Are you a leaf, a branch or a root?

I revisited the dialogue in a play directed by Tyler Perry, where Madea (Tyler himself portrayed), a wise black woman, was giving advice to a person who seemed distressed about his personal relationship. Madea said that there are different types of people going into your life, you need to be careful of who they are to you. Some are like leaves, they are seasonal and are only here to provide shades once in a while, but they wither and get away when wind comes. You don’t want to rely on them. Some are like branches of a tree, they can provide some support but not a lot, when the storm comes, they will not be there for you anymore. But some are like roots, they support you whenever and wherever, they are not there to be seen, they are just there to help. There may be many leaves and branches in our lives, but not many roots. You need to know who are those roots for you. And once you’ve found them, cherish them. Don’t confuse the seasonal leaves with your roots.

It made me ponder, am I a leaf or a root for others?

Is what I want to be the same as what I actually am?

Ingredients of happiness

Happiness in the modern fast-pace era seems so elusive that sometimes I think we are in search of the societal label instead of the actual meaning of happiness for each individual.

 

What does happiness really consist of? When I was younger, I used to think it was getting A’s in all the subjects all the time in school, and getting compliments & acknowledgements from teachers, and this concept lasted until half way through college. When everyone in the same dorm had dates, I thought happiness was having a loving and handsome boyfriend. After coming out of school, people around me all started to have families and make babies, and I thought, yes, those were what I needed to make me happy. That soon transitioned to having a nice house and settle down somewhere with nice neighborhoods and good weather, and with great job opportunities. At work, I thought getting some professional awards could make me happy too.

 

But were those beliefs sound? They existed for a reason, yes, because those things I listed were what the society deemed “standard/normal” to have/do. You have/do what the peers have, so you can blend in and feel that you belong. However, the question is: do they truly make you happy? The concept of happiness that change with circumstances and does not last cannot hold the promise to last.

 

After experimentation and a great deal of introspection, I finally am able to put my ingredients of happiness into words: having a goal, having the conviction to reach for it, and seeing progress of the process. Setting a goal sounds very generic, and we all have different goals, but having the conviction to achieve it is very critical. For me, I have strong conviction in self improvement and inspire others, so any goal that I set to improve myself will count. Specifically, the goal also include professional goal and personal goals, when I am clear on the and having specific plans of action to achieve, I feel happy. Happiness should be a process, not an end result. Just like the quote from the movie “The pursuit of happiness”, we should rephrase it into “The happiness of pursuit”.

 

Where does your happiness lie?

The weapons that those movies hit you with

I’ve been quiet here for a long while, not because I didn’t want to write, but because I was busy experiencing life and not giving it enough reflection. Now a part of the life experiencing included movie watching.

I recently realized that some movies have interesting common highlights that make them moving and long lasting, similar in a sense to romantic literature, with an emphasis on emotions and moral values, and the values of which will go beyond the current times. I think the fact that successful movies were able to convey some message that we can relate to is how they make us remember them.

For example, this movie Quiz Show, a historical film depicting the quiz show scandal back in the 1960s, tapped into some most common sins of men, greed and temptation towards wealth and fame, and illustrated how emotionally powerful it can be to be honest, to tell the truth. You don’t “get away” by telling the truth, but you can “live with” it peacefully if you did. This movie has one of my favorite speeches, “I have stood on the shoulders of life and I have never got down into the dirt to build, to erect a foundation of my own. I have flown too high on borrowed wings. Everything came too easy. ” Another movie, made by Woody Allen, called Blue Jasmine, used vanity, another common sin, as the theme of the film, and give the audience a great lesson that dishonesty can take you no where.

Another interesting theme is truth seeking. A few good men and Conviction are great examples of finding the truth out in and outside of a court room, the courage and persistence of challenging authority deserve more kudos than they’ve ever gotten. The former also included a segment of great courtroom speech by Jack Nicolson, one of my favorite actors. In a similar fashion, Scent of a woman, successfully impressed the audience by the speech given by the actor Al Pacino emphasizing the importance of integrity: the path one should choose that leads to character.

Into the Wild is a great example of seeking oneself from nature, seeking joy and peace from nature, and above all, believing the magic and following your dream. Just like what the actor Robin Williams in the movie Dead Poet Society advised the students in an elite prep school, Carpe Diem. Life goes away in a blink of the eye, grab it and appreciate it while you can. And I further advise please follow your dream with some premeditative planning, especially when safety is involved.

