[Life/Inspiration] We Need Multi-Dimensional of Ourselves to Thrive

This blog is inspired by a Hong Kong comedian actor. Who he is doesn’t matter, the inspiration does. When I come to know an actor, I know them from the movies and the roles they play in them. For this actor, his forte is comedy. He even does standup comedy in front of thousands of live audiences and ran his own show. We tend to generalize what we see on TV will mostly reflect to some level of similarity to the real life behavior of the actor. When I think of an actor, I usually think he/she is an extrovert, outgoing, sociable, and along with other traits like funny, handsome, pretty, attractive… etc. I mean, don’t you need to be like that in order to be an actor, especially a main character that is being followed by paparazzi everywhere and being in front of screens all the time? Don’t you have to have exceptional public speaking skills and the ability to speak on your feet?

Well, when I came across a personal interview of this actor, I learned many surprising things about him that is opposite of what I formulated in my mind. The image that I created from his movies was completely different than the real him. I learned that he never intended to be a comedian. I learned that he wanted to act in serious movies. Because of circumstances, he was pushed to be a comedian, and to his surprise, it was a successful path and therefore he continued down that road.

Similarly, who would think a comedian such as President Zelenskiy will become such an amazing leader of Ukraine, and a war leader? Sometime life just throw you into a different path and require you to undergo a new dimension transformation!

Life is quite weird. It sometime leads you to another total different path than your original intention that you never thought you would ever capable of doing. However, when facing adversity, humans can adapt quickly and push ourselves to thrive by creating multi-dimensional of ourselves. The actor has becomes a sociable person, an extrovert, outspoken, and funny… while he is on his job only! This makes me correlate and reflect to my own life. Have you ever encounter adversity and you had to cope and adapt to the changes that you must make to thrive? I certainly had!

My Personality VS. My Job

Similar to the actor, I consider myself a relatively shy and quiet person. I am an absolute introvert and do not like to be in the focus of attention or on a spotlight. To give you a sense of perspective, growing up, I hardly made any friends in school. By the time I graduated through high school and college, you can use your fingers to count the friends I have, and you wouldn’t even need to raise all of them.

Everyone has dreams. Mine, I wouldn’t say it was a big dream or something I’m super serious or try very hard to achieve. I guess I can call it “thought” or “imagination” instead of dream. In college, I did think about being a teacher. However, the thought of being in front of the classroom, and picturing myself unable to answer a student’s question in front of everyone – that deterred me from pursuing that vision. By random chance, I ended up getting into the science field and ended up working in a laboratory as a lab testing personnel. Quickly, I learned that I have to interact with other people – my coworkers, my boss, and attending lab meetings. Quickly, I found myself having to answer phone calls, speaking to random clients, completely stranger, on the other side of the phone — I don’t even talk on the phone with my own friends and family much — leave alone the difficulty of having to answer to requests that I am completely clueless. Needless to say, it didn’t take long for me to realize that I needed another “dimension” of myself.

The boredom of working as a lab tech, the same routine, not much interaction, but it can change if you want to change it!

It was not an overnight task to build a new dimension of myself. I sought help, and I discovered Toastmasters, a public speaking organization that helps people improve their public speaking confidence and leadership skills. I was part of the group for almost 4 years before I took on the opportunity to compete in a speech contest. When I was pushed by my club members to compete, I thought I would just lose out on round 1. Indeed, I did lose. I was so nervous that I forgot my words while I was speaking at my club. Because it was just an internal club contest, there were only 3 of us total, and I got placed 2nd place. However, I had the opportunity to advance to the Area Contest level for being 2nd place that year because there weren’t as many competitors, so they allowed each club to send 2 contestants.

I practiced really hard. I made edits to improve my speech. I rehearse each day after work, over and over and over. I must have practiced and made small edits for over a hundred times throughout my entire competition adventure – I made it through the Area Contest, the Division Contest, and made it to the District Contest Level. That is much farther than the club contest level that I originally thought. What happened? The short answer is my hard work paid off.

My very first trophy in the area Humorous Speech Contest in 2016!

The long answer is, I didn’t even realize I have created a new dimension of myself. When I was on the stage, I am no longer the old me. Instead, I tell myself I am a performer! If I am on the stage, I have to give it all out and do not hold back, and there’s nothing to lose. So who do the audiences and the judges see on the stage? A new dimension of me – a person who is so funny although it is self-deprecating, speak loudly and confidently although with flaw of pronunciation, and someone who has a passion to share a learning lesson with my listeners.

I became more popular. People come up to me and greet me. They told me how much they enjoyed my speech. They love listening to me speak! They told me things that I never think I was capable of doing – leave alone of doing so well, as winning 1st place in a competition. That gave me a big confident boost and I continued Toastmaster and competed in many more contests after that, and I gained more experience and earned more success in the Toastmaster and public speaking arena. Ultimately, I applied for a Education Specialist job in a lab and got the promotion – I am now a TEACHER in the laboratory, educating students, employees, and managing a lot of lab tours and presentations and leading lab meetings and such – things that I would never see myself doing if I look back in the rear mirror of when I was a college student.

