How to achieve happiness in life?

Some people think owning physical assets like cars and houses bring them happiness. Yes, it can bring satisfaction or happiness, but it will only last for a short period of time. So, let us delve deeper into the reasons on why and how to achieve happiness more effectively.

Why do people feel happy when they buy their cars and houses? Well, the excitement or happiness actually comes from the process of buying the assets. But will it last? The sad truth is it will end sometime after everything has settled down.

One of human’s unique ability is adaptation. It will cause everything to become a norm to human after some time. So what will people do next? They will continue to seek for similar happiness by wanting to buy more assets like new houses and new cars. The desire to buy will never end because it is human’s natural instinct to seek for happiness in life.

But is that workable? Well, that will very much depend on how well the person is in managing his or her lives financially. If they have the ability, or the assets are actually their investment which makes even more money for them, then it is fine. But this is not the case for many people. They might even fall into a never ending financial trap if they are not careful in making decision.

What is the worst thing that might possibly occur? For some people, it will become their worst nightmare comes true. When you own a long term physical asset, it involves having a long term commitment as well, followed by on-going maintenance. And most of the time, that is not something that people will enjoy. So, this actually counters happiness. You might end up having more unhappy days than happy days after you owned the asset.

Another negative emotion that a physical asset can bring is constant worries. You need to take care of it, prevent it from damage, and prevent it from being stolen. This creates some form of responsibility and form an emotional burden to the owner. That is again not something that is enjoyable by people so it is countering happiness as well.

But owning a house is unavoidable for many people when they have their own family, which is why many people will start to miss their childhood time when they have nothing much to worry about. Responsibility only grows bigger when someone grown into adulthood and it is something that is countering happiness.

Of course, there will be a solution to that too. Besides being careful not to burden yourself too much, i.e. buy expensive assets beyond your capability, there are some ways on how to maintain the excitement with your house or car. The easiest things to do would be by changing the interior design of your house with new painting, different arrangement of furniture, or new decorations. This can give you a whole new experience with your same house and you will regain the satisfaction and happiness just like when you buy a new house. And sometimes it does not even cost you a cent! See, this again proves that happiness has nothing to do with how much you spend.

Just remember the most important rule. Do not over burden yourself and buy according to your ability with sufficient consideration. Happiness does not increase if the value of the house or car you buy is more expensive. Happiness depends on the quality of the experience or how meaningful the experience you have and it has nothing to do money.

It is the fresh experience, something out from your routine life that can gives you the excitement and happiness. And helping people or bringing happiness to people will be a meaningful experience which will also bring satisfaction and happiness.

Therefore, buying non-physical experience is one good choice of happiness source in your life. How does good experience work? Memorable experience is something that will enrich your life, something that will stay with you, and give you strength and happiness when you reassess it in your memory. You will be more confident and wiser than others when you have rich and diverse experiences that other people do not have. It really serves as a powerful tool to the secret of owning a long lasting happiness. Now, you can see that the benefits that a non-physical asset brings have an even greater impact to our emotional level compared to what a physical asset brings.

Examples of non-physical experience are travelling, learning new things, helping others, and bringing happiness to others.  Events like an unforgettable wedding or an adventure trip with your spouse all gives you exceptional experiences, which forms stronger bonding in the marriage and will also give you happiness whenever the memory is revisited. Memorable experiences are something no one can steal away from you, and its value will also grow over time. In other words, there is no such thing as depreciation for your memorable experience, and it will only become more and more valuable in your life. Now, do you still think that having a good vacation is a waste of money and time? Think again!

Just try it out! Even small things like cleaning or rearranging your room, kitchen, or car to make it looks nice, and helping people or bringing people happiness like giving surprise to your parents or spouse will give you fresh and meaningful experience,  which is the magical ingredient for a happy life! Learn to adopt the art of giving, and be aware that selfishness is a negative emotion that burdens and reduces your happiness level. With that, I hope that there will be more smiles and the world would be a better place to live in.  

How to maintain a relationship?

Everyone wants their relationship to be a fairy tale love story. However, reality makes it hard for this to be realized, as everything in a person’s life require effort to acquire, and when you get something you will need to let go of something, or vice versa, to achieve equilibrium. This is the universal rule, just like the time you can spend for every day is limited to 24 hours. If you spend 10 hours working, you would have 10 hours less time to be spent for your loved ones, but you will get money in return as compensation in the form of salary for the 10 hours that you have spent working. Some people will be in dilemma on whether to sacrifice their career for their relationship or to sacrifice relationship and focus on their career only.

