I am not a fan of superhero movies; sorry, no, not Superman, Spiderman, or whatever; I am just not into those fictional characters made up to represent the alter ego.
I am not against them either, as psychologically, they are representations of the inner wants of ourselves and that imaginary world we yearn to be in, empowered with the capabilities that we desired and having that ability to do things we dreamt of accomplishing in the real world.
Apart from that, I am just not that into the notions of the movies nor would I scream helplessly at these comic characters idolized by many around the world.

That being said, as mentioned, from the psychological point of view, I can see the reasoning behind the conception of such characters as they are made to represent that wonderful imaginary world where everything becomes possible.

The key word here is Possibility.

Everything becomes naturally achievable; nothing is too hard - we can see endless opportunities and the positive ways we can accomplish those things we see and want in life. In the imaginary world.
It is something many can relate to; and who can blame us?

In reality, life is often encumbered with the hordes of daily struggles and difficulties where sometimes it just makes us feel like pulling our hair out. There are the times when we feel helpless, against our will, when there is simply no light to where the solution might be.
It is not a very encouraging situation for one to envision, and many may choose to simply ignore or run away from it; deluded with their own clouds of denial.
Therefore, it is in those times where we conjure images of what-ifs, and a world where we make the rules and we can be seen as the solver of problems.
It should be practiced with caution though, as excessive imagination and desire of and for power could lead to being authoritative and as some say, 'power-crazed' individuals.

The imaginary world of possibilities pictured and dreamt by most of us are the driving factors to those behind the creative world of art, literature and media where characters are then created to represent that inner alter ego many longed to have in themselves. From being able to fly, to climbing flawlessly (and borderlessly), or having that inhuman super strength to be able to lift anything out of the way, there are just so many powers these creative folks injected into their made-up characters.
From imaginary to sci-fi and to the fantasy world, these are just to fulfill that inner satisfaction in most of us ordinary humans.

Of course we have all dreamt of having that superpower;  and I am sure some of you have even put on your towel (substituting as a cape) and stood at the edge of the table trying to fly like Superman, or some may even practise kicking in the air, hoping to be able to belt out magically swift kicks of a ninja and there are even those who dwell in the art of magic, hoping to be able to cast spells and making things happen to their way (this is definitely not encouraged, at all).
Therefore, it goes without question that everyone has definitely imagined of being a superhero, or even dreamt of possessing a superpower which belonged to ourselves.

We may have dreamt of being able to fly, or elevate oneself, or even to command objects to fly to our side with a lift of a finger, or to be able to freeze time (like Piper Halliwell in Charmed), or to be invisible to people anytime, among many others; which is probably out of this world but yet we like to think of them as possible just to soothe that ego and deeply kept desire of a superpower.
How about we move beyond the impossible (or seemed impossible) and return to our realistic world?

Imagine ourselves now, in our world, and you have a superpower, what would THAT be?
I know, yeah right, if we are back in reality, what superpower could we possibly have?
Like hello, back to reality and start being realistic.

Yes, it IS Possible. We can still have a superpower that we can choose that may seem really ordinary in our daily lives but practise it with your own strength and mind power to make it truly a superpower.
I have always believed that each and every one of us is blessed with a gift; and we all have our own unique individual talent that is nestled deep within us. Some of us may know, and some of us have yet to discover it; or probably in denial due to various reasons. We have it; there is at least one thing which we are all good at and we need to look deep within our souls, to find that Gift.
For instance, there are some who are just so good at helping others, that they are just gifted with the savior spirit. It is just natural in them, reaching out without a word of complaint; not because they are born saintly, but simply because they want to, and they enjoy doing so.
There are also some who are born to teach, and they are just amazingly good in guiding people and teaching anyone in almost anything.
How about those who are born to inspire, to lead, to make everything orderly, to sell, to influence, and many more?
See the light now?

It does not need to be super, over the top capability, but just something as simple as an everyday thing that we tend to overlook most of the time.
Are you good at organizing events and daily schedules? That could be your gift.
Are you good at talking to people and just making them feel at ease to share information with you? That could be your gift.
Are you good at just simply listening to problems and own that strong shoulder for another to lean on, without having to say a single word? That could be your gift.
Are you good at making a good cup of coffee, where no one else could compete and everyone loved to have you make their coffee because you are just so good? That could be your gift.
Are you good at coaxing people, calming hysterical ones and just soothing everyone in a messy situation? That could be your gift.

So you see, there must be one thing that you are just good at.
It does not need to be a task, or something major (what defines major anyway), but it is just simply something you are good at, you enjoy and that people simply know you for.
Now, once you have found your gift, try imagining it as a superpower.

