Rule No. 11

'' be your own adviser ''

deep down within all of us is a fount of wisdom, this is called intuition . listening to it is a slow learnt process, it starts with recognizing that tiny inner voice or feeling that will tell you when you've done something you shouldn't have.

you might like to call it your concious if you like, but deep down you know when you've done something bad. you know when you've got to apologize. you know and i know you know. i know because we all know. there;' no getting away from it.

try running stuff past your inner you, before doing things and see what reaction you get. ask your self questions and you'll realize that you already know everything there is to know and everything you'll ever need to know.

listen, its all there. if you are going to trust any adviser, who will it be? it makes sense for it to be you. becaue you have all the facts, all the experience , all the knowledge at your finger tips, no one else has. no one can get inside you and see exactly whats going on

this is the important stuff, what we're about to do , big decisions we have to make , why we are behaving in the way we are. you already know the anwer if you ask yourself

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listen to your voice, no one knows u better than your own self ; you dont need others to decide for you when you got all the answers already .you don;t need to look around when u got it all here. all you gotta do is to trust your self and follow your guts.

its funny how to run to others seeking for advice and most of the time, we dont even like what we hear because its not we have on mind .. ZAIN SINCE U HAVE SOMETHIN ON UR MIND, WHY NOT DO IT !!! id rather follow my guts and make a mistake than listen to some one else and make a mistake ..

there is an inside voice, u gotta learn how to hear it .. its amazing how loud and carrying it can be .. how could something like that be ignored? just dont lose ur mind and go schizophrenic :P

Rule No 11

'' Be the last to raise your voice ''

shouting in any form is a bad thing, a sign that i have lost control and that i lost the argument .

the son of vicar saw his father's sermon notes and in the margin he had pencilled, '' shout here, argument is weak '' and i think this just about sums it all up

there are two situation where people lose their temper, justified and manipulative. the 1st where you run over their foot with your car and refuse to apologize. in this situation, they are allowed to shout. the 2nd situation is where people use anger to get their own way, a sort of black mail. you're allowed to ignore them and not allowed to shout back.

people who dont shout are known to be incredibily calm no matter whats happening, calm people get trusted , calm people get relied on, calm people get looked up to and given responsibility . calm people last longer

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i always believed that in an argument, dont feed the fire with more wood .. just let them shout their lungs out and then once they release all that anger, you'll find out that they will be more willing to listen and then u can do your talking.

Rule No.10

'' Only dead fish swim with the stream ''

life is difficult and thats why you must thank god. if it was all fluffy and easy, we wouldnt be tested, tried , forged in the fire of life. we wouldnt grow or learn or change or have a chance to rise above ourselves. if life was a series of lovely days, we'd soon get bored. if there was no rain, then there wouldnt be any feeling of great joy when it finally stopped and we could go to the beach. if it was all easy, we couldnt get stronger.

only dead fish swim with the stream, for the rest of us, there will be battle waterfalls, weirs and raging torrents. but we have no choice. we have to keep swimming or get swept away. and each flick of our tail, each surge of our fins makes us stronger and fitter, leaner and happier.

try to see each set back as a chance to improve. they make you stronger and not weaker. thats what life is , what it is meant to be, a series of struggle and lulls, so swim little fish swim.

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be grateful for the hard times, you wouldn't be you if it wasn't for them.
obstacles are like working out, the more you go through, the stronger and fitter you will be for this life .. you NEED them
remember easy life is boring, gotta have the rough times to spice it up and to rise your levels.

Rule No.9

'' Be on the side of the angels, not the beasts ''

every single day of our lives we are faced with immense number of choices and each and everyone of them usually boils down to a simple choice between being on the side of angels or the beasts. which one are you going to pick ? each action we make has an effect on out family, people around us , society and the world in general and that effect can be positive or detrimental and usually its our choice . sometimes its difficult to choose, we get torn between what we want and what is good for others .. personal satisfcation or magnanimity

if some one cuts infront of you in a line or traffic in rush hour, or when you are in a big hurry and some one stops u and ask for directions or when your friend borrows money and fails to pay back or when you hit your thumb with a hammer .. so many options .. now how do you know which side are you in ? it cant be that difficult, does it hurt or hinder? are you part of the problem or the solution? will things get better or worse if you do certain things? this will help you find out where you are ..

Rule No.8: take an interest in the outside world

'' take an interest in the outside world ''

-taking an interest in the outside world is about developing you rather than benefit the world

-make it your mission to know whats going in the world, in current events, music , fashion, science, movies, food, transport and even tv.

