I worked out in the evening, and most weekend nights I had to go somewhere to destress. So, I had my weekend mornings and afternoons plus a little bit of down time when I’m at home.

A better question I posed to myself was, “What am I going to learn this week?” Week after week, I challenged myself to learn or do something new. From a new restaurant, a new recipe, a new book or movie. It was also hanging out with a friend or two to learn more about their lives – learn from their achievements and reflect on its application in my life.

It became almost a habit to be curious and keep on asking more questions. I became more self-aware of the things I was weak at and the things that I can contribute to. I was an expert in some topics, and a novice in others – either way, I was here to learn.

As I ask myself these two questions regularly, I found that they help slowly unfold the creased parts of who I am – the aspects of me that I never knew about or never really explored in depth. I was able to taste new flavors,  go to places I’ve never been to, and meet people from different walks of life. These new flavors unveiled new cultures and subcultures. The new places opened doors to history and insights to the future. My new found acquaintances taught me lessons of life and love that I don’t usually get from my usual circle. 

These two questions took me one step at a time – closer to discovering who I am and why I am here. Ironically, instead of feeling like I spread myself too thinly because I was doing so much stuff in one day or week, I feel like I am more intact inside. I feel more in control of the things I do and say, how I react to situations and what solutions I provide for myself. I feel more centered to who I wanted to be, knowing well who I am and where I came from. I didn’t have to literally ask those questions. I had to live the discovery.

I had to go forth and engage the world – take it by the balls. It wasn’t an easy task, of course. Living the mediocre life was easy. But being a warrior and conquering the world was more exciting and more empowering. Slowly, I got back my self-confidence. Slowly, I got back the courage to take on challenges. Slowly, I got back the will to be more than what I am.

To be content is good, to seek more to life is better, and actually doing great is the best. So, I continue to be inspired as I want to continue to inspire others as well.