Archive for category Uncategorized
What happiness is really about.
Posted by Kevin Chan in Journal, Love, Uncategorized, Wealth on May 16, 2010
If there’s something really profound that I’ve learnt about myself recently, it’s this: I’m much happier when I’m purposefully working as compared to when I have completely nothing to do.
Do what makes you happy!
I’ve realized that the days that I feel the most down are the days that I don’t really have anything to do or anyone to meet. Days like that can feel pretty darn depressing.
When I really thought about it, it occurred to me that most of what we call modern entertainment doesn’t really make you happy, but are just temporary distractions to life.
Really, just take a moment to think about it.
A movie in the cinema, partying the night away in a club, escaping the country for a holiday – yes these things can be fun, but it sometimes seems that we do these things as a form of escape from reality, and escape from our sometimes less than satisfying lives.
What really makes you happy? What are the keys to happiness then?
Victor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning that:
“Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.”
And I think that’s a very big hint to that big secret. Happiness usually requires action of some kind. I’ve realised that I’m the most happy when I am working on something that is important to me, and close to my heart.
I’m happy when I feel that I’m going somewhere with my work and achieving my purpose in life.
I’m happy when I feel that what I’m doing is positively impacting others.
I’m happy when I’m achieving goals that are important to me.
I’m happy when I’m cultivating a successful relationship with someone dear to me.
But I’m definitely not happy sitting around and doing nothing. Some people may say that it’s the best thing ever to not have anything to do, but sloth is a very real sin. Possibly the worst sin that you can commit against yourself.
Finding true joy and happiness in your life will never be about inaction. Hopefully, you’ll find your calling in life – that something that makes you wake up early in the morning just because you can’t wait to continue working on it, that one project that you can’t stop thinking about.
Don’t settle and spend your life doing anything less than that.
Who am I?
Posted by Kevin Chan in Uncategorized on May 15, 2010
I tell you I’m chasing my dream, and for 95% of the time, I’m perfectly honest. I’m doing exactly what I want to do, and working hard towards my goals.
But during the wee hours of the nights, that nagging five percent of the time, I just find myself unable to answer that fundamental question – who am I?
Who is Kevin Chan?
Why after countless hours of journaling, self-reflection and meditation, can you still not be sure of who you are?
Who am I?
A brand new chapter.
Posted by Kevin Chan in Journal, Uncategorized on May 10, 2010
A brand new chapter of my life starts in about 10 hours time. I can just feel those final pages turning.
The new chapter.
Every time I enter a new phase of my life, things have turned out way more differently than I had expected them to.
When I just finished secondary school, I always thought that I would attend college in KL, and I somehow ended up in Singapore.
When college was through, I always thought that I would have ended up somewhere overseas doing something like Law, but I ended up doing a double major in Marketing and Business Law in NTU instead.
Things never really turned out the way I expected them to, but they always turned out for the best. And so, here I plan to stick to my modus operandi – to venture headfirst into the exciting, uncharted depths of the future.
I can’t wait to see where this exciting, exciting road takes me!
The sin of the naïve.
Posted by Kevin Chan in Uncategorized on April 5, 2010
A naïve mind is
More guilty than the fraud that
It surrenders to.- Mika Yoshimoto
How true. Ignorance, turning a blind eye to truth, can indeed lead to disastrous outcomes.
Ignorance and not having the courage to put your “truth” up for examination is not bliss, it’s just cowardice.
That’s all it is.
Why my generation doesn’t care.
Posted by Kevin Chan in Uncategorized on March 30, 2010
I was taking a jog around my university this morning and it was amazing that I couldn’t take a jog for more than 2 minutes before yet another monstrous vehicle sped beside me, spewing noxious, choking fumes into my face.
It was horrible, but as I already got out of bed early to take a run round school, I persisted.
It happened again and again – the cars sped by with drivers wearing glazed expressions on their sullen faces, heedlessly ignorant of the damage they’re causing.
Then it occurred to me.
The reason that my generation doesn’t care about our environment as much as we should is because we’ve always been in the car, and not the one jogging behind it.
I hate to admit it, but we’re a sheltered lot. We grew up in the safe confines of our air-conditioned homes, told to keep away from muddy playgrounds, told not to get grass stains on our white shirts and encouraged to run in comfortable indoor gyms.
We’re happily sitting inside the cabin of the car, inside the safety of our artificial environments, that we close our eyes to the threat we pose to our very own way of life.
Our Earth is of a finite size, a fixed volume, and there is only so much poisons, so much damage that she can take, so get to know her. Get to know what it feels like jogging on a beautiful morning and have the tranquility destroyed by yet another big, noisy bus. Get to know what it feels like swimming in a clear sea when an oil spill turns the waters sticky, smelly and black.
Our home.
Only my getting to appreciate our environment will be grow to become more environmentally conscious human beings. If we don’t see the beauty of what we are unwittingly destroying, all the Earth hours that we are going to have won’t change a thing.
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My name is Kevin Chan, and welcome to my blog on personal development.