My Journey

To choose life – 7 steps

photo credit: jessica.ebrey

This guest post is from Fredrik Öhrn, a writer, based in Bangkok, Thailand, who blogs in English at www.careofasia.com and in Swedish at http://www.ifred.se.

I signed up for an Adventure race a while back. Adventure racing in Thailand means, Jungle- running, Mountainbiking, Kayaking, swimming and a few other surprise obstacles along the way. The duration of the race is usually somewhere around 6 hours.

So I had signed up, I ha a partner (you do adventure racing, usually in teams of two or more) and the date of the race was drawing closer. One week before, I got a cold. I was not feeling up for this race at all. Three days to go, and the cold was worse than ever.

Then I let go, I saw myself off the cold, running through the Jungle with a perfect stride, jumping on my bike just to see myself flying down (and up) the hills surrounding The River Kwai. The only thing I did not see myself doing was kayaking – but that is another story. Of course I was not going to have a cold at the time of the race.

The Race
Raceday came, it had been raining heavily the day before and we were all kind of excited to get muddy, working ourself through the jungle and The River.

The race started at 8.40 – we all took off on our bikes, after about 20 minutes we reached the first transition area and we switched to running.

No trails, just trees, leaves and grass. And hills. It started going uphill shortly after the start, up, up and up. Exhusting most of the time and at times it was tricky to get by the rolling rocks without causing an avalanche. We had to run with our helmets on for protection – but there is really only so much a bicycle helmet can do against falling rocks after all.

We reached a part where it flattened out a bit and we got on a nice trail, I was feeling strong and took a moment to look around – WOW! Fantastic! It was almost like running indoors, in a corridor. Bamboo trees covering both the sides of the trail and we were almost totally covered by the same trees from above, it was magic.

We were jogging, not very fast, I got goosebumps all over my body – there I was running in the jungle, beautiful landscape surrounding me, I felt good, this is life – I am truly alive!

We finished the run, got back on our bikes and rode them to the river.

The River Kwai
Everyone knows about this river, everyone has seen the movie, heard about the bridge and we all know the name of this river. The River – The River Kwai.

We stopped for some drinking water, got ourselves a kayak and jumped in. We were now paddling on the River Kwai.

My arms started aching after about 7 minutes in the kayak, the trip down the river became more of a pain that it should have been. It was quiet, we passed a couple of beautiful monestaries where the nuns were sitting on huge porches overlooking the river, probably wondering what we all were doing.

I could have told them: We were alive and kicking, having a blast, feeling the pain in our bodies and enjoying it, thanks to the endorphines, the river, the mountains and the great outdoors.

After kayaking and then swimming in the same river, we went on a long jungle run, running in rivers, climbing rope ladders and at times it felt like you were on a set of an old Vietnam-war movie, minus the guns.

We finished the race after 5 hours and 21 minutes in 6th place out of many teams. We were tired and we were hungry but very happy!

Sometimes you have to take the effort, to sign up, buy the ticket, get out of the couch, turn off your TV, go somewhere and see something different. It may be a struggle at first, you might be a little bit intimidated or even afraid, but do it anyway. It will put a big smile on your face and you will feel so much more alive afterwards that you would wonder why you even considered not doing it.

The 7 steps:

1. Pick a goal

2. Make necessary preparations

3. Take small steps towards your goal

4. As you approach it – make sure you are relaxed.

5. Have fun along the way, feel how you are alive.

6. Have fun reaching the goal

7. Enjoy finding a new goal and a new challenge.

This is true for any goal as well as for life – it’s really 7 steps – where the goal is what you want to do with your life. Don’t feel stressed, feel relaxed and keep taking small steps towards your goal.

Fredrik Öhrn

Playing with the advertising widget

photo credit: drinksmachine

I added something fun to the 125 x 125 pixel ads you see on the right sidebar. The 6th spot will rotate randomly. At least 5, but no more than 24 ads will be held in the ‘Random Queue’ to be selcted from.

I thought it would be entertaining (for me anyway) and economical (for advertisers).

If you are interested in advertising rates or blog stats, click here.

Lessons from roleplaying

photo credit: fyuryu

I was sad to find out Gary Gygax had died. Gygax was a co-creator of the game Dungeons and Dragons. I never looked up to him like a hero or anything, but I have always been appreciative of what roleplaying has done for my life.

I was a very shy kid in Jr. High. I didn’t really come out of my shell until High School, when I started roleplaying. I became one of those AD&D geeks.

I played AD&D through High School and for several years thereafter when I joined the Air Force. I played with different groups of people from all over the country and outside our country.

Why am I telling you this? Because believe roleplaying games are one way to develop imagination and social skills. I know, I know. You’re probably thinking, “Geeks are not known for their social skills.” Let me give you an example.

Roleplaying games are good for development

In Jr. High when it came time for speech class, I was frozen. I mumbled my speech, couldn’t make eye contact, and my heart would nearly beat out of my chest. I hated public speaking. Outside of the classroom I didn’t make eye contact with others. I didn’t feel comfortable speaking to people I didn’t know, or even those I kinda knew.

Then, as I began to roleplay, I found it easier to speak in front of groups. It was simple: I just had to pretend it wasn’t me speaking. I became someone else, a politician, a wiseman, an expert. I even pretended to be someone else who was pretending to be me, if that makes any sense. I “steped out of myself” and in so doing, I left my fear of speaking behind.

Soon, public speaking became natural. Eventually I realized I wasn’t even pretending anymore. It was me speaking. And I liked it.

Some could say it wasn’t roleplaying in particular that helped me overcome my fear of public speaking, but just the fact that I joined a social group that happended to be composed of roleplayers. Joining a social groups is one of the points Scott Young writes about in his post You Won’t Get Anywhere With Poor Social Skills at Pick The Brain.

I choose to believe it was roleplaying, at least in my case.

Develop creativity

Roleplaying games helped develop a my creativity. Soon, instead of playing in a game, I was running them. I was devising my own adventures for groups of friends. I even created a series of adventures based on the book, The Shattered World, that drew notice from the author, Michael Reaves.

My creative nature has helped me to “think outside of the box” on many projects in my career. I’ve often been complimented, and given an occasional reward, for my creative approaches to problems.

I don’t believe I would have followed the same path had I not been a roleplayer. I have no idea where I would have ended up if I hadn’t been able to overcome my fear of public speaking. Maybe I would have overcome it another way, but I’m not so sure. I know that roleplaying helped exercise and develop my creative nature.

It’s now been years since I’ve played. I’ve grown out of it I guess.

Thank you, Gary Gygax. Your spearheading the table-top roleplaying genre helped one shy kid become a self-confident man.

Readers, tell me, what is your experience with roleplaying games?

Problogger traffic spike

My recent guest post on Problogger.net was good for traffic over all. The graphic at the top is the statistics from the wordpress dashboard. The lower graphic is from statcounter.com. I believe the difference in the count is due to statistcs be gathered in different timezones.

The end result: 2 to 3 times more daily visitors and RSS subscribers.

Thank you all for coming!

Participate in the Carnival of the Life Worth Living

I will be hosting a blog carnival for Living a Life Worth Living.

The theme of this carnival is “Carpe Diem” Seize the Day: strategies to live the rest of your life by.

The deadline for entries is March 15, 2008. You may submit your entry at http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_3683.html (I will update the URL as soon as the carnival entry is live.)

I hope to see your submission!