Today, I’m still an introvert. I’m still not sociable. And I’m still consider myself a shy person. However, I talk when I need to, I am funny around people I am comfortable with, and I love being in the spotlight when I think people should give me their full attention as I’m lecturing. I have built a new dimension of myself through adversity. I am now able to switch to my new dimension when I am at work, and also when I am not at work if I feel so! When I went on a cruise trip, I got on the stage and sang a Karaoke song for the first time of my life. And no, when I was on the stage, I wasn’t like most other people who just sang. I was a performer when I was on the stage. I transform into my new dimension, and I give it all. I moved my feet, I moved my body, I gave them my facial expression that emanate the energy of the song, and people cheered and sang along and some people even pulled out their phone and waved it with their flashlight mode on.

This was the crazy pose I did when I ended the song on the Karaoke Stage. The energy was high!

Final Thoughts

We need to be flexible and adapt to what we need to do in certain circumstance. Work is usually the place where we must make the changes to fit the tasks that we are assigned to complete. When there is not an option, then we are forced to create a new dimension of ourselves. Those who fail, or more like refusing to do so, are often the ones who find themselves stuck in an endless pit of struggle filled with failures.

I think having internal self-talk conversation with yourself is important. In my example, telling myself that when I am on the stage, on the spotlight, whether it is at a speech contest, at a lecture hall, or at a Karaoke stage – I am a performer, I am here for my audiences, my students, and my listeners. I’m here to teach, to inspire, and to entertain. Nobody want to see a shy, hiding in my turtle shell and being small, or a person who is lack of confidence. If you can overcome your internal self who keeps telling you that you can’t do it, that you won’t win, that nobody cares about what you say, and all those negative thoughts – you will realize you are capable of doing things that you never think you can do, and doing it with much better results than anyone would ever expect you could do.

Empower yourself, build a new you!

If you haven’t started building a new dimension of yourself yet, today is a good day to start. This isn’t something you can create over a day, a month, or even a year. It is something that you have to continuously push yourself to face adversity and just give it all in. Remember when I said I practiced my contest speech for over 100 times? I was not over-exaggerating. It was probably the ONE thing that I did in my life where I actually pushed and forced myself to do EVERY DAY for a long duration of time (a few months). The final result is HARD WORKS PAID OFF, and that was the turning point and marked the completion of my new dimension.

Build well!

[Reflection] Gratitude in the month of December

Toward the end of the year, it is the time when a lot of people should take some time to reflect about their life – their challenges, their obstacles, their accomplishments, their future goals, and most importantly, practicing gratitude in a pandemic time like this. Today, I’ll focus on reflecting about my gratitude throughout the past year.

Things to be Grateful for:

Health: That’s definitely one of the top. I didn’t really had a lot of issues this past year other than growing a bit older and getting exhausted faster when playing with my nephews and niece. That’s the typical thing. Nothing too major, so that’s something to be grateful for. As for eating, I never really make any conscious choices to be healthy, but I think personality wise, I am a somewhat a balance person. I am thankful that I don’t have a strong sweet tooth and really care less for candies and desserts.

Family: I’m thankful to be able to live around my family members. Although I am single, but I never feel lonely. Living just about 15 minutes away from my brother, I get to visit them almost every single week. There, I have 2 little nephews and 1 niece to spend those noisy and chaotic time with, and then return back to my own home where I find peace and quiet. Such a harmonious balance!

As for my parents, their health is progressively worse as they age, but they are both still alive and still able to live independently. That’s definitely something to be thankful for. I am worry that the time of them needing more care and time would come, and it will one day… that’s the cycle of life and inevitable, so I can only hope that the day will prolong.

Career: This year was similar to last year, nothing too different, which is not a bad thing. I would rather my life be boring and normal. I did ask my boss for a promotion. He agreed, but it has been a long process due to the new application process. He finally submitted the application to his boss for me last month, after pending for like 3 months. So this process has been ongoing for nearly half a year now, and I still haven’t heard back about it yet. I was hoping that I would get the promotion before the end of this year, but looks very unlikely now since we are already at the middle of November.

I have a new work partner this year and she is great. We are able to communicate with one another and I am more compatible with her than with my previous colleague, so I’m really happy that has made my life much easier at work. Also, my employer is one of the greatest employers ever! We got a lot of bonus and gifts throughout the year. Each person got $500 worth of gift from the institution, a personal gift of choice and a gift card from a local business in town from the department, an extra bonus paid time off on Black Friday – it’s really nice! I’m thankful to be working for a company who always put the needs of customers first, but never forget to reinvest in their employees’ health and well-being!

Investment: I have made some good trades, and some really bad trades this year. Overall, I didn’t really make much money, but I didn’t lose a lot either. I think it is a muted year for my investment. It’s okay. Life is not all about winning. It can be better, but it can also be worse. We can just accept whatever we got, and forgive whatever mistakes we made and move on.

Friends: I really didn’t make a lot of friends now at my stage of life, although I really should since I’m single. The pandemic situation isn’t making it any easier because I am very cautious and really avoid trying to meet up with people. I have declined in social gathering events and really been carefully wearing my mask when interacting with others. My social life started out not so exciting, and the pandemic puts a final seal to my social life. Now, I am only around my family members and one other friend who I meet for lunch weekly… other than that, I really do not expose myself to anyone else. It surely has affected my happiness level and really would like to have more friends time, but most of my “old” friends have relocated somewhere else, so I’m stuck without friends here. But I should still be grateful for the Internet and able to stay in touch with people online.

Self-Happiness: I believe last year, I wrote a blog about treating myself better and gift myself things to reward for my hard work. This year, I have been rewarding myself by buying myself things that I normally wouldn’t buy. More like squandering and spending the money on things that I’m too frugal to spend on.

