But sometimes I wanted to get rid of fear. Completely. The idea of being free of negative emotions made me curious. Being free of all those unnecessary emotions ordinary people do experience. Being somehow independent of my own fortune. I thought this might be the kind of perfection I was searching for. So I took some time to think about it.

At first I thought that it might work. I thought that the absence of worries and troubles might come naturally if you become wise.

But suddenly some questions came to my mind: Would I have to deny my roots to loose my fears? Would I even have to deny large parts of myself? Could my emotional state possibly be like a pendulum? So that I would have to take away all of its momentum to get rid of all negative emotions? This would also include getting rid of my personality…

Loosing my own personality would be a big sacrifice. Too big in my opinion. So I continued thinking.

Suppressing negative emotions can’t be the solution. But you can’t just cut off the unpleasant parts of your life and throw them away. It won’t work. They belong to you. And don’t negative feelings intensify life’s pleasant moments? I do think so. All of our emotions are a part of ourselves. And we better be careful with destroying parts of ourselves.

In my opinion, the only way to get rid of all fears, worries and troubles includes literally losing yourself. Mental suicide. Well, the whole concept of a self might be an illusion, but ain’t it a beautiful and exciting illusion?

Wisdom probably helps a lot to handle your emotions and I still want to learn to handle them better. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I accept my fears now.

I accept all of my negative feelings. I don’t want to get rid of them anymore. I want to live my life with all of its different facets. I want to see life in all its different colors, smell all its different odors, feel its different shapes. I want to experience sorrow and pain as well as pleasure and happiness.

Denying myself is not the answer. I love myself. I know that it makes me vulnerable but would you want to get rid of love only because you might risk getting hurt if you love?

• I posted 3 times.. Well, that’s not much, I know, but I got some private stuff going on.
• I wrote 2 exams and passed them both. So I think I’ll reach my goal of passing all of my exams.

I’ll have to post 8 times this month to reach my goal of posting 50 times till 31.03.10.

Well, february was a great month. I didn’t spend too much time with internet stuff though. So, let’s see what march will bring about.

Ask people about their ultimate goal and most of them reply happiness or something that’s closely related to it. And you know, it’s very hard to reach complete happiness by isolating yourself.

Of course, there’s always a certain risk if you integrate other people in your plans, as they are .. not you and so their plans might differ from yours. But it’s better to take calculated risks than to lead a boring life! At least, that’s how I think about it. Plus, you can minimize those risks by doing some thinking about yourself. Notice, that I wrote “some thinking”, don’t spend all of your time alone. Thinking can create a nice basis for your self development, but once you got your basis, further progress becomes way easier if you use other methods as well. And you won’t really know yourself unless you studied yourself in social interactions.

If you dislike all kinds of social situations, this does not mean that you should avoid them. On the contrary, you should rather get used to them. Feeling uncomfortable during most social interactions is a clear sign that you focus on yourself too much. Go out and learn to have fun! You’re not the only interesting person out there.

Almost all kinds of perfectionism include some definition of looking perfect and there are some different approaches to describe perfect looks. I’ll explain some of them to help you finding the definition you want to use for yourself. Take a look at these:

1. Comparison with other persons. This one is bad. And very common at the same time. A lot of people take the looks of a famous model or actor and start trying to look the same. Or wanting to look the same, as they don’t know how to come closer to this goal. The truth is that you are another person. And so you will always look different.
2. Others will tell you. You can also define looking perfect as getting the best feedback from other people. And that’s what you should do. … Not? Of course not! There are two major problems with this one: First, you can only guess what others will like, so you don’t really know which steps to take to come closer to this goal. Second, there is no perfect feedback at all. So you will never be completely satisfied with your own looks.
3. Having no flaws. Okay.. So you want to have no flaws? But in reality you got them? Your nose is too big or your fingers are crooked? Let’s see… There is plastic surgery so you could possibly fix them all! Great! Nah, I’m just kidding, You would probably end up as some kind of malformed barbie doll. Because you wouldn’t run out of faults. You won’t look like your ideal. … Wait! Ideal? Yes, or how do you define a flaw? Basically, this one brings you back to the previous points. Yeah, plastic surgery is okay in some extreme cases but really take some time to think before you do it. And of course, there are some things you can change without surgery. You can loose weight if you wish. But overweight is also a health issue so that might be another story..
4. Expressing yourself. I might need to explain what that’s supposed to mean. Well, it’s kinda hard to say. It means, that looking perfect is equal to looking like you truly are. Show who you are by your looks. Not trying to be someone else. Not being afraid of what society might think about your looks. It’s about looking in the mirror and seeing yourself. I know, it’s somehow hard to grasp but that’s a definition you can use. It’s still more of a challenge than you might think. It’s not that easy.

You see, the first three approaches (which are all very common) highly rely on external factors. They lead to unrealistic goals, goals that can not be reached. In the end they lead to aimless perfectionism. The fourth apporach is way better. It provides a reachable goal that probably still challenges you.

So hopefully, you rethink your own definition of looking perfect. And how you really come closer to that goal.

• 11 new posts have been submitted to this blog. With the number of articles being 10! Not bad.
• I launched my new project ThinkersClub.org, and did a lot of modifications on the code during this month.
• I changed the about me page of this blog. Nothing really special, but I just wanted to mention it here..
• I’m getting used to twitter and I begin to like it.
• There are some new pictures decorating some posts on this blog.

Well, I revealed my own goals some time ago, one of them was “Having submitted at least 50 posts to this blog. At least 27 posts need to be articles.” I already posted 30 articles, so I’m done with this part. (I’ll still post articles though.) The total of posts is 39 at the moment, posting 11 times till 31.03.10 won’t be that big of a problem I suppose.

Phew! All in all, january was great. Really productive and inspiring. 2010 is gonna be a great year!