Solving Money Problems

Solving Money Problems

Money plays a major role in life. You need money for almost everything in life. Given the importance of money, you need to know the basics of money—what money is all about.

In the past, people could enjoy the blessings of life without spending any real money. Nowadays, to many people, enjoyment of life requires money—and lots of it!

According to Buddha, craving or desire for material things is the source of all human miseries. Jesus also has this to say about money: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven.” (Luke 18:25)

So, what is the value of money? According to author Jonathan Swift, a wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart. 

More importantly, what does money mean to you?

Your perceptions of the value of money determine two of the most important things in your life: how you are going to live your life; how you are going to spend your money.

The value of money is based on your core values in life. One of the core values in life is integrity. Life, at any phase, is all about living—it comes with some hard work and simple integrity. Integrity is an important personal value, which has little to do with money. Integrity is an important value that the Creator has bestowed on each and every one of us, and its availability is the choice of an individual. Essentially, integrity is the value of what life has to offer, not the value of things that can be purchased with money. Your core values affect your attitudes toward money, including your financial priorities, financial decisions, and money management. So, what is the value of money to you?

Once you know the real value of money to you, you will know what to do with your money, and you will find the money you need.

Spending money is also an extremely important issue in life: throughout history, countries have become bankrupt, empires have collapsed, and families have broken up because of spending much too much money. So, spending money can affect positively or negatively your life, and can be a major stress factor.

Spending money has little to do with whether you have or you do not have much money. Spending money has to do with your attitude toward money. It has everything to do with the practical as well as the spiritual aspects of money and finance.

The practical aspect of spending money is that it may lead to debt—which is the source of financial stress. 

Why do people go into debt?

People go into debt for various reasons: deficit spending,  a result of buying things they don’t need with the money they don’t have; unforeseeable circumstances, due to exorbitant medical bills or loss of employment; personal choice, a consequence of reckless spending or buying on credit, bad investments, wrong financial decisions; ignorance, such as not knowing the meaning of APR or the implications  of “minimum  payments”  on credit cards, lack of knowledge of finance and money management; greed, leading to taking financial risks, or trying to get something for nothing. The list could go and on.

Don’t ever fall into the trap of “buy-now-and-pay-later”! Don’t run up your credit card debt. Consumer debt is the No.1 financial stress factor in life. Don’t let debt devastate your life. Don’t use a credit card if you don’t have control over spending; instead, use a debit card or a pre-paid credit card for the convenience of not carrying cash. Be careful when you use credit-card counseling services to get you out of debt, especially those so-called “non-profit” organizations. Just beware!

The spiritual aspects of spending money include being grateful and generous, as well as being a good steward.

Be grateful. God may have given you much less than others—or so you think! Remember, everything is relative. Maybe less is more: God has given you less so that you will have the incentive to make more.

You may have worked hard, but with little to show for it.  “You plant much but harvest little. You have scarcely enough to eat or drink and not enough to keep you warm. Your income disappears, as though you were putting it into pockets filled with holes.” (Haggai 1:6) Be grateful, instead of whining and complaining; put your time and effort on making money to live a debt-free life. More importantly, be generous with your money.

According to the biblical principle of money, God owns it all! You are but a steward of God’s money. Responsibilities of good stewardship include diligence, productivity, good time management, and self-discipline in matters of money. The money is not yours anyway. That is why you cannot take it with you when you are gone for good.

Stephen Lnd au

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

How to Avoid Human Conflicts

Balance and Harmony

The Way Through Human Conflicts

Human conflicts are many. The Way is the only way to go through them, rather than avoiding them.

Balance and harmony

Always maintain your internal balance and harmony. Remember, the world around you is always a reflection of what is deep inside you.

“The Way is easy,

yet people prefer distracting detours.

Beware when things are out of balance.

Remain centered within the Creator.

Distractions are many,

in the form of riches and luxuries.

They allure us from the Way.

Accumulations are like extortions of the poor.

They bring only disaster and suffering.

Do not deviate from the Way.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 53)

“When there is no desire to be someone that we are not,

separate from our true nature designed by the Creator,

all things are in perfect balance and harmony.” (Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 37)

Five elements and natural cycle

The five elements of the ancient Chinese are: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth.

The five elements balance and complement one another to create both internal harmony and a natural cycle. To illustrate, water nourishes trees or wood; without wood, there will be no fire (which burns wood); without fire burning wood, there will be no earth (the ashes from the burnt wood); without earth, there will be no metal (from the earth itself); through condensation, fire heats metal to produce water; without metal, there will be no water; without water, there will be no tree or wood.

These five elements are interdependent on one another for their own existence in the form of a natural cycle. In many respects, human relationships and our dealings with one another attest to the cyclical nature of the world we are living in.

                                                      

TAO wisdom

Think about your own nature with reference to the five elements. Are you strong and independent like metal, bold and pioneering like wood, soft and flexible like water, fiery and passionate like fire, or nurturing and receptive like earth?

Also, think about the different natures of the people around you, or you have to deal with. Understanding their different natures may result in better and more harmonious relationships with them. Indeed, the five elements can give you profound wisdom and insight into many different life situations to help you avoid unnecessary everyday conflicts and disparities.

The bottom line: learn to live a life without any conflict and confrontation with others. To do just that, you need to know not only yourself but also others.

“Knowing others is intelligence.

Knowing ourselves is true wisdom.

Overcoming others is strength.

Overcoming ourselves is true power.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 33)

Everything will be in its natural place because everything follows a natural cycle. So why do you strain, stress, and strut yourself?

“We stay in the very center of the Creator,

and refrain from controlling our destiny.

Everything will evolve and fall into its natural place,

according to the laws of the Creator.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 37)

Soft and flexible

To help you overcome conflicts and resolve issues, you need the flexibility of TAO. Always be flexible, instead of being strong-willed and uncompromising.

“The Way is paradoxical.

Like water, soft and yielding,

yet it overcomes the hard and the rigid.

Stiffness and stubbornness cause much suffering.

We all intuitively know

that flexibility and tenderness

are the Way to go.

Yet our conditioned mind

tells us to go the other way.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 78)

It does not mean that you let people walk all over you and do nothing. Just step back, giving yourself some open space to create a detached mindset. If you are combative and strike back with a personal attack, you are in fact driving a nail into wood with a hammer; when you pull out the nail, the puncture on the wood is still there. So do not do anything that you may regret for the rest of your life. Always defer your anger for later processing.

All in all

Having good human relationship with others may not only afford you joy and happiness, but also heal you mentally, physically, and spiritually through your own connections with others. On the other hand, having bad human relationships may make you feel sad, lonely, hopeless, and depressed.

“If we are in harmony with the Creator,

we are like newborn babies,

in natural harmony with all.

Our bones are soft, and our muscles are weak,

but our grip is strong and powerful.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 55)

We are all living in a world of speed in which nothing seems to last too long, including human relationships. In contemporary living, there is too much focus on speed. Given that life is short, there is a great deal to be done and accomplished. As a result, you may feel the compression of time, and you may have developed a compulsive mind with a multi-tasking mindset, such as talking and texting on the phone while driving at the same time.

Remember, it is your compulsive mind that makes you feel distressed and unhappy. Ironically, it is because you know and believe that nothing lasts, that you want to do more, much more than necessary, hoping against hope that some of the things that you are doing may last a little longer. Because nothing lasts, so you begin to look for new ones to replace the ones that have expired. An example is a love relationship: if it does not turn out to be what you have expected, you just let it end itself, and then start looking for another one because it is your belief that nothing lasts.

According to TAO, truly nothing lasts, but that is the wrong way to look at the impermanence of things. The right way is to look at everything with non-attachment, which is letting go of whatever that happens in your life, be it joy or sorrow, success or failure, happiness or un-happiness. Letting go essentially means understanding that nothing lasts, and that what goes up must also come down, because everything in life follows a certain natural order—just like youth becoming old age, and life transforming into death. Understanding the impermanence of all things may change how you are going to live your life and interact with others. If nothing lasts, then let go of everything, and live your life to the fullest, which is in the present. The past was gone, so let it go; the future is yet to come, so let go of your expectations. Only the present is real, so live it to the fullest.

“Therefore, we focus on the present moment,

doing what needs to be done,

without straining and stressing.

To end our suffering,

we focus on the present moment,

instead of our expected result.

So, we follow the natural laws of things.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 63)

 

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The Face Aging Process

The Face Aging Process

 Face aging begins as early as in the twenties, 

The twenties

In your twenties, your fibroblasts (cells deep within the skin) are in optimum conditions, continuing to produce new collagens (proteins) and elastins (substances to give elasticity to the skin) to support your skin. Your sweat and oil glands keep your skin moist and lubricated. The blood in your tissues gives your skin a healthy glow. Even when you contract your facial muscles as you smile, the temporary folds vanish once you relax your facial muscles.

