10 Minutes Relaxation Music

Set aside 10 minutes each day to calm down your tired mind, release tension from work, close your eyes and listen to this relaxing music.

Advice From People Who Have Been Through It

It's normal reaction to see psychiatrist for anyone who suffers from depression. There is another equally effective way that is to listen to those people that actually struggled with and successfully overcome it.

Some of the advices are as follow:

- 'For anyone out there who is struggling, know that you're not alone, there are others out there going through what you are going through too.'

- 'What you feel is real and it matters. Give yourself a break, take some time off even if it's just a day on the weekend.'

- 'Get off the couch, force yourself on a walk. Make sure you're moving your body. It doesn't matter if it's dancing or joking, just move that body!'

- 'Be good to yourself, forgive yourself, be kind to yourself, you deserve it.'

- 'Write down things you are grateful for everyday. Whenever you find yourself in those dark places, stare at the list that you have written and read it out loud until you believe it. It's going to be OK. You have so much more to live for.'

Conquer Your Fear

What makes us feel what we feel? Is it the weather, news or the people around us? The fact is all of these affect our mental state at a particular moment of time. So does it mean that if we distance ourselves from all these by hiding deep into the mountain, things will be different? That’s the practice of Buddhist monks where they believe that the only way to set themselves free from the entanglement of the world is to live a reclusive lifestyle away from the world. This may work but it comes at a tremendous costs. It means that they can’t be married and have families. They must cut off all their links to this materialistic world and devote their whole lives in seeking enlightenment.

But it does not make sense that the purpose of arriving to this world is to escape from it. We are here for a reason. If living in this world means suffering, so be it, we just need to learn to live through it. We need to experience every good and bad moments to learn from it. Some experiences may be unpleasant or even unbearable but the best way to overcome it is to face it head on and find the best solutions.

I feel very uncomfortable whenever there is something lingering at the back of my mind. It worries me because I can’t see it clearly when it stays in my mind. For example, there is a task that I need to accomplish today and I woke up in the morning thinking about it. The more I think about it the more I feel uneasy because there is zero progress by just ruminating about it. As soon as I spread it out on my desk and look at the problem in front of me, instantly I feel that I’m back in control. Calmness then overcome anxiety in that moment.

Nelson Mandela said it beautifully: “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

Garbage In Garbage Out

In computer science language, there is this phrase called ‘garbage in, garbage out’ or GIGO in short. What it basically means is that if you input nonsense or useless information to the computer, you will get faulty output as a result. The same can be said for practically everything else in life really. If we constantly feed ourselves with junk food, we will have bad body shape or even terrible health as a result.

Unlike our physical bodies which are easy to monitor as we can observe in the mirror everyday if we want to; our mind is what we have to watch out for it is less ‘visible’. If we constantly feed negative information into our mind, we will gradually form a mental perspective that life in general is just terrible. By telling ourselves that everything around us is bad (input), we end up feeling miserable and pessimistic (output).

The Christchurch mosque mass shooting in March 2019 is a perfect example of how bad input to the mind can cause horrible reaction in the physical world. In the midst of his shooting frenzy, the shooter filmed the entire process via Facebook live in an angle that look very much like a first person shooter game. By consistently feeding virtual reality into his mind, sadly it projected into reality in the real world. Perhaps this unfortunate incident may be prevented if the accused was playing Candy Crush instead.

Our mind is a very powerful tool given to us by GOD as a gift, we have to sacredly protect it, nurture it and grow it in a positive way. Think of our mind as a garden, if we are really so busy with our daily lives, we have to at least pull out the weed every now and then to prevent it from overgrown and dominate our entire garden. To go one step further is to obviously nurture the garden by applying fertiliser that will give nutrients to the soil. Our reward will be more beautiful flowers and bigger fruits in our gardens.

Proverbs Chapter 4 Verse 23 summarizes this point succinctly: ‘Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts.’ How true this is! 

在电脑学里，有一个口头谈“垃圾进，垃圾出”。它的基本含义是，如果您把垃圾讯息输入电脑，你将得到糟糕的答案。我们的人生岂不是一样吗？如果我们不断吃快餐，那么我们就会变胖甚至也会影响到我们的健康。

我们的思想也是如此。它是上帝赐予我们的一种非常有力的工具，我们必须保护它，培育它和让它能继续成长。

箴言第4章第23节总结了这一点：“注意你的想法; 因它将影响你的人生。” 

I Name My Fear 'Trump'

I got to know from an article I read recently that on average our mind can generate about 6,000 thoughts every day. That is a huge number! The first thing that came to my mind was, isn’t that a wonderful thing considering we can produce 6,000 business ideas a day! Unfortunately this is not the case. A substantial chunk of that amount are unnecessary thoughts which have no real use to us. Most of them consists of worries and fear that do not pose any real danger to us at that moment.