I bought a cheap drone from Amazon and learned how to fly it. I recently bought a curio cabinet for nearly $1,000 just for the heck of it. I bought a set of Karaoke microphone for singing as I enjoy that at home, although I hardly ever spend the time to sing (I need some company for motivation). I spent $100 to buy a photo book of the Asia trip that I went to with a cousin 2 years ago (he just put the photos together a few months ago, although the event happened in late 2019). All these things – I wouldn’t have done if I didn’t decide to spoil myself! I am grateful that I have extra money to spend and happy that I have decided to spend those dollars for myself.

What are you thankful for?

What about you? Consider your past year and take a moment to reflect about all the major events. What are you thankful for? Try to look for the positivities even though it may seem to be negative. I believe that no matter how bad a situation can be, it will only be a matter of time before it gets better because nothing can get worse forever, just like nothing can get better forever. There’s always an end to the extreme, and that’s why nature is dominated by the balance of life!

Bless you well!

[Reflection] Physical Therapy: Does it really help?

This topic comes to mind because I recently took a relative to a few physical therapy (PT) sessions, and actually, I have been taking this person to PT many years ago. While I do not have any professional credibility to make any scientific call, I still would like to share my personal thought from a family member, observing a relative’s progress through her PT treatment.

I think I understand the general idea of PT, although I haven’t really read any articles or papers about it. My guess is they want you to move your body parts so you can get your muscles to work and rebuild strength over time. People who needs PT are usually people who suffer from an injury, struggle with mobility or balance, and maybe experiencing all kind of pain/ache, including from arthritis.

For my relative’s case, I believe she has arthritis for her legs and then an additional back pain. It could also be some nerves that run from the top of the leg down to the feet. Anyway, she complained about this pain for years (5+) and in the past, I have brought her to PT sessions before. To jump to the final outcome, it really didn’t help her out much as I recently had to bring her back to PT once again.

I don’t think the doctors are really helpful either. They would put her through test after test: blood test, x-ray, MRI, CT, blah blah blah… spent… just say massive… amount of money (and stressful time of visiting the clinic), and in the end, the solution is always: 1) Take painkiller 2) Do PT and 3) Inject steroid as last resort (which is a short term solution, you’ll have to come back and keep injecting every few months to a year and it is not necessarily super helpful). My relative didn’t want to go the painkiller route because it isn’t really super helpful, and it also may cause drug dependency over time. I mean, taking painkiller like EVERY DAY for the rest of your life? Are you nut? So that really leaves PT as the last solution… and it is the same each time we see different doctor through the years.

Reflection: I can do it too?!

After going to several of these PT sessions, I think I can do the therapist’s job in less than 2 weeks of professional training. Seriously. First, they would always ask you “Why are you here today?” and then they will ask you a series of questions about where it hurts, what kind of activity will invoke the pain, how often it hurts, and blah blah blah. That whole questioning process will eat up about 15min or so of the 60min session. Next, they will ask you to walk around and maybe testing the strength of your feet and such by doing certain body gestures/tasks. This is about 5-10min. Then they will ask you to lay down and start pressing all over your back (if that’s where the pain is), and keep asking “does this hurt?” Also pressing wherever your pain is as well. That is about 5min. Then they will kind of explain where he presses that caused the pain and maybe a very general statement about how to alleviate some of that and avoid certain activity or whatever. Then he will excuse himself for about 5min or so to go print the exercise instructions for the patient to practice at home. Then he will spend the next 5-10min to demonstrate the 3-5 activities on the paper to ensure the patient knows how to do them at home independently. Lastly, they will ask “any other questions?” Nope. We were out of the session in about 45min. That’s basically their job, at least from my experience with this relative – again, maybe they do more than this, but that’s how I feel. I really think 2 weeks of training time would allow me to do as a good job as he is. Really, the main thing I need to learn is how to touch the patient. The selection of exercise and such should be super straight forward as there are categories like legs/arms/back etc…

According to Glassdoor, a physical therapist’s average salary is $80k/yr (~$38/hr) in Minneapolis, USA. My job is an Education Specialist, and Glassdoor says the average salary for this job is $58.6k/yr (~$28/hr) in the USA. I know I’m not comparing a state vs. a country, but that’s the info they provided, and it should be relatively comparable. Clearly, I’ve picked the wrong profession :p hahaha! A PT basically makes like 35% more. Anyway, just my reflection with what I see.

Risk of Failure

While PT must be considered one of the best solutions – otherwise, why would doctors keep recommending it? But I feel it doesn’t come without failure. I was looking up the success rate on Google, and I think I read somewhere that the success rate was like 50-60% for like 7-8 weeks of PT. That doesn’t sound very promising to me if you tell me half of the patients failed. Shrug. I can tell some big problems with PT is first of all, patient compliance. Patients usually do not follow the instructions and complete the exercise recommended daily. After a short period of time, they will lose motivation and stop doing it. Often time, for chronic issue like arthritis, you basically have to do those exercises for the rest of your life, not just weeks or months. So maybe because of that, it could lead to failure. Secondly, are patients really doing the exercises correctly? I know there was a 5-10min demo of each task at the session (once), but when the patient is on her own, did she really position herself correctly and appropriately? You can’t really tell. And lastly, while I understand that you need to move those muscles and exert some work on it to rebuild some strength, I witness my relative struggle with those exercises (particularly the one that asks her to walk 30min each day). The walking may caused her to get more nerve pain along her legs and numbness frequency. I understand that she can tone it down to 20min, or even 15min if needed, but the fact that exercising will lead to pain and fatigue, it is discouraging to patients to follow through. I don’t even know if the science really work, but I will just take their words for it for now… so the biggest issue with PT is patient compliance. They almost need someone to go through these practice sessions with them personally, like with a coach, who would impose discipline and motivation.

