Hacking the Good Days... » lifehack

It’s harder to be kind than clever

cathyma — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 22:32:16 +0000

‘It’s harder to be kind than clever. [...] Cleverness is a gift. Kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy, they are given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gift if you’re not careful.’

Founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos

(Talk starts at 6:26)

Lessons from the wisemen, 2010

cathyma — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 22:49:28 +0000

Some of you who followed my blog may notice that I tend to write a reflective piece (like this and this) towards the end/beginning of the year. Every year I was surprised by much learning/people/inspiration that came into my life; for that, I thank you. Here is my list for 2010,

1. A filled up or empty bottle won’t make noises. Bottles that are half-filled are the noisiest.

That’s actually a Chinese proverb. I learnt that there words are messy and actions speak louder. Sometimes in order to be heard it’s not about being loud, but to be quiet. When you speak little but only speak when there is something meaningful to say, people listen. If you shout, you almost prove that point that you are not worth listening to. Most powerful way to be listened to, however, is to speak with actions. Sometimes the best thing you can do for a friend who is grieving is just to say nothing and sit next to them.

2. Inaction can be the most powerful action

When life gets bit tough and confusing, it can feel like you’re lying under water when a pebble hitting the river bed. At times like this, it’s best to be still. With stillness you can look inwards and listen to yourself; what is it, why are you not happy? You may get a new perspective and realise that you are not even standing in the river you want to be in. Time to move on.

3. You can’t control everything in life, but you can be good to yourself

This classic research shows that lack of control is more likely to induce ulcer in animals despite the same level of shock administrated. It is unfortunate that we have no control on many things in life. From a taoist point of view, pursuing the infinite (the many things we won’t be able to change) with the finite (our limited being) is a dangerous path. Next time when you are angry with the ‘thing’ at work, at other people, at the tube strike, just let go and accept the fact that you have no control over. And notice the shortness of breath that happens when you are angry. Why don’t give your feet a tennis ball massage, get a nice haircut, or treat yourself your favourite magazine/book?

4. It feels good to assume the goodness in human nature

This mini saga story that I posted before is worth repeating here on this topic,

The waitress repeated, “Medium $3, Large $3.50.” The kid had emptied his pocket. He had $4 in total. The waitress was getting impatient. Five minutes. Finally, the kid asked for a medium scoop. Later, the waitress came to clean and swallowed hard. There was $1 bill left as a tip.

Read more: http://www.rajeshsetty.com/2010/10/04/mini-saga-61-thoughtfulness/#ixzz1A6YwG2Po
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike

My little coping mechanism in modern society (don’t I sound like a caveman?) is to think of a story that would sufficiently justify someone’s ill action (though it’s all done in my tiny brain so that it wouldn’t risk being ‘patronising’). For example, if someone pushes you to get onto the tube, I’d think, ‘ah maybe she’s standing all day at work and really need the seat’. Of course, sometimes people do push your buttons too much – in that case I’ll just go back to point number 3 and pull out my box of chocolate. That, for sure, would make everything better.

5. Judgment, attachment and resistance are the barriers to the present

During this year’s (yoga) practice we studied more about the concept of duality. Heaven and Earth, Joy and Sorrow, the Past and the Future. But what intrigues me is how hard it is to stay in the present. How many hours do we waste worrying? Or busy planning our next steps? I love the saying (ironically as a product manager) ‘life is what happens when you’re busy planning’. As well as ‘things you worry are usually not the problems. Real problems are things that would not even have come across your mind.’

And how we love judging. ‘The coffee isn’t good enough.’ Attachment. ‘This is not how I used to feel when I was with xx’. Resistance – the feeling that you’d rather be somewhere else or doing something else. All these vices. It’s nice if we can all take a moment to feel the earth we stand on, air we inhale, people we love, and just being with our own selves without any judgment.

