I turn to Zen­Hab­its once again for this week’s post on Organize-Your-Life 101. This is some­thing that I am try­ing to use for my own life. Yes, I have become quite Obses­sive Com­pul­sive about so many things in my life. I think it comes from know­ing that I do not have any­one to turn to and nobody will clean up after me.

Here is Zen­Hab­its’ post on cre­at­ing sim­ple systems:

The key to cre­at­ing calm and sim­plic­ity in your life is cre­at­ing sim­ple sys­tems, instead of hap­haz­ard sys­tems of chaos that form nat­u­rally when we don’t give thought to these things.

If you’ve ever said, “I just knew it was a good thing” or “I can not explain why, but I just had to do it” or “It just felt right” or “I had a really bad feel­ing about it”, then you’ve expe­ri­enced what some peo­ple would call “intu­ition” or “gut feel”.

It’s that pri­mary, basic, instinc­tive sys­tem meant to keep us out of harm’s way, even pro­tect­ing us from acci­dents, or from mar­ry­ing the wrong per­son. We’ve heard sto­ries of peo­ple decid­ing at the last minute to can­cel their flights on air­planes that even­tu­ally crash, or mak­ing choices that years down the line make per­fect sense even when they didn’t when they first made it. Our gut instinct allow us to “know” more than we can ever explain logically.

Now this is a really long post. So just read this on your free time. This was some­thing I got years ago and I’ve added to it over the years.

Let me just say that it’s really worth the read, spe­cially for my fel­low Fil­ipinos, and also for my for­eigner read­ers who know Fil­ipinos (this might be a good way to know us even more). With all the bad news going around, notwith­stand­ing the SONA of the Pres­i­dent last week, there are still a lot of things to be thank­ful for. Let’s start with these ONE HUNDRED things.

This is a plug about an activ­ity called IAmNinoy.

This August 21, we remem­ber a Fil­ipino who laid down his life for his nation, one who ded­i­cated a life of ser­vice and sac­ri­fice for his fel­low coun­try­men: Ninoy Aquino. And in remem­brance of his hero­ism, the Ninoy Aquino Foun­da­tion and the Ayala Young Lead­ers Alliance rec­og­nize the abil­ity of the youth to be heroes in their respec­tive fields. With this inspi­ra­tion, 100 youth indi­vid­u­als from dif­fer­ent back­grounds and sec­tors of soci­ety will given an oppor­tu­nity to relive Ninoy Aquino’s hero­ism through a con­gress enti­tled, “iamninoy:‘Connecting Young Fil­ipino Lead­ers’” on August 22–24 at The Aquino Museum, Tar­lac City.

Ever since I was young, I have been an advo­cate for the envi­ron­ment. I remem­ber back in high school, I would cut out news arti­cles on the envi­ron­ment. I kept them in this really nerdy enve­lope. I even did a study on for­est cover in Min­danao for my Inves­ti­ga­tory Project in Biol­ogy class. Wow, I was a nerd, man. haha

I lost a lit­tle of that gung-ho atti­tude for the envi­ron­ment after­wards, but I do remem­ber plant­ing some trees in the Novi­tiate sev­eral years ago. I think the trees are still there– a tes­ta­ment to what was a bud­ding voca­tion that was later on nipped in the bud (naks!).