This is a matter of personal choice as everyone views relationship differently. Some are lucky to be blessed with good and caring partner, but some are not. Some people’s characters are more direct and straightforward; they will not hesitate to break up once they feel the incompatibility. Those who are more patience and tolerance would usually be the ones that can stay in a relationship longer. We cannot say which character is better as you will get both the good stuff and bad stuff no matter what character you are having. The ‘give and take’ concept appears in every aspect of our lives.

Therefore, if you want to maintain a good relationship, some work or efforts need to be done. There are some important things to take note:

1. First, one must be clear that every individual is unique and has their own character, needs and wants. You can only accept your partner as who they are and not expect them to behave the way you want them to be. Please make this clear before getting into marriage, and ensure that both you and your partner do really understand each other and able to love each other for whom they are.

2. Second, all good relationship must come with good mutual understanding, tolerance, respect, care and trust. If you lack any one of these attributes, your relationship will be fragile and need to deal with obstacles all the time.

Some suggestion on how to keep your relationship warm all the time:

a) Always remember your partner’s goodness

What you like about him/her, what did he/she do that touches your heart before, and sacrifices that your partner have done in order to be with you. Most people are not even aware that their partner have sacrificed something in order to be with them and will think they themselves sacrificed more for their partner. Remember the ‘give and take’ concept? When anyone chose to have a relationship, they definitely will have to give up the time that they have for other things, be it career, family or dreams. You will appreciate your partner more when you are aware of the sacrifices that they have made for the relationship.

How this works when things seem to crumble up:

Give yourself a few days’ time to think, reflect, and evaluate all issues from multiple angles and point of views before making any decision. If after a few days’ time, you still felt that the relationship is not worth keeping, you may then decide to forget about the relationship altogether. However, recognize the fact that love sometimes does involves pain, but if the relationship is worth keeping, why not endure pain for a while and wait for it to heal. There is a saying that goes you will never know how to enjoy the sweet part of anything if you’ve never tasted the bitter part of it, or as some people might say, ‘no pain, no gain’.

The reason behind this is because according to Bazi or Four Pillars of Destiny analysis, our life cycle fluctuates and has a lot of ups and downs. It is the same for your emotions as well. Therefore, there are certain years that threats of break-up or divorce happening to you may be higher and easier due to the influence of your emotion. The only way to overcome this is to be patience, do not make any big decision in that year, and hopefully you can progress through the year smoothly.

b) Have a long term project together

Create a long term future target or dream in order to keep the two of you in the same direction for many years to come. A good example will be travelling around the world together.

You can either set up a project like ‘Our travel diary’ that collects the pictures of two of you taken with the world most iconic places. Maybe you can identify 20 places and you could visit 2 places every year. This would become a 10 years project together.

Alternatively, you can also plan to have an adventurous trip of a life time with your partner once awhile, something unique and special that both of you have done together and the memory is not easily replaceable by anyone else.

All these increase the special moments and cherished memory between the two of you that helps strengthen the bonding of your relationship.

After your trip, display some of the memorable pictures and souvenirs from your trip of a life time in your living hall or bedroom. This makes your mood better every time you see them. And the best part is it will remind you to start planning for your next trip together as soon as possible!

Other things that you can do include having a theme song for your trip. This helps you to retrieve back the sweet memory every time you hear the song being played. This is also why wedding songs should be chosen carefully as it plays a very important role in helping you to recall the sweet memory after many years of marriage.

It is easy to start a relationship; the difficult part is how to maintain it and keep it warm. People who have bitter relationship are usually due to their self-centeredness. If you focus on what people can do for you, you will tend to magnify your partner’s weakness and forget about what you can give them back in return, and the problematic relationship starts from there.

Just remember, it is a blessing to have someone who can share your life with you, when you are happy or when you are sad. After all, the most difficult skill that one needs to learn in their life is to love and be loved.

“I wanted my life back…”

I burst out with tears and woke up from my bed after listening to a desperate and helpless child saying, “I wanted my life back”. I could not forget the scenes; the child had whispered those words while eating some twigs, and she has no choice but to eat it because her parents forced her to do so.

I know that it seems illogical maybe due to the nature of dreams, but it does reminds me of the reality, that there are many desperate souls out there who felt really helpless as they do not think they are able to change their lives.

This also reminded me of my loved ones who felt hopeless with their lives because they have chosen their studies based on the advice of parents or friends without consideration of their own interest, and thus ended up with job that they do not like which in return causes them to lose the ability to live as their true-self anymore.

I really wanted to help them change the situation, but I am in doubt whether I have the capability to do so. Helping people to identify who they are is easy; the difficult part is how to really take action for a change? As reality is still the biggest obstacle, issues that need to be overcome when change happens include objections from family and friends, financial commitment, etc.

