Today, I celebrate the return of my Apple Laptop. It was a sad departure almost a month ago when it suddenly malfunction and could not function at all. I sent it to the Apple authorised workshop which I first paid $80+ for diagnosis and they came back after 3 days asking for nearly $900 to repair the motherboard. I refused as this laptop costs slightly more than a $1000. So with a broken heart, I left it at home, while painstakinly used a half working Dell laptop that was connected to the TV.

God is good and take this opportunity to work on my characters. It was tough of course , having to sit in front of the TV to do what I want on the laptop. In short, I am stuck in the same position unlike before where I have the freedom to roam around. The lesson learnt was not so much about the content I need to access from the laptop but the loss of freedom. Isn't this the same as many of the situations we are in?

If you have money before and you are not now, it isn't really the lack of money that you are unhappy with. It is the loss of freedom that you could not have like before where you could exchange money for the products or services that you want. Money was merely an instrument of exchange. The more you have, the different level of product and services you can have access to. That is all.

That is all? That is what drives humans on the pedestal of ever chasing for this material wealth, isn't it ? Returning to using the Apple laptop is like finding back an old friend, so much to talk about. The familiarity of using the keyboards, the files to access to ,etc. It gives a certain level of stability and comfort, I must say. Thank you God for the wonderful lessons.

Isaiah 43.19 - See, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up to you, do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

We have to move to a higher level of consciousness in order to understand this verse that God has given to us. Solving human problems using human intelligence is limited while accessing to the power and wisdom of God, we can receive many wonders and signs, creative strategies that our finite human intelligence can offer. If God is making a way in the wilderness, that means the search for a way out is near. He knows we are lost, circling round and round, perhaps losing hope and feeling dejected and losing our sense of well being. He shows us what we could not do on our own, for that I am thankful.

Trust the Lord, always.

I spent more than 2 hours to migrate some of my young plants that have been outgrowing its little container into bigger pots today. I thought it would be easy but when I get my hands dirty, I realised there is much more work than I thought. 
I discovered the bigger the plant, the longer the roots and the harder it is to do the migration for fear of hurting the roots. 

Then I thought to myself, isn't some of my bad habits like procrastination the same as well? The longer I took to do the medial task, the more reluctant and unmotivated I want to perform it. Habits are like plants with roots growing, the longer it takes to form, the deeper the roots grow and the harder it is to change it. I also discovered some plants like papaya which I had previously done a few migration died after the shift. Could it be it had grown acccustomed to its usual, comfortable small pot and once moved to a bigger and better place, it has difficulties to adapt? 

They say humans are resistant to change and once we are settled down, got comfortable we want to maintain it for as long as possible. I think there is some element of truth in it. I am glad I took the time , an activity that was pretty much unplanned for. 

I hope the new pot will give these young plants bigger space to grow and blossom their flowers, if any and they will grow to be strong and healthy. I pray that it would be free from pests attack and butterflies would be attracted to come. It is a good form of moderate exercise to start the day. Try it.

Ah.....are we going to talk about change again? Yes, we are, haha. In the words of Bob Proctor, a favourite author of mine, he said; we are either progressing or stagnant in life. So if the word; change is too BIG or daunting as if you need a complete makeover, consider replacing it with progress instead. After all, we had said that hundreds and thousands of times when we are in school. "We the citizens of Singapore...........so as to achieve happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation."  Sounds familiar? 

Since I had my shoulder injury years back, I had fallen drastically on my physical strength training for fear of aggravating the pain. It was, each time I try to exert the muscles around it and it is frustrating that I can't do much and felt helpless.....
I had many sleepless night as rotating the arm would hurt so bad that it wakes me up. (maybe that explains the dark eye circle, haha)Nearly giving up, I was feeling depressed and decided to turn to God for help. (Forgive me for not seeking YOU first, LORD) I asked him to release the pain and let me regain my strength and confidence once more. Nothing miraculous happen over the weeks, the pain still exist, the sleep was horrible and the days were muddled through...........

Then, one day my daughter wanted me to paint with her. Honestly, I was reluctant as I dislike drawing when I was young. But it was something that I had promised her and she was looking forward to it. So I said OK and this was what I painted. It came to me instantly, as if God knew that is what I need now! 

Shortly, thereafter, I got my son to draw up this calendar for me. See attached drawing. The 2nd drawing is an ordinary 2 months time line that I set for myself to get started with my training again. It was not helpful when I kept thinking how strong I was in the past when I can hit the gym to lift the weights and so on and so forth. I had to start from scratch, I know and the sooner the better.

I started on 16 Aug 2016 where you could see a number, 6 was written on it. That was the number of chin-ups I could do. On some days, I added in my own run which I had been doing regularly, 3 - 5km run depending on time availability. 
2 weeks later, I am still at 7 chin-ups and I was feeling a little frustrated how slow the progress had been. Then end of the month, 31 Aug 2016, I hit 8. That was a marked improvement for me. 

I noticed once a new number register in my mind, it becomes the minimum I had to do and 7 or 6 became the past as I looked back at this calendar. Of course, the words of God, written by my son is  a constant motivation. Matthews 19.26 - Nothing is impossible for God and Mark 9.23 - Nothing is impossible to Him who believes.

Last Sunday, 10 Sept 2016, I breakthrough with 9 chin ups and now 8 , 7 and 6 are behind - the past and no longer a limitation that I used to had and fear of reaching. My action and achievement by way of my records are evidence that it is possible and do-able.

Guess what, the next number will be ?Yeah, a full 10 and that would be another milestone that I love to hit it. The problem I realised that we get ourselves trapped are our very own thoughts. We not only compare with others but also our very own past performance, assuming if we had done it before ,then now should be easy and achievable. Yes and No depending on the context. 

The 10,000 hours training that each person put behind his interest, be it a physical goal or financial one is crucial. This two month tracking progress may seem slow and way too easy for some but it fits my current lifestyle and I like the progress, slow and steady without hurting my shoulders too much. 

God has a wonderful way of giving us what we want. He arranged for my daughter to get me to draw which I had not done in decades, less to mention holding a paint brush. As I saw her happily painting away, I thought what should I paint and my gut feeling told me this word. And then the next thing was this calendar I get my son to do for me. He loves to cross out each day of the month on the hard calendars we had in the house. And an idea just came to me, model the same thing on a piece of paper and each time I finished a physical task, I would cross it off. 

Also, each night I shared my happy moments with him, how happy Daddy is by achieving this baby step one day at a time. 
As a father, I think it is more important to walk the talk than to give him theories on how to be resilient in the midst of adversity. 

Friends, if you are going through some challenges right now, do as I had done. Baby steps, giant leaps one day at a time. Do not underestimate the power of accumulation but it has still to start from day one. Make today your day one and soon you will be excited to share your progress with your family member and others as well. 

To expect others to come forth and help us or the external situation to first improve without making a radical shift in our attitude is the works of an insane person who unconsciously repeat the same steps but expecting a different result. 

Acts 3.19 - Repent so that your sins can be wiped away..................

This is also one of my favourite verse but I too had to apply in my own life, experiencing the mighty power of God so that my testimonial are not hearsay but truly experienced. 

Repent in the dictionary has too many negative connotations from feeling remorseful to being regretful of one's act. Wouldn't that act itself (feeling remorseful) magnify the problems you had on hand; i.e. making it bigger and worse than before?

According to the Strong Concordance, the word; repent means change of mind, change the inner man (accept the will of God). So simply, God say I am here so that you can have abundance and prosperity..... John 10.10. Now, we know God's words cannot be revoked, he kept his promises and thus it is up to us to change our mind, to shift our paradigm from looking at the external situation (shoulder pain) and forgotten the teachings of God. And that is to have faith and believe in his words. Now faith is the assurance of things hope for, evidence of things not seen. 

In our mortal world, we were "educated" or brainwashed to only accept what we can see (visual sense) as facts before we can believe something. For example, if you say you are financially rich, then you jolly well dress up, live in a big house or drive a flashy car. We all "learn" to judge by what we see. But God see our hearts and not by what we have - our circumstances.  We find it difficult to believe in something unless we can see it . Money, house, car are what we can see , then our brain begin to believe.

God say to do the reverse, first to believe than you will see.  John 11.40 - Did I not tell you if you believe, you would see the Glory of God? And  Matthew 21.22 - If you believe, you will receive whatever you request for in prayer.

Meditate on these words (a strong reminder for myself as well). It is the reverse of what the mortal world is teaching out there - out of sight, out of mind but rather God's way - out of mind, out of sight.

To your success, keep the faith strong !

This is an interesting article I read recently - why you should pretend to be rich. Stacking cold hard cash in the refrigerator ?
Driving luxury cars that are leased? Or wearing branded goods to show one is rich? Does it truly works?

Pretend or act as if - are we talking about the real physical act in this context to realising one's dreams? With powerful quotes like this 

and many more, how can we mere mortals not be inspired to act ? Think this for a moment......
If it is merely the physical pretending to be rich that makes one rich, then wouldn't many actors and actresses be rich since they are in the profession of pretending - playing roles that they may not be in real life?

There are 3 parts to this questions that I would address. 

For one to be rich (or any other goals), one need to be conscious of it. By consciousness, I mean awareness or perception of something. One must be aware that he is rich. Our conscious minds can generate ideas of being rich and impress upon our subconscious mind to act on it. What is subconsciousness? It is defined as the part of your mind that notices and remembers information when you are not actively trying to do so, and influences your behaviour even though you do not realise it. 

So, in this context, if your definition of being rich is owning a luxury car, then the moment you are out of the house, you should be heading to where your car is parked and perhaps not to the bus station/train station (NOTE : this is not an argument that one can't take public transport when he is rich)

Lastly and most importantly is the power of choice that we humans have. To have choice means there are more than one possibilities that we can choose from. Unlike animals, they are not endowed with this freedom to choose. Their mind is program to do the same thing again and again. A tiger in the wild needs to hunt for food to survive in the jungle. It does not wake up one day thinking someone would deliver fresh meat to his tables and as such, take a longer nap. He might be eaten alive! That is the the law of survival in the jungle.

We humans have this ability to choose our thoughts and thus influence our action. We can choose thoughts that make us feel rich or thoughts that stop us from being rich (convincing oneself why we do not deserve it - no background, no connection, no looks, no this nor that).

So in essence, when one make the right choice  - wanting be rich , then we can control our subconscious mind through the control of our ideas and feelings (consciousness). It is said that our mind cannot tell the difference between what's real and what's vividly imagined (feelings).

I remained convinced that when we can control our feelings to be what we want to be, ( disciplined and practice helps)then we can be in any state that we desired (including being rich). Our mind is not a binary system but a complex one that switches between good, bad and evil thoughts round the clock. It is our job to tame it like a wild animal on the loose, to steer clear of unwanted, unhealthy thoughts that stop us from becoming what we want to be. Once we give in, it will expands and grow and grow till it takes over and we start to believe what it says as true. That's what we want to avoid and must not at all costs allow ourselves to be in.

If the physical act of hoarding large stacks of cash, driving a luxury car or staying in a leased car and the feelings of being rich is aligned, perhaps the person can attain his goal like in this article. Often, the one who acts the part does not feel the part - that's not congruency - the thinking mind and the feeling heart as one. 

Our subconscious mind will accept whatever as true what we declared as true. It simply cannot tells the difference. Knowing the latter, it is then to our advantage to feel the way we want to be (of being rich) until our reality is objectified. 
If becoming a millionaire does not feel real or possible to you (your consciousness) then our subconsciousness will accept that as true and conjure up ideas of failure, impossible and all other negative thoughts that follows. When a business opportunity appears, you would approach it with more skepticism than usual. 

One can hold on to his vision/dream in him mind, rehearsing it mentally and seeing in his mind (as if )it has already happened, that it is a reality. For example, I can feel the joy and peace I get tendering to my large garden in my new house, with lots of fruits that our family likes - papaya, edible vegetables like lettuce, spinach, bitter gourd,etc and many cactuses variety that I had recently fallen in love with. Being close to Nature, seeing the butterflies and the birds singing and humming their melody makes me happy. It's a feeling that one has to experience it to know what it is like. 

Since it has already happened, I am living the way I like to be and that makes me truly happy and satisfied. The more feelings I put into the future act, the more the conscious I am of this new life style and embrace it. It is part of my present lifestyle,expanding its horizon day by day, in a very unique and mysterious way. At its appointed time, like the caterpillar ready to meet the world in its cocoon, it will turn into a butterfly. Instead of controlling the time which creates the anxiety and one gets impatient and tried to meddle with the means of reaching the goals, I simply bask myself in living the dreams of my life. 

Dad came to visit me a few days ago and complained he vomitted twice after taking the kefir drink that I made for him. He was recently admitted to Hospital due to asthma and I read that kefir drink is good for healing many illness including asthma. I was a little upset that after 2 tries, he rejected the idea of this superfood. My wife who I regard as the smarter one told me at night it was not the food that Dad rejected but the thought of consuming a new food item in his diet. He had lead a routine lifestyle for many years, going about his daily business the same old way, the way he likes it. Any disturbance to it, including taking a health food will make him uncomfortable and thus he will reject it.

Upon hearing that, I was enlightened though the heart was a little down that day. How wise of my wife! Changing our beliefs - the internal system that is invisible is much more important than changing our outward behaviour or actions. Once our internal thought processes are changed, our actions will correspond with it naturally. On the other hand, if we attempt to change only the outward behaviour, the effect is temporary and often the participant experienced withdrawal symptom and soon return to his usual/old way of doing things.

We are creatures of habits and thus we are also creatures of our own circumstances.
To change our circumstances - health in this aspect, we must take a step back and study our daily habits. An intervention must occur to disrupt the usual patterns. Jumping on the bandwagon of dieting and aggressive exercise is not the answer though it may offer some consolation to the long suppressed guilt, anger, envy, frustration and many more hidden emotions underneath. 

This concept of change has fascinated many people and billions of dollars are pour into it to effect change. Think smoking, climate change to getting people to drink more milk to fast food and paleo diet and more. Where are you now ?

IF you have a chance to step in one of this above, which one will you choose?