It can be known as a superpower if we were to take charge of it and make use of the gift, or that something we enjoy to make that difference to the world and in ours.
It could be something as simple as a smile, and we just need to smile to make everyone around us happy every single day, or it could be a gesture of courtesy, by waving your hand and practicing thank-yous and pleases everyone you go to influence the society and make that difference - it is just as simple as that.

A Superpower depends on our very own perception, and the things that we could really do for ourselves and those around us. We could be our very own superheroes, in flesh and blood, instead of donning on some ridiculous outfits and just be ourselves; we can still make that difference.
We already have that power, we just need to concentrate and make it into a superpower; super in its context of being able to plant that difference in the world and to all around us.
The power is in our very own hands, and we choose what to do with that power.

Like many others, I have also often envisioned myself having that miraculous superpower and at one point, I even wondered if I could blink my eye and get things done (like Sabrina the Teenage Witch or Samantha in Bewitched), and even freeze things (like Piper Halliwell in Charmed).
It is normal to long for superpowers that do not belong to us, or that we wished existed, as I have mentioned above.
However, I now want to use what I really have, what I have been given or is already in me, to channel it into a superpower.

If I am a Superhero in my day, I think I would say my Superpower would definitely be Enthusiasm/Positive Thinking.
I love to see the bright side of things (though I do slip to the dark side sometimes, I am still human); but I love to see the possibilities that lie in everything I do, or come across. I like to project things as good; believing in the good that still exists in today's chaotic and often delusional world.
I do not believe in bringing negative energy around; and I always encourage people around me to believe that miracles can indeed happen.
I am not delusional; I am realistic, but I just learn that being positive or optimistic is not as easy as it sounds, having fall prey myself several times to the negative side too.
I do not like to hear of negative results, or the part where something cannot be done before the end of the task, and would rather focus on the remaining time to achieve that.
It is just my personal perception; which I channel to my own life and those I deal with everyday, even at work.

I like to cheer people up; reminding them of the many happy wonders around us which go unnoticed amidst our hectic lifestyles. I love sharing uplifting quotations or words of wisdom, and I enjoy making people laugh over goofy jokes.
Even in my world of blogging and writing, as can be seen in my posts, I like to portray and highlight the positive side of everything rather than focusing on the downside.
It is a way of thinking which slowly become that way of life.
The road is never always smooth; and there are times when I stumble upon the rocks and barriers on my own journey. I have encountered many negative folks; misers, complainants; well, just plain pessimists who are just the total opposite. They seem determined to make the worst out of everything; be it a small post or even about the people around them.
I have met bashers of my posts; people who just post hate comments on some of the reviews, simply for the sake of it (only they know their own reasons).
However, are they truly people we drive or run away from?
It really depends, or why not, share that positive energy with them and lighten that effect. It will not take shape immediately, but at least we have tried and someday, hopefully they will see the light.

We are living in a world where bad news are surpassing the good news; as we open up our daily newspapers and tuning into those television/radio news where awful and unimaginable destruction is happening everywhere. It sets the world to be such a scary place to live in, and everyone starts to live in fear and uncertainties; surrounded by doubts and insecure about their very own surroundings.
We do not need more of these negativity to live in our very souls, and we need to learn to smile a little more, laugh a little more and just see the world simply the way it would appear under a lightbulb.

We may not be able to change the past; but we can affect the present, which will lead to an improved future. We could look at things positively; learn to take things happily as they go by and make that choice of happiness everywhere we go.
Bad experience at a restaurant? Okay, at least I have tried and I have seen how it is like; maybe they might be having a bad day?
We cannot judge everyone, since we do have our bad days too.
Having a bad day at work where everything just went wrong, no matter what we do?
I must be overloaded and I am not seeing things well, this may not be my day. I will just have to take it slower, and be more careful.

We are not able to predict the future, and we definitely cannot see what is coming, but we can decide on our responses and our own behavior towards an incident/event.
We can control our own feelings, we can make ourselves happy, we can just choose to smile and laugh, or dance that little silly dance when no one is watching.

I love to make people around me laugh; or even smile, it just makes me laugh and giggle in fits too as we share the laughter and sometimes, if you caught me laughing insanely at no one or nothing in particular, with a phone in my hand, oh, that's just me in my normal days, and no, I do not need a psychiatrist or medical attention.

Am I a Superhero?
Well, I am working on spreading that enthusiasm and positive energy around, and it is a power that I can live with at the moment, making myself happy in the process.
If I had made you laugh, then I have probably done a little to make my point.
If I had made you think about your very own qualities, then I am glad that my writing did have that tiny effect in you.

We are all superheroes in our own way, and we have our superpowers.


So what is yours?





