Happiness is initiatives

One piece in my happy project.

15.02.2020 9pm

New concept: metacognition. My mentor said I should spend time learning about this concept. To put it simply, it is the ability to think about your own thinking which is quite similar to critical thinking. A metaphor explaining in a youtube video is that there is a bigger brain looking at my normal brain to ask questions like: “Is she memorizing the information or whether she is capable enough to teach it to others?” One method to understand this concept is separating myself into 2 versions. One is on the side of cognition in which I learn, I think and I do. The other side is on metacognition in which I observe, I compare and I adjust. This can be called a thinking style that helps to save time and effort in the learning process. The ability can be used to decide which strategy is suitable to learn certain pieceds of information. It moves us to a higher mastery level of learning that helps to analyze what we are doing and how we were thinking about the tasks at hand.

Every single moment in life, ask myself by these reflective questions:

How do I feel?

Why do I feel like that?

What did I do? How did I do that?

What did I observe?

What needs to change?

What did I learn?

Do I have any questions, ideas?

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The word to describe this week is “initiative”. This is the most absolute synthesis of all interesting jobs I have been involved in so far. It exists in every step I take. I will write about it this time.

What is initiative?

A state of mind shows that you are ready to take action. But literally, it is an action, not what you think, but what you do to realize your idea. Your action must come from your intrinsic motivation, your willingness to shed light on something by yourself, not following someone. The phrase verb “Take the initiative” overally means you take proactive steps to do something from your own wish, your own will.

What kind of actions are called “initiative”?

As long as you don’t wait for others to come to push you. An initiative-leader is a pioneer who:

- Ask questions

- Inbox teachers for working/ learning opportunities

- Search for jobs

- Apply for scholarship

- Go play sports

… so on and so forth.

These courses of action are understandable but it is more difficult in practice.

a. In Youth Nurture Club

I am extremely grateful to see the useful practices being applied in my club. Every 2 days, I ask them reflective questions as an initiative to open doors for the youths to open their mind and talk about what they learn. It only takes me 2 minutes to post on our Facebook group, but it is more than relevant to kickstart their beautiful voice.

Just got an idea to document and shape a timeline of online operation for the teams: - PR team: reflective posts every 2 days (Mon – Wed – Fri – Sun) human learning & connection

- Content team: Vlog challenges and English tasks every Tuesday & Friday| English learning and practicing

- Communication team: update on Club gatherings and share other topics including self, social, career (Thur & Sat)|learning & inspiration

This task division is another initiative just arriving to my mind. I mean I know the purpose and function of the teams but I haven’t classified that clearly to all so that the track is a bit lost. I hope this guideline will be in effect.

I will capture screen of my lovely club’s members answering 2 questions:

What did they observe today? How do you feel? Why do you feel like that?

This is my answer 😊

- I observed the readiness of highschool students here when I came to talk at an Infor Session Event of my Faculty (share information about the Undergraduate program with highschool students). I like how students paid attention to our sharing and joined actively in the activities. I like how they gave us detailed questions. - I feel comfortable and chill because I am writing my blog, and tomorrow I will get up early for a Run around my campus!

b. In my missions

My best dude at GSSE is too lazy but she is smart. I came to sleep with her, she was busy playing game as soon as she got up. I told her all of the causes of your ruined face were all about these damn habit: skip breakfast, eat late, play games, drink little water, use sunscreen,… Omg these routines go against how a healthy lifestyle should be. I looked around her bookshelf and asked if she had some cool books to read. She joked “you think I don’t read books?” haha. She used to be a hard-working girl before she broke up with some guy. Yasshhh. Now she is satisfied with the listlessness. I must take the initiative to push her ass out of the bed. Somehow this girl just appears to become a very potential boss in the future for me. I am busy up all day and night and feel ambiguous about my relationships and my career. She plays game at the same time with asks questions about brainstorming for her workstudy. I can multitask but not like at the same “minutes”. I hate eating and using phones together. I dumped my ex partly for that reason. Anyway, respecting myself and others is simple. Look at ther eyes. Listen to them with your attentative eye contact, sincere heart, and open ears. This morning, thanks to my initiative, I found a nice book gaining dust in her room called “The happiness project”. I is written by real life experience of the author who didn’t get life crisis but “midlife malaise” - “a recurrent sense of discontent and almost a feeling of disbelief”. From the outlook, she seemed to have a perfect life with family, jobs and all basic needs met.

I came to her room to sleep for the first time. We watched the movie “To all the boys I love” together. On a valentine night, a couple of close friends watch a highschool loveship-based movie and we sometimes wish to have a partner somehow sweet like the guys. It has been a while since…

c. At GSSE

I volunteered to help the Marketing team to share at the Infor Session. I didn’t know that there was not many participants. I purely wanted to come to help them whatever I could. The other 2 students were quite surprise to see my presence. Given their opinion, I know what I was doing and what made me spent time travelling to Bangkok. I really want to work in Bangkok for 1 year to closely observe and feel the spirit of the capital. I feel like I am not moving if I only stay at the campus. Thus I reached out to the office as an initiative, not an enforcement. I felt at peace looking at the obedience in the face of highschool students which is very different from fresh year students in uni.

I found myself inspired by how some young kid concern about their future learning pathway at an early stage. Then I enjoyed talking with my faculty’s officers who are in the LGBTQ community and I trust that they are incredible.

The day ended by a nice bus back to TU while I was reading “The Happiness Project”. Something cool might be kicking in. I got a call with my Singaporean friend to ask him about the public transport system in India. I am preparing for an interesting student competition. Let do something cool as soon as possible.

#benice

#behumble

#befoolish