I think PT will be much more successful if there is a personal coach, but it will get very expensive! So not feasible!

Anyway, that’s my thought about PT, and man, it is a nice job from my glance, and with a nice salary. The only “bad” thing about it that I see is you have to be pressing/massaging people’s body… and physical contact can be touchy. Plus, dealing with humans can be problematic at time. You never know when you’ll end up with a “difficult patient” who has a story of his own and go off the tangent and argue with you and such. Other than those things, I feel this is a nice and chill job 🙂 And you can “believe” that you are helping people.

Stay well!

[Reflection] When Life Comes Near an End.

What if you find out that you will only live for another short period of time? Maybe 5 years? Maybe 3 years? Maybe 1 year? Or maybe just for a few months? What would you do when life comes near an end?

I want to reflect on this topic today because I have a coworker who was diagnosed with cancer about a year ago. When I first met her, she was a tall and happy woman with beautiful long hairs running pass her shoulders. Today, her hairs are all gone, but fortunately, she keeps her smile on and continue on with the battle against cancer.

What to Do?

Well, certainly I did not know every bit details of what my coworker went through after diagnosis, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out it was painful, hurtful, and a lot of courage is necessary to grind through this horrific news. Thankfully, she has a lovely husband and a supportive family. Work has been very generous for her and she has been able to work remotely and flexibly depend on her medical needs.

From time to time, I see her posting photos of her son – whether he was on TV or just published today’s news on the newspaper, or him moving back to college campus. Often time, I see a lot of photos of her and her family went camping – actually all summer long! Sometimes, she would update her status to keep us posted with her health condition and what therapy or drug has been done to help her fight this battle.

So what exactly did she do? From my perspective, she keeps a positive attitude, accept friends and families’ support, and continue to work as much as possible – while still enjoy her favorite camping activities as much as she can while she’s still able to, and spend quality time with the ones she love the most.

My Thoughts

When I started to see her 5th or 6th camping trip in the summer, I got envious of her because of all the cool places she traveled to – and especially during the midst of this pandemic. I would see very beautiful scenery – waters, mountains, flowers, happy faces, things that make me wish I was also there. Then that prompted me to ask myself – then why am I not there? If someone carrying cancer in her body is able to make it to these destinations, why can’t I?

In my head, I started to look for my reasons (or excuses) – the first one is of course because there’s a pandemic out there, it is risky to go anywhere outside of the house! The second, well… I don’t have confident driving far, so I definitely will need someone to drive me along on these trips. Third, I don’t really have any companions nearby that would do these things with me. Fourth, I am busy at work, and it’s hard to takes time off (not true, if I really try, I can). Fifth, I have no idea how to camp and I don’t like uncertainties and it is really exhausting to go on trips like this. And so on and so on. In the end, I realized each time I see these places that I tell myself that I should go there to visit, but then knowing the reality is I won’t.

Now I tell myself, if I can find myself a companion, maybe a soul mate, someone who would drag me out to these places, then I will get it done one day. Yes! In the end, that’s just another reason I came up with to delay and make myself feel better about it. The answer is, “when life comes near an end”, that probably is the real answer for this. Unfortunately, life needs to get to this point before we realize we can drop everything else and just fulfill our bucket list. Often time, many of us won’t go checking off the list while we are still in good health.

What is Doable and What is Not?

With that in mind, that doesn’t mean that we all should just drop everything and go to all the dream places that we ever wanted to go right away. There are many places I have thought about wanting to go. I wanted to visit Japan, to see many national parks in the US, and to go back to Asia and try out all kind of exotic food. While I probably won’t be able to travel internationally now due to the pandemic, visiting national parks within the country is not something way out of reach. But besides traveling, there are other things that I can fulfill from my bucket list in the meantime. At the very minimal, I’m starting to treat myself better and buying myself a gift frequently to reward myself. Life is long, but many years can go by with the blink of an eye sometimes. Recalling the time when I was 6 years old, and to become a man of who I am today, it feels like the years of gap are just seconds in memory-term. For now, all I can do is to do what makes me happy within my reach. I sure hope we all will live long enough for the pandemic to end and all traveling get back to normal, so then we all can go visit our friends and relatives by flight safely, regardless of distance.

When life comes near an end is a scary question that I do not dare to attempt to think about. I hope I won’t have to think about this question ever. I really don’t know what I would do if it is to happen to me. I just hope that I would leave this world without any burden to the people remain on this world. I once heard someone said that we came to this world without anything, and we will leave this world with nothing. So as long as I don’t leave any messes when I leave, I’ll be proud of myself.

Live well!

[Reflection] Gift: I don’t even know what to buy for myself

While at work this week, I overheard some coworkers’ conversation over Christmas gifts that they received from previous years. I heard someone said they would write down the item throughout the year as the idea comes up while interacting with their loved ones or friends. That way, they would know exactly what to get them by the time Christmas come. I thought that’s a good idea, except how do you know if the person wouldn’t have acquired the item by the time Christmas come (it would be awkward to ask “have you bought the X yet?”).

