Why god gave us two ears and one mouth?

Yesterday I had CH & S class. We learned about counselling skills. Be a good listener, that’s one of the important skills that we learned and practised during the counsellor-client activities in class. I enjoyed the activities, practising both role as a counsellor and client.

Now try to reflect yourself, are you a good listener? When your friends pour their hearts out, did you try to find time to listen to them or would you simply listen for few minutes and then advise them based on your past experience? Instead of being a listener, you act more like an advisor and do most of the talking. I guess most people do that. In fact, sometimes I do but I hope I’ll be able to change that from now on.

Last few days, I read 'How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk' by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. I find this book really interesting although I haven’t finished reading it. In this book, the writer shared their years of experience, stories and new insights from their parent group. Simply describe, this book assist parent to nurture and sharpen their skills in parent-child relationship. I think parents should read this book, they might find some of the skills useful and applicable, if not all.

Some of the interesting things in this book, the authors said parents should say less, because a single word sometimes works better than a long paragraph. For example, when a mother said, “Look at you! You’re walking out the door without your lunch again. You’d forget your head if it weren’t attached to you” or “Son, your lunch!” Which do you think will have more effect on children?

In listening skills, the author suggested, among other things, that parents should listen with full attention and acknowledge their children’s feelings with words. Even simple words like, oh.. mm…uuh… will do. I believe it’s true. I know it's not easy for parents to communicate and listen to their children especially after a hard, rough, tiring day at work. But sometimes, it’s not that children want parents to give every solution to their problems. They just wanted to share their feelings and parents need to acknowledge that. I guess this can be adapted in our daily relationships too, with family, friends, colleague, students and others.

When I was attending a two-month English Language course in Singapore few years ago, my Myanmar friend, Chaw Kalyar, present us with a topic of 'why does god gave us two ears and one mouth?'. The answer simply is because god wanted us to listen more and talk less.

Make Love Not War

Thanks Kaidah for letting me contribute over in your blog. Hi all, it's Amy, and actually my permanent 'home' in the blogosphere is here.

Why the title above? The idea for such post came to me after watching a video titled 'Battle of the Sexes in the Animal Kingdom' in Behavioural Biology. According to the video, there's a constant battle of the sexes for power in the world. Lions fight with each other to overtake ownership of lioness and have cubs. Queen ants suppress the sexual tendencies of her daughters. Queen naked mole rat sleeps on top of a mattress of oppressed males. In other words, in most species, it's Make War, Not Love.

Interestingly there is a species that literally make love, not war. These are the bonobos. Males touch each other's genitals to reduce aggression, and engages in a ritualized sex play that do not lead to conception. In the video, after fighting with each other, two male bonobos touch each other's genitals like shaking hands.

The lecturer said sociologists are still investigating bonobos' behaviour, whether such peace can be applied to human societies.

Interesting.

multiply personality and good counsellor

I attended my Counselling and Helping Skills class yesterday. I really enjoyed the session because I got a chance to talk about a lot of things. Especially in reflecting my own personality, experience, etc. and then relate it to the counselling concept or theories. Yesterday we discussed about ‘self’ and ‘selves’.

Simply said, it’s like this, in our daily life, we have different personalities and they seem to transform every time, depend on the circles we are with. Whether it the circles of friends, professionals, family and others. For example, when I’m with my colleague, I tend to be more friendly-less talkative-type woman, but when I’m with my family, I’ll be more stubborn yet fun-type girl. What my lecturer's saying is that we are not just ‘one’ but there are ‘multiple’ of us in ourselves.

Well, to me I can compare this 'self' and 'selves' scenario to an actor/actress life. Actor/actress play different roles on screen but people don't know who they really are in real life. I guess it's the same thing with us. Our friends, families, colleague may know who we are but only us who knows our true selves.

Looking at this from counselling perspective, a counsellor must understand, realise and accept the fact that their client has multiply personalities, especially now that we are living in the complex-global environment. At the end of the lecture, our lecturer asked us a question, what are the criteria of a good counsellor that suit the post-modern community that have multiply personality?

