Happiness and Human Wisdom

Life is complex, and, as such, living is never simple. That is why you need wisdom in living to make the best and the most out of your life. Given that life is short; avail of every opportunity to create your own box, instead of just thinking out of the box. The art of living well is to create a life uniquely yours that you wish to live.

To many, happiness is the main ingredient in a life well lived. However, happiness is difficult to define, and at times very elusive. For many of them, happiness comes from money, health, and relationships. One does not need abundance to meet the basics in life or to feel material contentment, but one does need reasonably good physical and mental conditions as well as satisfying relationships in order to appreciate the joys of living. All these needs require mind power. In addition, life is not always a bed of roses; there are problems, challenges that are a part and parcel of life and living. Wisdom in living is understanding how to tackle and cope with the difficulties in life. Again, the mind plays a pivotal role. Therefore, it is essential to empower the mind in order to live well.

The art of living well is always mind over matter. After all, the mind controls everything: how you think, how your experience what happens to you, how you perceive your past and present experiences, how you anticipate your future expectations, how you make decisions and take actions that affect your future experiences.

You are who you are and what you have now become is all in the mind; essentially, you are the sum of your thoughts. But how does one control one's mind? Or how does the mind think?

Surprisingly, we have never been taught how to think. When we were young children in the early phase of growth and development, we were exposed to the world around us through our five senses; then our minds began to process what we perceived in our experiences, generalizing and interpreting it according to our mental input, and applying it whenever and wherever we thought appropriate and applicable. Over the years, these perceptions and experiences have become the substances or raw materials with which we think. But this may not be "how" we should think. The human thoughts are like an unbridled horse, which must be tamed first before it can become a stallion. Therefore, it is important to know how your mind works, so that you can empower the mind to work for you instead of against you.

You mind responds to your experiences from your five senses: sight, sound, small, taste, and touch. These sensations are then embedded in your mind, which is made up of a conscious mind and a subconscious mind. Theoretically, you are in perfect control of your conscious mind; that is, you consciously decide what experiences you want to remember or to be stored in your conscious mind. Your subconscious mind, on the other hand, simply absorbs indiscriminately all your mental perceptions and reactions to all your experiences; in other words, it does not reason or analyze your mental input. In actual life, your conscious makes decisions about how you think and what you do. However, it is your subconscious mind that directs your conscious mind; in other words, your subconscious mind controls your conscious mind, although you may not be totally aware of it. Therefore, it is critical that you know how to control your subconscious mind, instrumental in directing your conscious mind. To empower the mind is to control your thinking mind by providing it with an optimum environment for it to function efficiently and effectively.

For more information, visit my website: Wisdom in Living.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Go "Through" Your Depression

"If you have a depression, don't avoid it or overcome it with medications; instead, go "through" it with TAO wisdom, and become enlightened.

My Way! No Way! TAO Is The Way!

TAO Wisdom To Live And Survive In A World Of Depression

This book is perhaps one the few books with an unconventional approach to depression, a universal mind disorder. Instead of the conventional ways of avoiding depression with distractions, such as exercise, suppressing its symptoms with affirmations and visualizations, and elevating its depressive moods with medications, this 180-page book uses the ancient wisdom from China, what is known as TAO wisdom, to experience anything and everything in depression, that is, going through every aspect of depression.  

TAO wisdom may enlighten you so that you can ultimately free yourself from depression, or at least look at your own depression very differently.

Here is the INTRODUCTION to the book:

“TAO is neither a religion nor a philosophy.

TAO is simply a way of life about the Way of life, that is, a general way of thinking about everything in life. It is a pathless path of humanity to live as if everything is a miracle.

TAO is the Way through anything and everything in life in order to fully experience them and live in balance and harmony. TAO is not about avoiding or getting out of anything unhappy and undesirable in everyday life, such as depression; rather, it is about going through depression by experiencing every aspect of it in order to become enlightened, if possible, with the profound human wisdom to continue living in peace and harmony in a world of depression.

TAO is looking at life not as a series of both happy and unhappy episodes, but simply as a journey of self-discovery and self-awakening to the real meaning of life existence. You are defined not by your words and thoughts, but by the ways you act and react, as well as the impact you may have on others around you. You exist not because you are simply here; you are here in this world to love and to learn how to live, as well as to help one another do the same.

