The Seed of Greatness

Years ago I came across a saying, "The worst form of bankruptcy in the world is the person who lost their enthusiasm."  - H.W. Arnold.  That means this thing called enthusiasm is even more valuable than all the money in the world.  Winston Churchill said,  "Success is the ability to move from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm."  Walter Chrysler quipped, "The real secret of success is enthusiasm."  Not to be missed is also the adage by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, "Enthusiasm releases the drive to carry you over obstacles and adds significance to all you do."

Surely more than a word, enthusiasm signifies something greater.  The direct meaning of enthusiasm is the absorbing or controlling possession of the mind by any interest or pursuit; lively interest.  Much can be derived from this definition.  Certainly in order to be enthusiastic, you need a special frame of mind.  It has to be full of excitement.  A mind that is bored and indifferent cannot occupy the same space as the one that is keen and interesting. The enthusiastic mind is, therefore, eager to explore possibilities albeit good or bad.  It is about experiencing the world through the eyes of a child; full of wonder and curiosity.  

Enthusiasm also requires a bundle of positive energy to start with.  Without the excitement of the pulsating energy, the mind may be willing but the body might recede.  Youthfulness has an advantage in this area.  However, we should not discount those who are young at heart to pursue new and great endeavors.  Both Ray Kroc and Colonel Sanders were past their prime ages when they initiated McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken respectively.  My favorite champion of enthusiasm is Dr. George Sheehan who took up running in his late forties and later became a running icon due to his passion in beating the odds of old age. 

To live life enthusiastically also means to live life with a gusto.  Every day should be an adventure in the making.  An enthusiastic person seems to have a swagger that projects purposefulness and certainty.  He is no lame duck in projecting his persona for it's all a reflection of his inner confidence shining out.  He is well-paced, poised and elegant.  There is no hurry worry movement on his side and yet he is not a laggard either.  Everything seems to be under control.

It is worthy to note that enthusiasm is beyond positive thinking.  At times positive thinking alone may be disastrous.  Imagine if you have weeds in your garden and you keep saying, "There's no weed, there's no weed."  And yet you do nothing about it.  Pretty soon, before you realize, your garden will be invaded by bushels of weeds.  Which brings me to the next point; enthusiasm is about taking action.  Action requires effort and commitment.  Very rare we see a person full of enthusiasm undertake an assignment without the will of going the extra mile.  To make things happen he must be persistent and willing to work hard.  Along the way, pride of workmanship also involves.  He will not settle for a half-baked effort and never accept anything less than his best at what he does.  The person I can think of who operates in this manner is our own Chef Wan.  An accountant by qualification, Chef Wan later pursue his passion in cooking to become one of the respected names in culinary.

So there you have it, look forward to a brighter future.  Don't let circumstances get to you.  Once, during a battle,  Napoleon Bonaparte devised a plan to attack the opposing enemy in an unorthodox manner.  One of his military advisers said, due to certain circumstances that maneuver is not executable.  Napoleon retorted, "Circumstances?  What circumstances?  I make my own circumstances, attack!"  Ended, because of his decisiveness, he won the battle for the day.

Bipolar Disorder Revisited

It has been 16 years now since I was first diagnosed with a very peculiar illness known as Bipolar Affective Disorder.  When I was initially diagnosed with it, I didn't know what hit me.  All I knew was my brain was going on overdrive and I had this surmountable rage that I cannot control.  It was indeed a scary experience.  At the time of the manic episode (not to be confused with maniacs), I feel a sense of purpose beyond my comprehension.  I became aloof and larger than life.  Suddenly every thought that I had, absurd or otherwise made a lot of sense.  Too much sense to the point it became nonsense.

The illness was my body's response to the extreme stress that I had to face at that time.  Some people responded by having a heart attack or stroke, I, unfortunately, had a brain attack.  No amount of agony can describe the anguish of having this illness.  My wife said, she would rather I have cancer then this dreaded illness.  We were simply not prepared to deal with this foreign yet endemic ailment.  At the time I was running a thriving training and consulting company with a staff of ten.  When the news got to my associates and employees, everybody packed their bags and leave.  Literally, within a blink of an eye, I lost my business, my reputation, and the clientele that I painstakingly build for the past seven years.  Not to mention the amount of guilt and shame I had to bear.