-you should be able to hold a conversation on pretty well everything and anything because you are interested in whats going on.

-so how does it benefit you ? well to start with, it makes you more interesting as a person and its also keeps you young.

-the happiest, most well balanced and most successful people in life are those who are part of something, part of the world, NOT CUT OFF FROM IT.

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be interested and read about everything. knowledge is never a waste and you can never know TOO much ...
be part of everything by knowing about it
and remember '' its always better to know a little about everything thann know alot about one thing ''

Rule No.7:Be flexible in your thinking

'' Be flexible in your thinking '' * one of my fav*

-once your thinking gets crystallized, rigid, formed, you've lost the battle .

-once you think you have all the answers, you might as well hang up your boots.

-to get the most out of life, you have to keep all your options open.

-you have to be flexible, ready to roll as the storm breaks but the instant you are established in a set pattern, you set yourself up for being knocked off course .

-if you're flexible, you'll have fun. if you stand your ground, you're likely to get knocked about a bit

-we all have set patterns in life, we all like to read a set paper, watch the same tv show or movie, go to the same shops every time, eat the sort of food that suits us, wear the same type of clothes; if we cut ourselves off from all the other possibilities. we become boring , rigid, hardened and thus likely to get knocked about a bit.

- you have to see life as a series of adventures. each adventure is a chance to have fun, learn something , explore the world, expand your circle of experience and friends and broaden your horizon, shutting down an adventure means exactly you are shut down. go on an adventure, change your thinking , step outside yourself , go for it and see what happens.

here's a test to know how flexible your thinking is, are the books by the side of your bed the same sort of books you've always read? have you found yourself saying '' i dont know any people like that '' or '' i dont go to those kind of places '' ? if so, then perhaps its time to broaden your mind and take the shackles off your thinking

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don't make rules, dont stick to a plan. welcome all new opportunities and chances .
the golden rule here is '' WHY NOT '' .. if you've never been to a japanese restuarant before and some one suggested having lunch there, WHY NOT ? if you've never dyed your hair and you wnated a make over and some one suggested a nice color but you're afraid of changes and stuff '' WHY NOT ''. if you've never played tennis or football or something and some one asked you to play in their team, WHY NOT ! be flexible , be welcoming to any new experience, you really dont know what u might gain from it but atleast, u will GAIN SOMETHING .

so, if you've never done ( whatever it is ) before, then its time to do it :D

Rule No.6

' Dedicate your life to something ''

there are no right or wrong answers to this one as its a very personal choice, but its very useful to have an answer rather not really knowing.
have something for you that counts. its a yardstick by which you can measure : 1)how you are doing, 2)what you are doing and 3) where you going.

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this life is meaningless if you don't have a target, a dream, a reason to live for . everyone needs a destination, a place to go to. without it, you're completely lost and your life is totally wasted .

rule 5

''Know what counts and what doesn't ''

being here counts. being kind and considerate counts. having the latestest technology doesn't. doing something useful with your life counts. going shopping every weekend doesnt. there are some things in this life that are important and whole lot of things that aren't . nursing our children and teaching them real values is important. dressing them in latest fashion isn't .

Rule 4

Accept your self

'' whats done is done, you cant go back and change anything so you gotta work on what you've got which is ur self ... accept it ''

'' you don't have to improve or change or strive for perfection, quite the opposite, just accept and that includes all the warts and emotional lumps and bumps and weaknesses and the rest of it ''

'' accept some days you arent going to make it. some days you will , like all of us, fall far short and thats ok. dont beat yourself up. pick yourself up and start again. accept that you will fail from time to time and that you are human ''

'' stop giving yourself a hard time, instead accept that you are what you are abd you're doing the best you can at this point in time, so give yourself a pat on the back and press on ''

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you don;t need to be perfect .. being good is just enough
you will fail and that doesn\t mean that you are lacking something or that you need to change or something, its just part of life .. even the best fall down sometimes
you are who you are and thats just good enough

Rule 3

Accept whats done is done

'' sometimes people make mistakes or behave badly towards you, it wasnt necessarily because they meant to be horrid, but because they were as naive as foolish as human as the rest of us,they didnt do it that way because they wanted it to be like this but simply, they didnt know any better ''

'' accept whats done is done, don't label them as '' bad '', embrace them as character forming and in general as a positive thing rather than nagative ''

'' if you want more out of this life, embrace all the bad things as being as important part of you and move on, you wouldn't be who you are today if you didn't go through them ''