TAO is formless, shapeless, and inexplicable in words; after all, it had existed long before there were even words. TAO is infinite human wisdom, which is a pathless path to the infinity and the origin of all things.

TAO is not about making your life any easier; it is about acceptance of all aspects of your humanity that need to be fully experienced, embraced, and then to be let go of in order to become wholesome at other times of your life and living—that is the essence of TAO wisdom, which is true enlightenment of the human mind."

Click here to get your Amazon digital copy today!

Stephen Lau

Turn Your Senior Years Into Your Golden Years

The Creator has given each of us a life to live. Each individual’s life is unique in itself, and everyone’s life journey is paved with his or her personal encounters and events to enrich that unique life experience. Therefore, there is no blueprint for living

Since the beginning of time, man has applied every means to attain longevity basically for two reasons—to defer the inevitable end; and to continue indulging in the pleasurable experiences along the life journey. Some prefer to ignore death and continue to indulge in life pleasures as if it would never come, while others are preoccupied with the impending fate that stresses the body and the mind. No matter what, death is inevitable.

Irrespective of the purpose of everyday living for any individual, the quintessence of living for life is health fitness, without which everyday living may become a daily struggle, a dream turned into a nightmare. Health fitness is a prerequisite for longevity.

Health fitness embraces physical fitness, mental fitness, and spiritual fitness—they impact how you think and what you do; they are the components of living for life. You need physical fitness to reduce the risks of becoming ill, disabled, or dying prematurely. Mental fitness enables you to adapt appropriately to negative changes brought on by diagnosis and treatment of chronic disease. Spiritual fitness may facilitate you to bounce back from the devastating effects brought on by sudden and unexpected changes, such as bereavement of spouse or loved ones.

Life is never static: everyday living is full of challenging changes from time to time. Many of these changes are welcomed and embraced, but some are dreaded and even painful. Being able to cope with these changes in life is fundamental to living for life. More importantly, the ability to bounce back from these undesirable negative changes holds the key to the art of living well.

What is living for life?

Living for life is living with passion and purpose. Nobody is born with the gift of living for life: there is no blueprint for this. It comes from thoughts, behaviors, and actions, and these attributes have to be acquired through mental and physical effort and deliberation. Only health fitness provides an environment for an individual to turn them into a reality. Turn your senior years into your golden years, and don’t become depressed like many seniors do as they continue to advance in their age.

Your Golden Years and Santa Claus shows you the wisdom in happy and successful aging through changing your perspectives in matters of aging, health, money, loss and bereavement issues. It is a holistic approach to living in simplicity with compassion and tranquility in the golden years.  

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Emotions and Depression

Did you know that as much as 50 percent of diseases may be psychosomatic? Therefore, it is not an overstatement that the mind and diseases are interconnected.

Dr. Caroline B. Thomas, M.D., of John Hopkins School of Medicine discovered that cancer patients often had a prior poor relationship with their parents, attesting to the pivotal role of emotions in the development of cancer. In another study by Dr. Richard B. Shekelle of the University of Texas School of Medicine, it was found that depression patients were not only more cancer prone but also more likely to die of cancer than the other patients. If emotions play a pivotal role in cancer, by the same token, negative emotions may also adversely affect the symptoms or prognosis of any human disease. Thoughts of anger, despair, discontent, frustration, guilt, or resentment are instrumental in depressing the physiological processes, including the body’s immune response—a formula for promoting the development of an autoimmune disease.

According to other studies, strong negative emotions, such as anger, can create destructive mental energy that is health damaging. However, it is not so much in experiencing raging anger as in not experiencing it, or not wanting to experience it that may cause diseases. In addition, feelings of hopelessness and helplessness may also aggravate the symptoms of a disease. When one feels being “trapped” with no way out—such as, when the doctor tells you that there is no cure, except controlling the symptoms of any disease you may have, you naturally feel incapacitated in thinking a solution out of the “dire” situation.

