There are several options one can take when feeling stuck.

1. Feeling miserable about it and hoping for a breakthrough
2. Quit
3. Put it aside, think/do something else, and schedule a time to get back on it
4. Just take whatever tiny steps possible

Option 1 is probably the worst and yet most common approach. The classic “waiting for inspiration but it’s just not coming yet” mentality. It’s almost like gambling, wishing for money/ideas to just drop onto our laps. It makes us feel bad and guilty.

Option 2 is well, the end. There’s really nothing much to say about it if you just quit on it. You have to be careful about not doing this too often though. On occasions, it might actually be good to just quit about something. For example you might be in a toxic relationship and no matter how much you tried, it just don’t seem to work out. Then it’s probably a good idea to just call it quits. On most other occasions though, you probably need a stronger dose of perseverance and belief, and more importantly a system/principles to guide you through tough times without throwing in the towel.

Option 3 sounds like procrastination. It actually is procrastination. So it’s bad right? No, not if you re-commit yourself to get back to the problem at the later time and date. Sometimes we can’t solve everything at the moment, and we need to clear some space in our life before we can get back to it. Sometimes we need to take a step back, clear some space, and have a fresher perspective to tackle the problem. Again, it’s important to set a re-commitment and this should be part of your internal system.

Option 4 is likely the most optimal approach. When we are feeling stuck, most of the times it is because we are trying to tackle too big of a problem. It feels extremely daunting when you think of summiting a mountain. But it feels a lot easier and doable if you just focus on taking another step forward. Just one step up the trek. This applies to all the big projects in our life.

Just simply writing this post makes me feel stuck. After sitting around for 30 minutes, considering to quit, considering to maybe do it at a later time, I decided to just write a sentence. And then another sentence. And okay, not bad, how about another paragraph. And slowly we walked up the mountain.

Of course there are still many other things that needs to be done to do a certain project well. But we can’t do a project well if we do not start the project at all. It’s better to start it in a less than perfect manner and adjust along the way than not having start at all.

So, just get started.

The day is probably coming soon where most humans are not required to work for at least 50% of their time, and they will suddenly find an abundance of time on their hand. The pessimists will say that this is the beginning of the end for humans as AI is going take over the world and there’s no longer a need for humans.

The optimists might go like: “Alright, now we can spend lots more time to actually enjoy our life since AI can take care of most matters.”

There are a gazillion questions that one can ask about this situation. But what I want to know is, will I enjoy not having to work? What can possibly keep me entertained for so long in life if I don’t have to do any kind of work? Is it going to be just some drugs that chemically induce my sense of feeling good, or that we are all perfectly capable of living without any kind of purpose?

It sounds like heaven when the premise is that there’s no need to work, and resources can be unlimited. But if we think deeper, could this be hell instead?

If the super AI is going to be so powerfully intelligent and still care for the well-being of humans, perhaps it will deduce that humans require some kind of purpose, and it will deliberately leave some areas within the system that requires humans. Just to make us feel purposeful.

Is that pathetic, or awesome? Either way, I kinda hope I can live long enough to find out. It might come sooner than we thought. So stay healthy folks!

Is the glass half-full or half empty? That’s the typical analogy of an optimistic or pessimistic view. How about if it’s half empty, then there’s room for more! And if it’s half full, you have can now quench your thirst!

Having an optimistic view no matter what gives us a chance, a possibility that things can get better. Having a pessimistic view simply shuts down all possibilities, and make you feel infinitely worse off than having an optimistic view.

The main difference is that a pessimistic view sees the present as a projection of the future. It’s bad now, and it means it’s gonna be bad or worse in the future. But by definition of future, the time of future can be infinitely long! Or at least in the constraint of a human life, that’s still many days, months, years, even decades (depending on your current life stage). Lots of possibilities can happen, and within these possibilities, many of positive experiences.

An optimistic view however, sees the present as just one moment in life. It does not translate to the future as the future contains many possible positives. And this makes life so much more wonderful to live.

Logically, having an optimistic mindset gives you a better chance of success simply because it wills you to take action, and more chances. Mathematically, the more you try, the higher probability of success. Conversely, having a pessimistic mindset will mean you are more likely to give up. No tries equal zero chance of success. The math works out for optimism.

So the next time that something don’t go your way, fret not! Things will eventually turn out right for you. It’s mathematically proven. So might as well be positive and feel happier about it!

 

 

 

The first step for all self improvement comes from self-awareness. We are so often driven by our habits, desire, compulsion that majority of the things we do everyday are done without deliberation.

Remember the last time you picked up your phone and checked Instagram or Whatsapp even if there’s no particular need to? Ya that’s probably 5 minutes ago. And how many times did you do this throughout the day? You probably never keep track but just about every time there’s a gap between activities, you would be doing that.

That’s what these apps and the companies behind them are so great at. They understood human tendencies and everything is designed to capture our attention without us being aware of it. But anyway I digress.

To break off these unhealthy habits, we must first learn to catch ourself in the act of doing. To be actually aware that we are in the midst of doing something purely by instinct, and to stop doing it.

But this is probably not enough as we need to dig into the second level of self-awareness – What are we feeling when we are engaging in automated behaviours, or even what feelings are we avoiding?

These can be pretty harrowing experience because eventually it must lead to the third phase which can be rather unpleasant – What are the things we are missing, or not realising about ourselves? Usually it’s not a good trait. That’s why our brains try to steer us from noticing it.

For example, there are many times that we are irritated by an attention-seeking friend. But why? It’s none of our business. Or maybe we are irritated because the friend is taking attention away from us? Sometimes. Maybe. Just one example. Try thinking back to the last time you are upset about someone or something, and honestly ask yourself why did you feel that way.

However it can be a nasty downward spiral so just practice this self-awareness magic for just a few ‘levels’ down. You don’t want to keep second guessing yourself. All you need to know is that you probably should stop or change any unhealthy habits or outburst of emotions, understand your emotions or what emotions you are avoiding, and learn what are the areas that you are not so good at.

Ultimately, the goal is to accept yourself with all your flaws and all, and then learn to improve.

 

There is this belief that is widely populated in the media that to have a successful life, you have to achieve great things. And to achieve great things, you must first have big, ambitious goals. Aim for the mountaintop, get going, and conquering the ‘mountain’ is the definition of success.

I had and still have big dreams. I wanted to create an impact to the world that can last through time. These dreams can make me work hard at times. At other times, it can be make me really depressed when I take stock of my current reality. This is probably true for many people.

It is absolutely healthy and normal for us to pursue progress and superiority. I think that’s a natural evolution of humans. However if we were to define our life as whether it is a success or failure depending whether we reach the ‘mountaintop’, can we ever considered our life as complete? After all, there are only 2 possible outcomes with this mindset: 1) Not reaching our ‘mountaintop’, and we will deem our life as a failure, or 2) Reaching the ‘mountaintop’ and we ‘succeeded’, but what’s next? Another mountaintop?

I remembered I had the goal of winning a championship when I was still competitive in sports. I trained so hard for it and actually won. The victorious feeling was great but it lasted only a couple of weeks. After that, you wonder what’s next.

I managed to exit profitably for my second start-up and there was this triumphant feeling, but after a few weeks, you wonder what’s next. And I realise I still have not make any significant dent to the world. Now this can be depressing.

However I have started to learn to look at life as just many multiple events. Each event can be a joy in itself. A musician may like to be a top-class performer but if he did take joy in every single minute spent practicing his instrument, he would have lived a very fulfilling life even if he did not make it to the big-time. After all, there are many internal and external factors that affect the success probability.

And digging deep down, are we aiming to reach the mountaintop because we enjoy the challenge, or are we aiming for recognition from others?

Perhaps it is ok to be normal. Enjoy each individual challenges. We may or may not reach our mountaintop but we can at least enjoy and savour the journey. As long as we think we are contributing to others, being normal is still special.

People has the unique capability of changing. If we put our mind to it, we can produce amazing changes. We can convert thoughts into reality. We can change our habits, we can change our perspectives, we can change our relationships with others.

The problem is not whether people can change, but whether they want to. Perhaps you have been told that you are quite an asshole. But you don’t change. You feel that you can’t. It’s probably more like you won’t. You don’t want to change. It might be more convenient for you to be an asshole. So you didn’t change.

So the difficult thing is not about changing, it’s about wanting to change. About finding the courage to change what’s convenient for us to something that’s more beneficial to others.

