Illness at Work: Should I stay home?

ILLNESS AT WORK

Should I stay home?

There are many things about the working world that I find straight forward. You wake up early, you turn-up to your work on time, you dress appropriately, you listen to you boss and you dedicate yourself to the task ahead of you. OK. That understood. However, there has always been an area of confusion from my perspective about when you are part of the work-force and suddenly, you fall ill.

When I was working as a volunteer administrator at Thornton Heath Citizen's Advice Bureau between June 2010 and August 2012, there were unfortunately, too many days when I would have to call unwell to my manager because of persistant medical symptoms. Those symptoms included cold and flu, headaches, hay-fever, asthma, and diarrhoea. My manager seemed to be fine with me calling off work due to poor health. However, I was getting moans from one of my key workers saying that I should not be having so many days of work.

The Mystery Illness

I never intended to have so many days of work but my body clearly had other ideas. It should also be noted that at the time of working in the bureau that I had to move home and had this "mystery illness" which was yet to be properly diagnosed. I was going through hell medically as it seemed that I would fall ill for no reason. I had countless appointments with my GP about what was going on with my body. Why was I having so many headaches? Why was I having on-going cold and flu symptoms?Would it ever end? My confidence in the working world got lower and lower and I seriously questioned if I was really fit for the working world.

In early 2011, I just felt more and more dysfunctional. I wasn't able to walk very far because of my on-going symptoms and everyday felt like a struggle. At first I got the diagnosis of sinusitis in order to explain the headaches that I was getting and then I was re-diagnosed with allergic rhinitis six months later. Finally, I got to know what the "mystery illness" was and I can finally get the relevant treatment for the symptoms. That said, I was still struggling with constant fatigue which would occasionally make me feel drowsy and often oversleep.

The Health Problems Continue

Going into the new year of 2012, I thought I would have seen the end of my period of persistant illness. However, in March of that year I had an aggressive form of diarrhoea which saw me in hospital for a weekend. In May, I had the first of 2 asthma attacks of that year and I would have the other one in June. It was after the June attack that I decided to resign from my post as a volunteer administrator for the Thornton Heath Citizen's Advice Bureau.

Last year (2017) I saw an internet article saying that flu symptom does affect both your physical and your mental performance and therefore will affect your productivity.

https://www.shape.com/lifestyle/mind-and-body/your-brain-cold-and-flu

The Unanswered Question

I am just being honest when I say that I am not able to work properly when my body is in a dysfunctional state but the question remains: When I am not feeling well, do I stay home or do I try to commit myself to the working day despite my symptoms?

Until that question is answered, I don't think I will ever have the confidence to be part of the working world as a don't believe that I will be able to keep a job for long.

My Review of 2017

MY REVIEW OF 2017

New Spiritual Discoveries

I Started the year by trying to find the Brixton Buddhist Centre which happens to be small room that is hired for meditation and various therapy  treatments located in a small building called "Yoga Point" where yoga classes predominate. My initial search for this place was in August 2016. However, there were a few bus diversions around London at that time which made it too difficult to find the location. Thankfully, with the help of the internet, I was able to find the Brixton Buddhist Centre for a meditation and Buddhism class. I loved the bedroom like aura of the meditation room. It helped me feel right at home and I settled into the meditation very quickly. At the same time, the Croydon Buddhist Centre was having it's shrine room re-built and refurbished. The new shrine room officially opened on the 13th May, I first paid a visit to this new shrine room on the evening of Wednesday 28th June while attending a meditation class.

Meditation, Buddhism and spirituality has played an increasingly important part of my life this year. I feel like I am gaining valuable life lessons from my spiritual studies.

I subscribed to the American Buddhist magazine "Lion's Roar" on Thursday 2nd March. "Lion's Roar" is a bi-monthly magazine that gives Buddhist wisdom on everyday life experiences.

Life Blog

On Saturday 21st January, I launched my own personal life blog on the internat where I would create and publish articles about my opinions, experiences and lessons on life. The first entry of the blog is the review of 2016 which was dedicated to my elder sister Mariam who sadly passed away in April of that year. This year, I have touched on topics like anger and loneliness.

Chess

This has proven to be my most successful in Chess to date. My ECF standard-play grade reached an all-time high of 134. I won my first major individual championship since winning the Wernick cup in 2009. The 7 and a half year wait finally came to an end in April when I eventually claimed the CCF Division 1 title with a record of 6 wins, 3 draws and 2 losses. I showed the trophy to my family and we took photos to remember the occasion with. 

