Good Books

A reader asked if I read self-improvement books. I certainly do.

To begin with, I read lots of books in general, and a sizeable portion of what I read are "how-to" books. I have "how-to" books on raising little kids; meditating; investing my money; photography; Microsoft Excel; law; business; banking etc etc, and for obvious ulterior motives, I also like to buy recipe books for my wife.

And yes, my "how-to" collection includes many titles on self-improvement, including titles by Stephen Covey, Napoleon Hill, Anthony Robbins, Tony Buzan, Brian Tracy and other lesser-known authors.

I’m aware that many people feel strangely adverse about self-improvement books. It goes beyond mere disinterest – it is actually an adverse feeling about the entire genre.

These same people wouldn’t hesitate to buy a recipe book, if they were into cooking. They wouldn’t hesitate to buy a book about how to look after a dog, if they had just bought a dog. But they wouldn’t even want to be seen in the self-improvement section of a bookstore, holding a book with a title like "How To Succeed in Life" or "Time Management for Dummies".

It’s interesting to examine the reasons why.

I think that some people feel that self-improvement books are for dysfunctional, inadequate people, who already have difficulty coping with everyday life and therefore need some self-improvement. According to this logic, if you buy a self-improvement book, you’re admitting to yourself that you’re dysfunctional and inadequate.

Heheh. If you subscribe to such logic, then you have some big insecurities to face up to. Enough said.

Others may feel that self-improvement books are full of good advice that can’t be followed. In other words, they doubt their own ability to apply whatever ideas they might come across in a self-improvement book. It is true that if you don’t apply the good advice that you read in a self-improvement book, then it will be of absolutely no value to you.

However, it is also true that if your mother, teacher, mentor, pastor, boss, doctor or best friend gives you good advice, and you don’t apply it, then the good advice will also be absolutely of no value to you.

If you go through life doubting your ability to apply the good advice, ideas and suggestions that come your way, then life will be quite challenging indeed. You’ll just have to rediscover and reinvent the wheel again and again. Others would have faced the same challenges in life as you have, and they would be willing to share those lessons. But if you do not wish to learn from the experiences and insights of others, well, you’ll just have to struggle on, on your own.

Now, of course I am not saying that everything written in a self-improvement book is going to be relevant, useful or appropriate for you. Similarly, not everything that your mother, teacher, mentor, pastor, boss, doctor or best friend tells you is going to be relevant, useful or appropriate.

Still, it seems wise to pay at least a little attention to what they have to say, and think about it. Take what you find is useful, and leave the rest behind.

I am also not saying that the application of good advice is always an easy thing. Then again, because good advice comes in many different forms on many different topics, it cannot be the case that it is always a difficult or impossible thing.

Incidentally, you could jolly well think of holy texts and ancient scriptures as the original how-to books. For example, you could regard the Bible as a big how-to book entitled "How to Have Eternal Life After Death in Heaven". You could also think of Buddhist texts as how-to books entitled "How to Seek Happiness and Avoid Suffering".

Whether you’re a Christian or a Buddhist, the application of such good advice could, in either case, seem very difficult or even impossible. But as a Christian or a Buddhist, you would know that the most foolish thing you could do is not to try.

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Interesting Post

A Dialogue Concerning Two Medias, from the Singapore Angle. It summarises recent developments in Singapore's mainstream media and blogosphere, and makes some attempts to predict the future. An excerpt:

Specialist bloggers changing the landscape of Singapore: A respected blogger (who I cannot mention) once offered this view to me, "Celebrity and controversial blogging is the thing of the past two years, and what comes after that is specialist blogging." Of course, celebrities like Mr Wang, Yawning Bread, Xiaxue and Mr Brown are always there, but the emphasis is changing in view of market forces. Socio-political blogging has suffered with the departure of several high profile young bloggers and the lacklustre activity of other bloggers. Of course, as old bloggers depart, new ones will emerge.

The funny thing is that this post comes at a time when I am already shifting away from sociopolitical blogging, to other kinds of topics that interest me.

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In Search of Higher Purpose

A number of readers have written to ask how they should go about finding their Purpose in life.

This question has several implicit assumptions. Firstly, it is assumed that each person DOES have a Purpose in life.

Secondly, it is assumed that the Purpose ought to be discoverable now or in the near future, as opposed to, say, at a much later stage in life.

Thirdly, it is assumed that each person only has ONE purpose.

