Category: Epiphany

  • Mastery Over Oneself and the Environment Brings Safety and Happiness

    While talking with my brother in the car, I shared my recent epiphany: humans feel safe and happy when they’re in control. We constantly seek to master ourselves and our environment.

    For example, we clean our faces with cleansers and mud masks, stripping away oil and dirt, and then apply moisturizer to maintain a constant level of hydration. We use primer and foundation to control the base color of our skin, ensuring that any further makeup techniques will look consistent.

    We extend this need for control to our living spaces. We put a mat in front of our door and have an entrance door to limit the amount of dirt and dust that enters our homes, keeping them clean so we can feel safe, healthy, and content. We even create bins for rubbish so we can periodically clean up. Similarly, we tirelessly weed our gardens. If neglected, the garden remains, but restoring it to its former glory becomes much harder. We aim to master our environment so it is pleasing to us, and caring for it reflects our attention and effort.

    This ties into the wisdom of Chinese sayings about self-mastery: “修身、齐家、平天下”, or “Master yourself and tidy your home to bring peace to the world.” To master the world and achieve great things, the first priority is mastering oneself. As another saying goes, “If you don’t sweep your room, how can you sweep the rest of the world?” Creativity may be boundless, but self-mastery puts you in the best environment and mindset to accomplish meaningful work. A spotless home may not guarantee an immediate grand success, but it demonstrates care and consistency, qualities that can lead to thoroughness and excellence in all areas of life.

    Care and consistency. Such permanent principles, for nature constantly builds up, and nothing stays pristine without effort. If you believe one act of tidying should free you from future responsibilities, you’re mistaken – just as ludicrous as seeing getting into university as a chore, seeing marriage as a task to be ticked off, or having a child as the end goal to appease one’s parents. Life is a continuous stream of effort. Taking on these responsibilities consumes time, but it will make you feel safe and happy in ways that you don’t realise – because it’s never a grand gesture or a dopamine rush of happiness. Yet, it will improve your mood exponentially, knowing exactly where things are and seeing your home run.

    You will harvest so much more hidden happiness that elevate your mood quietly. I’ve strangely found solace and a degree of concentration in cooking. Even just taking out the rubbish improves my mood immediately. Completing small, consistent tasks brings a quiet sense of achievement, and are concrete evidence that affirm our abilities. Practicing self-mastery in our living spaces can translate into confidence in other areas of life, including work, relationships, and personal challenges. We are solely and wholy in control of what we have, what we know and what we can do.

    Consistency can also be achieved through hobbies. You can dive deeply into them or simply explore them for fun. One of my friends with ADHD told me that posting a photo of his home every day since 2017 helped him turn his life around. It grounded him, gave him confidence, and provided undeniable proof that persistence works. If one can master this, imagine what else could be achieved！

    Knowing we can manage what we have gives a significant boost to self-assurance. I see many self-help books attempt to teach routines, but it can be as simple as following the principle of “修身、齐家、平天下”.

  • On Purpose and Goals

    I recently saw a snippet on Youtube about a neurologist talking about how the adult human brain becomes fully developed after the age of twenty-five and will then focus on tasks that are essential to survival. When attempting to learn something new (e.g. new language) is considered irrelevant to survival, the tasks will “become” more unpleasant and difficult and there will be more friction to learn. The neurologist draws on the concept of brain plasticity, and how there are two things that could make it better: intense focus and urgency.

    —

    I did some research.

    DEFINITION:

    Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity or brain plasticity, is a process that involves adaptive structural and functional changes to the brain (definition via reference 1). Neuroplasticity explains how we learn by absorbing and analyzing information as we go through life and allows us to adapt to new environments and new situations (reference 2).

    It is popularly believed by neurologist that the prefrontal coretex stops developing at 25 years old (reference 3) which corroborates what the Youtube snippet says. While buzzwords like “rewiring your brain” flies around the internet, it all really is about understanding the science behind our brains, and how it is an organism that is primed for survival, organisation, recognition, and maximal efficiency.

    —

    This thought was very interesting, so I shared this with a friend.

    My friend raised a good point influencing the brain in a different manner: the lack of motivation may be the brain’s way of tricking you into thinking the task at hand is harder than supposed, because it is keeping count and has decided the task at hand has no purpose behind it.Your brain may be naturally deterring you from what it deems as the “furthest path to success and comfort” based on past experiences.

    He thinks if we set our goals with a timeline, and choose all our learning experiences that serve our goals, it will naturally tie into our survival instinct and urgency. In fact, all the learning and tasks will be “useful” and what may seem like an inconvenient task naturally becomes part of “what I do” or “what I need to do to get where I want”. He observes how certain actions seem natural to some but is absolute hell for others, and compares it to the difference of having a goal and not.