'' if i was given the choice, i wouldn't change a thing , yes looking back, it was tough being the kid i was, living the life i did but it has certainly helped make me, me ''

'' i think the change occured once i realized tat even if i could in front of all the people who had done me wrong , there would still be nothing they could do . i could shout at them, rant at them but there would be nothing they could do to put things right ''

'' life goes on, there is no going backward, only forward .. keep moving forward ''

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the only way to forget is to forgive :)

Rule 2: You'll get older but not necessarily wiser

'' theres an assumption that as we get older, we will get wiser; not true. the rule is we carry on being just as daft and still making plenty of mistakes, its just we make NEW ones, different ones. we do learn from exprience and may not make the same mistakes again, but there's a whole new pickle jar of fresh ones just laying in wait for us to trip and fall into ''

'' the secret is to accept this and dont beat yourself up when u do make new ones. be forgiving and accept that its all part of that growing older but not wiser routine ''

'' wisdon isnt about not making mistakes, but about learning to escape afterwards with our dignity and sanity intact ''

'' after all, the more mistakes you've made, the less likely you\ll come up with new ones, so the best thing is that if you get alot of mistakes done with early on life, there will be less to learn the hard way later on ''

'' thats what youth is all about, a chance to make all the mistakes you can and get them out of the way ''
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i really love how it makes u think of mistakes .. making a mistake isnt something bad AT ALL .. mistakes means learning, learning means improvement, improvement is making a better you :) and there is no such a thing as a perfect person, YOU WILL MAKE MISTAKES untill the very last moment because u can never learn enough and there will always be more to learn in this life .. so go ahead and make mistakes, u wouldn't be who u are if u didnt make em ..

The The Rules Of Life By Richard Templar :

this is one of the greatest books i've ever read .. you know, i don't believe in rules and self improvement and stuff but this book indeed opens ur eyes to alot of things you were not aware of you .. anyway i decided to share one lesson with u every day and there are 100 lessons here so lol u'll be hanging around here for a while , i mean if ur interested :P

Rule One : Keep it under your hat
'' keep quiet, no one likes a smart arse ''
'' we all hare being preached at so don't preach, propagate, even mention it , its a bit like when you give up smoking and you suddenly find this new heathier way of living and you want to convert all of your old smoking friends, trouble is, they aren't ready to quit yet and you find they label you as a smug or a prig and we all hate those ''

'' if anyone asks you a thing, just give them a simple answer, there's no need to go into details because its not what people want to know .. its a bit like when some one asks you how you are, what they want to really hear is one word '' fine '', even if you're in the bits of despair .. thats all they wanna hear because anything more than that requires committment on their part. if you don't say fine and u start unburden your self , they will back off pretty quickly . ''

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so don't ever talk as if you know everything .. if its a simple question, u give a simple answer .. no need to prove to the world that you're the smart pants here .. and don't talk about the things you are or the things u can do, some people might find this very interesting but most of people will get you wrong and would think of you as a snob .. so KEEP IT UNDER YOUR HAT, no body needs to know anything UNLESS they ask for it

Unforgiveable Stupidity

you know, i can be stupid sometimes .. in fact, I play stupid alot because it helps you to see the true color of people .. but i never imagined that i could be THAT STUPID ....

my mum has been sick for too long now. her immunity is somehow low and she's always getting sick and stuff .. she has done so many tests and all of them were nagative yet she's always weak and sick .. anyway, during a lung C.T scan, some kind of a lesion was discovered in her liver .. and the doctor referred her to a specialist for investigations .. it has been 3 months and my mum hasn't seen that doctor yet coz basically, she's too lazy to go ...

as a medical student, i had my own worries because that lesion looked suspicious and considering my family history of cancer, i was even more worried .. i've been nagging on her to see that doctor but she never listens and i had use plan Z since everything else failed .. plan Z is being honest .. i told her that there's a high chance that this lesion could be cancer and that liver cancer is one of the deadliest cancers ever.. i didnt want to be mean but she left me no choice .. as i was telling her this, i could see her face changing, her eyes started to get all teary and you could feel her chocking with her own words and suddenly she was all hugging my baby sister and stuff .. i think i freaked her out .. oh my god, what have i done? i didnt mean to, i didnt mean to !!