Anyway, finding a gift to me is quite a troublesome challenge. Not only you want to buy something for someone that they actually like and will use, but also at the price range that is within your affordable comfort zone. Besides that, you don’t want to buy a gift over extravagant that the other person may feel obligated to return a gift of the same value to you… after all, the point of giving is not to expect the same return. I often feel obligated to return the favor or gift to someone at about the same price range just so I don’t feel guilty of not giving back… and I am someone who would much rather have not received any gifts in the first place because shopping for gifts is a headache for me.

Gift card is usually the simplest thing, but not much thoughts at all.

I mean, I even have trouble finding gifts for myself, leave alone buying for others. Maybe this is just me, and not many other people – but I have a hard time figuring out what it is that I really want to have. I mean, I have all the basics and necessities… I really don’t need anything else. However, in the midst of the pandemic, I heard something about treating yourself well a while ago and I started to try to do something new – once a month, I will buy myself something that I want.

Sometimes find a gift is like walking into this place and overwhelm with hundreds of random useless things. You just wasted 30min here and find nothing practical or thought your receiver would like. You try to compare and ask yourself millions of questions what if they don’t like it? You walk out the door with nothing in the end.

As a result, several months ago, I bought a toy drone from Amazon. I picked a cheap one, just to try it out. I always wanted to see how it works and thought it is cool to take video on the air and record the screen on bird’s eyes view. A few months ago, I bought myself a set of microphones for karaoke at home. I love old songs and singing. Now, I am struggling to think of what else I really want. Well, there’s one thing I want, and that’s is to travel, and I need a companion. So besides the stupid pandemic that cause a lot of inconvenience and safety issues, I also need someone to enjoy the time with… so that is not something I can “gift” myself… not easily anyway.

I would probably search around Amazon and see if there’s anything I really like… it’s mid-autumn festival time… maybe it’s time to order some really good durian flavor mooncake for myself to try. I love durian! That’s an idea!

Gift well!

[Education] Does School Curriculum Help In Real Life?

Many of us – whether we are parents or students ourselves, when going into classes in school, we often wonder: why am I learning this? What is the point of learning all these “non-sense”? How can I apply these knowledge to real life? How is that going to help me (or my kids) find a job, exactly?

Back to when I was a student, that certainly was something I wondered in the back of my mind. At the time, I didn’t really know much about reflection, so the thought quickly escape my mind without any deep thinking. Fortunately, I am lucky to have a higher enlightenment innate mindset that I picked up on the knowledge and able to applied it to my life. However, not many people can recognize it like I did.

Today, I’m going to share what I think about the school curriculum, particularly High School because that is the time where kids really build their foundation and knowledge that prepare them to become young adults. It is the most critical time to inject any positive influence and thinking philosophy for them to become a good and useful person to the community and society.

The Courses

First of all, what were the courses that I took? Well, of course there are the core courses such as English, Math, and Science. Are those classes really that important? Well, it is hard to say. In English, you learn to read books, to write essays, and maybe a few more things here and there… but if I don’t plan to be a journalist, a reporter… etc, why should I need that class? You can say the same for Math and Science. Literally, all the classes are really “optional”, but why do they make us take those courses?

The key answer is not about the specific knowledge, but rather the idea of using what you learned and then similarly applied those concepts to your real life situation such as in the workplace. For example, getting a 100% in a quiz/test about the book “To Killing A Mockingbird” means nothing for the job. However, the reading skills that one obtained from how to effectively read and understand the author’s meaning behind each story and maybe learn about foreshadowing and suspense – those are the qualities that any good book should have. That right there is a valuable knowledge that one should get from an English class, for example.

A book I had to read in High School English class, honestly, I forgot like 95% of the story already. But it doesn’t matter.

The problem is, teachers never taught children the application part of those concepts. Yes, they talked about foreshadowing, creating suspense… blah blah blah, and listed out the example of each from the specific book that they were reading…. but failed to explain a step beyond on applying those key concepts to other books that a student may encounter later in life.

Math is probably the subject that most students would ask that question: why should I learn this? When in my life would I need to calculate the rate of the water running and the time it takes for it to fill my cylindrical container? Why would I want to calculate the volume of a sphere – like, am I really going to care how much air I need to blow to inflate the ball with radius x? Am I going to be an engineer or something? For most people, those textbook problems are simply another problem to solve for x, and then they move on to another problem to solve. After repetitively doing problems over and over again, chapter after chapter, you stop asking the questions and your brain just think about “solve for x”. The teachers – well, they don’t care either, they only care how you get your result and what x is equal to. My point is, nobody is taking the time to tell us why are we learning this and how is doing these problems going to help us in the future? What skill should we be extracting from doing these problem – no, the answer is not to know how to calculate the volume of any random shape, not to know how much materials you need to build to build a rectangular fence around your yard… blah blah blah.

Really, how in the world does any ordinary person needs to memorize and know how to do this?

What they should tell the students are key concept and traits. For example, we have math homework with 50 problems to do each day because “practice makes perfect and help us retain good memories”. When solving for x, there are more than 1 way to reach the same result – and this can be the same when working at a job as well, and explain that there may be more efficient way than another. I use Pythagorean theorem to justify why walking diagonally on the grass will allow me to reach to the final destination faster than my friend who tries to follow the pavement vertically and then horizontally. Why? Because a+b>c — yes, the teacher NEVER teach you that. They only teach you c = sqrt of (a^2+b^2). It requires another level of understanding for me to figure out a+b>c on my own that many students do not know. And then how to use that equation I came up with to justify what I see in my real life. That’s an example of what students should have learned from those classes, not just solving problems on paper.