Open minded, positive, active listener, trustworthy, are some of the answers from the class. Well, to add one to that list, I think one of the important criteria a counsellor should have is not to be judgemental. We tend to be judgemental when we met new people. I knew one boy who I went with in secondary school. He’s so quite, a loner. Always walk alone by himself. I don’t think I have ever talk to him. Few years ago, I met him at a reception. I didn’t recognize it was him until he approached me and to my surprise, he even remembered my name. He introduced me to his mother who’s a foreigner. Comes to think of it, I realise maybe he’s not a loner, maybe he just had a problem in communicating in Malay language since his mother is a foreigner. Had I not been so judgemental, maybe I’d have a chance to know him better and be friends with him. At least, perhaps I could share some laughter because I seldom see his smile back on those days.

I guess it’s true when Mother Theresa said that "If you judge people, you have no time to love them."

What is it with love? (Ada apa dengan cinta?)

It’s 14th February.. love is in the air.. I picked some interesting things about love from my cousin’s blog, Hang Lucky. I just love it.

"What does love mean?" To understand true love we have to see it through the eyes of children. A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds. The answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined.

I didn’t put all the answers here. Only some of my favourites:

Rebecca - age 8 "When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love."

Nikka - age 6"If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate."

Chris - age 7"Love is when mommy sees daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsome than Robert Redford."

Tommy - age 6"Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well."

Danny - 7"Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK."

Children are pure philosopher, I would say. I’d say I couldn’t even describe love better than they do. Haven’t met the true love myself… My other half, is still out there.. Hah… Tough luck, as if I ever could find one. But who knows, right? Miracles do happen. My best friend shared her story once when she was told that she was choosy in finding Mr. Right. She fired back and said, “Of course I was choosy, aren’t you all? Aren’t you choosy when you buy fish at the market? You choose the best, aren’t you? That is something you eat and it disappears within minutes. This is someone I have to share my life with for the rest of my life. Of course I had the right to be choosy”. Way you go girl!!..

Well, my definition of love is… love is like life itself. It can exists unexpectedly, it’s sweet in the early years, it can last longer if you really take care for it, it’s more precious and complicated when you gets older and it can dies suddenly without you having the answer why, but you really need it because without it, you'll never survive....

Feel Like Cryin'?...

I love to watch television comedy series. Home Improvements (HIM), My Wife And Kids (MYWIKS), 8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughters (8SMS), to name a few are among my favourites. But why in the world did I cry yesterday when I watched HIM, MYWIKS and 8SMS, instead of laughing? It’s all because of those beautiful words they said to each other. For example like “I love you more now than the day I married you”, or “I don’t think I’ve apologise enough for the things I’ve said to you” (HIM), “You’re not only the man of this house, but you’re the man of my heart” (MYWIKS). It’s so sweet that it put tears in my eyes…

Yesterday, during my CHS class, we did some discussion about Normal Behaviour and Abnormal Behaviour. One of my lists about Normal Behaviour is its normal to feel sad and cry. I cried when my aunt (father’s youngest sister) and uncle (mother’s youngest brother) passed away, I cried when I won the first prize for my first radio drama script, I cried with my two Thailand friends when we watched Armageddon, back in 1998 in Singapore, I cried with my two Bruneian friends when we watched Babul, in Reading a few months ago. So, I guess there's no harm in crying... it's a universal feeling...

I’d like to share some information about crying written by Victor M. Parachin, which can be found on this site: http://www.cyquest.com/good_cry.html

Why do people often feel better after crying? Alan Wolfelt, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Colorado Medical School, works primarily with people who are mourning loved ones. "In my experience," he says, "I have observed changes in the physical expressions following the expression of tears. Not only do people feel better after crying, they also look better." And according to Dr. William Frey, a biochemist and director of the Dry Eye and Tear Research Centre in Minneapolis, Minn., one reason people might feel better after crying could be because they are "removing, in their tears, chemicals that build up during emotional stress." Frey’s research indicates that tears, along with other bodily secretions like perspiration, rid the body of various toxins and wastes.