i'm feeling so bad, i cant believe that i brought tears to my mum's eyes .. you know, im dealing with so many patients with cancer right now, i have this particular lady, she's so sweet and friendly and she has cancer in her stomach but she doesn't know.. her family decided not to tell her yet and every time i'm around, she would invite me for a cup of tea and she would talk to me and stuff and sometimes, she would ask me to check her file and tell her whats in there !! and i always came up with stupid excuses not to check her file .. i would usually tell her that the doctors handwriting is too bad that i cant read it or i would deliberately mess with my mobile and pretend that i got a phone call and that i need to leave .. and i even started avoiding saying goodmorning to her to avoid her questions .. i can't risk telling her a thing .. imagine, i avoid saying hello just to make sure she's going to be ok ..

but with my own mum, i couldn't be more insensitive !! god ! i really hate my self at the moment !! i know , i did it for a good cause but NOT LIKE THAT ! god *bangs head on keyboard*
i feel so guilty and sorry and i cant even make things right since me and mum are not that close so if i go to her saying that i'm sorry and stuff, she's gonna think i've hit my head or something .. i've grown up away from them so i;ve grown up being cold .. I'M not cold, I'M NOT.. but i can't show emotions around them .. ahhh its kinda hard to explain .. but thats not the issue ..

i just feel bad for what i did .. this is not the kind of stupidity that i would enjoy .. kel shay wela dmo3 my parents :( ...

SOME BODY SHOOT ME !!

Guilty

I've always liked the fact that i do actually '' think ''.. and when i say think, i don't mean working out a problem or over thinking about life issues .. its more like meditation kind of thinking.. you know, when you take time to isolate yourself from everyone and just think about the world and stuff.. I've loved it because it made me feel deep and connected to everything around me, the sky .. the winds .. the moon.. the trees .. all kind of animals and insects but more importantly, human feelings .. to take time to put yourself in other people's shoes, to feel what they feel , to experience what they experience.. its such a great thing to learn and raise above it all with the lessons you get from these short moments of silence ...

i've drove my car all around seeking these kind of thoughts .. i re-lived my childhood joy by going to parks and seeing all these kids playing around.. i know how hard goodbyes can be by watching all these travellers in the airport. . i've known what it feels to be lonely just by sitting on the shore beside a broken hearted lover .. i've learnt what it means to be responsible by watching all these men doing hard labor work underneath this sun, just to earn enough for their families over seas... i know my family's worth after volunteering in the orphanage .. in every situation, in every place , in every face , i took my time to see whats beneath it .. i took my time to '' feel '' and think about it ... i enjoyed these moments .. i enjoyed being connected to everything .. i enjoyed being one with the world around me ..

but these thoughts started to be overwhelming .. more like a disease of a mind ... i think i lost control of it .. guilt started to build up .. and i don't know what to do .. lately, i've been feeling so guilty for having this life .. everytime i see some one's misfortune, i get this guilt .. i lost my uncle almost 3 weeks ago, he died leaving 4 kids .. untill today, i can't stop feeling guilty .. because i still have my parents and my 8 yr old cousin just lost her dad .. every time i'm in the hospital, i feel so wierd, so bad because i'm alright ( AL7MDALLAH ) while others are so sick and dieing ... i know that its not my fault and that this is the way life is, but i cant help it .. i guess i've crossed the safety line when i decided to connect my self with life around me ..

i need to step back a little before i lose my mind here ..

When Angels are No Longer Angels ..

After 7 years of studying medicine, I realized that i was tricked. whoever said that doctors are angels of mercy is wrong indeed.
I know that doctors are humans too, they have emotions and reactions. Just like anyone else, they get happy, sad , depressed , angry..but is it ok for them to be cruel? to be insensitive? they are humans, aren't they ?
I've met some of the most insensitive doctors ever during my rotation but i thought that they are the bad apples among the rest of us, but i guess its true when they say one rotten apple can ruin the whole box of apples. because, these doctors have been increasing in numbers .. like its the new fashion or something !
although i'm 90% doctor ( lol one year to graduate :P ) but i'm afraid to say that i have no respect to doctors no more.. i don't respect people who don't respect others or respect the responsibility they have. Half of the treatment is psychological, and you are treating a living thing, you're not fixing a machine or something, so why be so cruel ? so insensitive ? it's really sad ..
one of the things that upsets me the most is the way doctors use patients to teach us. i know i know i should be glad that i get to practise on real patients BUT NOT LIKE THIS !!! these people are here because they are sick, because they need to rest and not to be flipped and tossed around by us . OK, we need to learn, i couldnt agree more ! couldn't you choose the ones who are less sick ? OR ATLEAST wait for the sick ones to get a LITTLE BIT BETTER !!! imagine, this old guy, with hundreds of tubes in his mouth and nose plus millions of monitors on him .. he can hardly breathe and he's in so much pain! and just because, he's too helpless that he can't say a word, the doctor comes in, expose him and just start explaining on him ! and if u take a look at the patient, you see a sad helpless look in his face and i've seen many patients shedding tears of helplessness ... you know i shouldn't be saying stuff like that but I'M SO ANGRY !! they cant do that to people ! you cant take advantage of their need to u and do whatever you wanna do to them !! thats just cruel !

and what drives me even more crazy, how they pick on non kuwaities !! if you're indian, thats it, you're the new genuie pig and you're not allowed to say no !!! HOW RACIST IS THAT !!

when you're a doctor, everyone is the same despite their gender, nationality or social status .. the poor filthy pakistani janitor should get the same treatment as a member of the royal family ! it doesn't matter who you are outside the hospital, INSIDE, you're a patient ! and ALL patients should be treated with justice and sympathy !

alot of people laugh at me when they hear me ranting about this. they think its nothing but a medical student excitement ! they say, a few years with patients should turn me into one of them... i don't think so .. this is not excitement .. this is humanity .. and i know that i'll have stressful days when i might snap at others but i'll never be as cruel as them .. you have no idea how hard i am on my self, wayed a7asib nafsi, sometimes even too much. so i don't think i'll get that '' insensitive doctors disease '' .. i sure hope i wont ..

this is a cry out for every medical student, doctors, nurses and care givers .. ALWAYS, put your self in your patients shoes .. ALWAYS ! and treat them the way you want to be treated then.

Yelling VS. Teaching

In anger management, there's this golden rule of '' counting 'till 10 before saying/doing anything '' . i've always laughed at it! I mean seriously, who would think about counting when you're so damn pissed off and i've considered it a crappy rule until today ..
you know, I LOVE MAKING MISTAKES, i really do enjoy them because, I end up learning different things .. yeah sometimes the price can be really expensive but in the long term, you'll get it all payed back with even capital '' fa2da '' .

Today, I proved my self wrong and i'm glad that I did :D ... I was invited for f6or over my aunt's house and i told her i'd prepare the salad ( fattah ) and the dessert ( mango cake ) . so i told the maid to cut and fry the eggplants for me since I'm busy working on my cake. It was already 5:10pm (f6or is at 5:40 ) when i was done from the cake and i went to check on my fattah and i was so shocked when i saw that the maid didn't do anything. i got really pissed and i started preparing everything quickly.. i had less than an hour to do the fattah, to shower and get dressed and be there at my aunt's house ( which is 15 min away ) SO AS U CAN SEE, I WAS RUNNING LOW ON TIME and i was all stressed and pissed .. so while i was cooking the stuff, i asked the maid to get me corn from the fridge so she started bringing out different stuff, tomatoes, olives, green pepper .. I GOT FURIOUS coz i was SO LATE and she was driving me even crazier .. when i was about to explode and scream, that little voice inside my head remainded me of the 10count rule ... 1..2..3..4..5..6..7..8..9..10 .. and right after that, i REALIZED something. the maid is NOT stupid, simply .. she's just new .. she came to kuwait less than a month ago .. she doesn't speak arabic or english.. she doesn't know what the hell CORN is.. SO IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW, you can't expect her to know what you didn't tell her .. so instead of yelling, i held her by her hand and took her to the fridge and showed her what corn is, what green pepper is, what olives are .. that's all she needed .. she didnt need to be yelled at .. its not her fault that she couldn't speak arabic and it wouldn't have helped any of us if i yelled ..
how many of you ever done that ? yelling at maids and calling them stupid because they didn't get what we are trying to say? haven't you ever thought about the possibility that it could be your fault ? maybe you didn't say it our clearly, or maybe she didn't understand what you wanted .. THEY CAN'T READ YOUR MIND AND THEY CAN'T COOK IT THE SAME WAY U DO!

I'm just so proud of my self that i didn't give in to anger, that i chose to teach instead of to yell. i've kept my cool and she added new voc to her dictionary .. its a win win deal :D

'' if you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundered days of sorrow ''..
learn how to be patient, how to see through the situation , there's always a lesson to learn
when you're angry, close your eyes, count till 10 and open them again and you'll be amazed of how differently you'll see the same situation :D

you doubt it ? why not give it a try ;) ?