The Journey Within

It’s strange that I don’t feel the urge to set new year resolutions now when a lot of my friends are telling me their new year’s resolution. Some are busy with their performance appraisals and setting objectives for the new year. Some are buying new books to read or reading a book that has been sitting on the coffee table for the past year. They are looking for inspirations on what they should be focusing on next year. More people are in a reflective mood at this time of the year. Maybe it’s because of  the holidays. Maybe there’s just nothing to do after a sumptous christmas dinner.

It is good that we take stock of what has happened, and make a note of what we want to happen in the coming year. After all, I’m spending a lot of time dedicating this blog to such reflections! I have done new year resolutions before. I used to be in this mode at the end of the calendar year. It seems like we are all governed by the same movements of the sun and the moon. We are all connected by time.

What I find different this time for me is that I don’t follow the normal calendar any longer. I don’t view January as the start of a new year that I should have new year’s resolution. My reflective space seems to have enlarged to transcend the passage of time. I’m reflective most of the time now. I think it works. I think reflection is key to working smart.

So while others are setting new year resolutions, I seem to be seeing my resolutions everyday, and tweaking my resolutions as I learn more about myself. It’s a 2 way interaction, and it makes the resolution more alive rather than it being a manifesto pinned to the cork board on January 1st, every year.

I would urge you while you set your resolutions, you put a monitoring plan in place as well. Say a weekly review. To see what have you done that week that has brought you one step closer to achieving your resolutions. Do you need to change your actions? Do you need to amend your resolutions? Monitor yourself closely, and your resolutions will always be kept fresh and alive.

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This is a story.

There was once a ball of light. It came into this world with a glow so bright that everyone can’t help but welcome it with cuddles, blankets and milk.

Although the ball of light is curious by these gestures, it doesn’t question their love and welcomes them with glowing pride.

Soon, as the ball of light got used to the milk and cookies, it began to ask for more. It wants muffins and cheesecake. It wants them to be served on a golden tray. It wants to be carried in a golden chariot to meet them.

After a while, the people who welcomed the ball of light finds it more and more difficult to meet the demands of this ball. So the ball of light rolled around. It rolled outside the comfort of milks and cookies only to be treated to trash cans and banana skins.

Determined to earn its own golden trays and golden chariots, it hurled itself towards the dusty world.

Finally, it got its golden chariot. But the chariot no longer carries a ball of light. As it gathers more dust, the ball of light started to dim. Dusts started settling on to the ball of light, creating layers upon layers of crust. After a while, the ball of light started to get sluggish. The crust formed upon itself is slowing the ball down. It could no longer roll as it use to. The light no longer shines as it use to.

The ball of light doesn’t know why has it come down to this stage. As it look upon its reflection in the mirror, it sees a small ray of light shining through the cracks. The ray of light looks strangely familiar. As the ball of light ventures deeper into the source of this light, it came to the conclusion that it emanated from itself!

It finally realises that it has lost its own light in blind pursuit of other lights. Gold, after all, only reflects light from other sources. The ball of light knows what to do now. It knows it has to find its own light before its too late.

p/s: Inspired by stories from Karate Thoughts Blog, for example, a story of a Karate Sensei traveling in a time machine.

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I dreamt I killed someone, and it’s not the first dream I had on this murder. As vivid as the dream is, I still couldn’t quite see who the victim was, until recently. It’s a realisation rather than being there again to witness the murder. The victim – was me.

Death has been a strong theme for me this week – the death of my 100 year old grandmother, the death of me, even the book I’m reading features death quite prominently (The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown). I spent almost a week going through the proceedings of my grandmother’s death, conducted very much like the business of death I wrote earlier. However, this time, I feel different.

I am not close to my grandmother, but her strength to live past the century mark gives great courage to all the living people around her. I think that’s what the proceedings are all about, it’s for the living to accept her death, but more importantly, it’s for the living to celebrate life! To remind us that death is inevitable, but it takes great will to live a long and full life.

