Is life a struggle or a game for happiness?

Before we have any clue why we are on this planetary earth and whether it’s our choice or not, the fact we know is “we are here”. Immediately after being born, we have been provided with the care from our parent and our community. We have also inherited our cultural value and its way how we should live our life. It seems that a lot of things were pre-determined and decided for us no matter whether we like it or not.

Living within these barriers of life, do we have power of choice to decide our own purposes, achieve the freedom from overcoming the barriers, and have fun and happiness in life? Is it true that older generation has better games to play than our new generation, especially those born in 80's and after in Hong Kong?

Everyone is playing some kind of games depending whether it's known or not and whether it serves better goals and purposes. Any game of life consists of barriers, freedom and purposes. "Game" in fact has the same elements for any players regardless when and where you're born.

Without goals and purposes in life, we are dead. Freedom is a relatively term as one needs to identify the barriers to know what one seeks to be free from. Knowing everything without barriers has no games to play at all.

Life on the other hand can be a kind of struggle if living with a lot of “unknowns” on barriers, purposes and freedom, as one is playing the games "unknowingly". Life also does not always go all the way we desire to be and so one may simply flip to less count on one’s abilities but to empower other sources or authorities having better means and ways to determine our future. Some could assign “fate” or “destiny” or “ feng-shui” or “idol” as the cause of their lives or accuse others having used up all better opportunities to cause the difficulties of their current life. As such, we’ll have more “unknowns” to be out of our control. It’s really a struggle of life.

Starting a new decade with possibilities and impossibilities ahead of us, do you have some kind of games you really enjoy or life is still a kind of struggle?

To get out of the struggle of your life if any, no matter in the areas of work, relationship, family, community work, social life, and even politics, you may need to look, find or review your goals and purposes in different areas of your life. Ask yourself what kind of effect do you want to create in those areas? In other words, what are the desirable results you want to see? What kind of barriers are you aware of that you are willing to face? How can you make the barriers known and overcome them?

Instead of looking what can’t be done, something can be done about. Instead of saying that something is impossible to be known, something can be known about.

By making something possible to be done about, we can then do a lot more. By making something "unknown" to "known", we have acquired more control of our games. Life will be no more a struggle, but is more enjoyable.

Having a lot more people in our community to live better games is a better goal for our leaders to enhance the well being of all concerned.

Can you create better games of your life with better goals?

As now is close to the year end of 2009, it’s always a good time to look at what we have accomplished and what we have failed to achieve in the past, in comparison with our goals.

What goals we have and how we intend to make them happen by our planning and execution determine our level of ‘Havingness” in this universe. The goals can be anything for the individual, his family, his children, his group (career, business, communities, associations, etc), Mankind or life itself.

Anyone, if were busy in the pursuit of some definite and worthwhile goals with a lot of constructive and completed actions, would find himself with increased life force. The life force could dramatically get the person distracted from any past pain or upset though not permanently erased without any possible negative impacts to the person himself. Therefore, goals setting and pursuit are activities with a lot of therapeutic values. Any goals that are more constructive to the individual, family, children, group, mankind and life are valuable to pursue.

Each individual may have various goals towards his or her life. You may think your goals towards the Mankind are so worthwhile that any being on this earth should pursue it. But the reality is that we do have different viewpoints and many people may not agree with you.

The goals can be meaningful to the person only when he can see and set it for himself, but not enforced by other people or authorities. That’s why you will only get silent submission or even open rebellion if you have enforced your goals towards your children no matter how good you may have thought about the goals for them. Worse, you may have killed the creativity, abilities and happiness of your children in making their personal and self-determined goals to come true.

If you look at our new generation in Hong Kong, you may wonder why quite a large number of people are unhappy, lacking enthusiasm or simply living idly and to the extreme like wasting their time by doing something harmful to themselves and other people. There could be various issues behind such phenomenon as each individual is different. But you may find the common denominator of unhappy people as: lack of self-determined, meaningful and constructive goals. Some people may have meaningful goals, however, if they’re so stuck with the past pain and upset, cannot easily use his life force to get motivated and be persistent to do anything for his goals. They may eventually go apathy about the future that no goal is meaningful and simply complained life was against them with bad lucks.

Our future depends on what goals we have set for ourselves and others. At the time of the holidays, I wish you and your family all the best with the abilities to make your goals attainable soon in this universe.

How can you improve your learning rate in English?

Learning a new language is not always as easy as mastering your own mother language. When come to learning English, the most evident barriers for duplication and understanding are: grammar, vocabularies and small words.

In this era of demanding speed and efficiency, methods of speed reading and memory retention have been promoted through many channels to speed up the “inflow” of any information. But most of the time, it’s done at the expense of full conceptual duplication and understanding.

If you do not know every word you are reading, how could it be possibly that you really understand it? We can speculate, or guess the meaning in our reading that sometimes we may be right, but most of them we could be wrong.

If you do not know how to use dictionaries properly, you will not be able to understand any vocabulary you run into in your reading.

If you do not know the definition of “small words” (like, if, as, at, on, off, etc) used in the context of the material you’re reading, you will not get full conceptual understanding of the material.

If you do not know the English grammar, you also cannot fully duplicate the material in your reading.

With the decreasing learning rate of the workforce in Hong Kong, I would like to recommend some references that can help any executive to help themselves or their staff to speed up the learning rate by mastering the learning blocks.

Here is a short description of each and pictures of the inside book/illustrations:

THE NEW GRAMMAR BOOK

LRH researched the subject of grammar and isolated the exact basics to enable anyone to learn and effectively use this subject. Gone are the complexities and false data that have plagued grammar for many years.

With The New Grammar, it is possible to greatly improve one’s ability to communicate to others and understand others’ communications to him.

Illustrated Hardcover, 607 pages.

SMALL COMMON WORDS DEFINED

It is the small, common words that are most often
misunderstood and form a major barrier to understanding.

In this book, more than 3,000 illustrations clearly show each definition of the most common words in English. A unique method of providing a firm understanding of the basic building blocks of the language.

Illustrated Hardcover, 750 pages.

HOW TO USE A DICTIONARY PICTURE BOOK



Using a dictionary is something people often take for granted. But few have ever been shown exactly how to gain all the benefits a dictionary can provide or how to use it efficiently.

This illustrated and easy-to-understand text explains proper dictionary usage to both young students and adults, giving them this vitally needed skill.

Illustrated Hardcover, 263 pages.

The above books definitely help you to raise your level of duplication and understanding of English Language. Previously only available for key to life course at US$1,250, now you can get them all in a separate package for only US$345. Limited set is available for this special price.

You can now click the link at http://www.lrh-books.com/order_mult.php?item=dict,small_common,new_grammar&trackid=2275 to place the order online before this special offer has expired.

I hope the above recommendation may help especially if you are serious in improving your learning rate in English!

Can we trust our own observation and evaluation?

The world seems to grow into complexity as we grow up. Things in the environment no longer appear to be as simple as black and white. We start to learn more but get more complicated or even confused.

Information age indeed gives us instant access of information at our fingertips ( via our keyboard). It is getting harder to digest and differentiate which information is more valuable or close to the actual scene or reality.

We also get used to evaluate any subject by using positive and negative viewpoints. So whenever we study any subject, we use internet search and most of the time we get controversial information on some subjects especially in social forums. We easily heard both positive and negative voice from different opinions but our key question is: “Which is truer or more right than others?” We get “ridges” rather than flow of logic of information that can be useful or valuable to us; especially people tend to retain negative ideas or thoughts more than positive ideas or thoughts.

So it is important to be “three feet behind your head” to have an exterior viewpoint to really look, observe, and if possible it is better to go directly to the source of the information to find it out yourself rather than seeking any second opinions, and you know that sometimes what many people see and agree can still be far off from the real picture. As you are the only person who is responsible for all the observation in this physical universe, it is time not to simply bring the observation and conclusion from others into your universe without you first to “look”.

Unless one can establish his own ability of observation, evaluation and responsibility for one’s own conclusion, one can be true to what one observes without being the effect of any positive or negative voice on the subject. You probably will agree that such attributes are very much needed especially for any executive in any government and business organization; as any effective policies, decisions and implementions are based on true observation and evaluation.

I hope you enjoy your own universe of observation and evaluation which can bring more happiness, sanity and rationality to your life and people around you.

Are you happily living in Hong Kong?

According to the recent survey report released by the New Economics Foundation of London, I was quite surprised to see the happiness index as ranked the “84th” for the Hong Kong People, but the “6th” for the people living in Colombia. Colombia had been infamous for its high crime rate and street drugs production in the past but probably after the recent change in the mainstream to ask for solution of unhappiness, for example, the policemen started to distribute the booklet of the way to happiness to the people, and life is not the same in Colombia.

Regardless how valid of its survey result depending on its survey poll and identification of happiness factors for its index, one need not to doubt further but simply looking ourselves and people around us to find the actual reality of our happiness. How happy are we as Hong Kong people? How is the happiness index ranked the “84th” for Hong Kong People related to you as an executive, or a husband or wife, or as a parent?

Though we have witnessed an increasing rate of illegal drugs taking and selling sex to earn money among the high school students in Hong Kong recently, we have no real solution to help them to distinguish right from wrong, and the means and ways to happiness.

Look at the current curriculum of our school system, there’s basically no school time allocated for some basic “ drugs education”, “moral education” or “how to improve your life or condition” courses, etc. In other words, there is no life education but only on academic subjects with the sole study purpose in getting good examination grades results.

Whether one can happily live one’s life very much depends on his ability to survive, ability to reason, ability to arrange life and the environment, ability to see the true factors in a situation and resolve problems of living, ability to accept and execute responsibility, so that life can be enjoyed towards the accomplishment of the goals and purposes of one’s life.

But if you look at our current school system, do we offer education towards the direction in increasing the abilities of survival of our students? If not, how can we expect them to know how to say “ no” to drugs, and “no” to any acts that are harmful to themselves and others. Instead, they use destructive methods with the hope that they could make them happier, but in fact leading them with more problems and unhappiness.

How can we raise our happiness index for Hong Kong people? It’s time for us to rehabilitate our abilities as well as the abilities of others including our next generation to make our life happier.

Do we have enough drug education that we have a “Drug Free Hong Kong”?

Recently we have two Hong Kong artists got arrested in Japan because of the illegal possession of street drugs with the subsequent verification of having taking such drug. It did arouse a lot of negative impact especially they could set a very bad example to their fans and young people in Hong Kong.

I wonder whether we have enough drug education in Hong Kong that why young people could think that it’s a fashion or whatever reasons to be on drug ; that is far more attempting than any harms they may have received. For those who said “no” to drug for many years could not understand why other people could be so stupid to harm themselves by taking such illegal drugs.

There could be many reasons why they chose on drug, possibly they may have some prior problems or upsets that they could not confront or solve so to use “drugs” as a means in not confronting, etc.. but probably they do not know “drugs” could bring more problems and upsets as a snowball that could destroy their lives eventually.

While the authorities should by all means make the illegal drugs out of the market that the "criminals" cannot have any channels to pass the drug to the public, it is also much more important to educate our young people on the subject extensively and continuously.

It should be included as part of the school curriculum for the subject of “drugs”. Any student who has finished a drug education course should attest that he or she will choose “no drugs” in his or her life. A thorough education with one's own recognition of the subject can bring a self-determined decision to say "no" to drug. Education is far more effective than any other preventive or legal means to build a “Drug Free Hong Kong”.

For the materials one can use in drug education either in school or any youth community, please check this out at http://www.drugfreeworld.org, where they can also provide booklet in traditional Chinese.

I know you will share with my mission to have a “Drug Free Hong Kong”, and so let’s do more in our drug education.

PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait... wait... I: wait... L: wait... C: wait... SD: wait...

Are all of our education so important that our students can’t feel relaxed?

On my last blog, I have briefly expressed my opinion on the subject of education which indeed is a big subject as the critical question is how our education system (including online education) can guarantee the ability to learn and apply. However, I have been very much occupied in the last few weeks that until now I could spend some time on my blog.

There has been a lot of pressure on study that we see some students going that far to commit suicide, or simply stop schooling, etc. Many of them are good students (in terms of good grades in school) prior to such dramatic behavior changes and made us wonder what had happened to them.

Where do all these unbearable pressure come from?

Each person is different for his or her response and solution handling toward his or her environment.

If we simply focus on education, let’s see what door can possibly open for a better solution.

