Parental Anger

 Conflicts and misinterpretations often lead to anger with parents, resulting in the development of future relationships with a lack of love and trust.  Conflicts with biological parents, stepparents, foster and adoptive parents may vary in intensity, and even change drastically due to the separation and divorce of parents. In addition, bad parental relationships may worsen due to the following:

·       The birth of a new baby demanding more parental attention.

·       Financial problems, such as unemployment.

·       Development of anxiety and depression in both parents and children.

·       Experiences of abuse and bullying at home, at school or elsewhere.

·       Drug and alcohol use.

      Children, while growing up into preteens and teenagers, often become more independent and more responsible, with their own perspectives and preferences in every aspect of their lives. Their mental and emotional changes are the foundations of their disagreements with their parents, including their time management, their doings, and non-doings, as well as their obedience and disobedience to their parents’ demands.

 Irrational anger

      On November 21, 2022, a 10-year-old boy shot and killed his mother by mistake. He allegedly claimed he took the gun from his mother’s bedroom down to the basement, where his mother was doing her laundry. The boy initially claimed that he was twirling the gun around his fingers when it went off and “accidentally” killed his mother.

     But, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the boy later confessed that he carried out the heinous act out of his anger after his mother refused to buy him a VR headset. Members of his family further revealed the 10-year-old boy’s many previous episodes of erratic anger and rage issues, such as setting fire at home and causing explosion when his demands were rejected by his mother.

     Even while being interrogated by the FBI, the boy surprisingly asked if the VR headset that he ordered from Amazon the day after killing his mother had arrived or not.

The Bottom Line

      So, as a parent, you need to improve your relationships with your children by doing the following:

·       Spending more quality time with more one-on-one interactions with your children as they grow up.

·       Finding the right time to address any issue, instead of responding to it right away.

·       Listening to complaints without any interruption.

·       Acknowledging their needs and wants, and explaining to them the differences between needs and wants.

·       Connecting or reconnecting them with warmth, such as hugging.

·       Being willing and open to any compromise.

·       Teaching them about love, compassion, forgiveness, and empathy.

·       Helping them set their own life goals, and not what you want them to do.

Angry No More: A new book on how to control and eradicate your anger.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

 

Money Fantasies and Money Miseries

If money really matters to you, then earn more.

To earn more, capitalize on the skills you already have, enhance and improve them, and look for better and richer employment. In addition, there are likely many other skills you may possess that cannot be or have not been fully maximized or utilized wherever you are working. Then, harness those skills and capitalize on them through doing some freelance work on the side to maximize your current income.

If, on the other hand, you do not have the basic skills, and you do not want to learn and acquire them, and yet you always crave money and wealth, then your cravings are only your money fantasies.

What are money fantasies?

Only your money wisdom can separate your money fantasies from the money realities.

There was the story of a beautiful and sophisticated woman in her mid-twenties who wrote to an investment counseling company looking for a list of eligible bachelors with earnings of at least $600,000 a year. That woman had money fantasies in her mind.

According to experts, using marriage as an investment is a money fantasy, and no more than a bad investment bargain—just like investing into a shrinking currency. Imagine, the beauty of that woman will shrink over the years, while the $600,000 may grow over the long haul.

So, marrying into money, buying the lottery, and winning at the casino are all money fantasies.

What are money miseries?

Money miseries are also the realities for many, who always feel dissatisfied, frustrated, insecure, and insolvent. This mental condition suffered by many is often a result of constant exposure to media news of the rich and the famous, as well as their own perceptions of “possessions equal satisfaction.” It is your own mental interpretation of what you see verses who you really are.

You have money miseries if you have a job with a modest income but still living from paycheck to paycheck. If you are struggling with money miseries, you need your money wisdom to change your belief system, to stop comparing yourself with others around you, as well as to identify all the whys of your emotional feelings about and around your money miseries.

Why so many are broke?

According to The Wall Street Journal, many consumers (nearly 70 percent) are living from paycheck to paycheck. More than 50 percent consumers worry a lot about money, such as retirement. Once they lose their jobs or encounter any financial crisis, they become broke.

Even wealthy celebrities, such as Mike Tyson and Michael Jackson, go broke.

Mike Tyson, a boxing champion with several heavyweight titles, earning over $300 million dollars during his successful boxing career, ended up in bankruptcy in 2003.

Michael Jackson, recording artist, dancer, singer and songwriter, earning more than $500 million dollars, was heavily in debt when he died in 2009.

Of course, you might say: “If I had those millions of dollars, I wouldn’t become broke?” But if you cannot change your current spending habits, it would be a lot more difficult to change them when you have become a wealthy celebrity, such as Mike Tyson or Michael Jackson.

So, going broke is no respecter of persons, whether you are poor or rich.

The bottom line: Everyone needs to have the money wisdom to know how to earn, invest, and spend money to avoid going broke.

Click here to ge your paperback, and click here to get your ebook.

NORA WISE

Copyright © Nora Wise

Knowledge and Wisdom to Heal

If you or your loved ones have been diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, one of the autoimmune diseases, it must have been a devastating experience, especially if the neurologist has said that there is no known cure, except using medications to control and manage the many debilitating disease symptoms associated with myasthenia gravis.

A traumatic experience may have a prolonged effect on the human mind: having overwhelming negative emotions; feeling numb and unable to experience pleasure or even pain over a long period of time. The ultimate impact is that it may affect how you think, feel, act, and react in every aspect of your daily life and living.

To heal yourself of myasthenia gravis or any illness, you must be both knowledgeable and wise.

Knowledge and Wisdom

Knowledge comes from how your mind perceives and processes any information available. Wisdom, on the other hand, is how you apply the knowledge acquired to cope with any disease and disorder you may have, as well as your everyday life and living. The important implication: being knowledgeable may not  necessarily make you wise or wiser.

The bottom line: you need both knowledge and wisdom to heal yourself of myasthenia gravis.

Given that both knowledge and wisdom come from the thinking mind, your brain is, therefore, the most important of all your body organs. With its billions of brain cells, your brain is not only most complicated but also major source of all your health issues and problems related to myasthenia gravis.

So, it is important to keep your brain healthy as much as possible in order to be capable of acquiring the knowledge and attaining the wisdom to heal your myasthenia gravis.

The Healthy Brain

This is how you may keep your brain healthy:

·      Keep yourself hydrated because 80 percent of your brain is water. Drink at least 7-8 cups of water per day.

·      Keep healthy gums, and floss your teeth regularly to prevent any gum disease.

·      Enhance and improve blood flow to your brain with your 30-minute exercise at least several times a week.

·      Eat a healthy diet: high-quality lean protein; low-glycemic and high-fiber carbohydrates; natural and not processed foods.

·      Avoid inflammation and the formation of free radicals in your body.

·      Avoid sugar and sugary drinks, including all sodas and diet sodas.

·      Quit smoking, and limit your alcohol consumption to no more than 5 glasses per week.

·      Manage your blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol levels.

·      Maintain healthy levels of nutrients, e.g. vitamin D and omega-3s.

·      Maintain healthy hormones of the thyroid and the testosterone.

·      Promote good mental health, and avoid anxiety and depression.

·      De-stress yourself with correct breathing and daily meditation.

·      Get quality sleep of at least 7-8 hours a night without the help of medication.

·      Develop meaning and purpose in your life.

In addition to having a healthy brain, you must learn how to empower your thinking mind to seek and acquire the knowledge to heal your myasthenia gravis.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

To download the e-book, click here; to get the paperback copy, click here.

Why Do You Want to Live Longer?

There is an old proverb that says: “He who cannot ask cannot live.” Life is all about asking questions and seeking answers from the questions asked. If you wish to live longer or to a ripe old age, you must ask yourself many questions along your life journey.

Living for life in this contemporary world may never be easy because it requires wisdom, which is essentially finding answers to the questions asked, and then applying those answers to everyday living in the material world.

Have you ever wondered: there has to be much more to life than this—the kind of life that you are living right now? If you have, then maybe you should, first and foremost, ask yourself the question: “Why do I want to live longer?” Your reasons could be any one or some of the following:

·       You desire to live a better life than the one that you are currently living.

·       You want to see your children or grandchildren grow up and mature into adults.

·   You have your life passions, some of which might already have been accomplished, while others are being pursued but still remaining unfulfilled.

·       You are experiencing some core values, which are not just your life goals but rather your beliefs in humanity that have to be lived in order to fully experience the meaning of existence as well as the innate happiness in humanity.

·       You still like to enjoy some of the mundane pleasures of life and living that have satisfied your five senses.

·  You love to maintain good relationships and true friendships with those who are close and dear to you.

·   You may be fighting some life challenges or health issues—just like Alex Trebek, the 77-year-old TV celebrity famous for hosting NBC's “Jeopardy”, who openly declared in 2019 that he had to live longer in order to fight his pancreatic cancer because of his still-standing three-year contract with NBC. 

Asking the question “Why do I want to live longer?” may initiate many other why questions specifically related to you, to others close to you, and to the world around you. Living is all about asking the many why and how questions in your everyday life and living.

In the Bible, Jesus said: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find” (Matthew 7:7) In real life, we must always ask ourselves many thought-provoking questions at all times. Asking questions is self-introspection, which is a process of self-intuition and self-reflection, without which there is no self-awareness and therefore no personal growth and development. A static life is never a life well lived and worth living. Therefore, asking questions is self-empowering wisdom—a life tool necessary for living longer.

The truth is that the kind of questions you ask determines the kind of life you are going to live. Your questions often trigger a set of mental answers, which may lead to actions or inactions, based on the choices you make from the answers you have obtained. Remember, your life is always the sum of all the choices you have made in the process. No matter what, life is a journey of self-discovery, a continuous process of asking questions and seeking self-awakening answers from them. It should be noted that the answer to every question you ask may change over time, because life is forever changing, and changes are often transformative. The more questions you ask, the clearer your mind will become, and the more ready you will be to receive the answers.

Stephen Lau                  

Copyright© by Stephen Lau      

Anti-Depression Love Recipes

Love Recipes

“Love” is a big word in all human civilizations. For all religious disparities, love still plays an essential role in all the world’s religions. Love plays an important role in human lives, especially living in a world of conflicts and aggression.

What is the real meaning of “love”? Love involves our emotions and feelings. We all love some things and some people. Love, ironically enough, gives us both happiness and unhappiness. When the love is fulfilled, we feel happy; when the love is rejected or unrequited, we then feel pain, which becomes the unhappiness. This, unfortunately, is the reality of love.

Loving others is not that easy, and loving yourself is sometimes even more difficulty. This is also the reality of life.

The truth of the matter is that to truly love someone is very difficult, if not impossible, unless you love yourself first.

Self-acceptance

In a general sense, self-esteem is the positive or negative evaluative perception of self.  It is a rating of self based on a partial assessment of current and/or past traits. Many mental health professionals claim that achieving higher self-esteem is the keystone of good mental health, in particular, in avoiding depression; such claims, however, are dubious at best.

Low self-esteem is self-doubt, often expressed in not asserting oneself in public or workplace, and not pushing past one’s comfort zones.

To love yourself is self-acceptance, which is accepting who and what you really are—and not who and what you wish you were (that is, your ego-self). It should also be pointed out that “loving yourself” and “loving your ego-self” are not quite the same. The former is loving yourself for who you really are despite all your imperfections; the latter involves loving or craving to be the person you wish you were. “Loving yourself” means you can love others as well because they are not very different from you in that they, too, are as imperfect as you are. On the other hand, “loving your ego-self” means it is very difficult to love others because you want to distinguish and separate yourself from others; accordingly, others must somehow satisfy your ego first before you can love them. That explains why if you have a big ego-self, you cannot easily and readily love others.

The bottom line: if you can accept yourself as who and what you are, then it may become much easier for you to accept and love others as who and what they are.

Oneness with all life

Accepting and loving others implies having mindfulness of the inter-connection between people; that is to say, no man is an island, according to the poet John Donne. This mindfulness leads to love, and then to the awareness of the presence of God or that of a Higher Being. Love is the first step towards spirituality.

The oneness with all life is one of the basic laws of Nature: that is, we are all inter-connected with one another. This universal moral principle holds the key to true and lasting freedom in living. Without that freedom, we are forever living in human bondage that inhibits further development of the wellness of the body, the mind, and the soul. Without this wellness alignment, there is no wellness wisdom.

An illustration

A pastor from Hong Kong was invited to give a sermon in China. A woman from the congregation asked the pastor if it was right to give money to get her son into an elite school. The pastor replied by saying: “Your son getting into that elite school would also imply depriving another child of that same opportunity you are seeking for your child.”

A year later, the pastor met the same woman, who told him that her son had got into that elite school but without using her kwanxi or connection. The pastor then said to her: “See, God is in control; if you would just let Him.”

Thinking question

If you were the woman with the money and the kwanxi, would you have done differently?

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

How I Look At Life Problems

Looking at Life Problems

How I deal with my complaints

In my daily life, I try to catch myself complaining about anything, such as the weather—whether I am making a comment or just thinking a thought about the weather. By not complaining, I try to avoid putting my mind in a state of unconsciousness that creates negative energy and denial of the present moment. When I am complaining, I am in fact saying: “I cannot accept what is, and I am a victim of the present situation.” Understandably, in the present moment, we all have only three options in any situation that we are complaining about: get away from the situation; change the situation;  and accept the situation as it is.

If I want to take any action—whether it is getting away or changing the situation—I try my best to remove any negativity first and foremost.

If it is my decision to take no action, I honestly ask myself if it is fear that stands in my way of taking any action: I tell myself that any action is often better than no action. Staying in the present moment does the mental trick of controlling my thoughts:  focusing my mind on the present moment, and looking objectively at the fear that may be holding me back from taking any action, without letting fear get into my subconscious mind to create any negativity.

If, after much deliberation, I still decide to take no action, then I accept it fully and consciously, with no regret and no “should have” or “might have” because the whole episode now belongs to the past and is no longer real for me. It is important for me not to experience any inner conflict, resistance, or negativity in the mental process of deciding to take no action.

