A Capsule of Smile

The current pandemic has sent most of us to stay at home. Other than the frontliners and essential workers, some of us are left with nothing to do while the others are swamped to finish tasks as they work from home. Prior to this situation, the Productivity Mania has always been the trend and hyped especially in Social Media –grabbing your cup of coffee, showing off how much emails you finished, flaunting your meeting places, traffic, and a few rants to highlight how busy you are.  Yet today, the "new normal" has been testing out the character in each one of us. Industries, economies, people, trends, culture, habits, and many more are being reshaped by the current circumstance brought to us by COVID 19.  So it's okay if you change some of the habits that used to work for you before. Productivity should not solely define the things you finish but also the impact in your life as well, especially mental health.  In this new age that is marked by this pandemic, we all need to...

Now that the world is facing a pandemic COVID-19, the uncertainty is shaking everyone's stability. Most of us would even have to go through an isolation and the intensity varies. Some would still be able to talk to their families and loved ones, while the others need to stay at facilities, and a few more trapped in the circumstance of either being an essential worker or as a "frontliner." Isolation is not a bad thing. It has been practiced in long periods for those who wish to meditate or recuperate away from the bustling cities. However, the isolation that we go through right now has been quite abrupt to some of us, leaving them the feeling of unpreparedness in the process. Given this, Isolation has challenged a lot of our inner peace and sanity. Considering this, the isolation we all experience now, whether cabin fever or whatnot, is validating our value of self. During the isolation, it gets bad when we realize that our value of self is reliant on other's fee...

The distractions that you can find in the current dynamics between tech and people has gone more chaotic than it used to. No wonder why mood swings and mental health has gone into more detrimental state than before. This is also why mindfulness has been one of the most explored approaches to coping  in the current haywire of modern living. Happiness may be a choice but you can never force it moreover guarantee having it the moment you made the decision. However, mindfully choosing happiness  can help you bar any toxic or impending harm to your self-preserved feelings. Being Mindful can let you learn more about yourself and which doors to open, which rooms of your past to clean-up, and which to keep. It will also help you guard your vulnerabilities to those who don't deserve such access. Happiness may not end with you but it starts with you and Mindfulness can help you kickstart. So let's begin, shall we?

Cry if you have to and it's okay to do so. It is not a bad thing to express your emotions. Never feel guilty about feeling sad. It was not your fault to begin with Go ahead, cry if you have to but only if you need it. If you cry make sure that it is only when you need it. You should not rely on crying to get others to respond to you or trigger others to put more attention to you. Don't fall to the trap of "the girl who cried wolf" and lost her emotional credibility during her most critical time. If you find the need, let the people you trust know. They will understand. If they didn't, you don't deserve to have them around. KEEP CRYING. You deserve the liberation. You deserve to unload. You deserve to feel better. You may not know yet until when you are crying, but the moment you feel better, set your limits. Set a boundary so that you won't get trapped on the temporary gratification of crying that might be exponentially satisfying yet blissfu...

When we were still kids, we are usually raised under the protection of adults around us. They would immediately pacify us everytime we would throw tantrums or start sobbing. As we age, responsibilities are put to our shoulders and this is when we start having more variations of our emotions. Gratefulness is the virtue of recognizing your privileges and being thankful of them. In this day and age of social media where it is easier to communicate to others what we have, it has also magnified how others happen to have more than us. It gets more complicated when social media starts projecting not just what we own materialistically speaking but the experiences and opportunities that are made available to the privileged ones. Everyday becomes a battle of getting up in the morning to put yourself together under the hopes that you'll have better luck at life today. It's okay if every now and then you feel ungrateful. Some days just are not as good as they would usually be. It...

It was around August 2018 when we found each other due to circumstances. We happened to have jived well and eventually agreed to date exclusively. You knew, while I realized, that we were both not ready yet. We loved the process of waiting and the patience it entailed. But as circumstances have brought us together, so has our parting. The circumstances around me has changed and this has affected our routine. Now we live different routines and priorities. You're coming was my way of learning happiness and your departure left me sobbing. It made me curl up and cry most days and not push through with work and my passion projects. But your parting was the start of my understanding. The understanding that happiness does not come from another person. It comes from within. Anything in the form of happiness that come from external factors is infatuation. It is perishable. The feeling is fleeting. If you really on such source, you never understood happiness. Today, at the ...