6. Focus on the minimum, incremental chuck of improvement

I cannot even begin to articulate how much I learnt from Agile (for my non techkie friends – is a software development philosophy/methodology) and how that can be apply to my personal life. The main gist of Agile that inspires me is the notion of focusing on the little incremental, deliverable improvements that yield the most results. The example I love is if there’s one thing that you can do to tidy up your room – make your bed. So that you come home and you always have something nice and tidy to tug in. Don’t worry about buying a house, but start thinking about how much you can comfortably put away each month. Don’t worry about buying that amazing experience for your mum, but to send her a text message to let her know that you love her your way. The magical switch is not how much you plan to do, but how little and how you do it well.

7. Change is the Constant in Life

Finally – I guess if I were to put a theme to the year 2010, lots of it is about upheavals and changes, some of them for the worse first, then ease into blessing later. Some are just straight-up happy shocks (hello to my pregnant friends and babies of 2010!). Life happens when you least expects it. I hope year 2011 would awaits you with a few lovely, delightful surprises around the corner. Hope you enjoy reading my highlight of 2010… and here’s your treat!

Wish you a very happy 2011.

On Holding Hands

cathyma — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 15:28:01 +0000

How to be Smarter: If you’re walking with someone, holding hands, and they trip a little, you tighten your grip to prevent them from falling. If you would let go of someone’s hand and just let them fall, you shouldn’t have agreed to hold their hand in the first place. So if someone you love starts to trip a little in life, you need to tighten your grip, your friendship, your relationship with them, to help prevent them from falling. If you didn’t want the responsibility of having to take extra-good care of someone when they are going through a hard time, you shouldn’t have agreed to love them in the first place. But please only let yourself love the right type of stand-up, honorable, kind people, that would do the same right back for you in an instance.

Nice way to think about how to be smarter, not conventionally and not intellectually. That’s why I love this blog.

On Thoughtfulness

cathyma — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 14:38:53 +0000

Another great post from Setty’s blog:

Mini Saga #61 – Thoughtfulness

The waitress repeated, “Medium $3, Large $3.50.” The kid had emptied his pocket. He had $4 in total. The waitress was getting impatient. Five minutes. Finally, the kid asked for a medium scoop. Later, the waitress came to clean and swallowed hard. There was $1 bill left as a tip.

Quality.

It also boils down to one’s ability to assume good faith. How many times you are the waiter as opposed to the little boy?

Shoulder and wrist pain, anyone?

cathyma — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 22:48:16 +0000

A good friend of mine has been complaining about her wrists that hurt so bad she has started visiting the physios regularly – and she’s only in her twenties! That made me think, how many of us (who sit in front of a computer all day) are constantly suffering from back pain, shoulder pain and wrist pain? I hope you’re not one of us, but if you do, I hope this blog helps.

I have started doing yoga about 6 years ago, and have been a total convert only a couple of years ago when I learnt how to relieve any kind of strain and pain by going into certain poses. I also wrote about the main benefits of yoga for geeks in particular.

But as action speaks more than words, I feel oblige to share with as many of you all my favourite stretches for relieving pain around the wrists and shoulders, so easy that you don’t even go into a class to try! But of course, boring reminder here, when there’s any extreme discomfort or sharp pain, make sure you check with you GP. Otherwise these are great little exercises to give yourself a little impromptus massage. I have linked all exercises back to their source, but I have added my own personal comment to bring out the maximum effectiveness of each stretch.

Enjoy!

1. Basic Wrist Stretch (ninja mask’s optional!)

This one is so simple that you can do it while you’re sitting in front of your desk.

Remember to sit properly with your both feet parallel hip-width apart
Inhale as you extend one arm (or if your neighbour colleagues don’t mind, both), remember to tighten your fingers and arm muscles, that way you can feel the the stretch more intensely
Exhale while you stretch up, on the next inhale point your wrist up
Exhale, return to neutral (hands pointing to the side)
Inhale pointing down, exhale return to neutral
For the creative type – feel free to use this exercise to focus on the breath and try to maintain longer exhale than inhale, that way you clear your mind and come back with more good ideas (sans the caffeine and hello good night sleep!)

