When you desire too much, you tense up, and this in fact can close yourself to opportunities.
If you want happiness and success, learn to let yourself go and lose up.
Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery.
By having desire, you can only see what is visibly real.Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching, Chapter 1
When airlines stop you from carrying excess baggage on board the plane for your journey, you readily oblige.
Have you, however, check whether you are carrying excess baggage on your life journey as well? If so, have you done anything about it?
Excess baggage adds burden and costs to the carrier and may delay your journey. It can also bring similar problems to your life journey — delaying or even failing you from arriving at the milestones you have set for life your. Do not underestimate their impact.
The sources of excess baggage in life are endless. When you have a job, you want more money. When you have more money, you want even more money. You want to spend more time with your loved ones, start your keep-fit program, earn more commission from your next sales, and enjoy more glory from your social status and many more …
In this way, you are adding more and more baggage to your life. Ironically, you also want to arrive at the targeted milestone quicker than anyone.
Do you think this is possible?
The problem is: you may not even ask yourself this question. You have stuffed too many desires to your mind to ask yourself such question.
Unfortunately, the law of nature will set in sooner or later — even if you are unaware of or prefer to ignore it.
The law is simple: excess baggage slows down your journey! It may even stop you from reaching the milestone you have set to achieve. You may well be postponing or denying the arrivals for the excess baggages — which get heavier as you go along — on your shoulders.
Do what the airlines do to you for your life journey: limit weight of the baggage.
This will help you to arrive at the destinations of your life journey in time.
Do not forget the simple logic of nature: The more you want, the less you get.
If you want to achieve more, want less.
The five colors blind the eye.
The five tones deafen the ear.
The five flavors stale the palate.
The chase for preys deranges the mind, too much treasure impedes one’s growth.The Master acts on what he feels not what he sees, so allows things to come and go.
Life is difficult! There are many things in life that can turn you upside down.
It does not matter how smart you are, or how much money you have. You will have your fair share of downsides of life. You could fail an examination, unable to win the heart of the person you love, flop a project or sigh at the profit that goes downhill.
The next time when life is playing tricks on you again, however, try asking yourself this question, “what do I mean when I say that life is difficult?”
The tao that can be described
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
There is no one way to describe things in life.
When you feel that your life is difficult, what are you comparing it with?
Think of the persons who you admire. The difficulty that you experience can be small when in comparison to the challenges these great people have endured. In this sense, the difficulty is a difficulty no more. Compare yourself to people who are less fortunate, you may feel that you are thankful for being what you are.
On the other hand, if you are able to see the essence of things, rather than what it appears to be, bad needs not be bad, and good needs not be good.
Slouching in the comfort of your sitting room couch will never make you a strong. To stay robust, you’ll have to endure the duress of training and drilling.
For the same token, to build a character, you will need the tutelage of adversity. When you can see things in this perspective, the most appropriate name for adversity — in this case — is no longer ‘adversity’. Although there is no ‘eternal name’ for advesity, it can well tentatively be known as ‘opportunity’.
Good fortune has its roots in bad fortune,
and bad fortune lurks with good fortune.
Who knows why these things happen,
or when this cycle will end? (58)
Life is an irony.
A young man is on his way home from a journey, when he is stuck by a river. It is so wide, almost impossible to cross. Just as he is about to throw in the towel, he sees a old man on the other side of the river.
Delighted, the yells, “Sir, can you tell me how to get to the other side of this river”?
The old man ponders for a moment. He looks up and down the river, and then yells back, “Young man, but you are on the other side”.
So even when you are in the most difficult situation, there is another way to look at your situation. This explains why Lao Tzu says,
“If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.” (Tao Te Ching 33)
A secret for good health is to breathe like a baby.
Known as natural breathing, it is the way we breathed when we were born. Observe how an infant breathes, and you will understand what I mean. The basic principle is to breathe with your belly, rather than your lungs.
If you are not breathing this way, try the following exercise.
Lie on your back at somewhere comfortable — in your bed or on the floor. Put your hands on your sides. Breathe gently. Focus your attention on how the air move in your body. Ask yourself, “where does the air go to?” You will notice that the air goes to you belly, rather than your lungs, when you inhale! Feel the natural rise and fall of your belly.