How I deal with stress

Stress is inevitable in contemporary living. My wife sometimes complains that I stress her, and my spontaneous reply is: “If I don’t stress you, something or somebody would stress you. Just learn to cope with it!” Yes, everybody has to cope with stress, and not to deal with the stressor.

When I was working on a book, it was easy for me to focus too much on the future and forget about the present. My mind seemed to be preoccupied with getting to the future, that is, finishing a certain chapter or the completion of a book, such that I easily forgot about the present. Then I began to realize that my stress was due to my “being here” but “wanting to be there.” With that realization, I have learned to re-focus more on the present, and less on the future. As a matter of fact, I have stopped creating timelines for my writing. In the writing process, sometimes I don’t like what I have written (what is known as a writer’s bad days) but I try to enjoy the writing process, rather than looking at what I have written and what I don’t like about. By focusing on the present, instead of on the finished product in the future, I have learned to enjoy my writing and the writing process, and I am able to revise what I previously did not like. So, the key is doing something totally focused on the present moment.

Awareness and concentration are important ingredients in mental clarity and relaxation to de-stress the mind.

How I deal with the past

In my life, I have made many mistakes, which have changed my life—maybe for the worse, or maybe not. Who knows? And who cares?

I never let the past take up my attention. I do not let my thinking process create any anger, guilt, pride, regret, resentment, or self-pity. Like everybody else, I do have these negative feelings and emotions, but they do not last long. I believe that if I allow these thoughts of mine to control me, I would look much older than my calendar age, and, worse, create a false sense of self.

To reminisce what was good in the past would intensify a desire to repeat such an experience in the future, and thus creating an insatiable longing that may never be fulfilled. To recall what was unpleasant in the past would generate feelings of remorse and unhappiness. What is the use? I just let bygones be bygones. In my mind, there is no ”what if.”

How I deal with failures

The path of living is strewn with failures, big and small. But they should not become stumbling blocks in life journey.  Like everybody else, I have met my failures:

I look upon my failures with positive attributes: a lesson of humility to show my own limitation and inadequacy; a lesson that I may never get what I want in life; a lesson to strengthen my character as a human being; a lesson to learn about perseverance and survival from failures.

If I had succeeded in those endeavors in the past, I would have embarked on a totally different life journey heading toward a totally different direction. Would I really have been better off or worse off? Who knows, and who cares? I never ponder on the “might have” or the “would have” scenarios.

How I look at death

I am now closer to the end rather than the beginning. That is to say, the thought of death has become more and more real with each day passing. I have come to believe that most elderly people have similar experience.

If I could ask but one question about the future, it would be: “How am I going to die?” and not “When am I going to die?”

I wouldn’t want to know about the when. To me, time is not a big factor. My desire to know the “how” is just out of plain curiosity. Anyway, they are just hypothetical questions without any answer.

In life, we all ask many different questions, some of which are practical, some hypothetical, and some without an answer. To many, living is a search for an answer to many of the unanswerable questions in life.

So, stop looking for an answer to every question asked, but continue to ask, and just live if there were no tomorrow.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The Bag and Baggage

The Bag and Baggage

Life journey is forever on a long and winding road with many detours and sideways. On this bumpy life journey, we all carry with us our own bag and baggage, containing our individual beliefs, feelings, and skills, some of which may ultimately become the signs and symptoms of our own depression.

Thinking questions

What are you carrying in your own bag and baggage?

Who packed your bag and baggage? Did others help you with your packing?

How long have you been carrying your own bag and baggage?

Is your own bag and baggage getting heavier with each day passing?

Does your own bag and baggage serve the purpose of your life journey in any way?

Have you ever thought of unpacking some, if not all, of what is inside your own bag and baggage?

What is inside an individual’s bag and baggage could be anything from anger, bitterness, frustration, regret, sadness, shame, to “what-if”—the major components of depression.

TAO is the human wisdom, which is The Way of going through what is in your bag and baggage.  

Emotions and feelings are two sides of the same coin; they are closely related, but they are two very different things in that the former create biochemical reactions in the body, affecting the physical state, while the latter are mental associations and reactions to the former

Depression involves the numbing of strong emotions and feelings, especially anger, fear, and shame, that an individual often experiences and carries in his or her own bag and baggage.

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 leading to positive or negative emotions and feelings.

The Seven Emotions

According to the Traditional Chinese Medicine, there are seven emotions that are the underlying causes of many internal diseases, and they 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 excessive joy dysfunctions the heart, leading to mania and mental disorders.

Generally speaking, any “excessive” emotion or feeling may trigger insomnia and loss of appetite, which are some of the common symptoms of depression.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau