The Best of 2007 and the Only Lesson I’ve Learnt

Dec 30, 2007

The end of the year is drawing near, and I can say there is only one thing I have learnt this year.

I looked back at most of the posts in my archives, and I found that I had slowly been piecing together all the various interpretations of this one lesson.

Enough dangling of the carrot: the lesson is simply this – Love.

Bah Humbug!

When I first heard all these teachings, I reacted like most people did. “What do you think I am? Fancy feel-good fluff! Bah Humbug! I live in the real world!”

But all the deeper lessons I’ve uncovered throughout the year – they do point to this, in one way or another.

The Emotional Mastery series

Summary: Love your emotions. Stop running away from your suffering. Stop dulling your pain with alcohol, television, all of that silliness. Turn around and face them: your anger, your anxiety, your sorrow, everything. Accept, welcome, love them – and they will release its hold on you.

The Ego series

Summary: Finding out that you don’t have to believe your thoughts, beliefs, and filters – that they are not you. Thoughts and concepts, that’s all they are.

A child believes in Santa; he fights with his friends over this imaginary character, he cries when we tell him Santa was just daddy in a suit and a beard. That is all the ego is – just a bundle of thoughts and beliefs we’ve given power to because we believe so strongly.

The ego is built on hate and separation. It stems from separation, a belief that we are isolated fragments in the world. Love others will all your heart, without any hidden motivations, and let the separation, the ego, dissolve.

Stopping Negative Thoughts series

Summary: We all carry around what psychologists call the inner critic. It shows up as negative thoughts, images, movies, and voices. I’ve covered some of the Buddhist techniques to stopping your mind – the most powerful of which involved loving the source of your negative thoughts, ala the emotional mastery series. I’m planning a series on how modern psychology deals with such thoughts. It involves recognising cognitive distortions, disputing them, and so on. But it can also be summed up in this manner: Self-compassion shuts up the inner critic completely.

Gratitude and Forgiveness series

Summary: Gratitude and love for the bad things in life is something that many people will think is masochistic. But it isn’t – it’s a part of true forgiveness, and a step towards Love.

When life throws something bad at you, it is very often meant for your good, although that might be admittedly hard to see. An abusive caretaker in your childhood might have served you by developing your mental toughness; you might have used this very quality to forge yourself a successful career as an adult. Finding forgiveness, gratitude, and love for people and events that have hurt you is a powerful part of healing.

Little Secrets of the Power of Expressing Gratitude - Even for the bad

(I also have a forgiveness series but it’s a bit out of date, so I’m not linking to them. Will rewrite them soon.)

Love and Compassion series

Summary: Finding Love for others has to start with yourself. You can’t give what you don’t have. Once you have found Love for yourself, everything else will begin to flow. Start with yourself, and you’ll find that you’ve been cultivating Love for everything in the world at the same time, for there really is no difference.

How do we love this crazy world? The mystics and teachers have been saying one thing: Life is crazy, it goes up and down, but it is all okay. That’s their message: That it is all okay, there is nothing to run away from.

(PS I had to rename The Flower of Love to the Blossoming of Love because everyone who got here from Google were looking for information on roses. )

Loneliness and Aloneness

One of the most misunderstood series; but it taught me a lot about writing. Hammer your point in, was what I learnt. Many people just skim through it and they don’t really take the time to digest what the article is about. The feedback from these posts moved me away from a poetic writing style, which kind of sucked, because I enjoyed writing that way.

Thank you!

I would just like to say a BIG Thank You to all my readers for all the support you’ve given me.

I recently broke a barrier - 1000 RSS subscribers. This was a great motivational boost for me, especially since I heard most blogs don’t go past 500, and I haven’t properly marketed my blog in months.

Additionally, my material and writing style is not standard. All copywriters suggest short and snappy posts, with lots of lists and bullet points, and catchy titles. Bah Humbug! I did experiment with that at the start, but I decided to do my own thing. (I do wonder, though, if I could have been as big as Zen Habits, listed below, if I had done the popular thing…)

I’ve met some wonderful people, made some really awesome friends, and learnt so much along this journey. Thank you to everyone, once again!

Link Love

Keeping with the New Year and Goal Setting / Success theme, there are three blogs that spring to mind as extremely worth reading.

First of all, would be the famous Zen Habits, run by the awesome Leo Babauta. This blog speaks for itself, gaining nearly 27,000 RSS subscribers within a year of operation. One of the best productivity blogs ever. His summary of 2007 is a good place to start.

Next up would be Goal Setting College, by Ellesse Chow. As to be expected, it involves many great stuff on success – such as a series on mastermind groups, inspirational stories, motivation, vision boards, all that goodness.

