Christmas Greetings from Timmy

Dear Friends and Colleagues, 

I wish you a happy holiday and hope that you will always be in a great shape.

2013 has been a great year for me. And at the end of this year, I would like to share you some updates about me.

One of the most exciting updates is that I finally have some new friends. Ha! As you all know that I had some trouble finding friends in here last year. Thanks to the new organization that I am involved in this year, the Rawls College of Business Ambassador – and I am also just elected to be a Treasurer there. In the organization, I learned a lot about professional connections by having dinners and luncheons with donors and alumni; also give building tours to guests and prospective students. 

At the end of my third semester, I am so blessed with another 4.0 GPA. It has been three 4.0(s) and I will keep my tenacity for another 4.0 in the following semester. During the past fall semester, I also had a new job as a student assistant at the University Writing Center. I helped the Writing Center by managing the appointments, making phone calls, and greeting guests. I am working with great people and I love my job so much.

This semester, I have been living in an apartment with two other Indonesians. I am so excited because I have finally been able to eat rice every day and to make some Indonesian food such as soto, rawon, and rendang. I also made some homemade alfredo sauce, chicken katsu, and bake some brownies and cupcakes. My post-dormitory experience has been awesome. 

In terms of my education, currently I am a Finance major but I am thinking about adding a second major, it could be Accounting or Economics. Both second majors are interesting to me since I enjoyed my first accounting class and I always love economics. By next semester I will try to take one extra class every semester and I will make my decision from there.

Again, 2013 has been great to me; highlighted by some super exciting moments such as meeting with Ibu Sri Mulyani on April, having an internship at P.T. H.M Sampoerna over the summer, and being elected as Treasurer for the Business Ambassador. I hope you also had a great year, and I would love to hear back from you. 

I am honored to cross my paths with you, I am sure I would not be in the same journey if we had not crossed our paths.

I wish you a great holiday season, and please stay in touch.

Sincere regards,

Christian Timothy Wijaya

Finance

Rawls Business Ambassador

christian.t.wijaya@ttu.edu

The Law of Attraction

         Luke 11:9-10, “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” The verse is very simple, yet I have had so many magical experiences since I hold onto this verse about 5 years ago. I did not find the verse is very special up until I read a book titled “The Secret”. Basically, the book uses the verse in one of the chapters to explain the law of attraction, “Everything happened in your life is attracted by your thought. Good thoughts and good feeling will attract good things to happen and vice versa.”

            Many people do not agree with this value, because they think that it is impossible just to attract stuffs with thought. They said that people who believe in this value are over optimistic and not realistic. These people who disagree with this value mostly think that thought will literally attract something happen. They will say that if this value is real, there will be no poor people and everyone will be rich and successful. The problem with these non-believers is that they oversimplified the law of attraction. It is true that good thought will attract good things; however just thinking will not make everything happen.

             Since I read the book, I started to control my thought and my emotion to be positive most of times. It was not easy on the beginning, and it does not get easier because there are at least 600,000 thoughts pass through our minds every single day. One part of the book mentions that a person should believe that they can achieve what they want to achieve. I always want to travel overseas, however there were not many opportunities to travel for free. Up until a day when a foundation came to my school and mentioned that they would select one boy and one girl from my school to have a month study abroad in New Zealand.

            I realized that the opportunities might be the only opportunity for me to go overseas. I applied, and I had done my best in the selection process. I came to the final interview and everything seemed went very well for me. Yet, I was not selected. I was confused at that time; I feel like I had done my best and attracted the trip strong enough by imagining myself in New Zealand every day. Then I thought maybe I had to do better than just imagining it. I felt down for a couple of days, yet I know that if I kept attracting the overseas travel, there would be another chance. As a part of my redemption, I made a visa even though there was no opportunity for me, and I kept telling my close friends that I would go overseas before I turned 17. The New Zealand process was on April, about seven months before my 17^th birthday. It might sounds crazy, but the next thing happened I was on my flight to UK on September the same year I was selected by British Council to represent my country for UK school games, British Council only selected one boy and one girl from all around Indonesia. Even up until this point, I could not believe that my first trip was actually happened. I was not selected when I competed with my school friends, yet when I competed with all people in Indonesia, I made it. 

In the U.K with some other volunteers

            My first overseas trip to UK before my 17^th birthday made me believe that the law of attraction does actually work, and it made me keep myself positive. On August the year after, I was selected to be the only representative from Indonesia to an International Camp in Japan. And the year after Japan trip, I found myself in Lubbock, studying Finance at Texas Tech University. Then I started to recall that I have been attracting about studying overseas for my undergraduate degree since I was seven years old. My dad reminded me during our Skype call sometimes ago that I have been telling everyone that I want to go overseas for my university since I was seven. And my dad always kept telling me that as long as I keep working hard and pray hard, someday my dreams would become realities. 

My winning group in Japan - Group R!

             The things that happened to me did not always the same with the thought that I have. I realize that I cannot actually attract specific things happened in my life. When I wanted the New Zealand trip, it did not happen to me. During my application to college, I wanted to go to Cornell, but it also did not happen to me. Even after I graduated from middle school, I did not want to go to my high school. These three are very small examples compared to what have happened in my life, I could not specifically request things to happen. However, I always end up to stuffs that I needed instead of what I wanted. If I did not go to my high school, I might not end up studying in the U.S. If I was selected to go to New Zealand, I might not go to U.K. There is no rocket science about why and how these things happened. And every time, all things always work together for my good.

            I realized that my experiences made me have a counter argument for the non-believer. The idea of law of attraction is not just attracts thoughts and it will happen to our life. The idea of the law of attraction is that positive thoughts will keep us stand even though the circumstances let us down. Many people say that it is not genius person will be successful, but those who never give up no matter how hard is the condition. The other reason why law of attraction works is because positive thoughts lead to positive attitude that makes people around me have faith in me that lead to myself believing that I can be the person I want to be in the future. Started from my best friends in high school who supported me when I told them about me going overseas before my 17^th birthday, up until my friends and professors today that support me when I told them about my dream to be the Indonesian Finance Minister in the future.

            Positive thought does not directly attract good things happen to our life, but it indirectly leads us to reach our dreams by giving us optimism to face tough condition. It also gives us belief by having positive attitudes that lead us to people that support our dream. As a bonus, our positive thoughts will give us energy and inspiration to people around us. I might not live long enough to face hard condition in life; but in my young age I know that this value will keep me going on through life whatever happened in the future. 

“if you tell yourself you feel fine, you will.” -Jodi Picoult