I believe my dream is to strengthen this message – the will to live a strong and full life. Sometimes you must let go the life you had planned in order to make room for the life ahead of you. I believe that was why I killed myself. I killed my past me to release the future me.

My dream on death was a vivid dream, filled with remorse, guilt, the feeling that I can’t let go and clinging grudgingly to the past life. To experience death in my dream might be the kindest death experience to anyone, if you need to realise the importance of living fully through death. I hope you don’t have to wait till the real thing to realise the importance of living fully.

Some books on the wisdom of death and how to make full use of the present, the now.

• Tuesdays with Morrie
• The Last Lecture
• The Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality
• The Now Habit
• The Power of Now

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A bout of sickness, a torrential rain of work, the lack of tai chi practice, migrating to a Mac, playing too much word challenge on facebook… and probably there are more excuses, but there’s been a lot going on in my mind, which explains the dry writing season. I’ve even stopped writing in my journal till a few days ago. It’s been one uneasy silence. Silence in words, but in my head, the silence is deafening.

Today, I treated my silence with words from a page.

I walked into a book shop, and picked up a book called “This is water” by David Foster Wallace. I finished it within the 20 minutes I was there. It’s not so lengthy like a standard book. You can even find the whole text online (if you google hard enough). I read it quickly because I felt the message. It seems to be talking to me there and then, when I needed it.

And then another string of words jumped at me. It’s one of those motivational wallpapers (those that are literally on a wall, rather than those that fills your computer screen). And , surprise surprise, it’s on water again. It’s about a lecturer meeting a group of his ex-students who’s complaining about the stresses in life. He then asked them to pick up a cup of water from a table. Everyone did, only to find out that they picked the best looking cups. The lecturer’s message?

If all you want is water, why go for the pretty cups?

Maybe these water messages will drown out the drought. And I thought of these while having my dinner by the pool. Must be a sign…

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I’ve read about working for free in Rich Dad Poor Dad. Rich Dad would ask his son and Robert to work for free, so that they don’t ever work for a monthly pay.

I’ve recently just understood the meaning of working for free. In fact, I’ve been working for free for all these time, when I’m training for my Tai Ji.

Somehow, it’s the things that we do for free that makes life seems more meaningful, until what you do for free is being exchanged for something else, like fame and fortune. And then it becomes complicated, like training for a medal, or training for glory, or training for money, or even training to look good. It’s difficult to ask the mind to concentrate on one thing, and then at the same time focus on attaining something else. See, on the one hand, you’re training to learn the art. On the other, you’re training to attain some physical reward or recognition.

I don’t know whether I’ll ever need the recognition, but the training towards attaining recognition might be counter-productive to learning. The more you train, the less you learn.

Maybe working for free does have its merits. Get paid doing something else. I guess that’s what the day job is all about.

So, I’m good in numbers, spreadsheets, and maybe some writing. Anything I can help you with for free?

Hopefully, if I really add value, the money will come. I guess that’s what Rich Dad’s advice really is. Don’t work for the next pay check. Work to really add value to other people’s life. Money, fame, glory will then follow. So the theory goes…

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We’ve heard of outsourcing. Companies are doing it. Employees are afraid of it. China (among others) is welcoming it. As a result, outsourcing has different meanings to different people. To me, outsourcing actually holds a deeper root than what companies are currently doing. It has become a convenient tool for us to relinquish our responsibility and pass it on to others.

I guess outsourcing is made popular because it lowers cost, improves efficiency and … (you can fill in the blank with all the business buzz words you can think of!). This is from the company’s point of view. However, a company is an invisible entity made up of humans (yes, us!!). The root of outsourcing can actually be traced back to us.

We have outsourced our health to doctors, gym instructors, yoga teachers, dieticians, health insurance etc. We have outsourced our work to our wives, our children, our colleagues, the printer, the computer system etc. We have outsourced things that we don’t like to people who are willing to do them for a fee e.g. cleaners to deal with the cleanliness, human resources (HR) to deal with the “staff issues”, accountants to deal with our payroll and our tax payments, teachers to deal with the education of our children etc.

This spirit of outsourcing has given rise to the blame culture, where the person you have outsourced to (the contractor) is expected to take full responsibility. The parent will blame the teacher for the low grades of her son. The employee will blame the computer for his inefficiency. The couch potato will blame the TV that he became a couch potato. The manager will blame her staff because a particular work was not delivered on time / with quality.

As any companies can point out, outsourcing carries with it a “reputation risk”, i.e. if the quality of the outsourced piece of work failed to meet the customer’s expectations, the company will suffer, and not the contractor. No matter how much compensation there is – the contractor will never take full responsibility.

Similarly, if we outsource our health to others, any failure on their part will only mean we suffer, and not them. No matter how much they can compensate us, they can’t compensate us our limbs, our loss organs, our very lives. Joining a gym doesn’t make you healthy. Attending regular classes of yoga doesn’t mean you know yoga. Subscribing to a particular diet does not mean you will lose those weight. We still have to be responsible for our own being.

Just like outsourcing the cleaning job to others, it doesn’t give us the right to make a mess. Outsourcing the difficult “staff issues” to HR doesn’t mean we don’t have to deal with the particular colleague – you are still working with him on a daily basis, not the HR. Although we outsource the payroll to accountants, we however check this more dilligently than any other activities! Can we apply this dilligence to others?

Can we apply this dilligence to our health, our wealth, our work, our lives?

It’s sad to see we take outsourcing so literally. We outsource our depression to pills, psychiatrist, alcohol etc. We outsource our frustration to others who are weaker than us, to others who has less power/position, to the computer, to the wife, to the children, to the TV, through sports etc. We outsource our weaknesses to others through power, position, money, or any kind of leverage eg bribes, connections, incentives etc.

I’m not saying that outsourcing is bad. In fact, outsourcing has remained because it has been effective. Outsourcing is here to stay. But in the midst of all the outsourcing that you’re doing, try to remember:

• you can never outsource yourself

Please remember to put yourself back into any outsourcing agreements. The teacher can’t make you learn. Only you can learn it for yourself. The teacher can only be partially blamed. The pills can make you better, but it can’t cure the roots. Only you can cure yourself from within. Money, position, power – it can only get you so far, but if it comes from within yourself, others will appreciate you for it, and you will know that you have added value.

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I was so looking forward to the book fair organised by the library to sell off their old books. I guess my efforts to wake up early pales in comparison to the people that have already formed what seemed to be the endless legs of a caterpillar. And that was before it opened! To be fair, all books were selling at $2 per book, hence the crowd.

I tried to weave into the crowd, but I guess the tapestry that is human just proved to be too stubborn. Instead of fighting, I went to sections where there were less people. This was where I came across a book, the only book that I bought in the fair. With a title like Writing as a Healing Art, it just hooked me right from the start.

I haven’t finish reading it yet, but it did prompt me to revisit why I started this blog in the first place. When I first started out, it was meant to be a reminder. To remind me of the things that are important in life, to make me more aware of the things that are important in life. It slowly evolved into an outlet for my mind, a place to park my thoughts. Sometimes, it’s also a place for discussion with others. Sometimes, it’s just pure fun.

With the ever changing identity of the blog, why do I keep writing? Why do YOU keep writing? Is there a reason for the constant chatter in the blogosphere that requires your fingers’ attention to tap out what you’re thinking on the keyboard? To let others have a piece of your mind? Or could it be to find peace of mind?

Writing can heal. This is what the book suggests. Writing connects yourself with your mind. It allows you to express what you didn’t know about yourself, if you let it. The braver you are, the more you’ll find out about yourself, the more you can heal yourself.

