Thursday, 1 January 2009

New Year Resolutions

Noticed a yahoo news article about making new year resolutions. It mentioned that making New Year resolution can be bad for mental health. This heading actually attracted me to find out why. I had actually done up a few new year resolutions and now someone is telling me that trying to self-improve can be detrimental.

The British mental health charity Mind mentioned that making resolutions focusing on physical imperfections as such resolution creates a negative self image and lead to feelings of low self-esteem, hopelessness and even mild depression. This is when the result is not achieved, this could spark feelings of inadequacy and failure. Such resolutions can have unrealistic goals and when people fail to achieve them, people end up feeling worse than at the start of the year. Mind's advice is to think positively about the year to come and what we can achieve instead of making resolutions which is to focus on being active, connecting with nature and learning something new and working for one's community.

To me, not making resolution will be like going into the new year without any direction. I usually set resolutions that are reasonable and not have unrealistic goals. Why do something which one can never achieve? But it'll still be alright if lessons can be learnt and help in personal growth even if the goal is not achieved. Well, I'm glad to say that the resolutions I've set are all in line with Mind's advice. Hehe...

Resolutions for Year 2009
1) Give back to the community - blood donation and volunteer work
2) Self improvement - learn taichi and dancing

Of course it'll be good to find myself a girlfriend. This is not a resolution as it is not within my full control.

My next step now is to plan a timetable to fit in these activities and time management will be needed here as next year, I will be handling one more building in the 3rd quarter of the year. Its going to be challenging and I'm looking forward to it.

Happy new year. I hope to have a great 2009.

Wednesday, 31 December 2008

Fearing Safety of Teens

I read a news paper article on Monday and was quite shocked to see that the statistics show that nearly 2 in 5 teens have been sexually propositioned online. Though the statistic population survey is quite small but seeing such figures make me worry about the younger generation.

The teens are really at great risk. But there's a saying that "if the cow does not want to drink, you'll never be able to push its head down". I believe teens are attracted to the attentiveness, protectiveness, materialism and sweet talk of the older guys. Being clouded by these and sexually naive, teens seems to be more willing to accede to sex requests.

In the era of online proliferation, many teens use various social websites and online gaming sites. These places seems particularly easy for predators to "take their pick". Even if it is easy to hook up a teenage girl, guys shouldn't take advantage of this and satisfy their desires. Such acts will greatly affect girls' mentally, physically and emotionally. Even if some teens are open and willing, one shouldn't take as an excuse to commit something that violate morality issues.