Hundred percent!!

One day, in a coffee shop … I was about to pay my coffee. A waiter who often met me there asked me this questions, “Madam, do you like to do exercise?” I asked him back, “Yes. Why do you ask me that question?” He said, “You look young and pretty”

I said confidently, “I know I am pretty, even when no body says it… I will tell myself that I am pretty” 

Someone behind me said, “Wow … you are so confidence. People might not think you are pretty” 

I said, “Can you really read what people thinks about you? If you cannot recognize your own mind, how come you are so sure about what they think about you? If that minds cannot help you to build your confidence, forget it. Yes we need to be confidence, and don’t let anyone turn you down. A confidence is hard to build and it might take years to build it. Start from today you have to tell yourself that you are beautiful”

People are worry about others’ opinion, they never live their 100 percent capacity, and they keep wondering, worrying and overthinking. Time will not wait us to make a right decision about ourselves. Time will leave us behind … 

Today is the end of 2018, and most of us think about New Year resolution. How many of us can achieve our last year resolution. 10 percent? 15 percent? Or ZERO percent? 

How about a New Year resolution, live your life 100 percent of you??

Like C. Joy Bell C said: 

“Life is too short to waste any amount of time on wondering what other people think about you. In the first place, if they had better things going on in their lives, they wouldn't have the time to sit around and talk about you. What's important to me is not others' opinions of me, but what's important to me is my opinion of myself.” 

Good-bye 2018

Welcome 2019

Lina Kartasasmita** December 31, 2018 at 9.58 PM 

If not now then when

Tuesday December 18, 2018 was a contest day in my regular club meeting. It was table topics contest, and the question was “If not now then when”

I wanted to answer the question but I was not a contestant. However if I have a chance to answer that question, I would say:

If I were single and I had so much money and one of my dreams is to travel around the world. I would definitely take the chance to go around the world. I would not think twice because if not now then when. However if I were poor, I would start to save the money so one day I could travel around the world and I would tell myself If not now then when …

If right now, right here …there are some people look unhappy and if we could help to make them smile again. I would ask you all If not now then when. Help people right away when they really need us. 

If you haven’t called your parents, you should consider doing it now. If not now then when you will do it. Don’t wait the precious time to tell your parents that you are grateful to have them in your life. Don’t wait to tell your parents that you care about them and love them. 

If you have goals in your life, please ask yourself many times. If not now then when we would like to start…we couldn’t achieve our goals, if we keep waiting the good time to do …we wait until we are older and older. We have limited time in our life; time wouldn’t wait for us. 

If not now then when, it is a good question. Life is precious, time is precious but only action that you choose right now will make a different. 

If something good comes in your mind now, then just do it now. 

Roy. T. Bennett said, “The beginning is always NOW”

**Lina Kartasasmita** 19 December 2018, Jakarta 9.44 PM 

A peace in mind

“If you put a spoonful of salt
in a cup of water
it tastes very salty.
If you put a spoonful of salt
in a lake of fresh water
the taste is still pure and clear.

Peace comes when our hearts are
open like the sky,
vast as the ocean.” 
― Jack Kornfield, The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace

It was a such regular day for me to enjoy a cup of coffee and to talk about random thing. The topic was “we live sorrounding with bad people” Yes that is true, but I think bad people is everywhere. I heard people said, “I don’t want to live in this country because this country is so bad and there are so many bad people here” or I heard as well, “There is no hope to live in this country” 

I believe it could bother our mind, by asking, “Are we living in the right place?” Or we rush to find the world map and then to try find the right place to live?

How about people who lives in the war zone? Do they think the same thing like us? 

I probably have different opinion. “Good or bad is a concept in this world, because there is someone bad so there is someone good” My mind went to the quotes from Lao Tzu,  said, 

“When the people of the world all know beauty as beauty, there arises the recognition of ugliness. When they all know the good as good, there arises the recognition of evil.”

So it is not about the place we live … it is not about the people we deal with … it is about a peace in mind we should have. 

The fact that we don’t know about our future, so life is too short to worry about bad people around us … we just need to enjoy the moment, the present that we have and be grateful. 

If you still can look around you and you still find someone who smiles to you and does something nice to you … Be grateful and put a peace into your mind.  All is well… all is well.

“Nothing can disturb your peace of mind unless you allow it to.” 
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

**Lina Kartasasmita** Jakarta, 18 August 2018 at 11.03AM

Do it for fun ...

She said,”Mom, I don’t want to compete again”
I said,”Please do it for fun”
And she won the second place for International speech contest and table topics contest in the Club. She had to compete in the Area level 
She came to me and said,”Mom, may I just do one contest category? And let someone replace me for table topics contest”
I said, “Sure”

I came home late a day before the contest and she came to me and asked, “Mom please read my speech drafts”
I read and said,”I think I love your idea about International women’s day”
Without complaining, she wrote her speech ... about Women
And once again she said, “I compete not to win the contest but to share the message to respect women because what women can do in this world”
I said,”Yes....... just do it for fun”

Yesterday ...
She won the second place for International speech contest in the area. 

