Conventional Wisdom About Living

Conventional wisdom is “conventional” in the sense that the majority of people have already accepted it as the norm, with the implication that others should follow suit—something like a blueprint.

However, if you want to live an extraordinary life, you are going to have to think for yourself, do the unimagined, and create your own definition of the reality for living—that is, living with your own wisdom, not necessarily following conventional wisdom or that of someone else.

What Conventional Wisdom Says About Living

In general, conventional wisdom has the following to say about how one should live.

Life Purpose

Most experts agree that life has to have a purpose, and living is to identify that life purpose and then follow a pathway to attaining that purpose. The explanation is that with no central purpose in life one may easily become a prey to fantasies, imaginings, and longings—the root causes of all emotional problems in contemporary life, such as anxiety, fear, and depression.

Thinking Questions

What is my life purpose?

Is a life in search of happiness purposeful?

Life Goals

The next step is to set clear and achievable goals with a timeline for each in order to bring one’s life purpose into fruition. Based on specific life goals, a person then develops a direction in life in order to achieve what he or she has set out to accomplish.

Life goals, however, must be clear and definite, achievable, and, above all, life-transforming in order to make life meaningful.

Thinking Question

Does life still have goals when I am nearing its end rather than its beginning?

Life Priorities

Determine the priorities of life goals by focusing on current skills and strengths that facilitate the attainment of certain immediate short-term as well as long-term goals. Meanwhile, explore and discover hidden gifts and talents for other life goal further down the road.

Life priorities have to be adjusted accordingly as life proceeds.

Life Passion

A life well lived must be a life of passion. Follow your heart: instead of following anything or anyone. Do what you are good at or what you are passionate about, and you will find your true self. If you like what you do and do what you like, you will do it well. Passion gives life and substance to whatever you do.

Thinking Success

An individual who develops the process of right thinking is more likely to succeed than the one who does not because that individual knows how to rule himself or herself under any difficult circumstance. Success in any endeavor in life has to do with the mind, which creates the attitudes for success.

Attitude towards discipline

Govern yourself to avoid ungoverned grief, tumultuous tempers, and unbridled passion—the root causes of some of the major disasters in contemporary life.

Attitude towards input

Great success requires great sacrifice.

Find the one thing you do well, and do not do anything else—or at least do not try to do everything at the same time.

Develop a strong inner circle to provide you with the right input. As for others, just ask certain friends to keep you updated on what is happening in the lives of your other friends. You cannot possibly catch up with everyone you know.

Spend time wisely. Focus on knowing and learning what is important to you. Remember, 99 percent of everything in life is what you do not need to know.

Sacrifice short-term enjoyment for long-term value goals. It is important to know the things you are giving up in life and how important they are to your life. Being willing to give up some of the things you love in order to focus on what has the greatest impact is not only a difficult life lesson to learn but also a difficult life choice to make. But living is about balance, which requires give-and-take.

Attitude towards failures

Learn to cope with ups and downs, obstacles and drawbacks in life.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Use Your Mind to Live Like Santa Claus

Your Golden Years and Santa Claus explains the wisdom of living in the present, the wisdom of letting go, and the wisdom of not picking and choosing -- they are the essentials for happy and successful aging in the golden years. Learn how to think and act like Santa Claus in your golden years.

Your future is always unknown and unknowable, but it is your readiness to get new information and to use your new experience to reassess your current situation that provides a light at the end of the tunnel.

Stephen Lau

Wisdom Begins With An Empty Mind

“Focusing on status gives us pride, and not humility.

Hoarding worldly riches deprives us of heavenly assets.

An empty mind with no craving and no expectation helps us let go of everything.

Being in the world and not of the world, we attain heavenly grace.

With heavenly grace, we become pure and selfless.

And everything settles into its own perfect place.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 3)

You are in the world, but not of the world.

So, do not identify yourself with anything and everything in the world—the car you are driving, the neighborhood you are living in, the name-brand dress you are wearing, and among many others.

What is wrong with them? You become attached to them; they only enhance and inflate your ego, making you shackled to the material world.

With a deflated ego, on the other hand, you may become enlightened and see who you really are, and not what people think you are. Enlightenment opens the door to the TAO of living for life.

The reality is that many of us are not only in the world, but also of the world; so, we are living not for life, but for the world.

We are all somehow connected with one another, so focusing on yourself is not the Way of TAO, and not the TAO of living for life.

