Changing Lives » Blogging

What you resist will persist

Ian Selvarajah — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 04:35:59 +0000

As I migrated the blog over, I couldn’t help but notice the decline in the frequency of my posts over the last couple of years. Then, I saw a pattern. Since March ’07 I’ve been tracking the relative progress of a particular situation in my life on a monthly basis. Unfortunately, as you can see, that situation (the blue line) hasn’t been going well. The interesting thing, is when I superimpose the number of blog posts per month (the green line) on that chart, you notice the obvious correlation.

Back in October ’07, I wrote a “Why I haven’t been blogging” post and the #1 reason has (roughly) held true over the last 2 years. This chart makes it even more obvious that even after trying to remediate the situation, I continued to let it affect my general happiness which has been my biggest mistake all along.

The more I tried to fix the situation, the worse it seemed to get. At the beginning of October, I realized I had to let go. Letting go is really hard to do, especially when it’s something important. Letting go is tough because it almost feels like giving up and I hate to give up.

I was reminded of a quote one of my mentors shared with me: “What you resist will persist.“ Although much of the situation was out of my control, I got the sinking feeling that I was partially to blame as I didn’t expect it to improve. The amazing thing is that as soon as I let go, things have almost immediately started picking up. I’m not stressed, I’m not bothered, I’m not even tracking the blue line anymore!

Lessons learned?

If you’re going through a rough patch or things aren’t working the way you want/expect, you need to focus on something else; something positive. Stop focusing on what’s going wrong: the more you focus on the negative, the more negative you’ll attract. I’ve always been an extremely positive person and have generally attracted positive things, so this has definitely been an eye opening experience for me! Over the last 2 months, I’ve been attracting a lot of good things, so let’s hope this keeps up!!

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… and we're back!

Ian Selvarajah — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 04:54:33 +0000

If you’re here for the first time, welcome! If you’ve arrived from my old blog, welcome back and I’d love to hear your feedback on the new design/layout/concept (or anything else you feel like telling me)!

I’m hoping this blog will have a little more focus than the last one, but don’t worry, you’ll still be getting a good dose of my random stories!

Cheers!

Announcing: Generation Y Consultant

Ian Selvarajah — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:32:00 +0000

My blog has always been a mixed bag of random stuff. Since my personality is also quite random, I wanted to keep it that way as this blog is a fairly accurate reflection of who I am. However, I realize that this can become tedious for certain visitors because they never know what to expect. For instance, some of the top Google searches that bring people here are: age differences in relationships, inflamed liver, confidence vs. arrogance and life changing decisions. Very different topics; all on the same blog.

A few weeks ago, I was asked to be part of the blogger community at BrazenCareerist.com; see my profile here. I have ~~quite a bit of~~ more experience than the average 25yr old in dealing with a variety of corporate topics, so I might as well share my lessons learned! After much deliberation, I’ve finally decided to target a specific niche: Young Professionals and Recent Graduates.

Before you think: “Oh great, this is going to turn into another boring business blog…”, I have good news: I have an obvious personal attachment to this blog, so I’ve decided I’ll keep it going. This one will track my day to day (well, most likely weekend) shenanigans and I hope to maintain the randomness that I (and hopefully you) have come to love.

For those of you who want a little more focus and might be more interested in my professional side, I’ve launched a new blog:

Generation Y Consultant

That’s the blog where I’ll share things about what an IT [SAP] consultant does and general business/professional advice.

Needless to say, maintaining 2 blogs will probably be somewhat challenging, so I’ll probably “cheat” by pointing readers over there (or vice versa) every once in a while! I always value your feedback whether it’s positive or critical, so please share your thoughts! Thanks!

Spring Cleaning My [Blog] House

Ian Selvarajah — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 16:14:00 +0000

I’m expecting some new visitors, so I need to make sure the place is neat! I made some minor changes to the blog last night which you may or may not have noticed.

1) Cleaned up the label list and made the cloud on the right a little smaller.

2) Reviewed the description of my blog (this still needs some work).

3) Added profile badges for LinkedIn, BrazenCareerist and Facebook on the left if anyone would like to connect with me.

4) Removed the gray background so there isn’t much of a “cut” anymore, but I prefer the white space.

5) Removed Adsense from the right column.

6) Added StumbleUpon and Digg tags to my posts [last week], but it looked messy. I found AddThis via Darwin’s blog a few minutes ago. It’s much neater and supports most social bookmarking applications. Bookmark and Digg away!

Freakonomics – The Hidden Side of Everything

Ian Selvarajah — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:59:00 +0000

New site on the blog roll: Freakonomics

I remember reading Freakonomics while in Jamaica. If you’ve read the book, I’m sure you’ll enjoy the blog! Freakonomics makes you consider fascinating correlations as well as cause and effect situations that you may or may not have previously thought about. The most controversial one is most likely The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime. As with everything one reads, it must be taken with a grain of salt, but the author presents some great arguments. I highly recommend it!

