Life Rearranged.

Being twenty something these days is not easy. You must fight for anything in your life choice. Check your parent`s social life, then see yours. These day more type of persons than in the past you can meet. Everyone is connected by technologies. It means, more in EVERYTHING. You wants to find a job, you wants to success, or you wants to find good wife… You must win it over more competitors.

Twenty something are the year when you graduated from the collage, get degree and then you thinking, “What`s next?”. We have more choices these day. Choices bring opportunities. And opportunities bring expectations. Why? Because the freedom has paradox. When we have freedom to choose, we always want the best choice, yup, that is expectation. Then, if we are not satisfied, we start blaming ourself for choosing that choice. P.S:There is a TED video about this.

Okay, now you know where this note going. I will start my long (insignificant) story. It has a point, but too many ‘curhat’. 😀

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As student, i had a really easy life. I got my three-point-something GPA in my undergraduate, and that was not the best of me. Maybe i just put half-effort to get that. I am not lazy, i just not very determinate. Don’t get wrong, i am not ‘given’ student. As in high school, once time i got bottom two in my class rank, and i am okay. No one ever expecting me to reach something. I study only because it seems right.

Those days, i am a  ‘right now’ person. As long i having fun right now, i am fine. I also have very low expectation about the live, because i think i can still be fun in any condition, stupid thinking. My sensory of crisis was not developed in my early life. 😀

After graduation, i became so confused. Like i said in the first paragraph, graduation means more choices and i am not sure about what will i do in my life. I live in doubt, i am not focus, i learned little of too many things. Those days, seeing how my collage friend became, brought very much pressure to me. Some doing social program, some continue their study, some get decent job, some go aboard, some had family, etc. And in my mind, my life is nothing compared to them. I set my expectation so high. That time desperately need something to make me feel better. That was the first time i have my expectation of myself. It was in mid 2011.

On my desperation, i felt that everything in my life are not good enough for me. My job, my colleagues, the company i found, my master program, my girlfriend, even my parent, just all. All that year, i raise my expectation on everything, but i wasn’t ready. I became more egoistic than ever, i get bored easily, sometime i didn’t want to works on something just because it felt not worth it. i have set my goals so high, to get my (predicted) failures. But, i cannot lower my goals that time, because it will not helping me to get my esteem back.

I failed many times on late 2011. I wasted my job interview, i broke with my girlfriend, failed in my luxury project and got my contract terminated, just because i am so demanding. And, i take the failures the worst way. After the failures, i feel more worthless than ever, i only wants to ran away. I becomes so lazy and paralyze  I feel my life was so damaged, that can not be fixed. So, why bother to fix that? From egoistic, i became pessimistic and depressed.

That is my depression in end of 2011. That was when i was 23 years old. Quarter-life-crisis they said. 😛

End of curhat,

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And this is what i got from that moments, about 1 year later.

So that i lived in two parts of my life, very low expectation in most of my life and very high expectation on 2011. Both have positive and negative aspect. I lived in high expectation then got stressed. So, the expectation can easily make us down, that surely the negative aspect. So, what is the positive aspect of high expectation? Expectation is one of our driven, that is our fuel to achieve success.

The thing is, i think, it is not really the expectation that drive us. It is the evaluation. And with high expectation, we constantly compare our expected target with reality. Then it became automatic evaluation. People with low expectation don’t have this mechanism. But, there are many ways to evaluate.

Evaluation is very important. All of the role in our life need to re-evaluate constantly. Japanese get they success with their “Kaizen”, the continuous improvement, that using evaluation. Or remember hadits we (moslem) have, “Today must be better than yesterday”, that is evaluation.

Evaluation is must be applied in each of our role. So, i begin from defining mine. Defining what my roles are very important, so i never get confused again like before. So, what am i? I am a muslim, a student (for next 2 month :P), a transportation Enthusiasm, a child of my parent, a friend for my friends, a neighbor, an entrepreneur, an IT engineer, etc. Then, lets make a better of each one.

For example as a student. If today i study 20 hours a week, i can set a target 25 hours a week for next month. Another example is as an entrepreneur, i can set a target to join an enterpreneur seminar within two months. Remember the target is for our evaluation, not the expectation. So, you can change it, just keep it feasible. But don`t cheat, do improvement! 😀

So, now i prefers to keep everything in low expectation. It fitted me more. I choose to driven by focus on my roles and aware that i need to be a better of thats. Do that just because it is the right thing like before. It better if , i do everything for the Sake of Allah. It`s the best since it will brings the success of dunya and also akhira. 🙂

For me, i hope this note will reminds me to keep my expectation down and remember that i don’t need to doing something to impress anything or anyone (right now i start to comparing my life again). All i need is to do is focus to become a better person. I need to more grateful, start viewing only the positive side again. And get rid most of thoughts from my mind, stop thinking the others! Doing my best, and evaluating.