Treatment of the illness is not as easy as popping a few pills.  Since it has to do with balancing brain chemistry, I had to experiment with a plethora of medicines in order to find the one that suits me.  Some medicines caused my neck to become stiff that I feel like a robot since I had to turn my shoulder to turn my neck.  Others made me gained 30 kg in two years, while another made me feel like I was swallowing cotton balls when I sleep.  At times I wonder which is worse, the illness or the medication?

Interestingly I also notice that the number of friends that I once had dwindled rapidly. Bipolar is an embarrassing illness.  During the depression, there is a constant dark cloud looming over my head that it's almost impossible to have a cheery conversation.  On the contrary, during mania, the line between fantasy and reality becomes blurry such as it's difficult to follow my logical thought process.  So the quick and dirty conclusion that most people had, including my father, was that I had gone mad.  Perhaps beyond recovery, I presumed.  Otherwise, those once friendly and empathetic people will still be around. 

The illness lasted well over a decade.  During those times I was in and out of the psychiatric ward six times.  When it happened, I admit, I was not my normal self.  I was in the world of altered reality.  Sometimes hilarious, sometimes terrifying, and sometimes sad.  Often I ask why, oh why, this happen to me?  But as the song goes, there will be sunshine after rain, there will be laughter after pain, so why worry now? 

If there is a lesson learned from this experience, then it must be of love and rekindled friendship.  Now I know for sure my wife and daughters truly love me.  They had endured much.  I may not have that many friends anymore but the bonding that I have now last a lifetime.  

One out of four people today is suffering from some sort of mental illness.  If you know any of them, please show that you care.  The illness alone is already bad enough.  We don't need society to stigmatize it further.

I have a song to describe the manic episode.  This song might as well be the song about it.  Enjoy...

Of Science and Reason

Evolution is a fact.  That's because there are countless shreds of evidence that leads to the  explanations to why the living world behave in its manner.  A simple analogy is the breeding of dogs.  Prior to 10,000 years ago, our ancestors came into contact with wolves.  Some of these wolves were then domesticated and as the society progressed humans begin to selectively breed and produce multitudes hybrids of dogs.  It's a mind-boggling feat if we look at the varieties of dogs today and to think that they were once wolves genetically altered by man to become so many types of canines.  

The same things happen in the agriculture sector.  It is hard to imagine that cabbage, Brussel sprouts, cauliflower and broccoli do not exist in the wild.  They are all the products of human ingenuity.  As a fact, all of them are of the same plant origin.  We also see that apple and other fruits like durian went through evolutionary changes through mortal intervention.

The very same things also happen in the natural world.  In this case, there is no human involvement required.  The living things went through the process of procreation through natural selection.  Unlike selective breeding, natural selection takes a long and gradual process.  We are talking about in term of millennia if not hundred of million of years for species to split into new forms of species.  What scientists have to work with now are fossils that create a snapshot of that process.  It is difficult to observe in the wild the gradual transformation that takes place.  That is however made possible in a confined environment of the lab by studying bacteria and microorganisms that can split  into several hundred of generations in a short period of time.

So to say that Theory of Evolution is "just a theory" is very inept and almost childish.  The problem lies perhaps in the semantic of the word theory itself.  In our everyday usage, a theory could mean an assumption or a hypothesis.  However, in science, the usage of the term is more stringent.  Here it requires the collection of data which establishes the validity of the hypothesis as the foundation of the Scientific Method.  The data is then compared to the hypothesis.  The sample must be large enough and consistent for the hypothesis to be accepted.  If there are discrepancies in the sampling, the hypothesis needs to be reevaluated or debunked.  After going through the laborious process of assessing and reassessing  then only a hypothesis qualifies as a theory.  Hence, a theory in science is a model of observation based on facts.  The Theory of Evolution is better off labeled as The Theory of The FACTS of Evolution!