P.S: Don't Forget to SMILE and see that Today is indeed a Beautiful Day!


Yours always,
The annoyingly over-Enthusiastic Superhero-ine (with a capital E in Enthusiasm)

What Car Should You Drive?

The little boy ran around the living hall, chuckling to himself all the way as he seems to have lost himself in his own imaginary little world. His mother called out to him, telling him to stop and sit down beside her as they are in someone else's home and he should behave himself. 
He gave his mother a cheeky little smile, and continued running. 
His mother then got up from the sofa, excused herself and put her hands on her hips to signal to her son that she is in a serious mode.
The little boy then stopped running, and stood at the other end of the hall; in a seemingly staring match with his mother. There was a glint in his eye, and as his mother took the first step, he ran in the opposite direction and tried to hide behind the couch. Before his mother could call out to him, he slipped behind the couch and fell, knocking his head softly against the side of the couch but he landed on his knees. He did what a three year-old would do, and started crying.
His mother rushed to his aid, and comforted him, while softly telling him that he should have been more careful and at the same time, rubbing his knee caps as he wails loudly.
His mother then looked at him, then tickled him, and he started laughing, forgetting all about the pain earlier and then he couldn't stop laughing as he wiggled to get out of his mother's arms.
In an instant, he was on his feet again and he started running around the living hall and now, extending his venture to behind the couch; that very spot he fell down as I looked with much amusement.

This must be such a common scene we have seen many times, and perhaps went through that very same scenario when we were at that age though we might not remember it anymore.
The boy and his mother was our visiting relatives who came to our house a while ago, and I remembered smiling at the little boy's antics and also his unceasing energy levels as he ran around the whole house countless times. He fell down a couple of times, as his bare feet frictions with the smooth marble floor but he got up, chuckled a little and then got up again, continuing with his run as though nothing happened. The major fall was in the scene above where he almost knocked his own teeth out, but thankfully, he just bruised his knees and some parts of his arms and legs and also his forehead. That was when he actually cried out, wailing loudly, but then in less than a minute, he stopped and laughed.

I was amazed that he could heal so quickly, as I watched him fell, and it was not exactly a minor fall for a kid his age but just a tickle and he could forget the incident which caused him pain, and the best part was, as he got up on his feet to run again, he even boldly went around the couch which was the main culprit for his mishap and ran around that area.

We were all like that at that age, and we definitely have all been through the stage of childhood where we wailed and moaned when things do not go our way; something which we have grown accustomed to and were slowly growing out of since the day we were born. We can get away with crying when we were just a baby, and then when we do it 2-3 years later, we realized, "Hey, I am not getting it" and Mummy and Daddy would even give us a stern look in return. We learnt from that and then we moved on to other ways to get what we want. We start to learn to ask politely, and we learn that no means there is no chance of getting our desire.

We went through our own learning process, along with tips and teachings from our parents; but the experiences taught us more about what works and what doesn't in life. A hot kettle burns our hands, a puddle of water on the floor can cause one to slip, fall and hurt ourselves, too much chili sauce can make the food too hot for consumption, and prickly thorns do prick (ouch!), and the list goes on. We have gone through these experiences by our very own rounds of tests and trials as we learnt our lessons; sometimes by defying the advices given by the elders.
The key is, we Learn from each and every little thing that happened to us since the day we were born.
Our tests and trials have led us through the early tastes of successes and failures; and the spirit to strive on even when we fail. It is as simple as ABC, and a child can tell you easily so.

Then why is it easy for us to accept our failures at a young age, and learn to move on, but it seems like a mission impossible as we grow older? Is it because we stopped learning, or we are just in denial? There are a lot of things which could contribute to this; from our upbringing to our living environment, past experiences, achievements, pride, peer pressure and social expectations, just to name a few which bring us to our very own mental state we are in today. It is interesting still, but it is also baffling at the same time that we tend to forget what we used to learn when we were children.

We fall onto the floor, probably bruising or injuring ourselves; but after the tears dried up and a few words of reprimand from our parents, we get up and leave the incident behind us. However, as adults, we fall along the way, but then it becomes more and more difficult to get up each time and sometimes, some of us will just opt to give up and remain in that fallen position for some time, or even choose to be in that position. There is no longer any spirit to strive or to even attempt to get up. It could be a bad experience; or a really traumatizing episode, which can be nothing compared to a child's really bad fall and is not subject to anyone's judgment in any way. However, turn the situation around and be like child, if you were to have a really bad fall which hurts, so very badly; with serious bleeding and stitches or even hospitalization, what happens next?
The child would definitely cry, develop a phobia but then in the company of friends and families, they would then hope to recover and remember that incident. It was a lesson learnt, but when they heal, they would get on with their lives.