    —

    I would go a step further to say that in fact, our actions are reflective of our goals. We may not even know what concrete goal it is, but our actions are a reflection of what we truly think and value. It shows us (or betrays!) our deepest desires.

    —

    For younger readers, I suppose the advice is to: hurry and learn more and learn good habits before 25!

    But for those who love learning or still want to learn more – they say it’s never too late to learn, and it is true. Now we understand the brain more, we have more tools than ever – setting goals, applying intence focus and urgency to it – and we can get where we want to be!

    References:

    1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK557811/
    2. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/neuroplasticity
    3. https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=1&ContentID=3051
    4. https://www.growthengineering.co.uk/brain-plasticity/ –>note, this is a growth-mindset learning site, as such it may be over-optimistic about adult learning capabilities.

  • The Importance of the Past

    Today I’d like to discuss the importance of the past.
    When I was a teenager, and I read the blurbs on the books that talk about digging into the mysterious past of the protagonist, I wasn’t exactly interested. What’s so interesting about the past?

    Last year, older and supposedly wiser, I went back to the city where I grew up. Walking through the old house that was partially crumbling I felt part of myself that I had shut away when I was in Australia instantly come back to me. I had spent half my life there afterall, and just by walking through the house I was regaining part of me that was forgotten. There was a calmness in knowing what I did here, knowledge of the city and how things work, a strength that comes from the support system from friendly and familial relations. Invisible source of wealth that is buzzing and humming and so close now. Accessible.

    That was when I realised the importance of the past.

    In particular, the importance is in three points:

    1. It gives us awareness and perspective about ourselves, and guides us for the future

    It informs us about the environment and stimuli we grew and how we came to be. It can show us how we used to make decisions, why we carry out our decisions in certain ways. It helps to explain who we are, and in some rare cases shows us who we were meant to be through self-fulfilling prophecy (the danger is, of course, being misguided into inaction and simply waiting for the wealth to fall on us). By recording and being aware of this, it helps us steer away from things that affect us negatively and generally make better decisions in the future.

    2. It tells us of possibilities and shows us pathways to success

    Thinking broadly of the past in terms of history, we can watch and draw on the strength, wisdom, wittiness, cleverness, wickedness and opportunism of those we wish to emulate. We can mimic and learn about pathways to certain successes, or apply similar thought process in our new and changed environment.

    3. It is a fountain of wealth and strength in aspects of: knowledge, family and relations, personal wealth, ideas and inspirations

    There is generational wealth and culture that is invisibly built up and can only, at the time, achieved by passing down knowledge and ways to do things through human example. E.g. Why is a family line of doctors in that small village so good? Because they’ve always been servicing that area, and are familiar with every type of ailment that has happened in that particular area due to the unique geography and weather of the place. This long line of knowledge and samples cannot be accrued in one single lifetime, but our long line of past will affect a lot of our small habits.

    We’re making history here for the future, dear readers!

  • On Improving Life

    The best way to improve your life right now, is to take care of yourself.

    Sometimes, we take care of others more than ourselves. But we ourselves are the source of all happiness and goodness – it must be the excess from our happiness that overflows into other’s cups. We are our priority. With our happiness, we can bring love and light into our lives as well as other’s lives. It will inevitably cause burnout when we try to fill or serve others without caring for ourselves.

    I’ve discovered there seems to be a disconnect – almost an illogical way that I’m living my life. I seem to ignore signals from my body, also, recently a few of my perceptions have been challenged, so I would like to share these discoveries with you.

    On learning

    “I want to do this because it’ll make me a better person.” I say.

    My friend disagrees. “Do things that will help you live the life you want.”

    I’m still chewing on this concept, since I’m not sure what life it is I want yet. All I know is I wish to improve myself and be a better person, but “better” is always subjective and you can keep improving yourself forever. But “living our best life” will guide us to choose what we improve upon, and focus our energy – our time is rather limited, afterall. In the next few weeks I will endeavour to practise tying that energy to specific life goals.

    On being productive

    “…I’ll make fancier food, when I have more mental capacity/time”

    My friend goes: “But you can put that towards other things?”

    “What other things?”

    “Extra time can go to having fun or chilling out…”

    That completely stunned me. No wonder I was having trouble being productive – because after being productive, there was no reward, there was always more to do and more things to be productive about.

    After that, I tried to change my approach and give myself rewards and rest time for completing tasks on time, in addition to savouring the success of completing each item and staying on top of things.

    On taking care of myself

    I still marvel at the day I discovered that having chocolate can cheer me up.