What Do We Need to Teach In School?

We need a social class that teach kids how to interact and talk to others. How to make friends and start/carry a conversation in a meaningful way. Instead, we get speech class where the teacher basically just give you some papers to read and then tell you to prepare a 3-5min persuasive speech, informative speech, ice breaker speech… etc. Then you show up, stood in front of the class, give your speech… done. Sure, some people would learn the importance of public speaking and confidently standing in front of the public – that is a great skill. But for most kids, it is a subject that many do not want to take. What happen to them? They did it because they need to do it to get a passing grade… did they really taught what they needed to boost their confidence? Did they really get the mentorship they deserved to get? And how many people actually ended up having to use the public speaking skill on their job extensively? Rather, if you teach people how to speak in a social situation, how to mingle, how to make friends, how to tell great and exciting stories, and the classroom is a perfect situation to practice among many fellow students.

Having great social skills can go a long distance with today’s society. Networking can mean a successful career.

We need a financial class. Many many kids growing up, not knowing anything about managing their own money. They need to know and understand how credit card works, what is interest rate, what it means to be in debt, why it is important to make all the monthly payments on time, how to write a check… etc. I mean, they don’t need to know the crazy stuff like stock investment or setting up a retirement account, but at the minimum, just know that expense needs to be less than income.

I asked my 7 years old nephew where does money come from? “Bank”, he said. Teach your kids money come from work!

Another class we need is practicing good behavior. How to be a good person and be nice. How to think on other people’s shoes. Why we need to make compromise and that we may not always get what we want. Be good sportmanship… etc. Many people came out of school and joined the workforce, and they are very annoying and disliked because they don’t have any social skills and to be nice. Having a positive mindset and willing to help others is something that kids should be taught while in school.

If we can get our kids to be “good”, we can reduce crimes and violence significantly. It goes a long way!

Parents Will Have To Make That Up

So when school fails, parents are the last line of defense to make sure their kids grow up to become a self-sustainable and independent adult – ie: stay out of troubles!

YouTube is a very good place (and free) to find great motivational stories. Learn about reflection. Listen to stories because there are lesson-worthy for life that anyone can benefit from. Don’t just listen and forget, reflect on it and then think of ways to apply the lesson to your life. Check out the Toastmasters International Speech Contest, they usually contain very meaningful message to the story. Check out TedTalk, some of them are very touching with life changing experiences.

Story is the most powerful (and usually free) tool that can change a mind, and makes a big difference to those who can turn them into real action in their lives.

Only after you learn how to reflect and apply, then you will be enlightened to become a better version of yourself.

Learn well!

[Reflection] The Story of “Cow Psychology”

Last week, I listened to a speech from an old lady who told a tale of her younger days. She talked about back in the old days, she used to work as a nurse assistant in a nursing home. She shared a story of a time when there was an old patient who needed to be undressed to go to the bathroom, and she was sent to help that patient. When she tried to help the patient undress, the dementia patient swung his arm and hit her face, and screaming at her. Well, that was the brutal truth of working with dementia patients, I supposed.

Now that was the conflict of her story, and then she jumped back to the time before she was a nurse assistant. She was a dairy farmer. One of her tasks was to work (probably milking) with the cows. She noted that whenever she scratches the back of the cow and makes it feel good, they have a better time together and the cow seems to cooperate more. Therefore, each time she works with the cow, she would gently scratch the back of the cow – she referred to this phenomenal as “Cow Psychology” – in which cows also show affection and love to be petted or scratched. She even introduced the book “Animal bodies, human minds”, maybe she learned her communicative skill with animal through that book?

She then utilized this same strategy when working with her dementia patients. As she helps them undress, she would gently scratch their back and speak softly to them, and that seemed to have calmed their nerves, and she was able to leave the room without a bruise in her face.

It was a short story, but I was stunned with the fascinating concept of “Cow Psychology” that she enlightened the audiences with, and more importantly – how she applies that to solve her conflict with dementia patients. This is a universal language for communication for those who are like animals (such as babies, elderly, severely sick patients) – cannot talk, cannot show their facial expression, and simply cannot convey to others what they want anymore.

My own reflection

Now, thinking deeper into the concept of Cow Psychology, I realized it is actually existing in my circle of life as well – I just never realized it “as a thing”. I have a 7 years old nephew who has trouble sleeping at nights. One way to help him fall into sleep is simply scratching his back for him while he tries to sleep. This may sounds super simple, but it really helps. Does the feeling of scratching the back really feel good? I betcha it is! I still remember that feeling from when I was a child, having someone scratched my back for me. For me personally, I remember going into a private school and after lunch time, we would need to go take a nap. In Vietnam, the weather was typically hot, and I still remember the feeling of having the teacher fanning us with her paper fan to ease us into our naps with the cool air, it was unforgettable. The feeling of having someone nearby, knowing someone affectionately taking care of you, and just feeling good – that memory will last a lifetime because it feels so good!

Fanning yourself is not good. Someone else fanning you to sleep is a totally different experience!

Yes, the cow psychology concept is real! Maybe the next time if we ever encounter a dire situation where normal communication doesn’t work, we can try the cow psychology method… or, you may use it to communicate with animals, your pets!