The feeling of being trapped is most destructive in that it incapacitates the mind to come up with a solution to resolve the apparently insoluble situation. This may cause the body to conserve too much oxygen—just like holding one’s breath much too long—that ultimately leads to suffocation, and even death. Continuous feeling of being in a deathtrap deprives one of oxygen, and thus inhibiting the recovery process.

Given the critical role of emotions in disease development, evaluate your emotions, and how your mind may affect them.

Visit my site: Anger Management.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Depressive Episodes

Do you always feel good about yourself? Are you often plagued by depressive episodes in your life?

Wellness is feeling good about self with respect to the body, the mind, and the soul. Wellness may be synonymous with happiness. 

Are you happy? What makes you happy? A successful career, satisfying relationships, good health, or material possessions? Which one, or all of those? No matter what, wellness is what makes you feel good about yourself, and what makes your life meaningful. If your life is without a purpose, and you are always drifting from here to there, you won't feel good about yourself or life in general.

Feeling good about oneself requires wisdom -- wisdom to know who you are and what you want in life. Without wisdom, you will not experience lasting well-being. Without wisdom, your living is like like chasing the wind, without any direction.

Wisdom is essential in the art of living well. It involves wisdom of the mind, the body, and the soul. They are all inter-related and inter-dependent on one another. For example, if you have satisfying relationships but your health is rapidly deteriorating, you will not feel well; or if you have a successful career but are emotionally distressed, you will not be in good spirit. Therefore, the overall wellness is contingent on the holistic wellness of the body, the mind, and the soul. To cherish and nourish this holistic wellness, your need wisdom, which holds the key to happiness and well-being of any individual.

Which is wisdom? Where does it come from?

Wellness begins with the mind first, and not the body or the soul. After all, you are what you have become by reason of your thinking. You are a summary of your thoughts, which make you who you are or what you have now become. Your past experiences and your perceptions of those experiences have "preconditioned" how you currently think. In other words, your background, and upbringing predetermine how your mind perceives your present life experiences. Given that your past exposure might not be telling you the whole truth, you, therefore, need wisdom to "empty" your mind and re-define your current mindset. That is to say, you must learn how to rethink your mind. Thinking is never easy and that is why so few people do it, according to Albert Einstein.

You are living in a physical world, and your life experiences are perceived by your body through the five senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching). But these sensations may be positively or negatively interpreted by the mind, which stores past experiences of those sensations of body in both the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. The former voluntarily accepts or rejects those sensations, while the latter involuntarily includes whatever the subconscious mind is exposed to. True wisdom is the capability of the mind to know what is real and what is unreal. 

Tao wisdom is the ancient wisdom from China that shows you how to have an empty mind first to rethink your mind in order to separate the truths from the half-truths or myths.

Tao wisdom is the essence in the art of living well, It is the profound wisdom of the ancient Chinese sage, Lao Tzu, the author of the immortal classic Tao Te Ching, one of the most translated works in world literature. The book has been popular for thousands of years due to its wisdom, which is simple but controversial, profound and yet intriguing. To fully understand it, you need to get all the essentials of Tao wisdom. Click here for more details.

With Tao wisdom, you may live a much better life, without depressive episodes now and then.

Stephen Lau     

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Dealing with a Traumatic Diagnosis

Diagnosed with cancer is devastatiumaang and depressing. But a cancer diagnosis is life-changing. Learn how to turn a traumatic experience into a blessing. 

Get your book on cancer: Congratulations! You've Got Cancer!

This 132-page book is about what to do when one is diagnosed with cancer. The author is neither a doctor nor an oncologist. He is simply showing the power of the mind not only in coping with the traumatic experience of cancer but also in overcoming the disease itself. In addition, he presents detailed information on what an individual must do on the cancer journey of cure and recovery. A cancer diagnosis is not a death sentence. Rather, it is an opportunity for growth and development. Harness mind power to combat cancer and live your life as if everything is a miracle. Remember, stress is the underlying cause of many diseases and disorders, especially autoimmune diseases. Stress stems from your ego: No Ego No Stress.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Biblical Wisdom and Depression

TAO The Way to Biblical Wisdom

Understanding Biblical wisdom requires human wisdom. Reading the Bible may not lead you anywhere unless you have an open mind, or the "reverse" mindset of Lao Tzu, the author of Tao Te Ching, the ancient immortal classic from China. 