I also had my best summer campaign this year where I entered in 2 competitions. The CCF cup and the Felce cup. I finished joint 2nd in the CCF Cup where i won my first 5 games before losing in round 6 due mainly to a mistake in the opening. I pressed for a win in the 7th and final round but I eventually lost and had to settle for finishing joint 2nd. I won £45 in prize money.

In the Felce Cup, I won the South Norwood section with a record of 3 wins and 1 loss. This promoted me to the Felce Cup final where I faced the winners of the other 2 sections.

I won the first game of the final after an adjournment but lost the other 3 games mainly due to bad opening play. However, I did win £10 in prize money for finishing 3rd overall in the tournament.

The Easter Rapidplay at CCF was another event where I had success where I shared 2nd place and won £17.50 in prize money.

On Sunday 12 March, I launched a Facebook group called "The Dragon Kingdom of Chess, Xiangi and Shogi. This was originally just about Chess and Shogi but there was also interest in the game of Xiangqi. Xiangqi and Shogi are Chinese and Japanese equivalents of Chess. Members are free to post anything that is that is related to any of the 3 games.

Back in 2015, I decided to run 2 Super League teams at CCF. Both of them were called "The Dragon Kings" after one of the 7 professional titles in Shogi. There was the long -play Super League with a record of 6 wins and a draw and hence has been promoted to the "Premiership". The rapid-play team also had a decent calender year as they finished in third place with a record of 3 wins 1 draw and 1 loss.

They started the new season well enough with 2 wins to start their campeign, however, at the time of writting, we lost our 3rd match mainly due to a default.

On Saturday the 16th and Sunday the 17th of December, I played in the CCF Christmas Congress "Major" section. I took a bye in round 3 but otherwise played in the other 4 rounds. In the 4 games that I played in, I had 3 wins and 1 loss. It was my first long-play congress in 3 years.

The lowest point of the year however was having to leave South Norwood Chess Club for a second time after falling out once again with one of the vice-presidents. I actually lead the club to winning the Ellary Williams Memorial Trophy for a second time.  However, my conscience became clear when the vice-president in question insulted the head president of the club. I was so insulted by his behaviour that I decided that I no longer wished to work with him anymore.

I sent the vice-president an email to announce the termination of our relationship. However, he actually tried to bribe me into playing for his teams but I made it clear to him that I do not play chess for money.  He also tried to suppress my feelings and thoughts about him over the phone.  That made it clear to me that this was not a healthy relationship. In the end,  I had to make a second email to him just to understand the simple 3 word sentence "end of relationship ". Eventually, I decided that there is no point staying at the club if there is somebody there that is going to destroy my mental health. It's always a sad moment when you have to leave a place that you once considered a second home but sometimes you have to do what is best for your own well being.

Yoga

For most of the year, I have been interested in finding suitable and affordable yoga class to attend. Luckily, I found a banner outside my local park advertising various activities that was to take place in a local Hindu temple. One of those was a yoga class that takes place every Friday. I had my first attendance there on the 8th of September. It was challenging but also enjoyable. The best thing about the venue for the yoga classes is that they are free and only a couple of blocks from where I live. i hope to go to more yoga classes in 2018.

My Spiritual Future

Since the beginning of 2016, I have been on a personal spiritual path which has significantly enhanced my inner contentment. I have bought and discovered a lot of materials on spiritual development. However my most profound discovery of the year was the Be Here Now Network YouTube channel and website https://beherenownetwork.com/ which provides podcasts with recordings of some of the best spiritual teachers in the west. I enjoy listening to these podcasts when I am working by my computer or even occasionally when I am trying to sleep. I have to say that I general, I feel more complete now then I have been in a long time. In fact, back in November, I learnt something uplifting about one of the most talked about aspects of my natural way of  being; self talk. For a lot of my life and especially during my childhood, I was often shamed and told-off for talking to myself which as I understand now is caused by intensive thoughts. I have always been an intensive thinker. In some respects, until 2016, I was addicted to thinking. Most of the activities that I have enjoyed for most of my life have involved thinking. One of the great things that my spiritual path is that it has helped me be aware of the thoughts that I have and be able to control, monitor and reduce the intensity of my thoughts and emotions. I have also been well informed on the internet that self-talk is normal and every one talks to themselves . This is a relief to me as I was often told during my childhood that self -talk was "the first sign of madness". Now I'm even told that self-talk is the first sign of success! I even bought a book online called "What to say when you talk to yourself" by Shad Helmstetter which explains how we program our own minds to determine how much success that we have in life.