    Then realising going for a walk can really help clear my head.

    Then there was the day where I discovered not drinking enough water during the day was the reason I woke up parched in the night.

    And running makes me warm and toasty, and releases all my frustrations, sadness, and anger. I become happier afterwards.

    Discovering that a nice smelling candle is pleasant.

    Curling up on the sofa with a blanket is amazing.

    Eating well can help me concentrate more.

    Sneezing is my body telling me I’m not wearing enough, ditto with the blue fingernails.

    Window shopping nice things makes me happy.

    Marvelling at how nature is great for the peace of mind.

    With a car you can go anywhere, you’re free.

    Reject taxing relationships. There are too many good people in this world to discover and hang around.

    Taking regular breaks in between study helps with both my posture, back, eyes and actually increases my productivity.

    Going out with friends is fun!

    Who knew that self-care actually works?

  • On Choices and Habits

    – Inspired by the book Atomic Habits.


    1. The Power of Habits and the Choices We Make

    The power of habits is not a new concept. We observe it every day e.g. Jane always checks Aldi, Coles and Woolworths before making a purchase; Josh has a coffee every morning. However, we think less about how these will add up and impact us in the long term. Sure, everyone knows reducing screen time will mean better sleep and lead to better long-term health effects (and we still don’t effectively curb it), but habits can be insidious or advantageous in many other areas of our lives as well.
    Consider this made-up situation: Jake is risk-averse. So even though he likes art, when he picks his university course he picks the safe law degree and sticks to it while his friends change around. He gets a stable job and does not venture into startups. Every year, he keeps his head down and because he is risk-averse, he works hard to upgrade himself to be more relevant career-wise. He does a bit of art on the side but never thinks about spending too much time in visual arts or changing careers because it is too risky for his liking. He probably invests in bonds and a smaller amount in shares, most of it he keeps in the bank. He never invests in his friend’s winery or gold mines. Jake still lives a happy life though once in a blue moon he wonders about the other path he may have taken.
    The risk averse person, unless they are aware of their tendencies and change their risk averse behaviour when making decisions, will keep choosing the path that is slightly less risky. This will veer their life in a certain direction. A confident and risk-taking person’s life choices – and even smaller choices would be radically different. Similarly, a person that does not recognise that they are unprepared will keep being unprepared. These choices will add up and move their life in a certain way.

    2. 轮回之苦不在地狱，在人间。The suffering of saṃsāra is not in hell or another life, but right now.


    Carl Jung says: Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. Little habits, conscious or unconscious, create little loops of effects, and these snowball into bigger and bigger effects until an accident happens.
    Example: Jane leaves the cups on the counter at a precarious angle and thinks they should be fine, and that she will wash them later. Her pan is not placed back in the cupboard and the handle is sticking out from the ledge of the counter. She wears a thick coat in the middle of the kitchen since the heater is not turned on. She is also on her phone. She turns to get something and her thick coat gets caught on the pan handle, the pan spins and hits the cups which were misplaced and they fall and smash. Similar things keep happening to her, she drops her water bottles, her newly bought iPhone, and even her laptop. This will keep happening until something really bad happens and she decides to fix this.
    Sometimes, we don’t even recognise that we are caught in the same habits and repeating behaviours or responses.
    There is a concept in psychology called behavioural pattern, and that is linked to habits and heuristics. Examples include the famous attachment theory, how people continually choose partners that attract them but may not be the best for their overall wellbeing. Humans are drawn and attracted to certain things that feel familiar to us or make us happy – we need them in some way or another, at least it is good or feels good to us now. However, if we suffer for it, and we recognise we are worse off from it in the long-run, why do we continue to indulge in them? Why do we never change?
    That, my friends, I believe is the true meaning of suffering of saṃsāra, or in Chinese: 轮回之苦 Lun hui zhi ku *. We continually fall into the same pattern of resolving things, and so many tiny little choices and habits are made based on the conscious and unconscious preferences (e.g. what worked in the past, what feels right etc). 轮回之苦 is not about repeating the sufferings in the afterlife or reliving the worst experience in hell, it is that people are repeating the same fate in many different ways and experiencing pain in all sorts of variations in the life they are living right now.


    3. The Good News
    There is usually a reason for how people adapted in different ways – due to their situations and environments, maybe a major event that altered their life views forever. Lucky for us, there isn’t one “good way” or “perfect way” to live our lives, there is only the life we want – banish the judgement from others!
    The human capacity for change is incredible, and we can all nudge our futures in the direction we want it to be.
    More on that next time!

    2024.07.16

    Reference

    *The first time I heard about the explanation of suffering of saṃsāra is from 泽海命理水之道。