Of course, none of these assumptions are necessarily true. For example, it may well be that the Universe hasn’t assigned a specific Purpose to you that you are supposed to discover – instead you'll have to choose your own Purpose and stick to it.

Or it may well be that you do have a Purpose assigned to you by a Higher Power, but this Purpose will unfold itself to you not now, not tomorrow, but 5, 10, 15 or 20 years later, when the time is right.

Or it may well be that you could have several different Purposes at any given time, or alternatively you could have a Purpose at a particular time, and another Purpose at another time in your life.

Now let’s look at all this in a practical way, by revisiting Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

People wondering about their Purpose in life are actually wondering what they should be doing at Level 5, when they get there.

But maybe they should get there first, that is, climb right up into Level 5, and then their Purpose (or Purposes) will become clear to them.

In other words, take care of your Level 1 – 4 needs first, and then (and only then) may your Level 5 needs become crystal clear to you.

Remember, Maslow’s needs are hierarchical. A person facing big challenges at Level 1 would be unclear about Levels 2 or 3. A person who is facing big challenges at Levels 2 or 3 would be unclear about Level 4.

And to be clear what you want at Level 5, perhaps what you need to do is to fully address your Level 1 to 4 needs.

Consider for example, Gautama Buddha, who was once a prince. As a prince, he had power, respect, authority, riches, royal luxuries, palaces, guards, servants and furthermore, parents who loved him so much that they did not want to know him to know that pain, suffering or death existed.

In other words, Gautama Buddha had just about everything that anyone could want, at Levels 1, 2, 3 and 4.

And that, perhaps, was why he was eventually able to launch into such a determined, inspired effrt into satisfying his Level 5 need (in his case, the need to understand the ultimate meanings of life).

And eventually he attained Enlightenment – but that is not the point of my post. The point of my point is – perhaps you can discover your Purpose only after satisfying your every other lesser purpose, goal, desire or ambition first.

And then your Purpose – the one with the capital P – may finally unfold itself to you.

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Recommend a Psychiatrist

A reader has asked me to recommend a good psychiatrist in Singapore, for treating kleptomania. If you know of any such psychiatrist, please email me at soknenk@gmail.com or leave a comment below. Thank you.

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So Is Life Rosy or Not?

One of my readers, Mr Han, requested that I comment on the following letter which was published in the Straits Times:

ST Forum, June 4, 2007
Future not so rosy for working-class S'poreans

MANY Singaporeans must be celebrating at the moment, with the buoyant economy, high employment, higher salaries and, for private home owners, skyrocketing property prices and 'en bloc' frenzy.

However, is the current state of the economy and future as rosy as it appears for most working-class Singaporeans?

According to data published in a report on the wealthiest cities in the world by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) on March 11, Singapore ranks 36th out of 70 cities based on gross domestic product (GDP) in 2005.

A look at the rankings will reveal that, apart from Singapore, all the cities in the bottom half are in Second and Third World countries.

Singapore's GDP of US$129 billion (S$197 billion) pales beside other Asian cities such as Tokyo (US$1.19 trillion), Hong Kong (US$244 billion), Seoul (US$218 billion) and Shanghai (US$139 billion). In fact, we are only slightly ahead of Mumbai (US$123 billion).

These rankings are arrived at by using purchasing-power-parity exchange rates.

However, unlike Singapore, our Asian counterparts in Hong Kong seem to have more to look forward to. The projections for city wealth in the year 2020 show that Hong Kong is likely to rise to 14th position, while Singapore is likely to decline to 40th.

The study (taking into consideration deduction of taxes and social-security contributions) reveals that net salaries in Asian cities such as Tokyo, Dubai, Seoul and Taipei will surpass Singapore.

However, these sobering statistics apply only to the average Singaporean citizen. The top bracket of earners in professions such as medicine, law, banking and, of course, within the ranks of the Government, will earn as much, if not more, than some of their counterparts worldwide.

What do these figures tell Singaporeans? We can conclude that even though we pay a relatively low rate of personal income tax, the net amount of wages we take home leaves us in the bottom half of the 70 cities in the PWC report.

Edmund Khoo Kim Hock

I'm no economist, but this letter doesn't strike me as being particularly well-reasoned. In fact, it reminds me of Edmund Khoo's other recent letter to the Straits Times.

The same difficulty arises here - Edmund seem to form his conclusion first, and then only formulate arguments in favour of it. In the process, he loses objectivity and mangles the facts. Next time, try analysing the facts first, BEFORE forming a conclusion.