2017 has proven to be a year of spiritual enhancement and self discovery. I am currently going through an exciting period of my life where I am finding more and more ways to increase and maintain my inner contentment. It's also been a year when a long wait for real success over the chessboard has finally come to an end and I now feel like I know what's best for me both as a chess-player and a person.

The End

Completed on Saturday 13 January 2018

The Human Volcano

The Human Volcano

What is a human volcano?

A "human volcano" is a person who has been seen to have extreme anger issues and generally behaves in a a way that is destructive to both oneself and other people.

These people may seem irritable all the time and may easily get offended by seemingly trivial events.

Why do some people end up like this?

My Eruptions

While I don't claim to have all the answers, I can certainly talk from personal experience. Yes. I was once a human volcano. I grew up feeling a lot of pressure from my family, school teachers and fellow pupils to be a certain way. While this is normal for all of us, there were certain things that I found too much to take. For one thing, I was occasionally bullied in school and that hurt my self-esteem. However, bullying did not always end at school. There were times when I would feel bulled at home too. I was bullied mainly for my curly hair, my thoughts being spoken out loud and not having any friends.

Throughout my conscious childhood, I received many dismissive words about my way of being from my family. This left me feeling not only angry but neglected also. My anger was at it's worst when I was 16 years old. At that point in time, I had regular fallouts with my mother because of her dismissive language towards me. She would call me "mad" and "mental" on a regular basis. This was the last thing I needed when I was taking my GCSEs and preparing for college.

Why anger is only half the problem

There are many people out there who are considered to have an anger problem. However, I believe that in most cases that anger is only half the problem with "human volcanoes" There is usually a deeper underlying problem that is yet to be resolved or even talked about.

The magma in you soul

There are many things out there that make us "boil over" and provoke what I call the "magma" of the soul. When the magma get too much we start to "erupt" and the emotional "lava" comes out. There are many causes of "magma" in our soul. like trauma, anger, feelings of inferiority, emotional pain, insults, hostile environments, stress, pressure, fear and frustration which if allowed to overflow becomes emotional lava to the other person.

While it is normal to experience a lot of the above, when they have accumulated for a long time without resolution, the "magma" eventually becomes "lava" the consequences can be very damaging both the the individual and people close to the individual.

How to heal a human volcano

As we have learnt above, anger is like a fire. If it is not deal with quickly, then a catastrophe occurs. So how do we deal with anger? How do we cool the lava and flames within us?

While I do not claim to be an expert on this matter, I can certainly make positive suggestions based on my personal experiences. I think these 4 steps will be of some help to cool the flames of anger:

1). Realisation

I think the first step of any pain healing process is the realisation of the pain itself. Anger in the most extreme sense is a form of pain and we have to realise what is hurting us before it leads to something catastrophic for both you and your loved ones.

2. Find the triggers

If you look at your anger carefully, you will notice that your anger takes on a certain pattern or correlation of events. I realised in my own personal experience that it was the harsh words of other people that was the main cause of my anger. I would easily get upset or offended by what someone said to me. When I realised this I decided to give myself this mantra or affirmation that I took to my meditation practice. The mantra was "There words are not me. My words are not them". The whole point of this phrases was to detach my mind from the words that other people would say to me. It would also make me realise that I can also say harsh words to other people. When I practised this, I realised a positive difference it made to the way I absorbed other people's words. I was less impacted  by them.

Knowing your triggers and finding a solution can really help you make good progress towards healing the inner wounds of anger.

3. Self Awareness and acceptance

When we are angry, we often lose presence and self awareness. When anger is intense we lose conscience of our words and actions towards other people. How can we improve our conscience and awareness of our thoughts and feelings? How can we manage them better? In my experience my cure for my eruptions was meditation. Try spending 10 minutes a day to close your eyes, breath deeply and listen to your thoughts and feeling during this time.

Important Note: Do NOT  try to change your thoughts or feelings at any point during this exercise.  The whole point of this is to be aware of what you are really thinking without judgement. If you are angry at his moment then just accept that feeling for what it is. Thoughts will come and thoughts will go. Accept it for what it is.

Even a simple awareness of your anger can help you deal with your anger better. If you are able to increase your awareness of your thoughts and feelings then you will have better management of them.

4. Self-Love

If you look at our world carefully, we an see that there is a lot of hate in this world. You can also see that there are many things out there that actually teach us to hate ourselves for who we are. Our society tell us to conform with others and treat us like we are all meant to be the same as each other. This is a common mis-interpretation that virtually every society has. We are all different and we should be able to embrace the qualities that makes us unique and special.