Congratulations! You are doing the natural breathing!
Your belly expands when you inhale, and contracts when you exhale.
It is so simple, because this is the way we should all have been breathing anyway. Many of us have lost the habit as we grow older because of problems like stress.
It is a better way to breathe, and vital to our health. As you inhale the air to the belly that has a bigger capacity than the lungs, you take in more oxygen with every breath. Since we breathe every second, the increased amount of air from every breath will affect your health eventually.
Don’t lose this precious habit endowed by the Mother Nature! It is so simple.
If a baby can do it, so can you!
Just like other gifts from the Mother Nature, breathing is so much part of us that we take it for granted.
We breathe without thinking, wasting the myriad opportunities that pass under our nostril every day that could otherwise have been exploited to improve the quality of our life.
Although it is obvious, we often overlook the importance of proper breathing. We forget that when our breathing is natural and deep, we are able to take in more oxygen and release more carbon dioxide with every breath. Since our body is nourished by the air we breathe and the food we eat, improving the function of air flow in our body is essential to improving our health.
Chinese ancient exercise, especially tai chi and qigong, take breathing very seriously. They bring us back to the way that we breathed when we were in the wombs our mothers, when we were infants, and when we are totally relaxed — in sleep.
Known as natural breathing, the method of breathing makes us inhale the air not to our lungs, but our belly. You direct the air to your belly when inhaling, and push the air out of your belly when exhaling. You will see that your belly expands when you inhale, and contracts when you exhale.
If this is not the way that you breathe, try doing it — gently.
Natural breathing is an essential part of the Taoist tradition. If you’ll like the ancient arts like tai chi and chi kung to help improving your body and mind, proper breathing is among the first skills that you will have to master.
Many people fail to get their raise or promotion because they ask for it from a wrong person.
They ask their bosses.
But … is it not right to ask the bosses? Who else should you ask?
Look, do you ask your teacher to you a distinction in a test paper?
Do not ask anyone. Ask yourself first, if you want a raise of promotion. Let you question lead you to see more clearly about yourself. You are the ‘product’. Find out why people should pay more now to get the ‘product’. If need be, present a new version of the ‘product’ to improve its value.
Do the home work with your answer. Ultimately, it is what you want and what do that determine whether you would get that raise or promotion.
The decision will lead you clarity of what and who you are, and a whole host of actions that will ensure a raise or promotion. It could include what you’ll need to do about yourself, as well as what you should do to your work environment.
“Those who know others are intelligent;
those who know themselves are truly wise.
Those who master others are strong;
those who master themselves have true power.”
What should you do when someone is angry at you?
Simple answer: not to get angry.
But … how do you not to get angry?
There are many ways to do this. This is one of them: empty yourself.
Two great things happen when you can empty yourself in this case:
“It is easier to carry an empty cup
than one that is filled to the brim. ”– Lao Tzu (Chapter 9)
A very valuable lesson that I’ve learned about success is to value failure.
It sounds paradoxical, but life is paradoxical.
There are opposite forces in all things we do. Day is not purely day; and night is not purely night. The moment when the sun rises, the day is inching to the night every second.
So why must a failure be a failure, and not a journey taking you closer to success?
In order to attract success, learn to see failure not as failure, but a necessary element of success. Only when you are able to see failure in this way, that you are able to spot in failure opportunities that breed success.
As Lao Tze says,
“If you want to become whole,
first let yourself become broken.
If you want to become straight,
first let yourself become twisted.
If you want to become full,
first let yourself become empty.
If you want to become new,
first let yourself become old.
Those whose desires are few gets them,
those whose desires are great go astray. ”
(Chapter 22)
A great way to avoid failure is not to see failure as failure.
Jump out from the ‘failure’! By doing so, you ‘ll be able to spot opportunities for success in what do not seem to work. As Thomas Edison puts it, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
As a result, even the most disastrous failure can be turned into a miracle of success. “There are two ways to live your life – one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle,” says Albert Einstein.
Lao Tze sees this is another way, “Good fortune has its roots in disaster, and disaster lurks with good fortune. Who knows why these things happen, or when this cycle will end? Thus the Master makes things change without interfering. She is probing yet causes no harm. Straightforward, yet does not impose her will. Radiant, and easy on the eye.”