Human wisdom requires only an empty mind, not necessarily acquisition of knowledge. As a matter of fact, the more you know, the less wise you may become. The explanation is that knowledge previously acquired and accumulated often pre-conditions your thinking mind, and thus distorting your perceptions.

Human wisdom is already inside you. What you need to do is to search for it with self-intuitive questions.

Remember: less for more, and more for less; ask and you shall receive.

THE TAO OF LIVING FOR LIFE

Stephen Lau        

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Get the Happiness Wisdom

Get the Happiness Wisdom

The five major happiness ingredients are: love, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, and letting go.

Self-Intuitive Questions

Can you love someone you don’t like or who doesn’t like you, someone who doesn’t share your views—even though they are not bad or evil individuals?

Can you forgive someone who has hurt you, physically or emotionally?

Can you express your gratitude by not complaining this and that, by not comparing yourself with others concerning your lack or abundance?

Can you show compassion to those who are less fortunate than yourself with a charitable mindset and a generous heart?

Can you let go of anger, regret, vengeance, or your material possessions that define who you think you are?

Happiness is about doing—doing things to yourself as well as to others, based on the five major ingredients.

In addition to choosing the ingredients, you should know the methods of applying those ingredients to your recipe. There are basically only two: human wisdom, and spiritual wisdom.

Human wisdom shows you how to think: who you really are, not who you wish you were; how and why your perceptions may change the realities that ultimately affect your life choices and decisions, making you happy or unhappy. Happiness is no more and no less than perceptions by the human mind. Human wisdom is right thinking, leading to right doing to create the happy life experiences.

Spiritual wisdom provides strength and guidance for right thinking by the human mind. Spiritual wisdom may not only transform but also enlighten you to become a better and happier individual.

Bottom line: even with profound human wisdom and with the help of spiritual wisdom, no individual can be completely good and happy, because humans are imperfect. So, there is no perfect recipe for human happiness.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The Wisdom of Letting Go

TheWisdom of Letting Go

The pursuit of human happiness is forever elusive and evasive. Why? It requires human wisdom to ask the right questions, and spiritual wisdom to seek self-enlightening answers to the questions asked throughout our life journey.

Human wisdom comes from the mind: an empty mindset with reverse thinking; mindfulness living in the present with no expectation and no picking; and spontaneity with understanding of the natural cycle of all things, that is, what goes up must also come down. The ancient Tao wisdom from China may enhance human wisdom.

With human wisdom, one may see the wisdom of letting go of all attachments in the material world. Attachments are the raw materials with which we often create the self-delusive realities of the ego-self. Letting go of the ego and all its attachments may let us see the true nature of everything: who we really are, not who we wish we were, and what we really need, not what we desire.

The ego is the human flaw that not only undermines the natural human wisdom but also distorts the lens through which we see the world around us. Therefore, we need spiritual wisdom to complement the inadequate human wisdom, to guide the soul on our life journey. Spiritual wisdom can only be attained through trust and obedience to the Creator, which is letting go to let God.

The above is what this book THE WISDOM OF LETTING GO is all about.

If this book is right for you, you can get it from AMAZON. Click here  to get your copy.

NO EGO NO STRESS

Stephen Lau     

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The Role of Human Wisdom in the Art of Living Well

The Role of Human Wisdom in the Art of Living Well

Wisdom plays a pivotal role in the art of living well.

Wisdom is the capability of the mind to draw sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. We never have sufficient data for anything and everything because we are all limited in our capability in acquiring our knowledge.

Wisdom is not quite the same as knowledge: knowledge is the acquisition of facts and information, while wisdom is the application of acquired knowledge to everyday life and living. For this reason, being knowledgeable does not necessarily imply being wise. Wisdom is beyond knowledge.

Human Wisdom

Socrates, the famous Greek philosopher, once said: “An unexamined life is not worth living.”

Wisdom is examining life by frequently asking self-intuitive questions, as well as by finding answers to the questions asked about life and living. In real life, we must frequently ask ourselves many questions about anything and everything at all times.

Asking relevant questions is introspection, which is a continual process of self-reflection, without which there is no self-awareness and hence no personal growth and development. A static life is never a life well lived. So, asking self-intuitive questions is self-empowering wisdom—a life-skill tool necessary for the art of living well.

Why is that?

