Life 01 (May 08 - Oct 08)

Life 01 (May 08 - Oct 08)

Postby winston » Mon May 12, 2008 8:31 am

Many years ago, I read that there are 4 types of "personality-traits" inside a person. These personality-traits are:-

1) The Athlete
This person thinks that he is always in a race. Therefore, he has a very strong need to always end up as Number One and sees everyone as a Competitor. This person normally has a big ego and needs a lot of attention and visibility. They normally outgrow this athletic tendency when they are in their thirties.

2) The Warrior
This type of person thinks that he is at war and always sees everyone as an Enemy. Also, he is a bit paranoid and thinks that everyone is out to get him. They normally outgrow this tendency in their forties.

3) The Diplomat
This type of person is normally in their forties/ fifties. He has seen quite a bit in life already. He has also experienced various disappointments as well. It is likely that he has outgrown his Athletic and Warrior personality. He knows that life is not about being Number One nor seeing everyone as a Competitor or Enemy. Therefore, he is normally very friendly and diplomatic to everyone.

4) The Spirit
This type of person has endured some failures in life already. Maybe a mid-life crisis eg. divorce, death of loved ones, loss of a job etc. He has now becomed "spiritual" and is dedicating his life to something meaningful to him, either thru spiritual or charitable activities. Examples: Mother Teresa, Gandhi

BTW, all 4 personality traits can be found in person at any stage of his life. However, there would be one or two personality traits that are dominant at that point in time.

Normally, for the younger ages, the Athlete and Warrior personalities would dominate. After the person has experienced some setbacks in life, perhaps a Mid-Life Crisis, then the Diplomat and Spirit personalities would dominate.
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
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Re: Life Thread

Postby winston » Sun May 18, 2008 11:46 am

The Snowstorm in China in January and now, the Earthquake, may have changed the mindset of some of the younger Chinese people.

On almost all of the > 60 channels of Chinese TV, there are a lot of stories of people, travelling into the epic-centre with food, drinks, emergency supplies or volunteering to help out in the rescue effort. This is not to mentioned the foreigners who flew in from afar to help. Actually, I think one of the first foreigners on the scene, were an experienced earthquake rescue team from Japan.

In the past, the meaning of life for most of the younger Chinese people, was to make and spend money. Some people are now starting to question that meaning of life. That is the first step towards "spirituality" for them, whatever that is...

Not sure whether I'm trying to find something good in this incident..

And finally, did the people really become more "spiritual" after the Tsunami a few years ago ?
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Re: Life Thread

Postby kennynah » Sun May 18, 2008 5:03 pm

oh yes Winston....i am always for the saying that "everything happens for a good reason, even when it is apparently very painful at that time" .. of cos, it is easy for me, sitting here, thousands of kilometers away saying this...none of my loved ones or friends perished at this earthquake..

we will never know, but there's always a chance that among the bereaved relatives at sichuan, one chinese may become such great seismic scientisit who can help to prevent lives from being lost in future by forecasting very accurate earthquakes.

perhaps, it is my wishful thinking, but it stems from a religious backdrop...
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Re: Life Thread

Postby winston » Sun May 18, 2008 11:16 pm

The Greatest Virtue... and the First
by Alexander Green,

Frustrated with your job? Bored at home? Would you like your days to be filled with excitement, adventure and a strong sense of purpose?

If so, you can volunteer to work alongside my nephew Conrad Schwalbe. Conrad is a U.S. Marine in Iraq. Currently, he spends his days searching for weapons and clearing houses in Ramadi.

Aside from never knowing whether the house he's about to walk into is booby-trapped - he's already lost several members of his company - there are other inconveniences. Like improvised explosive devices. And snipers.

Then there are the minor inconveniences: missing several meals in a row, staying up for more than a day at a time, going more than a week without a shower, and getting woken at night by mortars and gunfire.

Don't worry. My intention is not to drag anyone into an argument about the war in Iraq. My message today is about gratitude. More than two thousand years ago, Cicero called it "not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others."

Psychologists say it's virtually impossible to feel grateful and unhappy at the same time.

Gratitude is usually generated in one of two ways. One, by feeling a genuine appreciation for the life that you were given and, two, by making a conscious decision to practice looking at what's right in your life rather than focusing on what's missing.

I'm thankful I don't spend my days knocking on doors in Ramadi, for example. Beyond the American mission in Iraq, I'm grateful for all the men and women in uniform who are willing to lay down their lives for us. George Orwell was right when he said we sleep peaceably at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf.

Of course, if you have nothing more than good health and the love and affection of your family, you have much to be grateful for. But take a moment, too, to marvel at how fortunate you are just to have been born in the modern era.

Your ancestors four generations removed would marvel at contemporary life: Unlimited food at affordable prices... plagues that killed millions - polio, smallpox, measles, rickets - all but eradicated... the end of backbreaking physical toil for most wage earners... the advent of instantaneous global communication and same-day travel to distant cities... mass home ownership with central heat and air and limitless modern conveniences... senior citizens cared for financially and medically, ending the fear of impoverished old age.

Let's not forget, too, how advances in medical technology and nutrition have created the greatest human accomplishment of all time - the near doubling of the average lifespan over the last hundred years. (At the beginning of the twentieth century, the average American lived just 41 years.)

Please don't kid yourself that things were really better in "the good old days." As I once heard an historian remark, "If you really believe life was better a couple hundred years ago, I have just one word for you - dentistry."

Let's appreciate, too, the many political freedoms - denied to millions around the world - that we enjoy today: freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, and freedom from conscription, among others.

Of course, it is nothing less than astonishing that you're sitting here reading this at all.

In "A Short History of Nearly Everything," Bill Bryson writes that "you have been extremely - make that miraculously - fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so.

Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result - eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly - in you."

Meditate on that for a moment. And recognize that the odds against you being here are astronomically large. Then be grateful...

Gratitude makes you feel like you have enough. Ingratitude leaves us in a state of deprivation in which we are always looking for something else.

Don't just feel grateful, however. Do something about it. As William Arthur Ward once said, "Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it."

Let your co-workers know, in subtle ways, that you enjoy working with them. Show your friends that you don't take their companionship for granted. Let your partner know how you really feel.

Who knows? You may be surprised to find out what they think about you. Doing this is a good thing, by the way. Medical studies consistently show that people who express gratitude regularly are happier, healthier and less susceptible to depression.

So find a moment to appreciate your incredible good fortune... and let the people around you know how you feel.
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
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Re: Life Thread

Postby helios » Tue May 20, 2008 1:18 am

life was like a box a chocolates, u never know what you're gonna get

[Forest Gump, 1994: how abt reminiscing this classic movie again?]
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Re: Life Thread

Postby winston » Wed May 21, 2008 8:50 am

The Value of Being Utterly, Gloriously Wrong by Alexander Green

When I started managing client monies back in the mid-80s, I was as green as a Granny Smith apple.

Although I was confident I knew what I was doing, I ended up getting my head handed to me in the market. Over... and over... and over again.

My investment strategy was a completely blinkered market-timing approach. And while I believed in it heart and soul at the time, it had little chance of success. (Pity my early clients.) Things never got better until the day I recognized that fact.

No one relishes the idea of being utterly and profoundly wrong. But discovering that we are can be one of life's most rewarding experiences.

For reasons of pride, ego, hubris or fear, however, we have trouble accepting this. That means we miss out on some of the best lessons life has to offer.

After all, when you admit you're wrong, all you're essentially saying is that you know more today than you did yesterday.

Yet studies show that we glom onto ideas early and resist letting them go. Psychologists call it "confirmation bias." That is, we seek evidence that confirms our beliefs and ignore or reinterpret evidence that refutes them.

It's easy to see how. We all gravitate toward like-minded souls, listen primarily to those who share our opinions, and read books and articles by writers who confirm our views.

But the narrower our sources of information, the more error-prone our thinking becomes. Our only exercise becomes jumping to conclusions.

In a 1989 study, for example, psychologist Deanna Kuhn found that when subjects were exposed to evidence inconsistent with a theory they preferred, they failed to notice it. When they did recognize the contradictory evidence, they simply reinterpreted it in favor of their preconceived belief.

In a related study, Scientific American columnist Michael Shermer writes that, "Kuhn played an audio recording of an actual murder trial and discovered that instead of evaluating the evidence first and then coming to a conclusion, most subjects concocted a narrative in their mind about what happened, made a decision of guilt or innocence, then riffled through the evidence and picked out what most closely fit the story."

Knowing this, is it terribly surprising that so far more than 200 death-row inmates in the U.S. have been exonerated by DNA evidence? (Maybe Woody Allen wasn't kidding when he said he'd hate to leave his fate in the hands of 12 people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.)

In truth, by looking at the evidence with an open mind we have nothing to lose but our ignorance. And sometimes we will solidify our existing views, making them stronger.

In his book "Confessions of a Philosopher," Bryan Magee writes that he became a skilled debater by identifying his opponent's weak points and then bringing concentrated fire to bear on them, a tactic used by successful polemicists since ancient times.

Yet he was blown away to discover that philosopher Karl Popper did just the opposite:

"He sought out his opponent's case at its strongest and attacked that. Indeed, he would improve it, if he possibly could, before attacking it... He would remove avoidable contradictions or weaknesses, close loopholes, pass over minor deficiencies, let his opponent's case have the benefit of every possible doubt, and reformulate the most appealing parts of it in the most rigorous, powerful and effective arguments he could find - and then direct his onslaught against it. The outcome, when successful, was devastating. At the end there would be nothing left to say in favor of the opposing case except for tributes and concessions that Popper himself had already made."

Amazing. Yet no one reaches this level of understanding without taking the time to thoroughly investigate an opposing view rather than dismissing it out of hand. It takes time to weigh the evidence, consider it, and allow for the possibility that we could be mistaken. This is something that most of us - if we're honest with ourselves - are reluctant to do.

When you bring an open mind to a conflict, one of three things will happen. You'll strengthen your existing convictions. You'll become more sympathetic to the opposing view. Or you'll end up smarter today than you were yesterday - and get a lesson in humility in the bargain.

That's why you should never lose your temper in an argument. If you're right, you don't need to. If you're wrong, you can't afford to.

As the French enlightenment professor Voltaire said, "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one."
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
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Re: Life Thread

Postby pepper » Thu May 22, 2008 2:42 am

I've been following this website for quite awhile and finds it interesting. It provides coaching in all aspects of life. You guys may wish to chk it out:

http://www.lifetrekcoaching.com/provisions/index.html
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Re: Life Thread

Postby kennynah » Thu May 22, 2008 3:54 am

pepper....

i would rather believe Huatopdea is all encompassing...although, i thank you for pointing out another website...

i have noted you have been posting...many thanks...pls post more.
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Re: Life Thread

Postby winston » Thu May 22, 2008 10:34 pm

My younger boy was weighing his running shoes on the weighing machine just now.

I asked him why he was doing that..

He told me that he has a "Track & Field Day" tomorrow.

And he want to be wearing a lighter pair of running shoes, when he is running tomorrow :D
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Re: Life Thread

Postby kennynah » Thu May 22, 2008 10:39 pm

wah...very smart...like father, like son 8-)
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