Love and forgiveness lie in the foundation of a happy living. The lawyer in Compulsion (1959) took advantage of this and was able to save two boys from being hanged, and he said: if there’s any way of destroying hatred, and all that goes with it, it’s not through evil and hatred and cruelty. It’s through charity, love, understanding, one of my favorite defense speech ever. Good Will Hunting is a good example of loving yourself and forgiving yourself for something that isn’t your fault. Forgiveness can lead to love, which will shed positive light to you and others.

Over the past years when my foundations were weak, I put myself in situations where my character was being tested, I fell most of the times. When I looked back, I blamed myself for what I did, blamed my family for what I experienced when I was younger, labeled my childhood as an emotionally neglected one. I was full of resentment towards myself and towards my past, wishing history could be rewritten. But where is this resentment and holding on to the past leading me to? A person with negative energy. And I don’t want that any more. I want light, and I want to love. And this will not start by a slogan, but by deliberate choices and actions, that are different from what you used to.

Life has no meaning to begin with, but you create meaning to it;

Life is empty to begin with, but you put memories and insights into it.

Life is tiny and fragile, protect it, cherish it and embrace it.

Dear fellows, you are not remembered by how you look like, but what you did and how you inspired. In this movie made of your life where you are an indispensable actor, I encourage you to pause and look around, see where you are going and enjoy the little things.

Maintaining a healthy sleeping schedule

I am into health very much, which is also the overarching theme of this blogsite, so I think a post on sleeping schedule is definitely necessary. I had postponed this post a long while since I was not sure whether I can actually identify and maintain a healthy schedule myself. Now that I did find it and have been maintaining it for a while, I decided to pop up here and share it with you.

Sleeping is essential to our health and bad sleep can play a deteriorating effect to our productivity in our waking time. I have done some research and found that successful (a caveat here, success can mean different things to different people, here I am limiting it to the generally accepted version of success) people maintain in general 6-8 hours of sleep. There are a couple of extremes who sleep for 3, 5 or even 9 hours a day.  The time ranges are also interesting. Please see the non-exhaustive list below:

1. Benjamin Franklin: 8 hours, 10 pm-5 am.
2. Thomas Edison: 5 hours, 11 pm-4 am.
3. Winston Churchill: 5 hours, 3 am-8 am.
4. Barack Obama: 6 hours, 1 am-7 am.
5. Donald Trump: 3 hours, 1 am-4 am.
6. Bill Gates: 7 hours, 12 am-7 am.
7. Tim Cook: 7 hours, 9:30 pm-4:30 am
8. Elon Musk: 6 hours, 1 am – 7 am.
9. Ellen DeGeneres, 8 hours, 11 pm-7 am.
10. Arianna Huffington, 8 hours, 10 pm -5 am.
11. Marissa Mayer, 4-6 hours, 12 am-4 ~6 am.

As you can see, there is no general rule of thumb in terms of what time frame contributes to the success of the people listed above. I was experimenting the schedule myself as well. I sometimes get tremendous creativity in the wee hours if I end up staying late, but I also notice the strong negative health effect late sleep has on me. So I decided to stick to my healthy schedule, and I believe the creativity part is mostly a result of habit, since your brain can be trained/tricked.

And below the list ends:

12. Hellen Jiang, 7 hours, 10 pm-5 am.

Sometimes your brain can be so active that it is hard to fall asleep, and here are some tips in helping reduce that:

1. maintain a consistent sleeping schedule
2. work out and break a sweat regularly
3. avoid heavy meals/drinking a couple hours before sleep (if you really need to drink something, herbal tea could be your safe choice)
4. meditation, deep breathing, and progressive muscle relaxation
5. hot bath or aromatherapy or try to visualize tranquility
6. power down one hour before bed: turn off electronics and dim your lights
7. write down what is bugging you, if there is any; don’t leave unresolved negative feelings before sleep
8. paint your bedroom in tranquil color, keep it cool and keep it dark
9. make sure hands and feet are not cold
10. reserve the bed only for sleep and sex.

Time to power down for me 🙂

Good luck finding that schedule that works for you the best!