Your skin simply looks gorgeous and stunning! Continue to protect and maintain your skin before it is too late.

The late twenties

In your late twenties, superficial lines begin to appear on the forehead and at the corners of your eyes. Tiny blood vessels start to surface on your cheeks and your nose.

Your first wrinkles may appear around age 30—for some, even well before that.

The thirties

In your thirties, there is a slight drop in the renewal rate of your skin cells. The accumulation of dead skin cells makes your skin look less fresh and drier. You need to scrub your face more often to get rid of the dead skin cells.

Your fibroblasts become less active in producing collagens (proteins) to support your skin, which by now may look less resilient. Dynamic muscles due to muscle motion begin to form in the expression areas of your face. In your late thirties, the fat layer under the skin begins to thin out, creating slight hollows around your eyes, on your cheeks and your temples. Due to a lack of support of the skin, there is sagging around the eyes, on the cheeks, and along the jaw lines.

If you are a sun worshiper, you may have a crosshatched and cobble-stoned look on your face, folds at the corners of your lips, uneven skin texture, and pigmentation.

The forties

In your forties, the rate of skin aging accelerates due to the slower rate of skin cell renewal, the loss of fats, and the shrinkage of bones. In addition, gravity pulls your skin downward, lowering your eyebrows, and making the tip of your nose droop, too—thus changing the overall physical structure of your face. Such changes are gradual and almost unnoticeable to you, but maybe apparent to others. More obvious signs of aging continue to appear: bags under your lower eyelids; vertical lines between your eyebrows; and deep-set wrinkles on your forehead.

The damaging effects of photo aging from the sun have become more evident:

Formation of hyperkeratosis (raised spots of thicker skin)

Freckles becoming old spots

Skin texture turning tough and leathery

Formation of basal cells and even malignant melanoma cancer cells

The fifties

In your fifties, the physical structure of your face further diminishes due to continual loss of bone mass, elasticity, fat, moisture in your skin, as well as the gravitational pull.

Your face may assume a crinkled appearance: crosshatching on your cheeks; folds and wrinkles on your neck; deep-set lines around your mouth extending to your chin; vertical lines extending up from your lip line; drooping eyebrows and eyelids; and smaller as well as thinner lips.

The sixties

Your face may have become rectangular or trapezoid in shape.

Your cellular renewal rate has slowed down dramatically by as much as 50 percent, and your skin’s elasticity and volume reduce significantly, resulting in excess skin on your neck, your cheeks, and around your eyes and jaw lines. Now, you look undeniably old. The skin aging process will continue into your seventies, eighties, and nineties until the ultimate end.

Make yourself look younger and healthier for longer.

Nora Wise

Copyright© by Nora Wise

The Importance of Happiness in Aging

 The Importance of Happiness in Aging

Are you happy or unhappy? If you are not happy, then why not?

Why is happiness important? It plays a pivotal part in the art of living well? The mind plays a critical role in shaping your personality, which is responsible for your happiness or unhappiness. In other words, your personality is all your own thinking, just as Descartes, the famous French philosopher, once said: “I think; therefore I am.”

Erik Erikson, the famous psychologist, also stated that the evolution of our personality is affected by different life stages of changes and experiences we have gone through, resulting in who and what we have now become. Understanding those life stages may help us understand how we have become happy or unhappy.

Trust and Mistrust

In this first stage, from birth to age one, we may  experience and develop trust or mistrust that affects how we feel about the benevolence of the world around us.

Independence and Doubt

In the toddler stage, we begin to develop our self-trust,  which leads to independence. With self-trust, we begin to learn how to walk. In this stage, however, we may also develop self-doubt that leads to shame later in life. This may be the underlying cause of failing to take risks in later life, missing some golden opportunities to improve our lives, and thus making us feel unhappy and unfulfilled.

Creativity and Guilt

In preschool years, we begin to exercise our minds to acquire initiative and express creativity. The capability to express freely our initiative and creativity helps us develop the playful and positive side of our nature. Under restraint, on the other hand, we may develop guilt, lack of self-confidence, and inability to get close to others.

Industry and Inferiority

From age five to eleven, we experience fulfillment in accomplishment or disappointment in failure. This is often a result of acquiring our society’s work ethics. We begin to believe in our abilities and feel motivated to work hard. On the other hand, if we become lazy, we develop poor work habits that may adversely affect our careers later in life.

Identity and Diffusion

In adolescent, we begin to explore ourselves, finding out who we are and what we want out of life. We may channel our energy into a field we love, and derive pleasure from seeing what we have accomplished. This growth in our sense of self determines whether or not we have an “identity crisis.”

Intimacy and Withdrawal

In early adulthood, we develop intimacy, which is a quality of an individual, and not the couple. The ability to develop and maintain a long-term relationship is an asset. However, many of us may experience difficulty in achieving closeness with others, or even maintaining a long-lasting relationship, resulting in inner loneliness that causes us to doubt even our own remarkable accomplishments in life.

Compassion and Selfishness

In middle age, we become more connected to future generations, as evidenced by being parents, mentors, and supervisors. However, we may also become self-focusing, alienating ourselves from the next generation, and thus creating the “generation gap.”

Ego and Despair

In old age, by letting go of the ego, we accept both our successes and failures, and thus have a healthy perspective on life. However, we may also look back at our own past experiences and the world in general with disdain and regret, and thus we become despaired and unhappy.

Remember, nothing is set in stone. Even if you have formed your own personality over the years, you can still change it to make you become a better and happier person if you have the wisdom and the know-how.

Human happiness or unhappiness is no more than a perception of the human mind, based on an individual's own life experiences. You think, and your perceptions then become your "realities"; with profound wisdom, you can change how your mind processes your perceptions. Change your mind to change your realities, and live your life as if everything is a miracle! Your life journey is uniquely yours.  Make your own happiness recipe from the happiness ingredients of ancient wisdom, conventional wisdom, and spiritual wisdom. Continue your life journey with your own happiness recipe.

The Happiness Wisdom

Stephen Lau 

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The Importance of Money Wisdom

You are living in a world wanting wisdom. The majority of people experience the lack and not the abundance, while only a small number of people feel both the affluence and the wealth. Surviving and navigating in this world of money disparity require profound wisdom—the perspectives of human wisdom, Biblical wisdom, and the TAO wisdom from ancient China.

So, always ask yourself many questions regarding your money wisdom, given that money always plays a pivotal role in this world of both abundance and lack.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz, a German-born American mathematician and electrical engineer, once said: “There are no foolish questions and no one becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions.”

So, continue your life journey asking yourself many self-intuitive questions with respect to your money wisdom. The spirit of wisdom demands you to ask as many questions as possible on how you view the world today based on your past and present life experiences. Your money wisdom is your individual need to think more about your money. Do not bury your head in the sand! Just be wise on all your money matters!

Asking-questions-and-seeking-answers may give you your money wisdom. Your own life experiences are often responsible for your judgmental attitudes, your bias prejudices, and your assumptive presumptions—they may prevent you from knowing your real self, as well as from separating the truths from the half-truths or the myths about your money wisdom.

The truth of the matter is that your money wisdom is all based on your own perceptions and interpretations of your life experiences. That is why your money wisdom is uniquely yours.

Your money journey in this world is forever filled with missteps and detours, irrespective of your abundance or lack. Even if it may seem to be a bed of roses to you because of your abundance, it is always filled with some thorns. So, you need your spiritual wisdom to give you hope and guidance on your money journey.

To attain that spiritual wisdom, you need your faith—which is your trust and obedience to your Creator. According to Saint Augustine, faith is to believe in what you do not see, and you will then see what you believe. So, if you believe in your money wisdom, you will then see your security in every aspect of your life, whether you have abundance or lack..

To apply your money wisdom in the material world you are living in, you need the wisdom of the TAO—which is the humility to detach yourself from all attachments that you think define who you are. With no ego, you may then become self-enlightened: perceiving the “nothingness” of all things, as well as self-intuiting your “connectedness” to anything and everyone in the world. So, you are in balance and harmony with anyone and everyone, and you are no longer at war within yourself with your fear of insecurity—that is ultimately your money wisdom.

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NORA WISE

Copyright © Nora Wise

Craving Is the Root Cause of Human Miseries

Money is the second most powerful god. Beware of money—or rather the enticement or the love of money!

The following from Proverbs (1:10-19) may enlighten you:

10 My son, if sinners entice you,

do not give in to them.

11 If they say, "Come along with us;

let's lie in wait for someone's blood,

let's waylay some harmless soul;

12 let's swallow them alive, like the grave,

and whole, like those who go down to the pit;

13 we will get all sorts of valuable things

and fill our houses with plunder;

14 throw in your lot with us,

and we will share a common purse"-

15 my son, do not go along with them,

do not set foot on their paths;

16 for their feet rush into sin,

they are swift to shed blood.