In the primitive world, human brains were great tools saving us from potential life threatening danger, most of this came from predators around them. They were on constant alert in order to avoid becoming prey to animals which were much stronger and larger than them. The warning triggered in their primitive brains put them in a ‘fight or flight’ situation. That mental stimulation is then directed into the primitive man's muscles to enable them to fight and flee from the situation. In that ancient context, it was very useful because they could convert this warning into physical combat or run for their lives. By doing one of those two things, they made good use of the warning coming from their brain.

Fast forward thousands of years later to 2021, although we have evolved into a much more complex human being, we still have our archaic brain with us, constantly in an alert mode to look out for potential danger. The problem this time is that we can’t really produce any reaction to that warning. Most of us who live in the city settings have no potential threat from a predator, so when our brain trigger a warning, we have no clear target telling us what to do. As a result, that warning will be redirected inwards and stays within us and is transformed into negative energy. This energy usually takes the form of 'worry' or 'fear'. We then find ourselves ruminating about problems that we can’t quite identify. When left unchecked, these negative energies are accumulated inside our body which do damage to our physical and mental health. If this unhealthy thinking pattern occurs on a regularly basis, we may end up in depression.

Most experts in the field of mental illness advise that we give this ‘worry’ or ‘fear’ a name. The moment we can identify it by naming it, it turns out to be not so scary anymore. We are fearful of things we don’t understand. That’s exactly what happen if we can’t identify it or we try to avoid thinking about it. This is exactly why Covid-19 is so scary because it is invisible, it can be anywhere and there is still a lot we don't about the virus and its prolonged effects on our bodies. Also, if we ignore our fear, we are actually helping it to grow stronger in our mind. So identify our worry is the first thing we need to do to beat it.

For me, I’m going to name my ‘worry’ TRUMP. I got this inspiration from recent political development in the United States. Like Donald Trump who kept shouting out loud about voter fraud without presenting any evidence, our worry will constantly spread lies inside our heads without any concrete justification whatsoever. Like President Trump, worry will incite fear in our mind of imminent danger if we don’t pay attention to it. Another reason why I chose TRUMP is because we all know now that he lost the election, so the end result is confirmed. Likewise, our worry will lose and we will stand tall victorious in the end.

So what are you going to name the ‘worry’ or ‘fear’ in your head?

最近我读了一篇文章说，我们平均每天大约有6千个思想出现在我们脑海中。这是一个多么巨大的数字啊！我想若我们每天可以想出6千个生意构思那该多好啊！不幸的是其中这大部分都是一些不必要的想法，对我们毫无实际用途。很多这些思想都是忧虑和恐惧。

在原始时代，当人类面临生命危险时，我们的大脑是一个很有用的工具。原始人无时无刻都会面临周围巨兽的杀生之祸。人类必须保持警惕，以避免成为比他们强得多的动物的猎物。原始人大脑中触发的警告使他们们处于“战斗或逃跑”的状态。在那个古老的背景下，它非常有用，因为我们可以将这种警告转化为应战或逃跑。

但到了数千年后的今天，尽管我们已经发展成为一个文明的人类，但我们仍然拥有那古老的大脑，每分每秒都处于警戒状态，以预防潜在的危险。问题是我们这次不能再对任何警告做出应对的反应。对于我们大多数居住在城市环境中的人并不会受到野兽的侵犯，因此当我们的大脑触发警告时，我们没有一个明确的目标告诉我们该怎么做。结果，这警告就逗留在我们的脑海中，并转变为担忧。如果持续放任不管，这些忧虑就会堆积起来。当这种不健康的思维不断的发生时，我们可能最终陷入抑郁。

精神病专家建议我们给这个“担忧”或“恐惧”起个名字。一旦我们可以通过命名来识别它，事实证明它不再那么可怕了。人总会对我们不了解的事情产生恐惧。如果我们无法识别它，或者我们试图避免去想它，情况会更严重。当我们忽略它时，我们实际上是在帮助它在我们的脑海中继续成长。

我把我的“担忧”命名为特朗普。我从美国最近的政治发展中得到了灵感。就像特朗普（Donald Trump）那样一直高喊选举被欺诈，我们的担忧在没有任何具体理由的情况下继续散布在我们的脑海中。像特朗普一样，担忧会不断激起我们对将来的恐惧。我选择特朗普的另一个原因是因为我们现在都知道他输了选举，换句话说我们看到了最终的结果。同样的，我们的担忧将会消失，最终胜利者肯定是我们。

您又会给您的“担忧”或“恐惧”取什么名字呢？