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。” 

Beautiful Weather

A beautiful Sunday morning here in Melbourne. The cherry blossom tree in front of me has started blossoming signally the end of winter and the dawn of spring. Trees afar are dancing in the breeze with birds trying to find their balance in the swaying branches. It is a perfect end to a week that was wrecked havoc by storm at the beginning. 

As expected, people are coming out from their home in this good weather. There are people strolling in the park to soak up their much needed Vitamin D from the sun. The Premier Daniel Andrews was quite worry that there might be huge crowd at the beach later today as Melbourne is still in the middle of a hard lock down.

Pandemic aside, there are indeed no shortfall of good things around us, we just have to constantly look for it. Don't waste what is available to us, put them to good use and ensure that we are consistently growing physically, mentally and spiritually.

Gratitude On A Rainy Day

The Covid-19 pandemic has wrecked havoc to the global supply chain. Every corners of the world are experiencing shortage of PPE and other essential items that we used to take for granted. To make matter worse, people rushed to the supermarkets and started hoarding products like toilet papers, pasta and other food supplies. Here in Australia, the government has to constantly reminds the people that supplies are sufficient and advise not to hoard unnecessarily. Seriously, are you going to do your business in the toilets several times a day that you need to stock up one year of supply?

To further complicate the problems we all face, one thing ironically has no shortage during this unprecedented times; that is negativity. We are bombarded with negative news several times a day on a daily basis. People complain about conspiracy theories, reluctant to wear masks, unwilling to isolate etc.

We should instead cultivate the habit of being grateful of what we have. It has been raining the whole day since the morning. Melbourne temperature plunges to below 10 degrees celsius. It is currently sitting at 8 degrees but felt more like 3 degrees when the wind blows. However, I'm grateful that I'm able to stay indoor with my heater on full blast (not that I have a choice to go out during Stage 4 Lockdown anyway). Feel great that I can sit down, quiet my mind and write this block while it is wet and cold outside. Satisfied that I can take a sip of my hot coffee while enjoying the rest of the afternoon.

There are many things around us that we can be grateful of. Start counting our blessing.

Weed and Feed

Anxiety is the most common mental disorder in the modern society today affecting around 7 percent of the world population. Thanks to our fast paced life and multi-tasking work culture, people are becoming increasingly difficult to relax! More serious case can even lead one to depression.

Picture this scenario: a person gets extremely anxious on the busy highway after driving for long hours without having a good sleep the previous nights. He is physically tense and unable to enjoy the ride. He is tired physically and his brain starts to behave strangely. Negative thoughts start creeping in every now and then while he is driving and that leads to fear of having trapped in that situation. The traffic jam doesn't help and is making him worry that he may stuck in that situation and can't escape. He starts to think that what if he suddenly has an emergency situation and the ambulance can't get to him in time due to the jam. He becomes desperate and wants to get out of that situation ASAP! The fear starts the vicious cycle in his mind that tells him that he is in danger even though we know that isn't true.

Have you experience the above episode before? If you have you most like have anxiety disorder without knowing it. A few simple things you can do to reduce chance of that happening:

• Have enough sleep the night before you going on a road trip.
• Stop more regularly along the way, come out from your car and do some stretching exercises.
• Take deep and slow breaths. This shall calm you down.
• Being mindful, stop your mind from wandering all over the places.
• Listen to soothing music and enjoy the freedom of driving!

One important thing to note is that anxiety is largely caused by the brain. Imagine the brain as the beautiful garden at home. The garden requires constant maintenance and care. If left unattended, weed starts to grow very quickly. There is a product available at the store calls 'Weed and Feed'. When you spray 'Weed and Feed' in your garden, it will kill the weed while providing the much needed nutrition to your Buffalo lawn. The first time I saw this product on the shelf, I thought to myself "What a great idea!?" The same principle applies to our mind, we have to constantly feed our mind with positive information in order to get rid of negative thoughts. This has to be done regularly until we completely kill anxiety and can enjoy modern day driving once more.