Cow well!

[Reflection] Fashion Show (Mr. Global 2019) – Something I thought boring hooked my attention!

I stumbled across a YouTube video yesterday (Full credit of video goes to: POPPORY FASHION BLOG). It was a video of men from across the globe, each representing their country, wearing costume that illustrate their culture, and elegantly walking on the catwalk just like a fashion show. I am not someone who is interested in fashion and clothing at all. To my surprise, it really caught my attention the moment the first contestant came out with a costume: Brazil. This blog will mainly just be me describing what I saw and my reactions to it.

Brazil contestant!

The person’s clothing is unique, and I have never seen it before. His red tie (or whatever the official word is that I don’t know) reminded me of a similar red tie I had to wore for school back to when I was a kid living in Vietnam. It is so elegant, and so I continued on and let the video keeps playing (my attention span is quite short, usually 10 seconds or less is all it takes for me to jump off to browsing for another clip).

Then we had Cuba! Oh my, the puffy arm sleeves are so special. I also like the hat ball on his head with the country’s flag pattern. It really gives me the cultural vibe/feeling.

Cuba contestant!

Then there came the Czech Republic. I mean, his clothing is simple, but really unique with the little vest on the outside. The patterned cloth hanging off his belly area definitely shows a cultural difference and separate his country from the others. I actually do not know much about this country at all, except I think it is somewhere in Europe. After watching more European countries’ costumes, I realize the European clothing are quite simple but carry a bit of sophistication. I was watching in awe.

Czech Republic Contestant!

Next, we have Guam – another country that I have not heard much of before, oh my. This one is feathery! BIG HUGE features. It feels like he is carrying a bird or yet, he has transformed into a bird! It surely is catchy to the eyes.

Guam Contestant.

Anyway, there are a lot of great costumes, but if I have to pick a winner out of everybody in this contest. Indonesia totally wins it. It is a god-like costume and the contestant walked out with unique creeping movement as he held into a puppet head, controlling its mouth to open and close. The costume is definitely the most eye-popping out of all.

Indonesia Contestant!

I will just share one last one that is worth mentioning, because he was the final winner of the Mister Global 2019 event. Note that this international costume catwalk is only one part of the entire contest. Although his clothing is quite plain (almost look like some monk clothing to me), but he has a good look and the fan gestures that he made during his walk really made him extra elegant and highly prestigious. One thing I realize now is the writing on his paper fan is Chinese… not Korean, haha!

Korean Contestant!

My Reflection:

I will include the link of the video at the end for those of you who also see interest after reading my blog. It is 14 minutes long, but it is worth every minute of it. I actually re-watched it for the second time. I also love the background music they play, very catchy.

My thought about fashion show before this video is it is always boring, just people wearing different clothing walking in and out with camera flashing all over their face. Maybe it is still boring to me, because I am just not interested in brand names for fashion. This may be an exception for me because it is not about a company, not about a brand, and not about trying to make me buy their product. Instead, it is about culture, identity, diversity, and most importantly – to show the pride we have for each of our nationality.

The glory comes when we root for the contestant of our own originality. We feel proud that our country display the cultural impressiveness that pride us all, and that is what make us unique and special. Not only that, I was amazed to see the design from these clothing. I started to put myself in a fashion designer’s shoes and give them more respect than I did before.

I don’t know if I would like to watch a fashion show, but for sure, I’ll be interested to see fashion show that display cultural diversity of the world in the future. Enjoy the show! Remember, you are unique and special just in the way you are.

Diverse well!

Mothers’ Day: What Do You Appreciate?

I think for Mother’s Day, it is a good time to reflect on the times we had with our mother, or maybe you are a mother and you are reflecting whether you have been fulfilling your role as a mother. Let me share some of my thoughts about my mother.

My mother is in her 60s and she has hardly ever attended any school at all. She is able to recognize the alphabets and some Chinese words, and that is pretty much all her education. As a young adult, she did entered a workforce and worked a sand factory for a little while. She then got married and had 2 children, and she was a homemaker for most of her prime time. After she immigrated to America, in order to find a living, she worked at a fast food burger restaurant, helping in the kitchen area. After several months or a year, she found another job at a gemstone factory as a factory worker. I think she worked there for maybe 2 years or so, and then the recession hits around 2008 and she was laid off, and that forced her into an early retirement since she really doesn’t have the skills to compete and find another job.

From the description above that describes her life, it really doesn’t sound impressive at all. In fact, sound like a low-life and uninteresting life to most people, I would say. What I wrote is what outsiders would see from the external side of a person. But from the perspective of a son, I see her as a woman that no other women in this world is able to match (at least so far in my life).

I have started to reflect more in recent years, and I remember finding myself surprised by my mother. For example, let’s look at intelligence – oh yes, you can say she is not bright – she can’t do basic math, she doesn’t know how to read, she doesn’t have “common concepts” in her mind because she never get taught any of the basic concepts that we take for granted. She is hard to train because she can’t seem to understand how the iPad screen reacts to her fingers. Yes, she is not bright in those ways, I admit. However, there were things I noticed that she is much brighter than me – someone holds a Master degree. For example, simple trick like leaving your bottle of ketchup upside down would facilitate your next squeeze much faster. How to keep the food fresh longer. How to differentiate fresh vegetable vs vegetable that are soon to be rotten. There are also a lot of simple tricks of life that I never thought about, but forgot about them now. She is uneducated, but that doesn’t mean she is not smart. That is the lesson I learn from my mom about uneducated people.