Here's one big mistake that Edmund makes:

Singapore's GDP of US$129 billion (S$197 billion) pales beside other Asian cities such as Tokyo (US$1.19 trillion), Hong Kong (US$244 billion), Seoul (US$218 billion) and Shanghai (US$139 billion). In fact, we are only slightly ahead of Mumbai (US$123 billion).

GDP can be used as an indicator of various things. However, if the intention is to use GDP as an indicator of the average citizen's standard of living (and that's clearly Edmund's intention), the least we could do is look at GDP on a per capita basis. That is, take the GDP and divide it by the size of the population.

That's because GDP is basically a measure of how big an economy is. A big city with a large population could have a GDP much higher than a small city with a small population. But on a per capita basis, we would realise that the average person in the big city isn't necessarily any richer, and in fact could be much poorer, than the average person in the small city.

The report that Edmund cites is based on a comparison of cities and GDP. In this report, Singapore is ranked 36th out of 151 cities , approximately in the same range as cities just as Shanghai (32nd), Melbourne (33rd), Mumbai (37th) and Rome (38th).

However, Shanghai and Mumbai are MUCH more populous than Singapore; while Melbourne has a slightly smaller population than Singapore; while Rome has a much smaller population than Singapore. If you go by a per capita approach, you'd probably see that the relative rankings of these cities would change quite a lot.

Now, if you compare countries based on GDP on a per capita basis, Singapore fares much better than 36th out of 151. Wikipedia tells us that Singapore would be ranked 25th out of 182 countries.

Of course, countries like Denmark, Sweden and Finland still rank far above us (8th, 10th and 12th). This is despite the fact that like Singapore, these countries are quite small, and not well-endowed with natural resources.

According to MM Lee Kuan Yew, the governments of these countries are even "mediocre", and therefore their ministers deserve to be paid much, much less than Singapore's PAP leaders.

An entirely believable claim, as long as you choose to disregard the facts.

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How To Touch The Face of God

I realise that my last post may have been a little too esoteric for some. Someone described that post as being "occultish and mystical".

So for today, I am sticking to more conventional ground (otherwise I may be accused of being a member of some cult). Today, we'll just learn how to touch God's face.

I say that this topic is entirely conventional, because it is entirely based on the work of a very well-known psychologist. He's so well-known that he appears in every standard textbook prescribed for undergrads taking Psychology 101. Many generations of NUS students would have studied him, for he is quite an important exam question.

Yes, we're talking about none other than Abraham Maslow.




Maslow's interest was in human motivations (what do people want? why do they want it?) and he is best-known for his hierarchy of needs (see above). Briefly, human needs are categorised into five levels. Only when you have satisfied your needs at one level, will you start being interested in satisfying your needs at the next level.

The lowest level of needs are physiological. They are your needs for air, food, water and so on. Once those needs are satisfied, you will become interested in fulfilling your next level of needs - for physical safety and security. After that, you will become interested in the 3rd level of needs, represented by your need for love and belonging (for example, friends and family).

The fourth level of need will be for self-esteem, confidence, achievement, and other people's respect. At this level, you may feel motivated to try to gain people's respect, by pursing conventional symbols of success and status (eg in Singapore, this could be the infamous 5 C's).

The first four levels are known as "deficit needs". In other words, they represent the lack of something. Once you have obtained enough of that thing, your need disapppears. For example, suppose you are very hungry. You then are motivated to get food. However, when you have eaten enough to feel full, you will not want food any more (not at least for a few hours).

The fifth level of need is quite different. This is the level of self-actualisation, which is not a "deficit need". Instead Maslow calls it a "being need" or "growth need". If your first four levels are satisfied and you come to your fifth level, you will seek to fulfill your "growth needs". How exactly a person will seek to do so, will vary from person to person - Maslow describes it as follows:

"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write., if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualisation ... It refers to man's desire for self-fulfilment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualised in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming".

The thing about growth needs is that they will never be satisfied. You will always want more and more and more. You will always want to grow. It is the desire to fulfil your full potential. An extract from Wikipedia:

Self Actualization is the intrinsic growth of what is already in the organism, or more accurately, of what the organism is. Maslow writes the following of self-actualizing people:

They embrace the facts and realities of the world (including themselves) rather than denying or avoiding them.
They are spontaneous in their ideas and actions.
They are creative.
They are interested in solving problems; this often includes the problems of others. Solving these problems is often a key focus in their lives.
They feel a closeness to other people, and generally appreciate life.
They have a system of morality that is fully internalized and independent of external authority.
They have discernment and are able to view all things in an objective manner.
In short, self-actualization is reaching one's fullest potential.

Only a small proportion of the general population are believed to be at the 5th level. If you like, you could say that Maslow sees self-actualisers as representing the most-highly evolved, the most developed, members of the human race.

Maslow also thought that although just about everyone has the potential to get there, most simply will not. The reason is that most people are unaware of their potential, or have been conditioned by society to believe that they are "mediocre" or "average".

Another Maslow quotation, to make this clear:

"There seems no intrinsic reason why everyone shouldn't be (self-actualising). Apparently every baby has possibilities for self-actualisation, but most get it knocked out of them ...I think of the self-actualising man not as an ordinary man with something added, but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away."

I mentioned touching the face of God. Where does that come in?

Well, according to Maslow, self-actualising people can be further categorised into two groups. He calls them the peakers and the non-peakers. The peakers are the self-actualising people who have peak experiences.

What are peak experiences? Read for yourself - here and here. Essentially, they are quasi-spritual, or mystical, or religious experiences, far beyond the ordinary. (In most reported cases, these peak experiences do not last very long, not more than a few minutes). I call this "touching the face of God". Here's a brief extract from the account of one individual, Osho, who had a peak experience in 1953:

"And the last day the presence of a totally new energy, a new light and new delight, became so intense that it was almost unbearable -- as if I was exploding, as if I was going mad with blissfulness. The new generation in the West has the right word for it -- I was blissed out, stoned.

It was impossible to make any sense out of it, what was happening. It was a very non-sense world -- difficult to figure it out, difficult to manage in categories, difficult to use words, languages, explanations. All scriptures appeared dead and all the words that have been used for this experience looked very pale, anaemic. This was so alive. It was like a tidal wave of bliss.

The whole day was strange, stunning, and it was a shattering experience. The past was disappearing, as if it had never belonged to me, as if I had read about it somewhere, as if I had dreamed about it, as if it was somebody else's story I have heard and somebody told it to me. I was becoming loose from my past, I was being uprooted from my history, I was losing my autobiography. I was becoming a non-being, what Buddha calls anatta. Boundaries were disappearing, distinctions were disappearing.

Mind was disappearing; it was millions of miles away. It was difficult to catch hold of it, it was rushing farther and farther away, and there was no urge to keep it close. I was simply indifferent about it all. It was okay. There was no urge to remain continuous with the past."

Or in Maslow's words:

"The power of the peak experience could permanently affect one's attitude toward life. A single glimpse of heaven is enough to confirm its existence even if it is never experienced again."

Peak experiences aren't as rare as you might think. They also come in varying degrees of intensity. A belief in "God" isn't an essential pre-requisite for touching God's face, either.

If you go and think about it, Buddha's enlightenment under the bodhi tree would, in Maslow's terminology, be an unusually intense peak experience. Subsequently, it became a plateau experience (Maslow's term again) whereby the experience becomes permanent and continues indefinitely (in Buddha's case, for the rest of his human lifetime).

Maybe you too would like to touch the face of God, if only briefly. If so, well then, hurry up, climb through Maslow's hierarcy of needs, and go to Level 5. Don't waste time being mediocre. Go and become everything you were supposed to become.

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Can Success Be Easy?

Well, of course. If you bother to find out how.

Mr Wang's methods are somewhat unorthodox. If he told you all about them, you'd think he's crazy. So he will be very careful about what he tells you. Take note - what you read about here today is merely a watered-down version of Mr Wang's unorthodox methods.

Mr Wang is a mindhacker. He didn't come up with that term himself. Mindhacker is the term that another blogger, Alvin Soon, once used to describe Mr Wang. It is an apt term.

Alvin Soon is a qualified neurolinguistics programming coach, who has used NLP to, among many other things, cure his clients' phobias (for example, of heights, public speaking etc). So Alvin Soon is quite an expert, quite a professional, at mindhacking too. Heheh, but Alvin knows that Mr Wang still has a trick or two to teach Alvin.

By mindhacking, I am referring to a collection of methods, techniques and processes whereby you will alter the way you think. One such method is meditation. Another method is hypnosis. Another method is NLP. There are others - some are esoteric and strange, and some are very simple and straightforward, such as writing down all your goals twice a day, every day, day after day after day, until they have been imprinted onto your subconscious.