Similarly to BoingBoing, there are also lots of random, but interesting, links to other stories. Here’s a recent good one, have a look when you have a chance: Do All Companies Have to be Evil?

Automatic Transfer of Blog Comments from Facebook?

Ian Selvarajah — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:47:00 +0000

Earlier, I’ve mentioned that one of the things I enjoy the most about blogs and blogging is the interaction readers can have with the writer via comments. This is why I don’t moderate my comments and make an effort to respond to all of them.

I’ve linked my blog to my Facebook profile, so my posts are automatically imported into FB as notes. In techie terms, this is what we call data redundancy (in the negative sense). The trouble is, people leave comments on my FB notes which don’t get automatically transferred to this blog, so readers might be missing out on the discussion (or people making fun of me) and my data is in 2 separate places!

At the moment, I’m transferring note comments manually as I don’t get enough of them via FB for it to be tedious. That’s why you’ll sometimes see “[Name] via FB” as the commenter name. If you leave a comment on my Facebook note and I don’t respond, it’s because I’ve probably responded on the real blog (not the duplicate!).

I’ve Googled around to see if there are any widgets or add-ons to automate this process, but I couldn’t find any and I doubt there would be an interface back to blogger…any ideas of how to do this a better way?

Posted by Ian Selvarajah … not the1truecoolguy

Ian Selvarajah — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:16:00 +0000

It has come to my attention that because my Gmail account is connected to this blogger account all my posts (and now, comments) are signed as “Ian Selvarajah” rather than the1truecoolguy.

I thought back to when RD discussed my choice of a nickname a while ago in this post:

“I have spent way too much time wondering if, and when, he’ll regret choosing that name. I reckon by the time he gets to 26 he’ll be wishing that he’d chosen something more like “Ian Selvarajah” as opposed to something that will definitely embarass him in the future.”

Oh well, looks like it has changed, not due to embarrassment, but a technicality! No regrets! I guess Google is telling me it’s time to grow out of the nickname. That’s fine. If you’re curious as to where, when and how the nickname came about and why it stuck, see here.

Getting Drunk in First Class

Ian Selvarajah — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:53:00 +0000

2009-12-06 Update: Sadly, it appears this blog does not exist anymore!

Another addition to the “Blogs I Enjoy” section: GDIFC

This [somewhat] true to life blog was recommended to me by one my colleagues last March, which would appear to be around the time the site first got started.

Since it’s an anonymous blog, you can gather some interesting and often funny anecdotes about consultants and the consulting industry that a consultant probably wouldn’t be able to “officially” talk about. This is one of my favorite posts: The Abbreviated Guide to PowerPoint.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you can’t make fun of yourself, who can you make fun of? Keep in mind that I’m sure several, if not most, of these stories are made up, but a few of them hit the nail right on the head! Enjoy!

Why I Haven't Been Blogging

Ian Selvarajah — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 04:47:00 +0000

Several people asked me how come I don’t update my blog anymore. The answer I often gave was that I didn’t have time. Although that was the case on several occasions, the truth of the matter is that unfortunately, my life is not as interesting/exciting as it used to be…

Top 3 reasons I haven’t been blogging

#3 Lack of time
Not the best excuse, but I have been doing a lot of travel lately. I’ve been on over 60 flights since June…

#2 Facebook
My blog was also a tool for others to be able to keep in touch and keep up with my latest happenings. Turns out that Facebook can do just that, but it’s becoming a little too much like MySpace for my liking. My blog is still linked through Facebook, so I guess it’s all good.

#1 Life isn’t as exciting as it once was…
Don’t get me wrong, there were several very cool things that happened in the last year that I never had a chance to blog about. Maybe I should do some sort of quick recap/highlights of the last few months? In general, however, things in the last year were not exciting as I thought they would be, especially considering some of the things I have done in the last couple of years…

The good news is, I’m currently working on ways to remediate the situation. Whether it’s reading books (I just picked up “Blink” the other day), getting back into blogging or coming up with some new business concepts, I’m hoping to do my best not to be bored anymore…

What I Miss about Blogging

Ian Selvarajah — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 03:51:00 +0000

Unfortunately, I have neglected my blog all summer, but no worries, I have not abandoned it! I can’t believe I haven’t blogged ANYTHING for 4 months!!

I’ve gotten back in touch with a few of my old friends recently and I figured I’ll try to get back in touch with some of my blog folks as well. When I neglected my own blog, I didn’t keep up with any of my favourites either, such as: RD, Darwin and Indi.

Ha ha ha ha – I just noticed RD has renamed my blog to “Mr Selvarajah’s not really blogging” on his link list!

I realized the other day that the one thing I truly miss about blogging is the fact that I can get opinions about my random thoughts from “strangers” and I find that fascinating. I use the term “strangers” loosely of course. You somehow build relationships via blogs and although you’ve never met these people, you seem to know each other fairly well.

I’m assuming since I’ve been gone most of the summer, there must be some new entrants to the blogosphere that are pretty good so please fill me in if there are some new blogs I should check out!