It is a precious lesson in life; and it is something which I see that is so simple in a child's mind.
A child perceive a complex situation as simple, but as adults we choose to perceive a simple situation as complex and it is just so perplexing. The reason is simple; we have developed boundaries along the way while a child is still learning the ropes in their early stages of life.
I remembered a famous speaker, whom I once attended his training; shared this analogy and experiment which he tried with us.

He gave us a piece of white paper, and then told us to focus on the slides he was about to present on the projector. The slide would go on for a minute or so, and after it is shut off, we have to draw the objects we saw on the slide. There were only two slides; and the first was a bunch of mixed geometric objects which were scattered around the entire slide. The second showed three rows of geometric objects, placed in a neat and organized manner according to the types.
Needless to say, everyone did better with the second slide; while the former ended with only a few objects caught on paper. The surprising thing is that the speaker revealed to us; the children below 5 years of age, did much better with the first slide.

The reason is; children think freely and there are no boundaries at a young age. These boundaries are slowly introduced into our mind as we grow older; and these boundaries refer to the rules, the rights and the wrongs, the morals, and all the lessons. Young children never cared about the rules; all they loved was to imagine all the wonders and also conjuring images of all sorts of possibilities. It is a world where fantasy and magic works for them. There are just simply endless possibilities to what could possibly happen in their world. As adults, we start learning the ropes, and the result? We start to create invisible walls; and limitations to the things which can be done. It is not wrong either, but sometimes, are we simply creating too much excuses for things which cannot be done or just being mere pessimists?

Two children were playing with each other; when suddenly one of them snatched the toy away from the other which result in the owner of the toy to cry and wail. The parents reprimanded the first child who took the toy, and he bowed his head in shame, but still refused to return the toy; causing the second child to cry even louder. The parents exercised a more harsh tone, threatening to punish the boy, and the first boy shed light tears; reluctantly returning the toy to the second girl, who took the toy swiftly and is instantly subdued. The first boy started crying softly, and turned his back on the girl, refusing to speak to her. The second girl turned her back too, ignoring the boy whom she know was wrong. The parents told the boy to apologize to her, and he refused at first. When the parents pacified him again, he then turned and said, "I am sorry I took your toy". The little girl, then turned, and with a big smile, "It's okay, let's share and play together, and not fight, okay?" 
They then shake hands, and burst into laughter, and continued playing with each other like nothing ever happened before.

Children can be such forgiving creatures; they easily forget and forgive each other.
While the first scenario was about forgetting the bad experiences, this second scenario depicts the nature of children in forgiving and letting go of wrong doings. They learn to admit their mistakes, and to apologize sincerely, and to learn to accept apologies, forgive the mistakes and then be friends again. It is again, just another simple thing to the children. They will never keep their resentment for long, and will instead choose to bury the hatchet for things to move on, so that they can enjoy playing together. They want their playmate, and they love the fun times; so they choose to just ignore the bad times.
If you have watched children play before, you definitely know that the above scenario of wailing and fighting is a recurring cycle and there is no stop to it, but they always make it up to each other.
So, why is it any different when we grow up and become adults?
Do we forgive, forget and move on easily?
Do we accept the fact that we make mistakes, own up to it and make it up for our faults?
Do we accept our failures, and learn the lessons from our failures and then choose to get up and rebuild ourselves, moving away from the past and looking forward to the future?
Do we remember all these lessons we learnt as a child?

We do not; instead we choose to dwell on our failures, our mistakes, others' mistakes, our past and things we cannot change.
We do not look forward to new, but often focus on things that had happened and brood over the history.
We hold grudges; no longer forgiving others, even to the extent of lifetime resentment despite going to churches and temples and saying our prayers every week which often preach on the importance of forgiveness.
We are no longer looking at the wide possibilities that are open out there in the world, but we constantly stay fixated on the black dot of impossibility and think of all the barriers which we would face to achieve something.
We make mountains out of mole hills, and we look at everything in a more complicated manner.

Perhaps it is good to recall the lessons we learnt from our childhood; to live, laugh and cry simply and then move on to look at the future with hope and anticipation.
Like a child, it is a lot easier to choose happiness over everything else.
Choose to be happy, choose to forgive, choose to forget, choose to accept each other, choose to just be simple, because it is just simply easier to be happy.

We deserve to be happy, and Life will definitely look a lot more hopeful and beautiful, from the eyes of a child.
Sometimes it is good to revive that little kid in us; and to look at things in a simple way, just like a child.

Who says we can't enjoy simple pleasures like ice cream, lollipops or just a ride on a carousel?



The choice is ours....