But I clearly know it does not mean that there is no solution if you cannot think of it now, as there are many people out there who also started poorly, or suffer and struggle a lot during their early days, but subsequently change their lives at 30’s, 40’s, or even 50’s. The important thing is, they never give up, and they learn the lesson so that they never repeat the same mistake anymore.

As life is like a wave where it will definitely has its ups and downs, nothing is permanent; good and bad days will come and go naturally. It is the action that you take at that moment in time that will decide whether the bad days or good days will last longer. All one needs is persistency; never give up hope which gives you strength during the bad days, learn the lessons, and be prepared to take full advantage when the good days come.

Of course, the best solution still lies with the parents. They play an important role in helping their child shape their future. They need to be clear that what they want and what their kids want is not necessarily the same. Therefore, they need to find out what their kids really want in life. Good communication is important. Never ignore the power of listening, as you will be surprised the depth of information that you are going to get from a deep and meaningful conversation with your kids.

Last but not least, have patience. Kids can also be unsure and uncertain of what they want, or keep changing their mind. This is where many people starts to give up and leave the job to other people because they are busy with their work and do not have much time for their kids. This is really detrimental to the parent and child relationship. Every child is so unique that you cannot truly realise their true potential without a great amount of love and nurturing. What standard education does is just producing standard products that are fit for the economy. I would definitely not want to see any child growing up and telling people that they are not living as themselves. Please put care into what a child really need and not try to mould them into what you want them to be. Let’s not begin another sad story…

How to overcome fear?

What is fear?

One of the many fears that human has is the fear when they are dealing with uncertainty or fear of the unknown. They feel uncomfortable when they are not sure what will come next or what to do next.

This is also what is causing humans to dislike changes and prefer to stay in their current familiar comfort zone.

Therefore, fear can be overcome by certainty; by knowing what is going to happen next and how to deal with it. In other words, better preparation and positive mindset about what comes next will give you the confidence and courage not just to overcome fear, but to leap a big step forward as well.

Now how can you achieve that? The answer is by staying calm whenever you are faced with an obstacle. Only a clear and calm mind can come out with a solution. Humans are most vulnerable when they are in fear; when you panic, you cannot think.

So, how do we overcome panic? One of the ways is to learn to expand your capacity. To make it easier to remember, I shall categorise them based on our human body.

Brain- Increase your knowledge, learn more things. The more things you know, the more confident and intelligent you will be in dealing with people and matters.

Eyes- See more things, travel more to expand your horizon. Your thinking will not be the same when you are able to view things from different perspective and with an international view.

Ears- Listen to other people’s problem and analyse it. This way you will learn how others deal with problems and one day you might find that your problem is not really a big one after all.

Mouth- Talk about your problems, share your fears or what is troubling you with your love ones or friends. It is always easier to solve something when you are able to clearly define it and say it out.

Skin- Experience more things, keep doing the same thing until you are familiar with it. Just like someone who is afraid to drive, let them drive more. Adaptability will eventually overcome fear.

Nose- Last resort, be more alert. The ability to smell trouble and avoid it at all cost before it approaches.

I hope the simple suggestions above, which needed some time to learn and practice as well, can give you a life with lesser fear which equates to a happier life! Cheers!

The Fisherman Story

The Mexican fisherman

An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied, “only a little while.”

The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish?

The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.

The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life.”

The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”

“But what then?”

The American laughed and said that’s the best part. “When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

“Millions.. Then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”
This is a story that I read from the internet which I would like to share with all of you. It has opened up my mind the first time I read it, making me wonder why I have never thought of this before. What we want in life is actually very simple and basic; you don’t actually need to go one big round (spending 15-20 years to earn as much as you can) before you can start to enjoy your life.

We all know ‘change’ is the only constant in life, and there is a risk that things may not go as what you want it to be in the end. This is why, I believe, only those who are living their life to the fullest in the ‘present’ are people who have received ‘the gift of life’. So, start asking yourselves, have you been living your life to the fullest today?

The concept of ‘give and take’ in life

Many people talk about balanced life nowadays, but it would mean different thing to different people. I would like to use the concept of ‘give and take’ to elaborate on this topic and in order to do so, we would explore a little bit on ‘time limit’.

Everyone has the same 24 hours each day, nothing more, nothing less and thus exist a time limit. So, if you spend 8 hours a day working in exchange for money, 8 hours for sleeping, 2 hours for travelling, and 2 hours for food, you will only have 4 hours left for yourself and your loved ones.

So, due to the time limit, your life exist in a ‘give and take’ scenario now, which means that any changes to your current lifestyle that requires time to do something new would requires giving up the time that you are spending on something else. For example, if you need to work 2 hours more every day, you will have 2 hours less for spending on other things, which could mean cutting down on your time for your family, your sleeping time or any other things.