Like in the last step above yon can spend 10 minutes of meditation a day or whatever spare time you have to yourself to close your eyes or gaze lightly on a spot, focus no your breathing and quietly and slowly say in your own mind a mantra or affirmation like "I am loved" or "I am worthy of love" . We all deserve love and we all deserve to embrace our own unique experience.

Summary

I have always believed that anger is the world's most mis-understood emotion. I think this is because we only see the surface layer of anger. The "aggression" or the "attack" that is simply the release of the emotional pain. I hope I have given some insight into the reality of anger and what can be found inside an angry person.

Hopefully, one day, we can look at anger with loving kindness and cool the lava and flames of the human volcano. With practise, patience, time and love, the human volcano becomes a peaceful and serene human lake.

Loving Language: Part 1: The meaning of Love

Loving Language: Part 1: The Meaning of Love

Language and in particular the nature of language has always played a very important part of my life. I have naturally been studious about words and the definition of words and above all things, the usage or perhaps to put it more accurately, the mis-usage of language.

As I have got older, I have become more and more aware of how abused the English language has become. There are so many people out there who have no real conscience of even a consciousness of what comes out of their mouth. I have suffered very deeply because of this. I have had so many people in my life speak to me in a rather upsetting way.

There are so many people in our lives that we claim to love. We say "I love you" to our parents, grand-parents, children, grand-children, aunties, uncles, nephews, nieces, husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends and sometimes even just friends, but how many of us actually know what love is? Let's look at what "love" really means.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, there are no less than 5 different definitions of the word "love".

1). A strong feeling of affection.

2). A strong feeling of sexual linked with sexual affection.

3). A great interest and pleasure in something.

4). A persoin of thing that one loves.

5). (in tennis, squash etc) a score of zero.

The last definition is one that is reserved for racket sports so I wont go into any details about it as it explains itself quite clearly, however, the rest of the definitions may feel rather vague to some people so lets try it make sense of them.

The first 2 definitions use the word "affection". Affection is a synonym for love and romance. There are many others we can add like "passion", "compassion" and "warmth". So "love" can be any words in one. The forth definition refers to the usage of the word "love" as a noun, for example,"My love" or "Your love".

At a deeper level, we realise that all of the 5 definitions above could have been definitions for other words. Definitions 1 and 4 could have been a definition for "warmth" while definition 2 could been for "attraction" and definition 3 could have been for "passion".

After reading all this, you might be asking yourself "Isn't there an easier way to understand what love really is?" Well personally, I believe that there is an easier way to understand what love is.

To put it simply, love is about positive emotion. When we "love" someone, something or some activity, it means that the subject in question is giving us positive emotion.

This for me is the real meaning of love. Positive emotion.

"Life is too short": What does it mean?

Life is too short: What does it mean?

Misunderstanding

A quick confession. If you told me what "life is too short" meant before this month (October 2017) I would have interpreted it in a very bad way. I would have confused the term for something like "your life will end shortly". The difficulty I have always had with phrases is that they are just a short way of saying something that often needs to be explained in depth in order for it to be understood properly.

However, this month I have received the November 2017 edition of the American Buddhist magazine, "Lion's roar" and it explained everything in a beautiful and touching way and in a way where everything simply made sense. To put it simply, we are impermanent. If we look at our lives carefully, a lot of us have a habit of clinging on to something and try to give it a feeling of permanence. this is an illusion that we like to give ourselves. We try to hold on to life even though we know deep down that it will all come to an end one day.

Mental Baggage

Throughout our lives,we are given both by ourselves and by other people different names, identities. personalities, titles and other descriptions of the self. However, when we are born, none of these things existed. When we are born, we were just a being. That was literally all we were. Just a sentient being. Just something that breathes and moves. There was no version, definition or perception of us. We were just ... well.. us. As life progresses and we get older and get more attuned to the world, we are given "Mental baggage" from other people. We are told that we are this, that and the other, that we have this,that and the other and that we can or cannot or even will or will not be this, that and the other.

Here is the poem that i discovered in the final page before the back cover of the magazine mentioned above. I love this poem, because it helps us realise the purity of being.

I Knew You Before

by Karen Maezen Miller

I knew you before were a victim

before you were a wreck, a mess, and a bomb.

Without a crowning success or crippling failure.

Before you had an issue, an axe, or a cross.

No disorder ,no syndrome, no label-

undiagnosed,

without a blemish or scar.

Before that night and the morning after,

before the fall, the crash, the crime,

without an upgrade or makeover.