Lastly would be A Long Long Road, by Lawrence Cheok. A very handy blog, with material on finance, relationships, and again success and productivity material. A recent post would be 7 Tools to help manage your goals in 2008.

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37 Comments, Comment or Ping

Evan Hadkins

Hi Albert,

It really is all about love I think.

Here’s a provocation though: you don’t sound too loving about your ego.

Evan

Dec 30th, 2007
Albert

Definitely Evan, that is one of my biggest struggles so far… especially since a few patterns (from childhood) have revealed themselves recently in my personal life, and I’m working on it. Inner work can get very stressful at times.

Dec 30th, 2007
Goal Setting College

Hey Albert, thanks for the link love! I really like your take on love and compassion. What goes to the outer, starts from the inner. If you can’t love yourself, you’ll unlikely to have the capacity to love others. It’s all about being human!

As for your question on writing bullet point articles, I think it’s just a matter of format. With your intellect and knowledge, I’m sure even if you decided to switch to that format, something wouldn’t change.

The excellence of the content.

Cheers,
Ellesse

Dec 30th, 2007
tracy ho

Great sharing of thought & thanks for the informative point,

To your advance success 2008,

Tracy Ho
wisdomgettingloaded

Dec 30th, 2007
Albert

Hey Ellesse, that’s very high praise, thank you so much!

Dec 30th, 2007
Goal Setting College

Haha.. Albert. You deserve it! Keep up the great work..

Cheers,
Ellesse

Dec 31st, 2007
Albert

Thank you Tracy and Ellesse, happy new years to you both!

Dec 31st, 2007
Cyrano

No… thank you for all those readings! The time and effort you put in, and the quality of those posts have helped me in my personal journey towards emotional mastery. Keep writing man… gotta love your articles!

Regards,
CY

Dec 31st, 2007
ReddyK - The Atma Jyoti Blog

Albert,

Happy New Year, a time for new beginnings, and for looking at back at the lessons one has learned (or ought to have learned.) As a blogger you have the advantage of having a concrete journal of many of your most serious thoughts and resolves.

I must confess to a Scroogesqe reaction when I hear most people talk about “love,” as for most people it is shallow attachment to the temporal, suffering causing not-self. You have pointed this out well in some of your articles.

And as to self-acceptance, there is a level where discontent with one’s inner state and outer situation is a spur to the attainment of something better, as long as one has the inner urge to improve. But it is no use obsessing on things which cannot be changed. That is where santosha (contentment in all such situations) comes in. But contentment with what should be changed is a mistake.

This is my “Bah, Hum-bug” comment for the day. (By the way, what is a hum-bug?)

Dec 31st, 2007
Nancy

Albert,

Thank you for your posts. Please don’t change your writing style, it is informative, inspiring and lovely. I look forward to what you will share in the coming year!

my best wishes
Nancy

Dec 31st, 2007
johan

Hey Albert

its great that you love writing as much as you do. im very grateful for that! =) the “lengthy” articles style is one of the reasons i have you in my rss-list, over other personal development sites. although its easier to fly over short “top 7 …… lists” there nearly never is anything new or particularly interesting about them. mostly they are just resumes of in depth articles or concepts. they are good for pleasure reading. i want to understand stuff and learn and your in depth articles are far superior in that sense! so please keep up the quality!

thanks and all the best
johan

Dec 31st, 2007
Jean Browman--Cheerful Monk

For me 2007 was a year of adventure. I’ve always had the love. �

Dec 31st, 2007
Lucid

Hello Albert

Let all the Love that was created and found carry you into a healthy and happy new year!

See you in ‘08

Dec 31st, 2007
Albert

Thank you so much everyone! Looks like I’ll be sticking with my writing style then . Reddy, your insight on contentment is great, very well put-together. And I have no idea what Humbug even means, my friend uses it a lot whenever we play argue, and I used it just because I thought it was funny. Blessings for everyone! Down here in Australia, it’s a mere 13 hours until 2007 disappears!

Dec 31st, 2007
Evan Hadkins

Hi Albert,

Yes inner work can be hugely stressful. We usually have harsh judgements of the child inside us. Having compassion for our young self can be extraordinarily confronting. But the pay off is joy.

Looking forward to hearing how you go with it.

Evan

Dec 31st, 2007
Evan Hadkins

Reddyk,

Humbug is an older word. Rough modern translation: bull***t.

Evan

Dec 31st, 2007
ReddyK - The Atma Jyoti Blog

From Wikipedia:

“Humbug is an archaic term meaning “hoax”, or “jest”. While the term was first attested in 1751 in student slang, its etymology is unknown. It is known, however, that it was used as profanity centuries ago, in places such as Great Britain. Its present meaning as an exclamation is closer to “nonsense”, or “gibberish”, while as a noun, a humbug refers to a fraud or impostor, implying an element of unjustified publicity and spectacle.

“In modern usage, the word is probably most associated with Ebenezer Scrooge, a character created by Charles Dickens. His famous reference to Christmas, “Bah! Humbug!”, declaring Christmas to be a fraud, is heard afresh every year around Christmas time when the perennial favorite, A Christmas Carol, is played on stage or TV.”

I would like to think of it as some sort of bumble-bee, myself.

Dec 31st, 2007
Albert

Thanks for the support Evan, rest assured that my journey is always revealed (subtly) in the blog, although this one might be many months in the processing, it’s HUGE!

Dec 31st, 2007
Miracle

Albert,
I have tagged you to post an Alternative New Year’s Resolution.

Check out the details here

An Alternative Resolution

Jan 1st, 2008
Albert

Thank you Miracle, I’ll participate for sure!

Jan 1st, 2008
Lawrence Cheok | A Long Long Road

Hi Albert,

Congrats on breaking the 1K barrier. I think you certainly deserve it. It’s definitely a great start to 2008 huh?

As for the writing style, I have that struggle when I first started, and now I have given up thinking about it. I agree with Ellesse, your great content delivers and your style shines through in its own ways. If you simply try to copy what works for others, then you’ll stop being remarkable. So continue whatever you have been doing.

Thanks for the mention and link as well. It’s a great compliment having that come from you.

Happy New Year!

Jan 1st, 2008
Miracle

I like the long article style. Many blogs are so superficial and bland because they try to keep to smaller posts. I think the long and deep posts are the reason why your blog has become such a success.

Jan 1st, 2008
Albert

Thank you very much, guys. I’ll stick to my writing style, then I might throw in a couple of shorter, more relaxed type of posts once in a while, probably in a ratio of 5:1 or something.

Jan 1st, 2008
Desikachari Nadadur | I Am My Own Master - Self-Mastery for Independent Minded Seekers

Hey Albert,

Great summary of your articles, my friend! Congratulations on your breaking 1k barrier on your RSS subscriptions.

May you spread the light of your deepest understandings of life, love and bliss to more of this universe in this new year and in future years to come.

Love and light,
-Desika

Jan 2nd, 2008
Albert

Thank you so much Desika, Love and Bliss in return Keep up the good work on your own blog, mate!

Jan 2nd, 2008
Liara Covert

Happy New Year, Albert! I simply love how you invite your readers to rethink how they create their own perception and interpret the world. May your own life experience continue to enlighten and enrich you as your efforts continue to empower other people. You are indeed a blessing.

Jan 2nd, 2008
gale

i like the simplicity of your message. the simplest things always turn out to be the deepest things, such as love. great post, happy new year, and hope to stay in touch with you on the blogosphere!

Jan 2nd, 2008
Albert

Thank you Liara and Gale. Happy new year to you both! I really appreciate your compliments and your support. Especially Liara’s comment, made me blush, hehe.

Jan 2nd, 2008
Elias

Hi there

I came across your Blog only recently via Stehphen Hopson’s blog.

I found your blogs to be very informative and easy to read and very helpful indeed. I am so grateful to Stephen for recommending your blog.

After a very difficult 2007 I look forward to the year 2008 with a clear mindset and a better understanding about Life and Law of Attraction as well as contnuing a new phase of life journey I am on.

I have been printing your articles from July 2007 and I am reading it during my trips home on the public transport and i know i will enjoy it immensely.

I look forward to reading your blogs in the new year.

Thank you for your informative articles.
Elias

Jan 3rd, 2008
Albert

Thank you so much Elias! It is always a great honor when someone prints out my ramblings, it really is the biggest compliment

Jan 3rd, 2008
Life Reflection

Hi Albert, Have been reading your blog since last year. Lots of great posts here. Look forward for more to come! Have a great year ahead.

Jan 4th, 2008
Patricia - Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker

Albert, you have been tagged to participate in the Seven Random and Weird Things about you that your readers don’t know. The rules for the game are found at http://patriciasingleton.blogs.....hings.html

Jan 4th, 2008
Albert

@ Life Reflection: Thank you! Happy New Year to you.

@ Patricia: Got the tag I was tagged before, and have something half written already. Just got to get out of the holiday mode and get back in front of Microsoft Word. Heh.

Jan 4th, 2008
EngineerTiat

Hi Albert

Just came across your site. Like your articles/posts and the way you’ve grouped them as “Series”.

I look forward to more of your postings in the year 2008 and also to learn from all in this community.

Warm regards
Tiat
AbundanceLaw.com - Creating Abundance in Your Life, Aspirations and Wealth!

Jan 6th, 2008
Albert

Thank you Tiat, I’m very grateful for your presence and kind praise. Please stick around!

Jan 7th, 2008