* also take time to notice you *are not* slouching – imagine an invisible string pulling yourself up from the tip of your head. No, I’m not trying to imply that you’re the sock-puppet mucking around on Wikipedia, it’s just that in the long run slouching messes up with your spine alignment and exerts prolong pressure in the wrong place. And that can really, really hurt, now we don’t want that, do we?

Great for wrist relief! Once you get into the hang you can start introducing variations, such as rotating your wrists clock-wise and anti-clock-wise, also great for relieving the tight tendons around the wrists.

2. Counter shoulder stretch

Knowing my blog’s audience, I am tempted to make this pose more macho sounding, like, Couching Tiger pose. Right.

As you know, but probably not often think about, that our shoulders are composed of highly intricate joints, muscles and tendons and we tend to stuck them in the same position whole day (arms 90 degrees typing/mouse maneuvering). By now with all the damage done, you are probably like me – a quick test here - if you reach your left arm above your shoulder to the centre back and right arm from below up, do your hands touch touch one another easily? On both sides? heh. After years of trying (definitely not hard enough), I still can’t do that on my left side.

If you are like me, you’re going to *love* the couching tiger stretch,

This pose should bring immediate relief to upper back and shoulders, as well as relieving strains on the arms. Also it clears the head a bit, too. And if you’re good in holding your spine steady and lock your knees, you can get a great hamstring stretch too, great for the cyclists.

Finally! I’ve been building up to this funky one!

3. Funky hamstring-lower-back stretch:

I love this one when I start feeling sleepy – and it’s so easy to sneak into an empty meeting room when you feel stale, uninspired, or just having bad shoulder strain! Easier done than how it looks, too, I promise. Not to mention having all the blood rushing to your head, guess how I quit my coffee addiction slowly and steadily?

Hope you like the stretches, and feel free to share if I have missed something obvious. Now time to show some love to your shoulders, wrists and lower back… and let me know if these poses work for you!

Are you lucky?

cathyma — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 09:31:51 +0000

One of those days you sit in the park with a friend that clicks with you, and you start talking like Plato (or Plato-wannbe) . My mate and I were talking about what makes people lucky. It reminded me of a scientific research I have read and it’s a fascinating finds – there are actual significant differences in personality traits that contribute to people’s perception on their luckiness.

So this psychologist, Richard Wiseman, devised an experiment to test his two groups of people – one group consistently counts themselves as lucky, and the other group as unlucky,

I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. On average, the unlucky people took about two minutes to count the photographs, whereas the lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because the second page of the newspaper contained the message: “Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than 2in high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.

It is shocking to see that the ‘lucky’ group tends to remain oblivious to the ‘lucky’ opportunities right in front of them. I like how Wiseman puts a positive spin to the research outcome – being lucking is actually a *skill* that you can learn:

Unlucky people often fail to follow their intuition when making a choice, whereas lucky people tend to respect hunches. Lucky people are interested in how they both think and feel about the various options, rather than simply looking at the rational side of the situation. I think this helps them because gut feelings act as an alarm bell – a reason to consider a decision carefully.

Unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety.

Lucky people tend to see the positive side of their ill fortune. They imagine how things could have been worse. In one interview, a lucky volunteer arrived with his leg in a plaster cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheerfully explained that he felt luckier than before. As he pointed out, he could have broken his neck.

So the keys are ICP: Listen to you Intuition/Instinct, be Creative, and stay Positive. Wish you all luck and please do share with friends who find themselves lucky and more so those who don’t!

Special thanks to another good friend of mind who builds this MiniMotivation hack: keep refreshing it for more positive vibes. I feel lucky already.

The two brothers on the 80th floor

cathyma — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:40:37 +0000

Here is a Chinese story,

There were two brothers who lived on the 80th floor of a building.

They went out together for a party without noticing there’s no lift service on the day. The brothers were very frustrated when they realised that they were kind of doomed, but they decided to slowly start climbing the stairs flight by flight.