Since the topic is vast, I can't address it in any real depth here. The applications are just as diverse. For example, one hypnotherapist I know helps her clients to quit smoking by hypnotising them to believe that cigarettes are vile and disgusting. When the client sticks a cigarette into his mouth, he immediately feels like throwing up (and in a 100% genuine physiological reaction, he WILL throw up, if he doesn't take that cigarette out of his mouth). Very quickly, the client will succeed in quitting his smoking habit.

Once you realise how malleable the human mind is, you will begin to see the endless possibilities. Life becomes vastly easier, if you can master just one or two mindhacking techniques and use them regularly. For example, suppose that you hate maths. If you could actually hypnotise yourself into loving maths, being excited and thrilled by formulae, equations and so on, aha ..... you'll see how very easy it could be, to succeed in doing well in maths. You just won't be able to keep yourself away from your maths textbook.

To better understand mindhacking, you must first understand that what we normally think of as objective reality, is actually highly subjective. What you think that the world is like, is mainly a result of what you think. What you believe that your circumstances are, is mainly a result of what you believe.

If you still do not understand that reality is very subjective, simply consider how different persons, placed in identical circumstances, can hold very different opinions about those circumstances. For example, two employees, X and Y, could be employed to do exactly the same kind of job in Company Q. They have the same pay, the same boss, the same colleagues and the same working conditions. X loves the job passionately and feels utterly fulfilled at the end of each workday. But Y hates the job bitterly and can't stop complaining about it.

Or two NSFs, A and B, are platoon mates in the same SAF unit, P. They are of the same rank and the same vocation, and their meals, pay, training, living conditions etc are identical. A thinks that army life is quite fun, exciting and adventurous, and he thoroughly enjoys the friendship and camaraderie of being with his army buddies everyday - these are the best days of his life. B, on the other hand, is so depressed about army life that he is secretly comtemplating suicide.

In truth, the job in Company Q is neither good nor bad, until someone thinks it is. Life in SAF Unit P is neither good nor bad, until someone thinks it is. Nothing in the world actually is, until someone thinks it is. That is why Prince Siddharta, you see, was trying to tell you that reality is just one big illusion. Albert Einstein agreed.

Now, if you are a mindhacker, you will learn the arcane arts of tinkering with your own mind. You will consciously choose the kind of thoughts and beliefs you want to have, and then you will penetrate into the deeper levels of your own consciousness, and you will plant those thoughts and beliefs there. And then you will be ready to play with that big illusion known as reality.

For example, if you are working in Company Q, you could hack your own mind and plant a mindset like X's, deep into your own head - and everyday, it will be a joy for you to go to work. If you are an NSF posted to SAF Unit P, you could hack your own mind and plant a mindset like A's,. into your own head - and everyday, life in the SAF will be fun, the most memorable days of your life.

Wherever you go in life, whatever you do, you could just keep hacking your mind, and planting whatever you want, into the deeper parts of your consciousness. You will truly believe that Company Q is a great place to work. You will truly believe that SAF Unit P is a marvellous place. You will truly believe that cigarettes are nauseating. You will truly believe maths is fascinating and exciting. And as far as you're concerned, all these things will truly be that way.

(A brief digression. If you truly believe that Jesus is your saviour and your path to eternal life after death, that's probably going to work too. But that is a topic for another day).

Of course, the first limitation is how good you are at mindhacking. It does take practice. If you are not very good, you may not be able to plant certain thoughts too deeply. For example, just as you may not succeed in ridding yourself of a fear of public speaking, you may not be able to create in yourself the belief that army life is enjoyable - even though there are clearly some people who love public speaking, and some people who love army life.

But as you grow more and more adept at mindhacking, your ability to consciously change your beliefs will grow. Whatever situation you find yourself in, you will have greater and greater ability to consciously select the optimal thought patterns for your situation.

Remember - there are all kinds of people in the world. Some enjoy climbing cold, hazardous mountains or running marathons. Some fearlessly give public speeches even to 10,000 people. Some love the challenge of studying for the most difficult exams. Some are calm, focused and good-humoured even under stressful working conditions. Some are very skilful and confident about dealing with the most difficult clients, bosses or colleagues.

So if you ever have to climb a mountain, run a marathon, give a public speech, study for difficult exams, work under stressful conditions, deal with difficult people, whatever else ....... all you have to do is steal the relevant mindset, and go deep, deep, deep into your own brain, and plant it there. You can do it, if you know mindhacking.

And yes, success will come more and more easily then - whatever you want to succeed in.

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This post is dedicated to PC, who knows the reason why. Go bend reality, my friend.
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