It is because the kind of questions you ask also determines the kind of life you are going to live. Your questions often trigger a set of mental answers, which may lead to actions or inactions, based on the choices you have made from the answers you have obtained. Remember, your life is always the sum of all the choices you make in the process of going through your life journey.

To make the right daily life choices, you need human wisdom, which is clarity of thinking, to know who you really are, what choices are available to you, and why you decide on those choices.

TAO Wisdom

TAO is the profound human wisdom of Lao Tzu, the ancient sage from China, more than 2,600 years ago, who was the author of the immortal classic Tao Te Ching on human wisdom.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The Depression Basics

Depression is no respecter of persons. Millions and millions of people worldwide are afflicted with this mental disease.

You must understand the complications and complexities of this as-old-as-age mental disorder. First and foremost, you must know the depression basics.

The Depression Basics 

Depression is a serious medical illness affecting more than 15 million American adults, and nearly twice as many women (6.7 million) as men (3.2 million) suffering from depressive episodes each year.

Depression can occur at any age, including childhood, the teenage years, and adulthood. This debilitating disorder is more than an abnormal emotional experience of sadness, loss, or hopelessness – it can interfere persistently and significantly with an individual’s thoughts, behavior, mood, activity, and physical health. We are living in a world of depression.

Depression may include anxiety attacks, panic attacks, mood disorders, such as bipolar depression. Different types may have different symptoms and varying degrees of severity, and there are significant individual differences in the symptoms and severity.

Risk factors

Some of the risk factors of mental depression may include:

• A life-changing event, such as the loss of a loved one or divorce.
• Chronic illness.
• Certain medications, including some high blood pressure drugs.
• Alcohol abuse.
• A history of child abuse.
• Sustained problems at home or at work.
• Physical trauma.
• Other family members with a prior history of depression.
• Chronic stress or anxiety.

 Causes of depression

There is no single cause of mental depression. Psychological, biological, and environmental factors may all contribute to its development. Generally, depression may be caused by one or more of the following:

Genetics

There is scientific evidence of a genetic predisposition to mental depression. When there is a family history of the illness, there is an increased risk for developing depression. However, not everyone with a genetic predisposition develops mental depression.

Brain chemical imbalance

Norepinephrine,  serotonin, and dopamine are three neurotransmitters (chemical messengers that transmit electrical signals between brain cells) are implicated in the cause of mental depression.

Diseases

According to a recent study, half of all people with advanced or terminal cancer suffer from some form of depression, anxiety or adjustment disorders. According to researchers, medical management of cancer has improved significantly over the past 10 years, but mental health care has not been fully integrated into cancer patients’ treatment plans. Research studies show that depression and anxiety can adversely affect a cancer patient’s quality of life and attitudes towards living and dying even more than physical pain.

Hormones

Your mood, memory, and other cognitive functions depend on the efficiency of your neurotransmission, which is the communication between brain cells. Hormones in your body play a pivotal role in regulating chemicals in your neurotransmission —norepinephrine, serotonin, and dopamine — which in turn regulates your moods. 

Your estrogen level has significant impact on your brain not only in enhancing the growth and survival of your brain cells, but also in regulating your emotional states, such as anxiety and depression.

As women age, their estrogen levels decline, and they are more vulnerable to depression. As men age, they, too, are at greater risk of major depression due to declining testosterone.

Your thyroid hormone regulates the metabolism of your entire body. Low thyroid hormone levels are both a cause and effect of low estrogen, thus leading to mental depression and mood disorders, such as bipolar depression.

Nutritional deficiencies

Depression may be caused by nutritional deficiency. For example, magnesium deficiency is responsible for neurotransmission abnormalities. All chemical reactions in the body require an enzyme system to initiate the biochemical reaction, and magnesium is a critical co-factor in more than 300 enzymatic reactions in the human body. In addition, magnesium is responsible for neurotransmission abnormalities — the precursors of different types of mental disorders.

 Environmental toxins

Research studies have linked environmental toxins, such as chemicals, pesticides, pollutants, to depression.

Even some commonly prescribed drugs, such as sleeping pills, high-blood pressure drugs, antibiotisoics, and painkillers are implicated in neurotransmission abnormalities.

New Perspectives of Depression

Is depression really a mental disorder? Are antidepressants the only solution to the disorder?  Can one use the mind to control the disorder? According to Lao Tzu, one has to go "through" the depression in order to get out of the depression. 

.Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau