Saygreeeeenngrin.

Amidst some small talk

2021-09-10T18:22:00.001+08:00

A friend looked deeply into my eyes and said, “You will get it if you work for it”. I can feel something within me resonating strongly to those words…

Besides family & close friends, not many people actually talk “to you”. Most people talk for the sake of talking.

Ikigai

2019-04-04T18:41:00.002+08:00

#NoteToSelf

something, you love

something, you’re good at

something, for the world

something, for yourself

Then, maybe you’ll stop questioning the meaning of life!

Tired.

2018-11-30T23:03:00.000+08:00

Some days are good, some days bad.

I feel tired everyday, but I’ve gotten used to that some time ago anyway. I’ve gotten used to not having enough rest, not enough food, water, and worst of all - not enough time - for anything else except work. I’ve gotten used to the daily rush. Rush to work, rush to finish work, rush to rest, so I’ll get enough juice to rush back to work. On off-days when I’m off-work, when I know I have at least that much time, with limited supply of energy, I’d rush to enjoy myself - usually a whole day of obligatory video game grind so to satisfy my self that there is more to life than just work.

I’ve gotten used to all that.

But today, today I feel tired. Tired of trying to be better. Today I feel like a failure, I feel like walking down a walkway slamming door after door, real hard. Bam. Bam. Bam. I’m not good in anything I do in life. I’m not good with my work. I’m dissapointed with myself. Dang I’m not even good with my hobbies. I’m not good with people, I’m not good to myself. I’m not good with anything. I’m getting nowhere yet I still try to be better.

Some days are good, some days bad.

But some days how I wish i could just have some little encouragement...

Good News: Happiness Doesn't Exist

2018-01-05T12:05:00.002+08:00

"Happiness is slippery. It doesn’t like to stick around. We know we’ve had it before, but it’s gone away, and we know there are certain things we have to do to find it again. Certain ducks have to be in a row. After all, if you didn’t have to do anything to be happy, you wouldn’t do anything at all. It can’t be too hard to find. Other people seem to be finding it all right.

Yet for all our efforts, we never seem to get this happiness problem nailed down, and there’s a very good reason for that.

When we start talking about solving the problem of unhappiness, it’s hard to avoid the topic of Buddhism. I know not everyone is a fan, but they have lain some important groundwork, even for those of us who like the idea of improving our quality of life but aren’t prepared to buy the whole package, with all its baldness and orange robes. Despite its promises of peace and enlightenment, I haven’t leapt in with abandon, so don’t worry, this article doesn’t delve into pratitya-samutpadas and tathagatagarbhas.It’s about a plain-jane concept you know very well: happiness.

Buddhism developed as a response to mankind’s search for happiness. In the simplest terms, it’s not a belief system but a methodology for being happy. Yet Buddhist literature is known for focusing much more on suffering than happiness. Its curious preference for morbid subject matter has led some to describe Buddhism as preoccupied with negativity.

The reason suffering has become Buddhism’s primary focus, rather than happiness, is that happiness, as we conceive of it, doesn’t really exist — at least not in the same way suffering does. What we refer to as happiness is really just what the absence of suffering feels like.

Although it’s become the favorite term for the concept, “suffering” is really not an adequate word. The Buddhists call it dukkha. Suffering is perhaps the most common English substitution, but I’ve also seen anguish, unease, dissatisfaction, stress, discomfort, or unsatisfactoriness. None of them are quite right, and so many writings in English will use dukkha.

I avoid the casual use of Sanskrit or Pali words in my articles because I think they make a lot of readers tune out, as they sense they’re being led into an esoteric religious discussion. Books and articles about Buddhism can get pretty dry and cryptic, scaring away readers who would otherwise be fascinated by the very same concepts if they weren’t presented in such stuffy, user-unfriendly language. But for the rest of this article I’ll use dukkha, if it hasn’t scared you off yet.

“Unease” might be the best of the English translations of dukkha. The original word was meant to evoke the feeling of a potter’s wheel that would screech as it turned.

I often substitute dukkha with “suffering” but I realize that may be misleading for those not acquainted with the Buddhist meaning of that word. Before I encountered “suffering” in the Buddhist context, it meant something different to me. It meant great pain. Sobbing, aching, despair.

Suffering, from a Buddhist perspective, refers not so much to outright catastrophe as to the persistent, low-intensity feelings of dissatisfaction or yearning that human beings feel most of the time. Indeed, most of our “suffering” is extremely minor:

The faint hint of financial angst you get when you notice gas has gone up again

The tiny feeling of urgency you get when you discover you only have 19 more minutes to get ready to go, and you thought you had 30

The slight unease you feel when you’re opening a gift in front of the person who gave it to you, and you want to make sure you look pleased no matter what you really think of it

The sinking, “here we go again” feeling you get when so-and-so begins to get impatient with the waitress

Happiness is…
There is no happiness

This is dukkha. This is life.

Moments in which unease is not present are wonderful. There is a light, problemless, “everything in its right place” quality to them. We’ve all had these moments, and they aren’t particularly rare, but they are not your typical moment.

Often they happen when you experience something so powerful that it wrests all of your attention away from your thinking mind, such as a picturesque sunset or an incredible piece of music.

Other times, this peace blindsides you at a perfectly ordinary moment, maybe when you’re filling up a glass of water and you’re taken by a perfect, glowing triangle of sunlight on the countertop. Suddenly the mind shuts off, you can hear the delicate background noise of the kitchen and the surrounding neighborhood, and everything looks and sounds exactly as it should.

The potential for it seems to be always there.

Buddhism’s genius is that it reduces all human problems to a single one: the problem of dukkha. This is a very powerful perspective. The implication is that our ordinary state is one of peace, perfection, problemlessness, and clarity — the very things we are always ultimately seeking. Dukkha is the only thing standing between a problematic moment and a problemless one. The problem is not gas prices, or your bank balance, or your love handles. Without dukkha, none of them would be problems. The price of fuel would strike you as perfectly appropriate, as would your net worth and your physique.

The Buddha developed a method for transcending dukkha, but many other approaches have been discovered since by sages, psychologists, seekers and average joes. They all amount to overcoming your attachments in the moment.

…what’s left when you take away unhappiness.

Since the only problem we ever have is the presence of unease in our moments — and not the absence of anything — happiness itself doesn’t really exist. It’s just what we call moments in which we don’t experience dukkha. And that means what we refer to as “happiness” is always there behind the current moment’s unease; ultimately, it is always accessible.

I find it’s more empowering to think of happiness this way — as the absence of unease, and nothing else — and here’s why:

We tend to think of happiness as something “out there,” waiting just beyond some future achievement or change in circumstances. This makes our happiness contingent on factors we cannot directly control. If we think of unhappiness (or unease) as a function of how we are relating to the present moment — whatever it contains — then we always have an opportunity to improve the quality of our moment. This way power over our quality of life resides with ourselves, and not with luck, status or other externals.

Happiness is too easily confused with gratification. Gratification is simply getting what you currently want. It provides a fleeting cessation of unease, which makes it feel awesome, like an end in itself. It is such an intense release that it feels as if the problem has been conquered, when really it’s only been chased away for a short while. As a strategy for happiness, gratification is a poor one for three reasons:

1) You can’t always get what you want

2) Depending on getting what you want in order to be happy increases your attachment to getting what you want, which intensifies the suffering you’ll experience next time

3) Getting what you want often makes it harder to get other things you’ll soon want — for example, when you spend all your money on what you want right now

The typical approach to seeking happiness is to add something to our lives, because we perceive ourselves as needing something we are missing: more security, more money, another possession, the approval of others, a personal achievement. But on closer inspection even these actions are actually driven by a desire to removesomething: insecurity, hunger, angst, tension of some kind. We are driven to acquire and achieve in order to remove dukkha from our experience.

Happiness (or whatever you want to call that state we are all seeking — joy, well-being, peace) occurs when something is removed, not when something is added. Happiness is an opposite, a negative mold — an imaginary abstraction created to define precisely what it is not. It’s no different than darkness, which itself is nothing at all — only a way of describing an absence of light. Light is real, darkness is just a concept.

So why did we get it backwards? As with most of our inefficiencies, we evolved that way. For millions of years our behavior has been driven by dissatisfaction, which manifests itself in a sentient creature as desire. Our very clever biology has us desiring, non-stop, for anything that appears to put us into a better position to survive. It’s the ultimate carrot-and-stick setup, and we still fall for it because we don’t know what else to do. We can always use more security, more esteem, more power, so the desires never cease. It works very well to the survival end, by constantly creating a mental itch that must be scratched. This itch is unhappiness, unease, or to Buddhism fans, dukkha.

This is how the human mind works now. It creates unhappiness to keep us moving, with no regard for our quality of life. You can scratch the itch your whole life and it won’t go away. It will only put you in the habit of scratching the itch. The human mind has developed to a point where we are finally understanding this awful cycle, and developing ways of dealing with it. About 2500 years ago — a New York minute, in evolutionary time — a curious young prince nailed the problem down. He found we weren’t actually missing anything after all.

Happiness, it seems, is just a shadow. By continuing to gaze at it, we’ve overlooked what’s standing the light."

- David Cain, on raptitude.com

The Sunk Cost Fallacy

2017-06-11T22:59:00.001+08:00

"But you've invested so much time and money... you shouldn't..."

Jimmy McGill: "That’s the sunk cost fallacy, it’s what gambler’s do. Throw good money after bad. There’s no reward at the end of this game.”

Exactly how I always thought about paid food - money's already spent, whatever happens to the food - money's already spent. In many instances this is especially true for precious time spent.

Are surgeons and doctors glorified mechanics?

2016-06-08T17:09:00.001+08:00

This question reminds me of an old joke:

A famous surgeon takes his car to a mechanic. The surgeon and the mechanic strike up a conversation while mechanic is working on his car. He says to the surgeon, “You and I, we kinda do the same thing, eh? We look for the part that isn't working, then fix it or replace it. But you get the big bucks!”

The surgeon coughed into his hand, then gently replied, “Now, can you do it with the engine running?”

- Jill E. Griffin, on Quora.

What are the lessons people often learn too late in life?

2016-06-03T17:54:00.001+08:00

1. You are the only one responsible for yourself and for your success. I am responsible for mine. Thinking anything else is wasting your energy. So don't blame your parents, spouse, children, friends, aunts and uncles. It is you, you and only you.

2. Life is short. There are no special occasions. Don't wait for them. Today is the special occasion. Buy yourself an ice cream/beer/ wear that nice shirt. Today!

3. If something bothers you change it. If it is beyond your control, learn to live with it. Accept it. Change yourself. That is the only thing you can influence.

4. You will regret the things you didn't do much more than ones you did. So... action!

5. "Future you", imaginary person that has perfect weight, looks great, gets up early, smiles and loves his/her job, will never become as great if "present you" don't do something.

6. Prioritize your health, rest and happiness. No one will do that for you. There will always be more work.

7. Don't ruin your health in order to earn money. You will end up spending your money to recover your health and that is not reciprocal.

8. Besides of 1. and 3. the biggest time and energy wasters are: TV, people pleasing, perfectionism, envy, regret, obsessive dieting and house cleaning. You can refocus your time and energy in so much better ways.

9. We tend to overestimate what we can do in a day and to underestimate what we can do in a year (or a lifetime). Start today, start small. Drops will fill the bucket.

10. If you waste money, you can earn it again. If you miss the moment, it can never be returned. Live life with opened eyes, ears, heart!

11. EXTRA: "It is too late," is just an excuse. You can always change the course. You can always reinvent yourself.

- Milena Rangelov, on Quora.

Something to think about.

2016-03-03T16:56:00.001+08:00

Somebody said, with acceptance,

Fear turns into adventure,

Jealousy turns into inspiration,

Anger turns into tolerance,

Hatred becomes forgiveness.

It's two sides of the same coin, and the flip depends on a key called 'Acceptance'.

Positivity, and humility.

2016-02-11T22:37:00.001+08:00

Think I like it. Hmm. :)

Ish.

2016-01-11T20:54:00.001+08:00

Malaysian Muslim Consumers Association: "We have to block (Netflix) in advance, before people start to like these shows." - Berita Harian on 9/1/2016

Inapropriate in so many ways.

Enforcing what one thinks is right and wrong on everyone else is just not right. If they meant 'people' as in 'Malaysian Muslims', and 'blocking' done as a 'Shariah Law' then I suppose everything sounds less inconsiderate. Even so, try rereading the statement with the new words/meaning in mind, it still seems ridiculous.

Come on, you think the Rakyat (or "people", in your own words) like bad things?

I am 25 and I've just found my passion in life. Am I too late?

2015-11-08T15:04:00.000+08:00

"Am a medical graduate. Currently working as a strategic consultant in healthcare. During med school I realized that I don't see myself working as a doctor, it's just not me; am a creative guy. I didn't have the guts to quit med school. So I continued with the course, while continuously searching for who I wanted to be in life. And I found my passion, it's the consumer web. I want to be an entrepreneur and build high-tech products. That's what I deeply identify with. So, apart from my job am also learning how to code and am just loving it, and come what may, I've decided to be a coder for life. Am gonna quit my job soon, and start working on my 1st startup.

But, somewhere, it's just eating me up that I could've been in this position at 20, had I looked for my passion then. Am otherwise quite an optimistic person, but since I haven't "made it yet" it really hits at times.

Do most people go through this, or am I starting over too late?"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Felix Oginni:

"When I was 21 I used to have this regret. I used to wish I learnt to code at 16, gone to Stanford and joined a startup really early... But at that time, I didn't even know enough to have the Stanford dream.

Then someone asked me how I would feel if I was 28 and I still didn't know how to code? Which is what would happen if I didn't start learning now.

This is true for a 21 year old as it is for a 49 year old, because every year you waste doing nothing to close your skill gap because you think you are too old is just one more year of regret, wishing you had started last year...

Go for it, start now and give it all you've got. Your experience as a doctor is more of an advantage than a waste of time."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jason Joven:

"Absolutely. You're too late.

(pause for effect)

DEAD END.

Doesn't leave you with any options, does it?

Brother, I'm just as guilty as you in that in my 20s, I had myself on some kind of non-existent "success clock". Maybe that's a reflection of the youth-obsessed culture we live in through American media. Whatever its causes, it doesn't exist. Unless you wanted to make the "Top 20 Under 20" list in Entrepreneur magazine. Or if you wanted to play football in high school. Or if you wanted to eat more broccoli in kindergarten. Then, yes, you're actually too late.

There is romance in the journey of life. Make glorious mistakes while the world watches, and let haters judge you. You've found something that energizes you...many people never do. Be happy for the child prodigies that came out of their mothers' vaginas screaming, "I'm gonna be a ______!!!"...but never be jealous, it's disrespectful to your journey. You can argue they missed out on the wonder of an open adventure.

Keep earning your stripes, show your battle scars with pride. You finished medical school, man, that's huge. Be proud. And now you've found something that makes you feel alive. You are now Anderson Silva when he first picked up MMA gloves. You are now Steve Jobs when he put together his first computer motherboard. How exciting.

So answer your own question.

Is it too late?

AW HELL NO."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Selim Jamil:

"I may be going against the grain here and saying that "passion" is overrated - I am passionate about acting but I am currently not getting paid for this passion. I can't afford to stop working while I wait for this passion to allow me to earn a living.

One person I really admire is Ken Jeong, from "the hangover" series. He is a medical doctor and developed a stand up career when he was off duty. It took more than ten years but now he makes his money from acting.
If someone is willing to pay you for coding then go ahead, but if you already have a skill that will earn you money keep that in mind.
One thing to add to this - I presume you have a ton of debt from medical school - this is not something that you can just ignore as you explore your passion. It's great that you found something you really care about but unless you have a comparable level of experience in this field you probably will not have the same kind of earning potential in any web field that you would have as a medical doctor.
Have you finished your residency? If you have there is nothing to stop you from taking some ER shifts to support yourself while you pursue your passion.

Unless you're independently wealthy you will be able to make mucho the money with your medical expertise or several years then you can with your computer skill set. At some point the balance will tip but right now you have debts that won't just go away."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oliver Adria:

"At 21 I wanted to become a robot scientist, so I studied engineering and worked as a student programmer at a robotics institute.

At 23 I wanted to do something in business and make a difference there, so I started programming for a consultancy.

At 25 I wanted to do something meaningful, so I started working as a researcher for a sustainability consultancy.

At 27 I thought "I don't just want to work with clients, but want to speak up my mind", so I started a sustainability blog.

At 29, more and more people asked if I know something about jobs in the sustainability area, apparently I wasn't the only one looking for work with a "meaning" and a positive impact. So I spun off a jobs website from the sustainability blog.

At 31, I'm now self-employed after 10 years of working as an employee, I'm now developing and programming a jobs website in the environmental and social sector and advising people how to get jobs and clients on how to get good people and I just hired my first 2 part-time team members.

Without all the previous experiences, I wouldn't have had the skill set or the network to do what I do now. If I had started my current work 10 years ago, I would've been ahead of the pack, sure - but hey, more reason for me to keep creating and developing :-).

'I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.' - Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Money doesn't buy happiness but it buys freedom, eh? Hmm.

Watch the news just once a day.

2015-10-29T12:22:00.001+08:00

"Why? The news thrives on negativity, that's why it always starts with murders, disasters, catastrophes, because human curiosity will always stay glued to the TV to find out what else bad happened. News is basically the same throughout the day, but only changes day by day. All you hear and see affects you, how you feel, how your stress level rises or subsides. That's why exposing yourself to only once daily instead of 4-5x to something that affects you so much is healthy for you." - Angie Neik on Quora

Yes. Just not too long ago I decided to cultivate a daily habit of catching up with the world news*, figure it good to be updated with what's going on in the bigger world. Set up a few RSS feeds from carefully selected news sources and made an effort to read them daily. Within days I found myself reluctant to open my RSS reader**, and that the number of updates fill me with more dread than interest. This is not so when I was exclusively following tech news, Unread is almost always the first app I open everyday. Conflicts from China to Russia to Middle East to Europe to Africa and strangely, less from the U.S. (Hmm I wonder why.) cap the headlines. Only 10% or so posts are credited to achievements, wonders and discoveries. Why is this so?

Anyway, I'm back to tech-news-only. The world news is, at the moment, too distressful for my daily intake.

*What you'll find if you Googled for "news". Not genre-specific "tech" news, "entertainment" news or "fashion" news etc. .

**My favourite for the past 6 months or so, and still is: 'Unread' by Supertop, originally created by Jared Sinclair. Beautiful beautiful reader. And what a nice interface. The best on the AppStore I dare say.

Communicate Without Ego

2015-09-23T10:08:00.001+08:00

"Imagine how peaceful the world would be if no one needed any praise. There’d be barely any overt fashion trends, unnecessary communications of forced attention, and there certainly wouldn’t be many Instagram selfies. People would simply relax into themselves, recognizing the ‘okayness’ of the moment, accepting themselves for who they are without requiring constant affirmation.

Therein lies the truth of things: everything is, excluding tragedies and whatnot, basically ok. You are ok as you are, and any forced ‘improvement’ is usually just mere vanity. Tragedy is even recovered from in time. The world requires our patience, and, more importantly, our acceptance.

If you can learn to accept yourself, there’s no need to coax others into gratifying your ego. Conversely, you won’t find yourself surrounded with people who make you feel like you’re trading attention for attention, affirmation for affirmation, judgement for judgement.

And, interestingly enough, when you accept yourself, you refrain from adopting behaviors that make you do things to harm yourself and others. I’ve spent many a party or social gathering wondering when everyone is just going to cut the flattery, stop swallowing their anxiety and feigning genuineness, and stop trying to impress one another.

In my experience, the most rewarding and interesting relationships develop when two people decide to stop trying to fool one another into believing a falsely cultivated persona. Accept yourself, accept others. It’s a lot easier than always fighting for attention."

- The Daily Zen

What is the biggest misconception people have about life?

2015-09-19T18:01:00.001+08:00

From The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho:

"What is the world's greatest lie?" the little boy asks.
The old man replies, "It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie.”

The power of our thoughts is highly underrated.

Life lessons: Never compliment people on (or chide them for) things they don't control.

2015-09-07T18:07:00.001+08:00

"When I was a kid, people complimented me on being smart. They meant well, but it was terrible for me. I couldn't control how smart I was being; I could only control how smart I was appearing. So I learned a bunch of tricks for seeming smart. Even worse, I didn't learn to stick with things, and I avoided doing things I was bad at. That's fine for looking smart, but terrible for actually being smart.

Now I'd no more compliment people for being pretty, smart, or strong than I would for being tall. Instead I look for things that they're actually doing, like putting together a cute outfit, figuring something out, or sticking with their workout plan."

If you feel like shit,

2015-07-11T19:42:00.001+08:00

every thing you hate wins.

Google Photos

2015-05-30T03:07:00.001+08:00

I've spent half the day backing up our entire photo/video library on Google's new unlimited-storage "Photos" service. Eager to see how well it works.

Looking back at/revisiting past times/memories, I have a bunch of feelings; I feel like an idiot, I feel like cursing myself (not in a terrible way)*, I want to laugh out (so very) loud (mostly at myself) and then, apologize deeply and sincerely. I'm not regretting nor rejecting, this is memory I appreciate. I simply want to express: I am sincerely sorry for my actions, and that I would do better, if again.

*'Hilariously stewpid' feels best.

ATM

2015-05-12T19:14:00.000+08:00

#1 I'm at the mid of a 7-week-break from a 5 year undergrad course. Finally got to start programming, something I think I would do if not for Medicine. Glad to have this head start, hoping it's enough to cover the basics before moving on to 4th year.

#2 Gosh. iPad has been sent for repair/replacement. I know I'm not the only one with this problem: Random "popping" sound from the speaker, very much like an amplifier's "distortion". Waiting time: 21 working days. That's a month! - just as Legend Of Grimrock is out for iOS - been waiting for this game for some time - now I have to hold up for 2 more weeks. Ish.

#3 I'm binge-watching Breaking Bad night after night. Heard good things about this show, but never bothered giving it a try cause' we (+family) were already following The Walking Dead series anyway - didn't want to "dilute" the drama, heh. Now (2 weeks ago) that we're updated on the series and the next season won't be coming out anytime soon, we needed something to fill that slot so I thought why not. True to the reviews - It's absolutely great! Totally worth it! No regrets. We're already in the final Season 5 in just 2 weeks and I'm eagerly looking forward to tonight. Them too I'm sure.

Billy and his bacons

2015-03-23T00:05:00.001+08:00

Funny that most of us thinks - "four".

The best way to learn something?

2015-01-22T21:32:00.001+08:00

"A pottery teacher split her class into two halves.

To the first half she said, "You will spend the semester studying pottery, planning, designing, and creating your perfect pot. At the end of the semester, there will be a competition to see who's pot is the best".

To the other half she said, "You will spend your semester making lots of pots. Your grade will be based on the number of completed pots you finish. At the end of the semester, you'll also have the opportunity to enter your best pot into a competition."

The first half of the class threw themselves into their research, planning, and design. Then they set about creating their one, perfect pot for the competition.

The second half of the class immediately grabbed fistfulls of clay and started churning out pots. They made big ones, small ones, simple ones, and intricate ones. Their muscles ached for weeks as they gained the strength needed to throw so many pots.

At the end of class, both halves were invited to enter their most perfect pot into the competition. Once the votes were counted, all of the best pots came from the students that were tasked with quantity. The practice they gained made them significantly better potters than the planners on a quest for a single, perfect pot.

In life, the best way to learn a skill, is to make lots of pots."

- from somewhere.

The saddest thing in life?

2015-01-14T10:36:00.001+08:00

"Man surprised me most about humanity. He sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

- from somewhere.

Long hours on iPad, going blind!

2015-01-04T13:05:00.001+08:00

Awe, some.

2014-11-25T12:03:00.001+08:00

If you've ever got a look or feel of the new iPhone 6 or 6 Plus,
I'll bet with my last 1 cents that your first thought was
'wow this thing is thin light sexy.'

That's 7.1 mm thin.

The iPad Air 2 is s-i-x point o-n-e mm thin-ner!

Heck.

I just bought one and I'm crazily excited! Woohoo!

Hard Choices

2014-10-18T15:56:00.000+08:00

"When we choose between options that are on a par, we can do something really rather remarkable. We can put our very selves behind an option. Here's where I stand. Here's who I am. I am for banking. I am for chocolate donuts. This response in hard choices is a rational response, but it's not dictated by reasons given to us. Rather, it's supported by reasons created by us. When we create reasons for ourselves to become this kind of person rather than that, we wholeheartedly become the people that we are. You might say that we become the authors of our own lives."
- Ruth Chang, TED

If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.

2014-09-28T23:57:00.000+08:00

"For the past 33 years I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."

"You've got to find what you love. And that is true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."