Version 0.0

No story,

no narration, no closed captioning,

no footnotes and no bonus features,

before you remembered to forget and forgot to remember.

I knew you before you were what you say-

what you think,what you fear, what you know.

Do you know yourself before?

The one thing that came to my attention when reading this poem was that this is the way we were when we were born. without any agendas. This is also the way we will be when we die. Without agendas. When we die, all conceptualisation of ourselves will cease. In other words, when we die, we are free from concepts and we are just who we were when we are born. Empty. Empty of concepts. We came into the word with nothing an we leave the world with nothing.

Equality in death.

A friend of mine told me that death is the ultimate equaliser. When we are dead, we are all the same. No one is superior or inferior to any other person when we all die, because superiority and inferiority are both concepts of the mind. Therefore, death is a liberator that makes us return to our true self. Once we realise all this about death, we lose our need to hold on to life and we can live our life to the full.

Moral of the story: Live your life! Live your dreams! Don't be overwhelmed by what life throws at you! Don't listen to your doubters, your haters our you criticisers.

I will leave you with Prince EA.

EVERYBODY DIES, BUT NOT EVERYBODY LIVES.

Decisions,Un-decisions and Re-decisions

Decisions, Un-decisions and Re-decisions

In my own personal life, making decisions is a very hard and sometimes even a painful process. I often spend months, even years working out wherever a certain decision is good for me or not.

The thing that makes the decision-making process even worse for me is that when I finally have made a decision, it often gets challenged and questioned by other people.There are time when I am told to re-think ore even change me decision . This is very annoying  for me as I often take a ling time to make decisions for me as I often take a ling time to make decisions in the first place. One thing for sure is that if I am not allowed to make my own decisions at the age of 31 the there is something seriously wrong with the society that I live in.

I've realised now trust sometimes you have to trust your own heart when it comes to your own decisions. If it doesn't feel right, the it probably isn't.

I have spent the most recent years of my life being encouraged to re-think and undo certain decisions. In the end, I eventually do what my heart tells me to do. The mind can be a great tool for making rational decisions but when it comes to emotional well being, your heart is your teacher and director. I think I need to balance mind-orientated thinking with what the heart tells me. 

When you make decisions, do you listen to your mind or your heart? Here is American spiritual teacher Ram Dass who gives his thoughts in this lecture.

A Toxic Relationship

I have decide to do this entry at the spur of the moment so I do apologise if I sound a bit emotional.

I received a phone call on Thursday 14th September 2017 before the clubs AGM which was taking place the same evening. I did not attend the meeting. Why? Because I was so overwhelmed and overloaded by the things I heard. This phone call lasted almost an hour. It was about an e-mail that I gave to this person who was an important member of my chess club basically saying that I did not like his verbal etiquette. I also mentioned that I did not want to play for him in the forth coming season because I've realised that I am easily overwhelmed by his behaviour. He often speaks dismissively about people and has previously said some upsetting things about how I captained the club's rapid-play teams.

Initially, this phone call was about the idea that I will be payed to play for his teams because I mentioned that I didn't like the idea of working for him without payment. Because I mentioned the word "payment" in this e-mail he thought that I actually wanted to be payed for playing in matches for his team. What I was trying to explain was that my chess was not officially paid work and yet I am having to be overwhelmed by his way of speaking and general aura.

Over the years, I have heard all sorts of people tell me things like " You have to make allowances" , " You've got to make leeway" , "Relationships have to be worked at" , "Oh, sometimes he is just like that" and "He has had a hard day/week/life".

While I do accept that all people have flaws and occasionally make mistakes, it also seems that society is creating more and more excuses for the mistakes. It is almost as if we have given up trying to improve ourselves.

I just think that there comes a time when enough is enough and I feel like this person is just wearing me out with his inability to talk in a responsible way. It is clear to me that he is not conscious speaker. Why should I continue working for a person who in the long-term only makes me and other people suffer?

I believe that my life deserves better than to be around a person who only feeds me with negative energy and makes me and others feel bad about themselves.

I do my best to work with others and most of the people that I have met in my life have been wonderful and have been of great help to me in many different ways. However, every now and then we meet a "rotten apple" who ruins our experience of life in some way.

This have been an emotional entry so I do apologise if I sounded over-the-top in certain parts, but at the same time, a bad relationship is like a fire. It will burn you inside if you don't get out of it before too long.

At the end of the day, we all deserve to be treated with respect and I just don't see the point in spending of my life working for a person who is disrespectful to others.

I wish you all well in your relationships.