"江山易改，本性難移"

Having had a rebellious childhood and had upset many of those who I loved and loves me, it makes me think on the amount of times I've been referred to as 江山易改，本性難移.

A proverb to mean it's easy to change the landscape but to change one's personality is difficult.

It's difficult, but not impossible; after all, we shouldn't want to change completely... we must always aim to be ourselves. What we need, is to shape our personalities. It'd be a waste to completely demolish the landscape and rebuild it; how should one rebuild it, what's the influences, where do we start? It's likely you'll end up replicating from others in parts.

A better solution perhaps is to shape each mountain, the lakes and forests until it's better improved. That way we never lose the unique essence of the original, and yet any 'bad' aspects are altered.

Likewise with personality, we should take influences and learn from others, but never lose ourselves in the transition so that we replicate another's personality and end up living as someone else.

As I've gotten older I realise all the wrongs I've done; all of which are undoable. But we shouldn't dwell in the past, we must take the past and use it to shape our future. 

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Through living in a foreign country, it has forced me to grow up quicker than I really should have, in turn that caused a lot of problems in my childhood and teens. Now, I think I'm catching up with my true age or rather, going back to my true age and even younger. I realise that we really must appreciate everything we have, we get and we need to do all we can to anticipate and make the most of it all.

Music studies really had tamed me; through discovering my passion and love for music I realised that I could change everything about myself in order to continue with it, even to the extreme point that I would get rather ill and sick from trying to overcome something that wasn't meant for me due to manipulation of others. I was naive enough to think it was because I wasn't good enough and I would punish myself for it. After, I realised that it doesn't matter, because I gave it my all, and most importantly I learnt from it more than just music, but about life and myself.

Consequently, coming out from music studies I realised that most of my bad habits have been broken, bit by bit, over time. Habits are hard to break, but it's achievable. Determination, influence and encouragement is what it takes.

The first step to improving yourself, is to be honest with yourself and admit what is bad. Then strive to change and improve it. Dishonesty, denial and stubbornness will prevent you from being the YOU you want to be.

If you want others to love you, you need to love yourself first - learn to really take care, respect and appreciate yourself. If you don't know what you want, like or dislike, how would others know?

Don't stop improving (*^-^*)