There is one useful tip I have learnt from Mr. L. Ron Hubbard on his lecture about method of education that you can use it for your kids. For example, if he or she can’t feel relaxed on certain subject in school, or any particular topic of the subject concerned, you can ask , "Select something unimportant about the subject of ______”, he or she looks and gives you an answer, then you simply acknowledge it, and repeat the question again and again until he or she feels good about it. You can continue until he or she can select the unimportance and find what are important. If everything seemed important to him that nothing is unimportant, it could make him feel very tense like"killing" him. By doing this drill, he may find out that there is nothing important for this subject as you know some subjects or topics may be useless if they contained false or useless data ; or he can find out something valuable of the subject that he can be interested in studying it about. By doing this, you can help him to establish the proper importance of the subjects he is studying without studying unimportance or useless materials. Any data of importance can be valuable only after being evaluated by the person himself. The person can study well only on the subject he could find interest to study as it is based on his own self-determinism. It could even be better if the person masters the skills of study technology on the subject.

But before you help your kids feeling relaxed about study by the above suggested drill , you may ask yourself whether you have communicated everything around the study and education very important to him or her that you’re probably the source of putting all these “important” pressure on your kid. Then you may really need to look what the real importance of the education to your kid are.

I hope the above tip may help.

PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait... wait... I: wait... L: wait... C: wait... SD: wait...

What are the purposes of our education in Hong Kong? Being schooled or educated?

To survive through our educational system in Hong Kong is not an easy task for everyone, especially if the stress is to train “memory experts” with “endless tests and examinations” rather than educate the students with the purposes of the subjects that they can understand, evaluate, learn and use them in life with their own self-determinism.

If you ask anyone what the purposes of education are in Hong Kong, you may not be surprised that many people cannot give you the proper definition and purposes of education. Instead you will most likely get many similar answers like the reasons going to school are to prepare oneself to get a better job and earn a better living.

It’s nothing wrong to get a better job or earn a better living, but how can we achieve this? Can we achieve by training someone as a “memory expert” without duplication, understanding, power of choice of the received data, and knowing how to use it to achieve results in life? Our education is more geared toward “one way inflow of data to the students “ that one cannot easily challenge whether the text is correct or not, but all what one needs to know is how to relate the text to the examination questions. We can easily witness the failure of many graduates of good grade students in applying what they have learnt from school into life, and conclude that the talent of this generation is not so good as our earlier generation. But what has gone wrong?

In addition to our conventional school system, we have many other supporting businesses around the subject of so called “Education” that in fact they are "School Technologies', for example, how we prepare our kids for interviews for better school so to have a smooth school runway from kindergarden to university; where we should live to get a better school district; whom we need to connect so to help our kids studying smoothly in school; which tutoring schools we should send our kids to improve their memories to get good exam results; how we fill up our kid's time with activities that would help him to look good on his resume, etc, all kind of ramifications which are geared towards good examination grades without any inspection what exactly we need to have and do in educating our next generation with real results.

Our culture is held together by how well we can educate our own people including whether we can educate valuable subjects that are useful, and whether they are taught in a way that the individual and the society see the purposes and the need of them, so to have a roadmap how to achieve the purpose by our education.

So it is time to ask:
1) What are the purposes of our education?
2) When studying any subject, do we have any purpose of doing this subject? What kind of results do we expect in acquiring and applying the subject in life?
3) How does the subject we study relate to ourselves and others? Is it valuable?
4) How can we evaluate the information on the subject to know the importance, relevancy, application and have our own opinion on the subject?
5) Do we have any effective study method (rather than memorizing method) to help us to achieve the above and know how to learn anything in life as one wishes?

I have been educated in both school systems in Hong Kong and the United States. I see that there is a lack of effective education and study methods thoroughly taught in our school systems. Most of the time, we simply jump in receiving the teachings of the subject without first consulting the above questions for ourselves and from our teachers; with the assumption that we instinctively know how to study and if any improvement is needed in this system, it will be the effort on raising one’s abilities in receiving or memorizing the data of the subject.

We are self-determined beings. For any information we receive today, especially in this new era of information age, our self-determinism is very much required in the evaluation of the information so we can use valuable information to achieve the goals or purposes of the subject to the extent of our own goals and purposes in life; and from which we can possibly have a prospering culture of our own.