Beside being witty, she is very organized, very clean, and is a person who always complete all her duties and responsibilities. She has never failed to cook a decent and nice meal to the family. Even on days that she was sick, and not feeling well with her old age, she was still putting in a lot of thoughts and efforts to cook a nice healthy meal for us. She always complete all her house chores, never asked for help. I don’t think you can find a wife like that anymore in today’s age. They only exist in the earlier generations.

But those are just the physical duties and responsibilities… what about the caring and attention? Well, you know the most caring moms are the most annoying moms who would always call you every single day to check on you… even you are not like 10 years old anymore. She likes to ramble on and on about the same topic over and over again, and that drives me nut… and honestly, I don’t really want to pick up her phone calls. I have taught her to leave voice message on Messenger instead, and that has worked wonderfully! Ha! And if I feel there’s a need to talk, then I will make the phone call to her instead. I’m such a genius to figure out this solution, haha! The joke aside, when I was sick and was all alone, she was the only one calling and I was able to conveniently tell her about my sickness. You know, I’m not someone who would post a status update to the world that I’m sick, or I’m dying, or whatever… and expect people to come rushing to check on me. So I really appreciate that kind of attention and care (when it is needed, not all the time, haha).

How about you?

Anyway, that is a little story about my reflections with my mom. We spent some nice dinner time last night for a hot pot meal as a family and we spent half the afternoon today to take some nice family photos together in a beautiful park. I hope you had a great mother’s day and took a good moment to reflect on what you appreciate about your mother and if you are a mother – if you are an inspiration and a role model for your children. Share what you did on Mother’s day or a thought of your reflection!

Wish all mothers well!

[Story/Inspiration] Defining “Success”

Success is a cliche word and topic that many people talk about and even discuss in great extend, some people even run a seminar/workshop revolve only on this topic alone, and people pay hundred of dollars to attend these sessions. Attention grabbing titles like “5 Big Secrets to Success” or “Road to Success Tomorrow”, these get people to click/join/read/listen to. Like usual, whatever we come to interact with, if we don’t take the time to reflect it and think critically about how we are going to apply what we learned into our actual life – even knowing the “secrets”, it will only remain a virtual secret that will never come into life unless we put it into practice.

I remember several years ago, I had a job interview with a manager. He asked me to define what success means to me. I am never good at answering questions on my feet, so I spit out some random thoughts, whatever came out first in my tangled mind. I said, “I want to write a novel, and success would be one day that I can publish the book”. Needless to say, that book never came close to publication, nor does it even make it beyond a few chapters. Recalling back to this story, I learned that I actually didn’t care so much about publishing a book. If I was so desired to do it, why did I give up so easily? Why didn’t I put in more hard work to get it done? Was it because I’m too lazy? Well, not really… I spent lot of time playing my video games to beat all the levels and destroy the final boss! I have my determination! When I was as young as 6 years old, I remember trying the same level over and over again, spending hours to beat the level on the game.

I tried, several times, even joined a Writing Club, but did not succeed.

Well, the answer is simple, I didn’t want to publish the book bad enough although I have tried a few times. Sometimes we have delusional thoughts in our heads, thinking that we really need to do this and that it is our dream to do certain thing… but that is really who we want to become, and that is very different in the reality world for the most cases. Surely, some people are determined and goal-orientated, and they have worked hard for decades to meet their goals in life. One of my long-term goals is to retire early, and I have been working on that goal for over 12 years, building up my retirement portfolio. This is actually a harder task than writing a book, but I am still willing to work for it in order to make my retirement a successful story. The reason – I just don’t want to write a book that bad.

Back to the interview – it was a terrible answer, and now looking back, it was not just terrible, but was the wrong answer. And what was the outcome of that interview? I was offered the job right after the interview as a math tutor. I didn’t have to succeed in answer the question, but I succeeded at getting the job… so should I say I succeeded? Well… no, because I didn’t really need that job that bad, it was a bonus thing for me only.

The moral of the story is what you define as success can change over time, and sometimes you don’t really sure if these long-term goals that you have been pursuing is really something you really really want. If you find yourself giving up, not putting in enough efforts, not fighting to the end, and maybe not even mind without it, then maybe you should let it go and let it be. Sometimes we do things just because that is how society thinks we should be doing. For example, we want to climb the corporate ladder because we should be promoted every now and then in order to be successful at the company, we want to own a house because a real family needs a roof with our names on it, we want to get married because it is part of life and is a stage of adulthood, we want to become great parents so we can be proud of what our kids do when they grow up… these are real dreams, real goals, and ambitious. They are all worth following. But you always have to measure it with a ruler that shows how much your desire is to complete that goal.

Let it be – if it is meant to succeed, it will fly up high. If it falls, it will sprout another plant and keep growing.

After trying for maybe the 10th time, the 20th time… I finally defeated the toughest boss I ever played against as a little kid. If we choose to let go and give up, that’s because we don’t want it and it is not worth pursuing… and it is not because we aren’t capable and unable to succeed. By the end of the day, there is no such thing as “5 Secrets to Success”… there’s one one way to success, and there is no secret to anyone in this world, and that is “hard work or determination”.

Happy Easter everyone! The biggest success in life is to live a happy and stress-free, so keep everything that make you smile each day and get rid of the sources of negative energy.