While a whole lot of us will admit we don't know the Strings Theory in Physics, for example, many will not hesitate to give their piece of mind when comes to evolution.  Turns out to be evolution may be the most misunderstood yet most talked about theory of all.

The Twin Powers of Memory

Everything in nature has two sides; a good and a bad, a positive and a negative.  In philosophy this thought goes back thousands of years to the Chinese Yin and Yang.  The Yang is the good, the sunny side of the hill; the Yin is the dark.  There is a dualism in everything in the universe.  The rain that waters and fertilizes the crops also brings floods; the fire that warms our homes and cooks our meals causes widespread havoc when out of control.  We are familiar with the dualism of love and hate.

Have you ever thought about the good and the bad sides of memory?  Yes, the subconscious remembers everything, but the conscious mind forgets.  We forget our failures, our mistakes, our foolishness, the pain we have caused, the opportunities we have missed, the love we have failed to give when it was needed.  These things pass from our conscious memories as from filters to which they have clung for a while before being washed away by time.

We also forget, unfortunately, the good, and that is bad.  We forget the principles, the systems which, if we would but live by them, would result in our achieving the things we seek.  We literally forget how to live successfully.

If, through some diabolical device, we were constantly reminded of all our past weaknesses and mistakes, we would live in a state of constant depression, fear, and sorrow - a hell on earth.  Instead, our conveniently forgetful minds save us from this.

If, through some wonderful agency, we could be constantly reminded only of the good, of those principles and systems which we know work to our benefit and the benefit of society, we would live in a state of optimism, enthusiasm, and hope.  We would go from one success to another.

It is true the world's most successful people manage to live in this latter state.  They are always aware of what they are doing and where they are going.  They know that if they will just do certain things a certain way, every day, they will be led to their chosen goals.

Most news seems to be bad.  Our newspapers and newscasts are not - and cannot be - filled with all the good that is going on in the world.  They report all the news, and the majority of it seems to be on the negative side: the wars, murders, crime, disasters, accidents, swindles, scandals.  Furthermore, so many of the people around us, subtly influencing us, are so constituted, or so lacking in the proper education, that they too seem to act and talk on the negative side most of the time.  If we live then in accordance with our environment, we too will tend more and more to forget the good and dwell in the bad.  This means we will live the major part of our lives on the dark side of the ancient Chinese hill.

What is the solution?  It it to find a way to remind ourselves every day, as do the really successful, of those things that lead to success, to good.  Otherwise, we will forget the good, along with the bad.

A good airplane pilot carefully follows a checklist before taking off and landing; he does this regardless of his hours in the air.  It keeps him successful and alive.  You and I need a checklist too, every morning and every night.

Dare to Fail

Has life ever shown you that the right to fail is as important as the right to succeed?  If we didn't have bad weather, we would never appreciate sunny days.  One hardly ever values his good health until he becomes ill.  And I have never known a successful man or woman whose success did not hinge on some failure or another.

There is a old saying which goes, "It is impossible to succeed without suffering.  If you are successful and have not suffered, someone has suffered for you, and if you are suffering, without succeeding, it is so that someone may succeed after you.  But there is no success without suffering."

Success in the world, any kind of success, is like a universal college degree.  It can only be earned by following a certain course of action for a definite period of time.  It is impossible for real success to be easy.  Success also follows a kind of natural selection.  Only those individuals who are willing to try again after their failures, those who refuse to let defeat keep then down for long, those who seem to have some strange inner knowledge that success can be theirs if they just stay with it long enough, finally win their diploma in life.

Most men and women who have earned success will tell you that often, just as they felt they were finally reaching the point in life on which they had set their hearts, the rug was pulled out from under them and they found themselves back at the starting line again, and not just once or twice, but many times.

Thus only those of patient persistence are rewarded.  But those who do not achieve great success in life are by no means failures.  They are successful in their way because they have what they really want.  They simply did not want great success enough.  They're happy with what they've got - and there is nothing wrong with that.

To make great success, decide definitely upon what you considered success to be for you.  Then work at it twelve to sixteen hours a day until you had achieved it.  And when you wasn't working at it, to think about it.  By doing this, you could reach your goal in perhaps five years of so.  However, to achieve success, you must force yourself back on the track every time you strayed off, realizing that failures are as necessary to success as an excavation is to a basement.

Each of us is given two powers.  The first one is the power to act.  In order to act, we must do it IMMEDIATELY, EXCESSIVELY and WITHOUT EXCUSE until we make it.  If we do these three things we will then be granted the second power, the power of momentum.  I discovered these principles when I was in my mid twenties.  And so by applying them I became a millionaire when I was thirty three.  There is no mystery to it.  Just the ability to believe and achieve.

Everybody has an equal chance to be successful, there is no exception.  All it takes is the ability of knowing what you want and dare enough to get it.  Successful people are dreamers who have found a dream too exciting, too important, to remain in the realm of fantasy.  Day by day, hour by hour, they toil in the service of their dream until they can see with their eyes and touch it with their hands.

Dare to Dream

A philosopher once wrote, "There is not much to do but bury a man when the last of his dreams is dead."  That seems to be the answer - a person is as young as his dreams - for it explains why some people are old at forty, others still young at ninety.

Youth is a time for tackling new projects, and as long as a person is enthusiastically beginning something new, he will remain young in the only places that really count, in his mind and heart.  As Emerson said, "We need not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count."

The person who has no dreams to spur him on, no goal to achieve, is already old; for age comes when hope and planning for the future die.  This is why a man's lifework must be much larger than an eight hour a day job.  Men only grow old in occupation with fixed limitations, uninteresting surroundings, and with no call upon the imagination or the mind.  But some men stay young, regardless of their work.  These are the men who are striving for something better, something greater.  People who stay young are people who feel young, regardless of their years.  They are people who like to try new things and who like working toward a goal whether they live long enough to reach it or not.

People who stay young never think much about old age or death.  They concern themselves less with what might lie beyond the pale and more with the here and now, with today and tomorrow and next week.  

People who stay young keep their sense of humor; they know how to laugh, even when the joke happens to be on them.  They do not hold grudges; if they are angered by something of someone, they are quick to forgive and forget.  They seem to know that hatred hurts only the hater.

People who stay young look for and are quick to accept new ideas.  They have a healthy curiosity about everything that comes within the range of their senses.  They know that while they may slow down considerably from a physical standpoint, the mind can grow more able, more powerful with the years.  A person can be at his best, mentally, even when he is at his eighties or even older.

But above all, they continue in pursuit of a dream, something to earn or bring about, a new, higher plateau upon which to stand.  Titian was painting masterpieces when he was ninety-eight.

What is the dream you are trying to bring into fulfillment?  A person is as young as his dreams and as old as his doubts.

The Essence of Life

It occurred to me while running that there must be an equivalent training program for the mind.  "A sound mind in a sound body" implies that physical and psychological fitness must proceed from the same principles, in fact from the same source.

The basis of the sound body is, of course, stress - stress applied in measured and constantly increasing quantities with suitable interval of time between to allow the body to adapt.  What makes this process work, however, is play.  What makes us fit must be sport, or we won't participate.  What makes us healthy must come from a self-renewing inner compulsion, or we won't persist in it.  What makes us athletes must become an essential part of our day, or our bodies will rebel against it.  If play is the answer to our physical life, should not play be the answer to our psychological life as well?  Will not the play that made us athletes also make us saints?

I put it to you that it does.  There is no question in my mind that the best way to handle psychological stress is play.  The surest way to develop a sound mind is through humor.  How better, then, to deal with stress than with humor?

Humor allows us to tolerate the intolerable, to accept the unacceptable, to bear the unbearable, even to understand the incomprehensible.

Humor gives us the capacity to live with ambiguity, the courage to take chances, the strength to go forward without solutions.

What humor does is reduce life to the game that it is.  It allows us to take a long look at the real world and all that is evil about us, yet to know that it is somehow part of the plan.  Only a sense of humor can help each of us face those great unanswerable questions:  Why was I born?  Why am I here?  Why must I die?  What must I do to make my life a triumph?

Humor is play to the mind as much as to me, running is play to the body.