Parenting is not to force our children to do something that they don’t like ... but to encourage them to use their talents to explore the world and to do something good for others

Congrats Vin ... you did it !

Jakarta 11 March 2018 at 9.31 AM

Dealing with difficult person with acceptance

Acceptance and tolerance and forgiveness, those are life-altering lessons.

Jessica Lange

On that evening my husband suddenly asked me,” Lina, do you have any article about dealing with difficult people?” I just realized I never wrote about that. It was easy to write about good experiences in life. In my life I have lots of experiences dealing with people and most of the times I just wrote about the good one. 

I curiously asked my husband, “Why do you ask me about that? We have the book somewhere in our book shelf about Dealing with difficult person” He looked at me and smiled, “I think you have one article about it and I want to share to my friend” The only answer came out from my mind was,” If you can not deal with difficult person, deal with yourself first. Just accept and change the way we deal with that person. It is hard and takes time to apply in your life, but it works” It was so simple but also too hard to apply in life. 

Sharing this story it is not easy for me. Many years ago I had seen problem with one of my family member. He used to be a very nice person when I was a little child. During his teenager life he involved in many problems. At that time I was too young to realize what his problem was, I just knew that my parents struggled with him. Times went so fast while I was a teenager he stayed at home and he started all the problems at home. In my eyes, he is like a bomb. It could exploded in a minute, he changed from angel to a monster. I lived with a big fear in my mind. I couldn’t stand to see him creating problems in the family. I couldn’t stand to see how my parents struggled to handle him. And sometimes at the end I had to involve in that situation. 

I remembered one night he had a problem with his family and his wife came to my parents’ house bringing two little children. I had to take care of the children the whole night while the next morning that was my university final test. I couldn’t run away from that situation and I hated him. 

From problem to problem without solution, the only thing, which I remembered, my dad always sent him to hospital and after treatment he would be normal again. There wasn’t any right explanation for his behavior. My dad spent a lot of money to heal him but it didn’t work well. My parents always asked me to give him tolerance. I thought I had given enough for him. My dad passed away in 1995 and only my mom took care of all the problems in our big family. He started to disturb my mom. I saw his behavior and sometimes I thought that was unfair for me. If there is a problem, I have to involve and to be there to help. I hated to deal with him. 

My husband always said to me, “Lina, please forgive him” I said, “It is hard for me. I can not forgive him. He always gives me hard time in my life. And he is my brother” 

Back in the year 1999, he made a big problem again and my mom sent him to hospital and he was under treatment with a psychiatrist. My other family didn’t want to take care of him. One night my mom cried and talked to me, “Can you help me to take care of your brother?   I will go to India for 10 days and nobody will talk to the psychiatrist. Please help me, you need to come to see the doctor” I screamed in my heart, “Oh God … why me… why I have to deal with him again” I couldn’t say no to my mom even though I thought that was the hardest responsibility in my life. The only thing I know life is responsibility and it runs in my blood. 

That responsibility brought me to deal with the psychiatrist. The first time I met the psychiatrist, it was like in the classroom discussion. The psychiatrist asked me whether I knew about stress, phobia, depression, paranoid and schizophrenia. Many questions from the psychiatrist and he also gave a great and detail explanation to me. He told me at the end,” Your brother’s problem is called Paranoid schizophrenia, you can learn about this … I will teach you to understand more about this” The psychiatrist made a deal with me that he would teach me and at the same time my brother would be under treatment for three months. Every week for three months I had to meet the psychiatrist and before I entered his room I observed the behavior of his patients. My husband gave me articles about schizophrenia and I also read the book. From discussion to discussion, I learnt more and more from the doctor. The psychiatrist was a great teacher for me and he opened my eyes about lots of thing can happen in someone’s mind. It became my new subject to learn. At the end I understood my brother’s mind problem, sometimes he couldn’t control his mind and his depression and it created problem in his life. All of sudden everything became so clear in my mind. 

I wished my parents knew about this many years before, he probably would have a different life. I also didn’t need to live with fear for many years. Anyway… everything happened for a purpose.
 Times couldn’t be reversed.  That learning experience made me easy to forgive my brother. The freedom came into my life by forgiving.

In life, once I can accept … I can forgive.

Acceptance is not love. You love a person because he or she has lovable traits, but you accept everybody just because they're alive and human.

Albert Ellis

**Lina Kartasasmita** Jakarta, May 14, 2011 at 11.51PM 

I decided to post this on March 4, 2018.