Interestingly enough, both Tao Te Ching and the Bible are among the most translated and extensively read books in world literature. Tao Te Ching is about human wisdom, and the Bible is about the wisdom of God. The former was written hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus Christ. Because both books are about wisdom and true wisdom is universal and timeless, often sharing some common attributes, there are similarities in the Biblical truths expressed in the Bible and the profound and eternal truths of human wisdom in Tao Te Ching.

Wisdom is the essence in the art of living well, especially in your senior years. Wisdom is not the same as knowledge. Therefore, acquisition of knowledge and information does not necessarily bring wisdom. 

TAO The Way to Biblical Wisdom: Get the ancient Chinese wisdom from the ancient sage Lao Tzu, the author of the immortal classic on human wisdom Tao Te Ching. The book explains what human wisdom is and how to get it. It also includes all the 81 chapters of Tao Te Ching with Biblical references. The book concludes with interconnection between human wisdom and Biblical wisdom. 

TAO The Way to Biblical Wisdom contains the complete 81 short chapters of Tao Te Ching, the essentials of Lao Tzu's wisdom to help readers understand not only the text but also the wisdom of God. Given that Tao Te Ching is a difficult book with its multiple paradoxes and deliberate perplexities, I have also provided everyday examples to illustrate their relevance to contemporary living and the wisdom of the Bible.  

Stephen Lau     
Copyright© by Stephen Lau

What Is Depression?

“Depression begins with disappointment. When disappointment festers in our soul, it leads to discouragement.” Joyce Meyer

Depression is as ancient as man. Man is inherently desirous of happiness. We all want to become happy; without happiness, human existence may have become meaningless. Therefore, we all want to avoid unhappiness, and this self-defense mechanism may then develop into addictive habit patterns that have ultimately become some of the characteristics of our individual personality, affecting how we think. In other words, to avoid unhappiness, we may subconsciously begin to "lose contact with our realities" and thus become the persons we are not supposed to be. Depression is a mental struggle against unhappiness that an individual wishes to avoid, and in the process becomes a different person—a person with ever-changing moods and temperaments.

To illustrate, a baby or toddler—even well-fed, dry, and comfortable—may cry because he or she wants happiness, which is not being separated from the parents; crying or screaming is the only self-defense mechanism against being separated and feeling unhappy. As that baby or toddler continues to grow, that normal child will ultimately learn the reality that to be separated from the parents is just a normal and necessary part and parcel of life and maturity.

However, the mental and emotional growth and maturity of that same child may not be consistent with his or her physical growth and mental maturity, and this inconsistency or disparity may subsequently lead to many mental and emotional problems later in life, such as recklessly driving a car, engaging promiscuously in sex, taking drugs or addicting to alcohol. If the mental and emotional problems are not properly and fully addressed and resolved, that same adolescent turning into a young adult may continue to develop more problems, such as compulsive gambling or shopping sprees. As that same individual continues to grow and mature, there may be many other problems that crop up along his or her life journey, including problems in career, marriage, family, health, money, and among many others. All these life problems and challenges may continue to create more behavioral patterns, which are only the manifestations of that individual's desperate struggle against the unhappiness associated with emotional, mental, and physical problems; they are just the self-defense addictive behaviors of that individual striving desperately to overcome depression. In other words, that individual simply wants to avoid un-happiness resulting from the many life problems and challenges encountered. 

But, according to Lao Tzu, the ancient sage from China, more than 2,600 years ago, the only way to get out of depression is to fully experience and embrace it, thereby becoming enlightened.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

No Attachment! No Depression!

No Attachment! No Depression!

Attachment is no more than a safety blanket to overcome fear—fear of change and of the unknown from that change. To cope with that fear, all attachments become distractions.

