The Limits of Reality & Belief

LifeHack.Org is a very well-known blog on personal productivity. According to Technorati, it is the 38th most popular blog in the world. Recently it featured one of my old posts - How to Write Down Your Goals.

This is a nice surprise. So today I shall write something more on the topic of personal development. Naturally, this is presented from Mr Wang's favourite TAR perspective.

As you know by now, your thoughts create your reality. After all, everything you have ever known or believed about the universe or your own life is just precisely that - knowledge and belief. These are mental states - the products of your own thoughts and consciousness. And these mental states are changeable.

Effectively, your mind is your universe. Change your mind, and you change your _________.

Not all your thoughts have equal power to affect your reality. For example, suppose you think a random, fleeting thought about something inconsequential to you. The thought goes away and never comes back again. This thought will have very, very little power to change anything to a discernible extent in your reality.

In contrast, a thought which recurs constantly, is attached to strong emotion and consistently held in your consciousness over time will play a much bigger role in creating your reality. A convenient word for such a thought is "belief". If such a thought is linked to other mutually supporting thoughts, then together they will constitute a "belief system".

The deeper a belief is, and the stronger a belief system is, the greater the effect on your reality.

The most deeply-held beliefs that a person has, are not even recognisable to himself as "beliefs". He simply assumes that the belief is just "reality".

Some of your beliefs serve you well. Your teachers and parents may have tried to instil them in you. For example, if they raised you to be a confident person, essentially they instilled you a strong belief in yourself.

Some of your beliefs do not serve you well. They may once have served a useful purpose, but they could have outlived that purpose. If they now obstruct you from further growth and happiness, then they are known as "limiting beliefs".

The first step in dealing with a limiting belief is to identify it. This is not necessarily an easy task. As I had mentioned earlier, a deeply-held belief may not even be recognisable to the person himself as a "belief". He will tend to assume that his limiting belief is just reality.

Think of an area of your life that you'd like to improve, or some personal issue that you'd like to resolve, or some goal that you'd like to achieve .... but which you believe you cannot. Why not? What are the limiting beliefs holding you back? This checklist may be helpful.

"I am too young."
"I am too old."
"I am under-qualified."
"I am over-qualified."
"I am a woman."
"I am a man."
"I am not healthy enough."
"I don't have time."
"I don't have money."
"I don't have the opportunity."
"I don't have the luck."
"I don't have the support."
"I don't have the skill."
"I don't have the discipline."
"I don't have the tools."
"My boss will not agree."
"My parents will not agree."
"My teacher will not agree."
"My spouse will not agree."
"The government will not agree."
"I am lazy."
"I am stupid."
"I am incompetent."
"I am shy."
"I am weak."
"I am just an ordinary, average person."

Which of the above beliefs apply to you? Remember - these limiting beliefs may indeed be "true". But what's "true" in your reality is simply the reality you've created with your own thoughts. Change your thoughts, and your reality must __________.

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Honest Words From A Local Christian Boy On Singapore's Gay Issue

That's a very long title. I didn't come up with it. It was the title of a long email that a reader, T.W Tan, sent to me. With his permission I reproduce his email below (he did request that I not mention the name of his church). The email has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Hi, Mr Wang:

This is my first time writing to you. I appreciate your taking time to read this letter. I'm a 25- year old man who has been a Christian for more than 9 years. I currently attend XXXXX, one of the biggest mega churches in Singapore.

I've been following your blog for quite a while and read with great interest and enjoyment many of your articles. One of the most popular topics has been catching my attention recently (about homosexuality in Singapore).

I respect people with different religious / philosophical preferences. I do know many in our world today are not ready to accept the Christian faith just as I don't accept theirs. The same would apply to people of different sexual orientations. There has been so much buzz generated around the local gay community and Section 377. The potential for misunderstanding is unavoidable. Please consider that homosexuals are not the only ones on the receiving end of insensitive, hurtful remarks. In fact, as I see it, many Christians (whether here or round the world) are getting attacked for things that they are not guilty of saying or doing.

In the last few months, the war of words between the pro-gay supporters and the anti-homosexual Christians has been a burden in my heart. It's saddening to see the so-called 'righteous' believers declaring war against gays and at the same time, painful to know that people have very negative views of churches being gay 'witch hunters'. I decided that somebody has got to hear what I have to say.

Based on the Bible, homosexuality is indeed a sin. This belief is not based on some religious folks' puritan conclusion. The Holy Book itself states it loud and clear. However, while I'm not for homosexuality, I'm definitely not anti-gay. People who hear these words may dismiss me as a hypocrite. To the individuals with such narrow minds, consider this: Does your intense dislike of your spouse's smoking habit immediately make him/her your bitter enemy ? Does a father who hates dishonesty set out to destroy his 8-year old son for lying about his poor Math results? I believe many will find my remarks reasonable when they think seriously about it.

It would contradict the beliefs of my faith if I said (just to 'appease' people) that homosexuality is not sin. On the other hand, if I set myself against a person just because he's gay, then I'm also disobeying the word of God, which is to love people. So try to understand that this 'against the act but not the person' stance adopted by many good Christians is not based on hypocritical cowardice.

My next few points will likely infuriate my 'other' fellow Christians who find it satisfying to thump the Bible on gays. I do my best to understand the plight of local homosexuals. In fact, during my army days, I had a gay friend for whom I have a healthy respect and I believe that he was one of the nicest and most encouraging guys in camp. It would be disappointing to see overly zealous Christians embarking on what they so believed is a God-approved crusade and hurting people like my friend who just wants to live a peaceful, normal life but has to suffer because he is 'different'.

Well, shame on the zealots. Shame on the principal of a Christian secondary school for punishing a butch right in front of an assembly, her 'crime' for having short hair and looking too much a 'boy'. Shame on the Singapore pastor who mobilized fellow believers against the homosexual community
during one of those gay controversies. Shame on American preachers who are ready to blame gays for the 9/11 attacks. Shame on all those who are quick to condemn but fall short of being compassionate. I only hope that such believers are aware of the sin they are committing.

In closing, I also hope that Section 377 of the Penal Code will be done away with. Yes, you hear me right, straight from the mouth of a Christian. The way I feel it, these laws persecute gays. If adultery can be decriminalized, I don't see why Section 377 can't be scrapped. Really, it's time for the judiciary and general society to be fair and decide that homosexuals need not have to live in fear because of that law.

Lastly, thank you, Mr Wang, for your patience on going through my letter. I hope whatever I had written will help you better understand my position and that of like-minded Christians. And I also hope that your readers and fellow countrymen will share this understanding. Thanks again for your time.

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Turning Ugly

Uh oh. The violence grows.

80-year-old disabled monk protester 'bashed'

AT least 17 Buddhist monks were injured when Burma's security forces violently dispersed their peaceful anti-junta protest today, witnesses said.

All 17 were injured around midday when police baton-charged a group of monks and mainly young protesters near the Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar's holiest shrine, the witnesses said.

Among the wounded was an 80-year-old monk who witnesses said was beaten about the head by security forces.

The elderly monk has participated in the daily anti-junta protests in Rangoon although he cannot walk and has to be carried.

Hospital officials have refused to comment on any injuries stemming from the crackdown.

Despite the violence, tens of thousands of people remained on the streets of Yangon, scattered across the city, witnesses said.

In the outlying township of Ahlone, about 300 monks protested but were blocked by armed soldiers who began firing over their heads, witnesses said.

The monks urged the people to stay away from the protest, but when the bullets started whizzing overhead, hundreds of people sat on the ground around the monks in a show of solidarity, the witnesses said.

"I felt so sorry when I saw this scene. I've never seen this kind of violence. I feel so sorry for the monks," one woman said by telephone from Ahlone.

Meanwhile, the Singapore government, which is also the current chairman of ASEAN, still has nothing more to say than these three sentences:

"Singapore is deeply concerned by reports of clashes between protestors and security forces in Yangon. We urge the Myanmar authorities to exercise utmost restraint. We call upon all parties to avoid provocative actions and to work towards reconciliation and a peaceful resolution of the situation."

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Getting Women Back in the Workforce

An ST article about getting women back into workforce, by offering them flexible work arrangements.

ST Sep 26, 2007
Job crunch? Attract women back to work

COMPANIES are hungry for workers yet are slow to turn to an 'under-utilised resource', said MP Halimah Yacob.

This resource: women at home, who should be lured back into the workforce with flexible options.

She urged companies to put in place arrangements such as part-time work or allowing them to work from home, replying to a question from a member of the
audience at the Singapore Tripartism Forum.

Ms Chang Shook Leng , a human resource consultant, had asked if the Government had any strategies to attract women back into the workforce.

Madam Halimah, who is leading a new tripartite group tackling the issue, appealed to the bosses present at the forum.

'We need to create a lot more opportunities... which are tailored to meet the needs of these women,' she said.

Currently, many quit their jobs when they are about 30, to take care of their family.

...... 'Women in Singapore are quite an underutilised resource. There are so many jobs... and everybody is screaming for workers, and there is this pool of women who we can tap,' she said.

Here's a strange little observation. I know more than a few women who have flexible working arrangements (my wife is one of them). However, I don't know any women who have actually asked their boss for flexible working arrangements, and have actually been turned down.

Of course there can be various explanations for the above phenomenon (for example, the total number of women that Mr Wang happens to know is statistically insignificant). However, I suspect that many female employees have not obtained their desired flexible working arrangement simply because they didn't open their mouths and ask for it.

And the reason why they didn't ask for it is that they didn't think their employer would give it to them ("the company has no such HR policy", "it's not possible because it's never happened before in my workplace" etc). And since these women never asked for it, they never got it.

If you don't believe it's possible, it won't be. If you believe it's possible, it will be. That's the simple reality.

Ahh, my TAR theories at work again. However, even without going into reality-bending concepts again, I'm sure you can see the plain-vanilla common sense of what I'm saying.

Because once you start believing it's possible, you'll start thinking about how it will actually be possible. And you will get new ideas, of how to manage your work if you were to work a four-day week, or two days from home, or whatever it may be. And eventually you can take to your boss a convincing proposal that this is all for his best interests as well as yours.

There are all kinds of jobs out there. They can be structured and restructured in numerous ways. Handphones, emails, fax machines and the Internet link people even when they're not all sitting in the same office. There is no Divine Law out there which says that the optimal way to employ employees is to make them come to office five days a week, from X a.m to Y p.m..

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SPH Editor Looking A Bit Silly Again

Are bloggers journalists? Leslie Fong, an SPH editor, had this to say:

“No! Emphatically not! Whether in writing news stories or features, properly trained journalists check and double-check their facts, set these in context, work in relevant background information, insist on objectivity and balance, organise their material so their account flows smoothly and logically, and use temperate language unless there is a powerful reason to resort to strong words. Even in offering views, they ensure that the opinions expressed are based on fact, failing which, as any libel lawyer would tell you, what they write cannot be defended as fair comment.

Bloggers, on the other hand, just sound off as they please. They are not bound by professional standards and ethics, and are responsible to no one but themselves. So you read them at your own risk, or peril. Newspaper editors who give bloggers space, or even prominence, in their pages, in the hope that this will attract younger readers, are doing damage to their calling.”

Meanwhile, hot off the international press, we have this from AFP:

Yangon bloggers outsmart Myanmar censors
Agence France-Presse
Posted date: September 25, 2007

BANGKOK -- Savvy young bloggers in Myanmar are breaking through the military junta's tight Internet controls to post photos and videos of swelling anti-government protests, experts said Tuesday.

The government blocks almost every website that carries news or information about the Southeast Asian country, and even bars access to web-based email.

But an army of young techies in Yangon works around the clock to circumvent the censors, posting pictures and videos on blogs almost as soon as the protests happen.

Many of these images have been picked up by mainstream news organizations, because bloggers have managed to capture images that no one else can get.

When Myanmar's detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi stepped outside her home in Yangon to greet marching monks and supporters on Saturday, the only pictures of the landmark moment were posted on blogs.

....... These bloggers are mainly young university students in Yangon who have made it their mission to post messages and pictures since the anti-junta rallies broke out there on August 19, he said.

..... No foreign journalist has obtained a visa to enter Myanmar, under military since 1962, since the start of the anti-junta rallies, rights groups said.

Sounds like the whole world is depending on Yangon bloggers for news of what's happening in Myanmar. Who has time to think about Leslie Fong? He's just one of those dinosaurs left behind by the Internet age. Leslie's cocksureness is certainly amusing though. I like this part of his quote:

"Newspaper editors who give bloggers space, or even prominence, in their pages, in the hope that this will attract younger readers, are doing damage to their calling."

It implies that bloggers in general are just very excited and over-eager and just dying to have some space & publicity in a newspaper. Actually, when the Straits Times first launched STOMP and I was invited to join them and go for a photoshoot, my immediate reaction was "Gawd, no."

Maybe one day ... when they have improved themselves. Currently, Singapore's ranking for press freedom (147th out of 167 countries) is just too embarrassingly low.

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Your Retirement Savings

And after all the hue and cry about the changes to the CPF system ... what are you going to do about it? Personally, I mean.

A couple of points, if they were not that clear to you previously, ought to have become somewhat clearer by now. Firstly, whether you like it or not, chances are that you WILL live to a ripe old age. Here's some calculations by Tan Kin Lian, done in an ST article on 21 Sep:

"Many people think their chances of reaching 85 are slim. But they are mistaken. I estimate more than 50 per cent of the population will live to age 85 and beyond.

You do not believe me?

The Department of Statistics' publication Population Trends has data for the death rates of each age group over a period of 25 years from 1980 to 2005. Death rates have been falling over this period by about 3 per cent yearly.

I did some projections based on that data, assuming the decline will continue. This is likely to be the case, at least for the next 10 to 20 years. It has been falling at this rate for the past 25 years. Why should it stop now?

Based on my projections, a male at age 55 today has a 57 per cent chance of surviving to age 85, and 32 per cent chance of hitting 95. The probability for a female is higher, at 70 per cent and 42 per cent, respectively.

If you still do not believe me, remember I am referring to people who are 55 years and less today. This group will have a longer life expectancy compared to that of the older people living today."

Secondly, for many Singaporeans, CPF money alone won't be able to sustain them through their retirement. If these Singaporeans also do not have children to support them (adult children being the traditional safety net for the aged, in Asian societies), then the challenge grows greater.

Whatever the government may do now at the policy level, understand that it's pitched at the subsistence level. A monthly annuity payout of $300 is really just to ensure that you'll have enough money to buy your bowl of rice every day with a few sticks of veggies and toufu in it. It's to make sure that when you're old and wrinkled, you don't have to die of starvation on Singapore's nice, clean streets and spoil the scenery for tourists.

So if you want to enjoy your retirement years in much better shape than that, Mr Wang suggests that you spend some time thinking about how to save, invest and grow your money more effectively.

There's no point complaining: "But I only earn $X every month now, and after I pay my utilities bill and my handphone bill and my mortgage and my car instalment and my food expenses and give $Y to my parents, I only have $Z left, I have hardly anything left over to save."

Because, folks, it's your own life. And you know our kind of government is definitely not the kind that's going to give you any free money on a silver platter.

So you have to find a way, that's all.

Me, I drew up my first financial plan for retirement, during my 3rd year of working life. A crude model, no doubt, since I didn't know very much about personal financial planning then, but it got me started.

What about you?

Here's an interesting exercise - think of five ways you could cut down your expenses, without compromising the quality of life that you're accustomed to right now. No, let's make it more interesting - think of five ways you could cut down your expenses, which would either not compromise your current quality of life, OR improve it.

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Why Homosexuality Should Be Decriminalised in Singapore

In the Straits Times today, we have an article providing strong, clear evidence that homosexuality should be decriminalized in Singapore:

ST Sep 20, 2007
7 in 10 frown on homosexuality, NTU survey finds
People most likely to be anti-gay: The religious and those who conform to social norms
By Radha Basu

SEVEN in 10 people here frown on homosexuality, a Nanyang Technological University (NTU) study has found.

The study - which its authors claim is the first 'nationally representative' survey of its kind here - found two key predictors of sentiments here: how deeply religious a person was and how far he or she conformed to social norms.

The study by NTU's School of Communication and Information was published recently in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, which maps public opinion worldwide.

To gather the data, more than 1,000 people, profiled to resemble the national population, were asked six questions to gauge their attitudes towards lesbians and homosexuals.

For example, they were asked whether sex between two men or two women was 'plain wrong' and whether homosexuals or lesbians were 'disgusting'.

It was found that 68.6per cent of respondents 'generally held negative attitudes', 22.9per cent had positive attitudes and 8.5per cent were neutral.

Besides answering the questions, participants had to give their age, income, education level, gender and marital status. They also had to answer questions designed to gauge how religious they were and how strongly they felt about conforming to social norms.

Through statistical calculations, the study concluded that 'intrinsic religiosity' - viewing religion as the primary driving force in life - was the strongest predictor of anti-gay sentiment here.

On average, Christians and Muslims were seen to hold 'significantly more negative attitudes' than Buddhists or freethinkers.

You might not immediately see what I mean. Let me explain.

Suppose you conducted a survey among Singaporeans and asked them if they disapproved of murder. You would certainly get 10 out of 10 Singaporeans saying that they disapproved of murder.

Suppose you conducted another survey and asked them if they disapproved of shoplifting. Once again you would certainly get 10 out of 10 Singaporeans saying that they disapproved of shoplifting.

And if you did a similar survey on drug trafficking …. child abuse …. drunk driving …. cheating …. corruption …. maid abuse …. robbery …. kidnapping …. illegal possession of firearms … rioting …. voluntarily causing hurt …… driving without a licence …. and most other criminal offences in the laws of Singapore ...

…. you would get 10 out of 10 Singaporeans saying that they disapproved of such acts.

This should surprise no one. In general, crimes are those kinds of activities which are so harmful and serious that society sees fit to set up entire institutions – the police force, the courts, the prisons – to deal with them. Crimes are those kinds of activities which are so serious that we can expect 10 out of 10 citizens, or at least 9 out of 10 citizens to disapprove of them.

The fact that only 7 out of 10 Singaporeans frown on homosexuality probably puts it in the same league as premarital sex. Divorce. Interracial marriages. Opposition politicians. Integrated resorts. And PM Lee’s latest proposed changes to the CPF system.

After all, if you did the various surveys, you’d probably find that around seven out of 10 Singaporeans would frown on premarital sex. Seven out of 10 would frown on divorce. Seven out of 10 would frown on interracial marriages (or Asian women dating white men). Seven out of 10 would vote for the PAP instead of the Opposition. Seven out of 10 would disapprove of the integrated resorts. Seven out of 10 would disapprove of PM Lee’s proposed changes to the CPF system.

However, it is not a crime to have premarital sex. It is not a crime to get divorced. It is not a crime to marry a person of another race. It is not a crime to be an Opposition politician. The integrated resorts are still getting built. And PM Lee certainly won’t be arrested for proposing that all CPF members buy annuities.

So why should Section 377 of the Penal Code threaten gays with life imprisonment?

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