Should tears be controlled? The simple answer is no. Very few people cry for the wrong reasons. Consider the man who rushed his daughter to a local hospital after she experienced a severe fall. Because tears were pouring down his cheeks, the emergency room doctor ordered the young father to stop crying. Clearly, the doctor was wrong. Most people would do well to cry more often, and scientists as well as therapists and doctors are beginning to concur.

Can we cry too often? There is, in fact, only one word of caution about crying. Says one psychotherapist, "People who cry easily should feel glad they’re in touch with their feelings. But if they’re crying a lot in response to criticism, they should try to get some counselling. This kind of crying is an alarm bell of a far deeper hurt; it could signify a loss of self-esteem that is triggered whenever anyone says anything negative."

So to all of you out there, cry as you feel like it. I’m pretty sure you know when to stop. Here’s a story I copied from my cousin blog (Thanks Hang Lucky!). A 4 year old child whose next door neighbour was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his mother asked what he had said to the neighbour, the little boy said, "Nothing, I just helped him cry." So sweet, isn’t it…

Changing the unchanged

Yesterday morning I attended a Behaviour Management class. It’s all about how teachers manage the behaviour of their pupils more effectively.

It makes me flashbacked to my school days memories, when my behaviour, sort of gave my teachers bit of headache. I was not totally rebellious, but I’ve had those moments when I had been called by the senior teacher or discipline master. I escaped from class, didn’t attend a class test, made noise during assembly when the principal gave his speech, asked for 20 cents when my teacher asked me to read a passage in history class and other silly-funny stuffs.

One event I could not forget was during a history test in my secondary 3, when the teacher asked us to write an essay about Sarajevo Incident. What I wrote was “I am sorry sir. I don’t know anything about Sarajevo Incident. I was not born when the incident happened”. Now, after more than 20 years, I still could not stop thinking (and smiling at the same time), why am I pulling that silly stunt. Well, I had to stand in front of the classroom the entire period, and got a zero-mark for that creative answer. I know it’s nothing to be proud of… well… I guess when you’re young, happy-go-lucky and free-spirited kind of girl, you just feel like doing ‘crazy-fun’ things in life.

But one day, I was called to the principal’s office after one incident. I thought he’s going to scold me or punish me, well… then it turned out to be more like a heart-to-heart talk session. He acted more like a fatherly figure than a principal, who genuinely asked me what actually I really wanted to do in life. Not even the discipline master treated me with such kindness. He’s really a great leader, it’s no doubt, currently, he’s one of the prominent figures who held a high position in Brunei. I believed that, the less-than 30-minutes session was the turning point that made me what I am today.

So, if I was asked does managing student behaviour really important? From past experience, I would say yes. It’s not only a matter of the children’s behaviour within the classroom walls but it’s the tale of their life that goes after that which makes a difference.

“Many aspire to change the world but few realize that everyone accomplishes that goal. Each day you live you are changing something. Rather than simply changing the world, one should aspire to make a positive change with each action they commit” - Anon

Life Is Difficult

Life is difficult. Our lecturer in Counselling and Helping Skills quoted the first sentence of a novel in our first class last Monday. Is life really difficult? Well, each and every of us has a story of our own. We all face the ups and downs in life. I would say, it takes a lot of courage, braveness, patience, resilience, open-heartedness and positive mind to lead a happy, peaceful and fulfilling life. Simply said, well… life is really difficult.

I did not intend to share all the things that I’ve gone through in life… I believe other people may have gone through harder obstacles than I do. That’s what I’d like to think of whenever I get into difficulties. One of my mentor said to me, “When you have problems, do not look up to the people above you who possess everything, but look down to those who are less fortunate than you and you’ll find the courage to face whatever hurdles you may stumble into in life”.

I always watch television programmes about people facing hardships in life and read real-life stories, where sometimes you can’t imagine that it could ever happened to anybody. For example, a story about parents who lost three of their children that hanged themselves in their teen days, a husband who lost his wife and four kids when their car plunged in a river, a child severely abused and beaten to death by their own relatives and lots more.

I think by learning and comprehending about other people’s experience in life, you’ll feel stronger and will look at life with a more positive perspective. A versus in the holy Quran says “Allah the almighty, will never give you the burden that you could not endure”. I strongly believe that.