I think this is what I’ve been trying to do, unconsciously. I’ve been using the blog to heal myself, by allowing my thoughts to run freely, more freely than it can in the brain. I guess when your thoughts are inside, they are just caged up and rattle randomly inside. Sometimes, some part of it gets let out but then there’s nothing coherent about the escapees. Through writing, you commit yourself to let it out and stay out. To stand up to scrutiny in the outside world. Not anyone’s scrutiny, but your own scrutiny. We are a prison of our own thoughts, unless we are willing to release the prisoners, they will just be serving a life-long sentence with no chance to ever get a pardon. Now that just sounds like a very cruel thing to do to yourself!

So if you’ve ever wanted to start your blog, please do so. If you don’t like the “publicity”, just start your own personal journal in a diary, like the good old days. Just remember to write. Allow yourself at least the chance to know yourself better. Who knows, when trying to know yourself better, you can then start healing yourself, and healing others in the process!

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Another bout of sickness. It’s just a short trip to Malaysia but the whole trip was spent indoors because I didn’t have much strength to go outdoors. With the body feeling weak, I just want to sleep all day, which gave me a headache that I can’t shake off, which makes me want to sleep again… aah… the all so familiar vicious cycle.

Today is a good day. I finally woke up feeling energised. Probably more energised than before I was ill. Whenever I feel this way, I think the illness was meant to wake up me up from some dreamy-lethargic state I am in. I don’t feel that way when I’m actually sick because then, you’re just trying to fight the sickness. But after that, I feel refreshed. So refreshed that I thought I can start to make some improvements to my normal days as suggested by Steve.

I started off with his first suggestion, to get an early start to the day. So I set my alarm to go off at 5.30am. I figured it has to be something drastic to actually make any dent to this goal. I woke up at 7.30am, officially got out of bed at 8am. I didn’t even hear my watch alarm. I think I need to change the alarm clock. ;P

Another one of his suggestion was to read habitually. So, I did the morning thing of washing my face and brushing my teeth, had some breakfast, and continued reading on the investment book. It’s taking me a while to read through this book not because it’s long, each chapter is on average 5 pages long! There’s only 20 odd chapters. But having read each chapter, I normally have to close the book to reflect what has been written, what I have understood, how has it applied to my own experience – basically to internalise what I have read. It’s a tiring process but the book just demands it. It relates so much more to the investment philosophy.

Next up, exercise! I’m going for a run. Lunch. Table tennis. and probably more reading.

All these activities immediately after I recover from being sick. It’s like someone pricked the lethargic balloon and all the gas escaped all at once. So, is this what sickness is suppose to do? To be a prick? (I just can’t resist to use that question in this context…

I believe there’s a 2-part answer to this question.

One, it’s suppose to remind me that I’m fallible. I make mistakes. I’m human. It’s part of the human condition. The body is trying to correct an error. Hence it shuts down some parts and make other parts work overtime.

Secondly, to adapt what Kennedy quoted, “ask not what the sickness can do for you, ask what you can do for the sickness”. It’s actually how we react to the sickness that’s important to any sickness. Let’s face it, everyone falls sick some time or another. The degree of illness varies. Some gets it more severe than others. It reminds us of the unfairness of life. If we surrender to this fact (that life is unfair), then, only then can we start to take positive action – be it something so common as sickness to the more challenging areas of life – career, wealth, family, relationship.

So, have you been sick lately? Try to be more aware of your feelings towards it. Maybe you can learn something amidst all the pain and suffering. Plus, it’s something to take the mind away from the pain and suffering!

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I would like to share with you a recent revelation that I hope it will help you too. In my various sports activities, I am always told to relax my wrist, relax my grip, relax my footing etc. The not so annoying comments come from table tennis and badminton where relaxing the wrist and relaxing the grip is normally the order of the day. In the world of Tai Ji, the word-count for “relax” is probably highest of any activities I know of! The teacher will say “relax your shoulders, relax your elbow, relax your arm, relax you neck, relax your back, relax your waist, relax your kua…” the list just goes on irritably.