By the 20th flight, they decided that they were going to drop their heavy knapsacks and planned to pick them up the next day.

By the 40th flight, they started to blame and yelled at one another for not being attentive and missed the notice.

By the 60th flight, they came to accept fate, slowly and peacefully they inch up and eventually reach to their door.

Only then, they realised they left their keys in the knapsacks…

If the keys are like our dream and passion and vision when we have in our 20s: With all the pressing needs in life, like paying off loans, getting a mortgage, finding a partner, raising children, many of us decide to set our dreams aside. Eventually we work hard and move up, from the beginning till the end, in our 40s we start blaming one another for not having the vision and strength to carry forward. And then we come to accept fate and become serene for the rest of our journeys in our 60s. At the end, do you have the keys with you?

Where are you and your keys?

I read the story and something switched today, thought it’d be nice to share with you. Thanks for swinging by.

Be 1/0 happy

cathyma — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:53:39 +0000

Someone made me happy today, and I thought I was happier and I defined that as (1+x%)happy. And then I was asked ‘can you be more than 1 happy?’

Got me thinking,

Happiness is a 1/0 thing.
Imagine you are a happy person, you make someone happy, and that someone makes someone else happy, like butterfly effect it triggers down.

1/0 happiness seems like a probable notion. Sorry it does sound like an xkcd strip .

But something said by a yogi inspired me the other day, ‘Have no fear. Not courage, because courage is a reaction to fear. Have no fear, and peace be with you. And that is beautiful’.

So it got me to conclude that ‘Be not sad. Not happy, because being happy is a reaction to sadness’.

Well doesn’t make too much sense, does it? I think it’s time for a good glass of wine.

A wonderful thoughtful exercise created by Erik on Flickr, beautiful.

Busy I am busy…

cathyma — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:07:22 +0000

1. I hate not being able to keep up with my thoughts.
2. Not being able to keep up with my thoughts means that you think more than you will ever be able to share and articulate the signals among the noise
3. Too many ideas go wasted because of that
4. Wouldn’t it be great if we log all of ideas down as stubs and open it up so that other people with a different personality inclination (convergent versus divergent) can pick up and create something cool out of your ideas?

Hearing the Voice of the Valley Stream

cathyma — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 22:35:41 +0000

‘The water of the valley stream is always flowing. It races on, not pausing for even an instant. Its sound, to me, is the sound of time.

The water of time glistens on the riverbed of the universe. Though theirs is a much slower flow, Human beings and all things that have life flow. Thought and culture, too, flow. That all these appear to be unchanging is but illusion.

We make every effort to keep things as they are, because human beings, alone, lament transience. Yet no matter how we grieve or protest, there is no way to impede the flow or anything. If we but see things as they are and flow with them, we may find enjoyment in transience. Because human life is transient, all manner of figures are woven into its fabric.

[...]

When we listen subconsciously to the sound of flowing water, does it not seem to create a rhythm? Yet not a single drop of water passes over the same rock twice, and the murmur of water rushing over a rock is constantly changing. Sameness is but an illusion of the human ears, eyes, mind. Water has once flowed along a riverbed can never retrace its course. Human life is no different. It is only our mundane eyes and minds that see yesterday as being the same as today.

Enlightened eyes and minds should recognise that each moment has a form different from that of any other moment.’

Shundo Aoyama. (2001). Zen Seeds (pp 1-2). Tokyo: Kosei Publishing Limited.

Buddhism maintains that the source of suffering is our inability to accept impermanence. In ‘secular’ geek terms, you won’t wake up thinking that all the data of your unback-up hard disk can be all gone for no reasons. Obviously I cannot articulate as beautifully as Aoyama in her book Zen Seeds, hence reading her book is like looking at flaking candle flame for the first time – so magical, but yet so natural and non-contrieved. I wish we possess enlightened eyes and minds and recognise that each moment IS different, be peaceful, see that there is nothing we can do and enjoy it as just it is.