Adopting a mucus-less diet

I have suffered quite serious diseases when I was younger due to problems with my lungs, like pneumonia (multiple times before the age of 7) and tuberculosis (end of high school). My grandparents joked that I would live long since I survived what some others probably wouldn’t have. My health history probably attributed to the fact that I am extra health conscious compared to an average person.

Health starts with the diet, the part that you have a control over, anyway. I had experimented with different diets, vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, even fasting. Sometimes, I would go back and embrace a balanced diet, which includes meat. This was also true if when I have to go to restaurants with limited options. I also try to keep mental notes of my bodily reaction towards the food that I have eaten. One thing that I found that really affects me negatively is that some food triggers more mucus/phlegm than others. So I dig into this topic and decided to post what I found out.

Meat and sugar are two major items that can generate extra mucus. It seems diary products also do the same, fortunately I am not a big fan of diary products in the first place. I personally also found gluten contributes to mucus in your throat as well. While I was searching for this topic, I also found some articles or treatise by professor Arnold Ehret, a Germany born nutritionalist who had experimented different kinds of diet and started to promote his own creation–mucusless diet. He also asserted that it was closely related to solving problems of constipation. It was said that his experimental dieting saved him from his some diseases, but this claim was not verified. It was also hard to verify his longevity/health with his promoted diet, since he unfortunately died when he fell on the ground and hurt his skull when he was in his fifties.

On a different note, I would like to touch on causes of extra mucus or phlegm (or snot) induced during or after an intensive workout. 1) exercised induced asthma which can only improved by doing more warm up exercises and expanding your lung capacity by exercising: 2) allergy related, not much to do there except to be aware of the environment and/or take allergy meds; 3) underlying diseases related to lung or others (pneumonia, pulmonary edema, or cystic fibrosis etc); 4) diet, such as diary…

In any case, I am with the opinion that our bodies are as different as they are the same. Think about the basic similarities that make us human beings when we have conflicts or the tendency to judge emerges, but please don’t ignore the vast differences that define each one of us as an individual person. Do what makes you feels good and be responsible for what it brings you.

 

Self exploration and expression through writing

I am so glad that I can have this space to share my thoughts with fellow citizens who are interested in leading a meaningful and satisfying life. Who may find this blog helpful? You will find out below.

I was born and raised in a big family with four older sisters in rural areas of northeastern China. I had an acute intellectual development in early ages but somehow the emotional development was hindered. Starting from my early twenties, my parents passed away with two years apart before I was able to emotionally bond with them on a deeper level, and I emotionally wandered about afterwards until now–early thirties.

There were numerous times that I needed a trustworthy source for decisions that I need to make, but I wasn’t able to find people with similar experiences to relate to. So here I am starting this blog hoping to help people who may feel lost in their lives for any reasons and hoping that they can find some inspiration. I want to tell you that there is always hope. I am now a scientist at a national laboratory in the US. As I am striving to understand myself and the world around me, I am emotionally evolving in an exponentially pace every day. The journey was not as easy as it seems. Sometimes I thrive two steps but would stumble and backtrack three steps. However I believe we can always make progresses as long as we never give up. Please hold on to yourself and reach out for help.

Scott Peck started the first chapter of the book <The road less traveled>: life is difficult. And I completely agree with it. Sure, there are moments when life presents you with the indescribable joy and bliss, or there are moments that you see others laugh and relax like everything was so perfect for them, but you cannot deny the fact that life is hard and it is those difficult times in life that makes the happy moments more cherish-able. And just like you have difficult times in life, others are no different in this matter. It is just that whenever we are happy, we tend to forget that we had bad times. The ironical thing is sometimes, when life is hard, we also forget about the good times that we had as well.

Writing gives me peace and clarity. But it is hard to get into the habit of writing, especially when the schedule is too tight to cut out a block of time or when life is stressful that it is hard to focus on writing. But I think of those times when I wished there was a web source that I can fully relate and trust, I am motivated to share more frequently. so here it is, for those who don’t have experienced emotional hinderances at a younger age, or lacking a good role model in their lives or those who were lost in any way or orphaned as young adults. I also don’t exclude the possibilities that people who don’t have those experiences may find this blog helpful as well especially if it can provide different perspectives.

This blog is going to include any topics related to emotional health, physical health or any issues that I think can help a person thrive in a well-round way. Hope you find it useful. Cheers!