Digressing into the book i’m still reading, The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett & George Soros, the first chapter is devoted to the power of mental habits. And the very first element needed to sustain a mental habit? – a belief that drives your behaviour. The book says that the Master Investor has a strong belief that he/she DESERVES to make money. Without that belief, or if other thoughts are limiting that belief, such as thinking that nobody deserves to make THAT much money, you will then not have the mental habit strong enough to actually make that much money. It’s sort of a self-prophesizing attitude.

This initially sounds a lot like having the “i can do it” attitude, sort of psyching yourself up so that you can achieve your greatest potential before the big match. I believe the mental habit method above goes deeper than that. Chanting the “i can do it” mantra can only give you results momentarily. This method actually asks you to change your mindset, to change your belief system.

Having a belief system helps us make decisions in our everyday life activities. If I want to be healthy, I know I need to have a balanced diet and a balanced exercise regime. This will then dictate what I buy in the supermarket, what I have for dinner, how much should I eat for each meal etc.

If you’re like me, I have a lot of self-limiting beliefs. I want to be healthy, and yet I still like to eat – I can always watch my diet tommorrow. Everytime I psyche myself up to lose that tai ji ball i have gathered around the waist, I can do it for 1 week, maybe 2, and then it’s back to square one. Consciously, I know I want to lose weight and in order to lose weight, I know I need to eat healthily and exercise. So i set myself some targets of say, running in the evening for 30 minutes, or have fixed meals per day. Often, they will work for 1 week, 2 weeks at most, and then I’m not meeting the targets any longer. Unconsciously, I don’t think I actually believe that I will lose that belly. That’s why I set myself unrealistic targets, or realistic short term targets. These targets are not meant for the long haul flight that is weight loss. Losing weight is easy, maintaining it that way is difficult.

What i’m actually missing is that I have unknowingly limited my belief to lose weight. I know my belief is to lose weight, yet I limit that belief by unknowingly telling myself that I can’t lose weight. I set myself targets but because of the limit I impose on myself, the targets that I set will never be met. What I don’t realise is that I first have to take away that self-limit, i.e. to actually believe losing weight is possible, and let that possibility flourish. Then the so called “targets” will take care of itself.

Coming back to the initial topic of relaxing your body parts, what I’m proposing to you is this – relax your mind! And your body parts will just take care of itself. Relax your mind into thinking that you are actually able to relax your wrist, elbow etc. You are actually allowing yourself to entertain the possibility of a relaxed body. It’s not something that will create miracles, but it’s the seed required to achieve a relaxed body. You have to believe in miracles for miracles to happen. If you don’t, even if miracles happen right under your nose, you won’t be able to recognise it. Just as the Master Investor believes he deserves to make money. If you don’t, even if money opportunity knocks on your door, you won’t be able to seize it.

So, have you relaxed your mind lately?

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I heard a story yesterday which I would like to share with you. I met a principal of a school and chatted with him for a while. I asked him what made him choose to start his school when his first choice was becoming a priest!. His story went like this…

“I was crossing the road at the traffic lights and saw a blind man. I thought of leading the blind man across the road but I said to myself, maybe someone else will do it. The next day, I met the same man wanting to cross the road. So I said to myself, maybe he will feel insulted if I help him. And the same blind man appeared again the next day. Right, (I said to myself), if you’re going to help him, help him now. Just because you’re there. You don’t need to come up with any more excuses.

So he helped him cross the road, and founded a school for the disabled. It was not done immediately, but over the past 5 years, his school has been growing. His school now is training teachers to help and identify students with special needs. He went on to say that everyone of us has a choice to change the society for the better. Inspired by an article in Innovations, I’ve adapted a title from an article in there… Everyone is a Changemaker.

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