Most of the problems we have are created in our heads. And most of these are relationship problems. Problem with our parents, with our spouses, with our siblings, with our boss, with our colleagues, with our customers, with the guy who horned at us, with the waiter who is taking too long, with the loud, obnoxious auntie on the train… You get my point.

We then like to create our own sense of ‘no choice’, essentially limiting our own freedom by using these problems that we create in our head as excuses.

“If only my parents had brought me up better, I would be more successful than I am today.”

“If the bus driver had driven a little faster, I wouldn’t have been late for the interview and would not be still jobless now.”

“If not for that incompetent CEO, the company will now be in a better situation.”

We limit our own opportunities and growth by creating these problems in our heads in our relationship with others. Essentially in this way of thinking, our life is controlled by what others did to us. There’s nothing else we can do to escape.

But that’s not true. These occurrences with others happen to us all the time. We do have the power and ability to take control from these externals, and live the life we want.

We just need some courage.

Feelings of inferiority can drive us to work harder, to want to become better than our current selves. That is good. That creates progress and innovation for humans. The sense that we are not as good as we could be can give us the courage to take action. Hence it is normal to develop feelings of inferiority, and in fact healthy.

Without the courage however, and with increasingly overwhelming feelings of inferiority, some of us develop this mechanism to excuse ourselves from taking any action and finding excuses for our inabilities. More perplexingly, we can even develop a sense of superiority to mask our lack of courage in taking action.

These can manifest in many scenarios.

Some will go: “If only my parents were rich, I might have gone to a better school, make better friends, have better opportunities, and make better life choices. Now I’m poorer and more miserable than my peers because they had a better family background than me.”

In another common example where we see people decking out from head to toe with luxury items and/or bragging about what they have: “By putting on an appearance that I’m better than you mask my sense of insecurity and inferiority of my own abilities and self-worth.”

In a more subtle and tricky way, there are also others that tries to show off how much they have done, trying to prove they have put in lots of work, but somehow they were not rewarded because of they are unlucky, unappreciated, or under-privileged. This is a very complicated complex in which both the superiority and inferiority complex are in application. “I lay out everything that I have done and it’s much more than others. [Superiority complex]. But the others seems to always get rewarded better than me because of A, B, C. I could have been so much better if not for these. [Inferiority complex seeking excuses, superiority complex implying that self is better than the others].”

And many more examples. Many of which happens to many of us.

And what keeps feelings of inferiority developing into an inferiority/superiority complex?

Courage.

 

Writing forces you to put clarity into your thoughts. It takes away the vagueness in your ideas and make you face up to all the flaws in your thinking. It helps to uncover your blind spots.

Clarity in thinking. Most of us spend too little time thinking. Asking questions. Observing the world, observing people, and asking why are things the way they are. How do they work? How did they come to work the way they are now? Is there a better way?

And then there are the different types of questions we ask ourselves.

“Do I enjoy doing what I’m doing now? Is THIS what I want to be doing ten years from now?”

“Why are babies generally cute and lovable? Is it a form of evolutionary defence?”

“What should I have for dinner later?”

“How do I deal with this troublesome person?”

“Who can and should I ask for advice?”

“What can I do for my family?”

“Will I live to regret this in the future?”

“Why do our hair grow?”

“How much should I spend on a wall clock?”

“What is the foreign worker labouring in the sun building our houses thinking? Is he content about his current stage in life? Does he have bigger dreams?”

“How should I best optimise my time and energy?”

“What’s the difference between equality and equity?”

“Do I strive to make long-lasting, world-changing impact or strive to make my life and maybe just those around me meaningful and satisfying?”

Some of these are easy to answer, some are not. Some don’t have any correct answers. But we simply just decide one way or the other and find out the consequences. Then we ask questions again, and decide again. And again.

Most events lie on the range of very improbable to extremely probable. Inversely, very few things in life are absolutely certain.

It also means that something that is very probable might not actually happen. That’s just randomness or some say it’s ‘luck’. We will feel less upset or unlucky if the improbable or unexpected happen to us if we are aware that everything lies on a spectrum of probability.

We can improve our decision making by thinking probabilistically. It doesn’t mean we will achieve good outcomes from our decision all the time, but in the long run, we PROBABLY will get more decisions right than wrong.

Probability tells us there’s always a chance.