17 How useless to spread a net

in full view of all the birds!

18 These men lie in wait for their own blood;

they waylay only themselves!

19 Such is the end of all who go after ill-gotten gain;

it takes away the lives of those who get it.

The second most powerful god is money, which is controlled by Satan, or rather by our own greed. Money is even more powerful than Satan himself. Here are a two scriptures regarding "money-lust":

"For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." (1 Timothy 6:10.)

"You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below." ( Exodus 3,4.)

We all need money, and we cannot do without money. This reality may make money become a god if you have a lust for money. EVERYTHING you buy with money is only with you while you are on this earth; once you die, you cannot take these "things" into heaven. So, why would you want to worship money? "Things" only last for as long as you live on this earth. On the other hand, everything you'll ever need is waiting for you in heaven if you choose to worship the One and Only God. Do not worship money, and beware of money!

Buddha, too, said: "Craving is the root cause of all human miseries." So, just beware of money.

Stephen Lau
Copyright © by Stephen Lau

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How Changing Emotions and Feelings Can Help Marriage

 

Help your marriage by changing your emotions and feelings as well as those of your marriage partner.

Emotions and feelings are two sides of the same coin. They’re closely related to each other, but they’re different in that emotions create biochemical reactions in the body, affecting the physical state, while feelings are more mental associations and reactions to emotions.

Harmony and Disharmony

According to the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), we all have qi (氣), which is the internal life-giving energy circulating within each of us, giving us internal balance and harmony. Emotions are energy states, which may either contribute to or deplete our own internal life-giving energy, causing harmony or disharmony, and thus leading to positive or negative emotions and feelings.

Diseases and disorders

The truth of the matter is that any “excessive” emotion or feeling may become the underlying cause of many health issues.

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 feelings may also adversely affect the symptoms or the prognosis of any human disease. Thoughts and feelings of anger, despair, discontent, frustration, guilt, or resentment are instrumental in depressing the physiological processes, including the human body’s immune response—a formula for promoting the development of an autoimmune disease.

So, an unhappy marriage may negatively affect your mental and physical health.

The seven emotions

According to the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), there’re seven emotions which are the underlying causes of many internal diseases, and these emotions are: anger, anxiety, fear, fright, joy, sadness, and worry. Because Chinese medicine is all about internal balance and harmony, these seven emotions may even affect different human body organs. For example, excessive anger impairs the liver, causing headaches, while even excessive joy dysfunctions the heart, leading to mania and mental disorders.

Anger

Anger or rage is an ineffective and inefficient way to resolve any issue or to make any problem go away. Anger is a disruptive emotion that may often lead to depression, and worse, the breakup of a marriage or a love relationship, especially if the anger isn’t properly addressed and controlled.

So, how to change your disruptive emotion of anger or rage?

Take a deep diaphragm breath, and just feel your anger as you breathe in.

Look at your anger in your mind. Then review the situation, and ask yourself one simple question: Can your anger change the situation or anything?

Accept that you’re now angry, and then breathe it out. If necessary, use your arm like a sword cutting through your feelings of rage, while saying: “I can see my anger: it is as it was!”

Don’t hold your anger in; instead, let it go, by breathing it out. Don’t let it go as pain; instead, let it go as your acceptance. But your acceptance should be viewed not as a sign of your own weakness but as a statement of your own communication to yourself that getting angry will never solve the problem anyway or right away.

Then, remind yourself that anger is always present to serve a purpose to release some deeper issues, problems, and internal conflicts that you may be carrying in your own bag and baggage all these years. It’s always better to release anger than to turn it around to destroy yourself.

But suppressing your anger is also self-destructive, as the negative energy redirects itself back into your own body. Anger is always a path of destruction. Resolve anger by developing habits that may release internal conflicts in a constructive manner before it can be released as rage.

An illustration

Donna Alexander, the creator of the “Anger Room” in Chicago, first thought of the idea as a teenager living in Chicago. Having witnessed much domestic violence and many conflicts at school as a teenager, Donna Alexander finally decided to create a space where anyone can lash out without serious consequences. While at the “Anger Room,” the guests, after paying a fee, are given a safe space to unleash their anger and rage by smashing and destroying objects, such as glasses or even a TV. In addition, the room can also be set up to look like an office or a kitchen, where anger often becomes totally uncontrollable.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

“GETTING MARRIED TO MAKE YOU HAPPY?”

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