We are living in a world with many problems that confront us in our everyday life, and many of these are not only unavoidable but also insoluble. To overcome these daily challenges, many of us just turn to attachment as a means of distracting ourselves from facing our problems head on, or adapting and changing ourselves in an ever-changing environment. All of our struggles in life, from anxiety to frustrations, from anger to sadness, from grief to worry—they all stem from the same thing: our attachment to how we want things to be, rather than relaxing into accepting and embracing whatever that might happen after we have put forth our best effort.

Attachment is the source of human depression. No attachment, no depression!

 

Career attachments

Your career may span over decades, involving many ups and downs, such as promotion and unemployment, changes of career and pursuits of higher qualifications, among others. They may have become your problematic attachments.

Money and wealth attachments

Money plays a major role in life. You need money for almost everything in life. Attachment to money and the riches of the material world is often a result of an inflated ego-self. You may want to keep up with the Joneses—driving a more expensive car than your neighbors and friends.

Relationship attachments

Living has to do with people, involving agreements and disagreements, often resulting in mixed emotional feelings of joy and sorrow, contentment and regret, among others, and they become attachments to the ego-self as memories that you may refuse to let go of—forgetting and forgiving, for example, are hurdles often difficult to overcome.

Success and failure attachments

Success in life often becomes an attachment in the form of expectation that it will continue, bringing more success. Failure, on the other hand, may generate disappointment and regret—an emotional attachment often difficult to let go of. 

Adversity and prosperity attachments

In the course of human life, loss and bereavement are as inevitable as death. Loss can be physical, material, and even spiritual, such as loss of hope and purpose. You may want to attach to the good old days, and refuse to let go of the current adversity. Adversity and prosperity attachments stem from the ego-self.

Time attachments

Time is a leveler of mankind: we all have only 24 hours a day, no more and no less, although the lifespan of each individual varies. Attachment to time is the reluctance to let go of time passing away, as well as the vain attempt to fully utilize every moment of time, leading to a compulsive mind, such as texting while driving.  

Sometimes we are so busy in the outside world that we seldom have an opportunity to look inside of ourselves, to understand who we really are and what really makes us happy—probably not the material things around us.

Letting go of your attachments is the art of living well.

Stephen Lau     

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Depression and Enlightenment

Tao Wisdom and Enlightenment

We are living in a world of depression. To free yourself from depression is not easy; after all, depression is a complex and complicated mind disorder. You must need profound human wisdom to look at your depression from a totally different perspective. More specifically, you need TAO wisdom so that you may become enlightened.

TAO, also known as The Way or TAO wisdom, is the ancient wisdom from China more than two thousand six hundred years ago. It originated from the ancient classic Tao Te Ching), the only book written by Lao Tzu, the Chinese sage, who was born with white hair—often considered a sign of old age and wisdom.

TAO and enlightenment are two separate and different entities.

First of all, TAO is the Way through anything and everything you encounter and experience in your life. It is a pathless path to the understanding that its purpose is not to get you to any particular place or a specific goal. It is just a journey of your own self-discovery and self-understanding. By the same token, TAO does not show you how to avoid or get out of your depression; it only helps you go through your depression so that you may or may not become enlightened by those experiences.

Enlightenment is self-awakening, or attaining a very different way of looking at everything with totally new perspectives. Humans live by the eternal law of cause and effect: that is, if you do something good, you will get a good result; if you do something bad, you will then get a bad result. Enlightenment is self-awakening to the unique consciousness that an individual experiences regardless of what has taken place. Simply put, you just let yourself experience both the good and the bad, or just about anything in your life; going through those experiences may or may not change your own perspectives, but that is not the point.  Enlightenment is not a state of mind that you can force yourself into; it may or may not even come, but that is irrelevant and unimportant—just experience whatever that comes along your way.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

My Way! No Way! TAO Is The Way!

TAO Wisdom To Live And Survive In A World Of Depression

This book has an unconventional approach to depression, Instead of the conventional ways of avoiding depression with distractions, such as exercise, suppressing its symptoms with affirmations and visualizations, and elevating its depressive moods with medications, this 180-page book uses the ancient wisdom from China, what is known as TAO wisdom, to experience anything and everything in depression, that is, going through every aspect of depression.  

TAO wisdom may enlighten you so that you can ultimately free yourself from depression, or at least look at your own depression very differently.

Stephen Lau