Now you, as the operator of your life, would have to think and evaluate, between the additional works, the time for your family, the time for your sleep, etc, which one carries more weight and importance? Some people might think that sleep is not important and it is a total waste of time, but in fact, a good and sufficient rest is crucial for a healthy body, not to mention in order to obtain a younger looking skin as well (which is of utmost importance to the ladies, of course!). It also helps you to recharge your life energy to continue your everyday life. Can you afford to risk it? A definite no way for me!

How about a lesser time with your loved ones? Many people does not realise the point that time is running and ticking for everyone as well. Your kid will not stay forever at age 5, waiting for you to come home and hug them. Your parents will not stop getting old as well. How about your spouse? Will they stay the same forever? People usually wait until they have lost their loved ones before beginning to realize that their most important treasure in life is by their side all along. That is human nature, always under appreciates or did not see and value what they have, and keep chasing for what they do not have.

The main message that I want to bring forward is to always remember that when you get something, you will lose something in exchange. The reverse is true in that when you give away something, you will get something back as well. Think about what you are getting and losing, and which is more valuable and important? Make a wiser choice so that your life would be filled with fulfillment and happiness.

Of course some people might argue that they are already aware of this, but due to financial constraint, they have no choice but to work harder. We shall discuss about this in an article named ‘life experience’.

An Ideal Life Experience?

What is an ideal life experience? To become a multi-millionaire, live a luxurious lifestyle, and have beautiful houses and cars? But to people who already have all these, are they happy? They might still chase for something that they do not have, right? So, what have gone wrong?

It again boils back down to human nature, under appreciates or did not see what they already have, and chase for things that they do not have. Maybe this has something to do with the competitive or fighting nature in human, where they like to compete and win over others.

So, to me, an ideal life experience is the ability to live an interesting and meaningful life; a life that follows your freewill, and a life where you will not feel that there are any regrets as you have done everything that you ever wanted to do even if it is the last day of your life.

Does it require a lot of money in order to be happy? When you think carefully, money is definitely not a mandatory requirement to be happy. It is not difficult to find people who is already rich but is yet still not happy because they are still chasing for more money and other things that they do not have yet. This mentality will blind people from the ability to see and enjoy what they already possess now. The process of finding more money to get what you do not have is the main cause of unhappiness, because you will not be happy until you get what you want. So what makes people happy? In my personal opinion, it is the ability to be contended and appreciative of what a person already has at present. By doing this, you do not need to wait 20 years before you can be happy and start enjoying life; you will be happier NOW!

So what is the problem if I do not enjoy what I have now? The problem is everyone has a limited life span; usually people spend about 20 years studying, 30 years career building, and the remaining 20 years for enjoying life. There are also some people who chose to focus on their career so much that they decides to give up the part of experience in life for family building. Well, different people value different things. At the end it is a personal choice.

But what if the perceived life span is shortened? Initially, we may think that we can live healthily until the age of 70, and spend the last 20 years for enjoying life. Unfortunately, there are one thing human can never be too sure of, and that is you will never be able to know what will happen to you in the future. What if sickness strikes? What if there is an accident? Then the last 20 years of your life can easily be wiped out without a choice.

The risk of ill health is even higher for modern people, as we do not walk as much (with the help of vehicles), or work as hard (less physical work) compared to people in the past anymore. Coupled with an unhealthy diet and lack of time for exercise, you can imagine why the risk of not being able to fully enjoy your retirement age is high.

This has left many people with regrets when they are at old age, citing that they still have a lot of things unaccomplished but lacking the energy to do it anymore. They have missed the chance to travel around when they are young, missed the chance to see their children grow happily with full attention themselves as a parent, and many more. Life should not be lived in the future, but in the present. There was a wise story I once read that questioned how do you know that you have lived life to the fullest? It is when you have no regrets even if tomorrow is your last day on earth.

There are those who argue that due to financial constraints, they have no choice but to work harder and therefore have lesser time for other things in life. Please realize one thing; that pressure is what people gave themselves due to the choices that they have make. So, a more matured mentality and wiser decision making will be the key for a less problematic life.

So, what should you do? You should evaluate how much money you could spend based on what you can afford. Everyone has to know their limits and capacity in life. What can you expect when a person whose earning is below RM50k a year but wanting to buy a house costing RM1M? They will surely put themselves in great financial burden for at least the next 20-30 years. This is not to mention the high probability of an economic downturn that might occur during that period. So, it is not difficult to imagine why people are unhappy nowadays. We shall discuss more on financial matter under the financial topics.