Hurricane Sandy – Your Role?

At this very moment Hurricane Sandy had made her landfall in East US.

Affected or not, it happens in our common-shared world.

Here’s some advice:

1. If you are directly affected

Value yourself and human souls first. Keep close to announcement by officials. Evacuate if you’re asked to. Bring only the important things. Keep stuff for survival in safe area (basement etc) in case you’re trapped.

On sudden danger and you’re unprepared, trust your guts and have faith.

2. If you’re not affected

Get updates of the events. Hope that souls affected will survive. Look for ways on how you can help them on time or aftermath based on you capabilities.

Let’s hope for the best in surviving mother nature!

Larry Smith – Why You Will Fail to Have a Great Career?

In this spirited talk, Larry Smith used thought provoking approach to open our eyes about the reality of our passion.

Watch him until the end to get the full insight.

Truly an artist of public speaking!

CALM by Miyamoto Musashi

In building a resilient character, being calm is crucial to lead someone to get over adversity and bouncing back from it.

Miyamoto Musashi, the legendary samurai swordsman had explained ‘calm’ in ‘The Book of Water’ from ‘The Book of Five Rings‘ – a classic text on kenjutsu and martial arts (circa 1645).

Let’s see what ancient wisdom from the east had to say about calm;

 

CALM by Miyamoto Musashi

Both in fighting and in everyday life, you should be determined yet calm.

Meet any situation without tenseness yet not recklessly.

Your spirit settled yet unbiased.

Even when your spirit is calm, do not let your body relax.

And when your body is relaxed, do not let your spirit slacken.

Do not let your body be influenced by your spirit.

Nor your spirit influenced by your body.

Be neither insufficiently spirited.

Nor excessively over-spirited.

—

Calm is the virtue to not let the enemy see your spirit.

As preventing the enemy to see you put you in a better position to win.

—

History Channel Documentary of Musashi

The Book of Five Rings Audio Book

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Learn Unlearn Relearn – The Art of Relearning

Relearning can be defined as acquiring a set of knowledge or skills that we possessed in previous time of our life.

As for myself, I used to practice lots of guitar circa 2005-2007, but circa 2008-2010 my skills had declined tremendously due to lack (extremely lacking) of practice. I can’t pull off some riffs that I used to pull, but I still can play some other riffs naturally.

At this point, I realized that I store those riffs that I can pull mostly in subconscious or semi-subconscious memory. I distinguish those riffs as the riffs that I really like and the riffs that I write myself.

For the riffs that I can’t pull, they mostly fall into some ‘quick fix’ for band practices and some ‘quick fix’ to impress girls. I did take them lightly just for the moment.

Currently, if I want to relive those riffs, it is easier to relearn riffs that I stored in subconscious/semi-subconscious memory but more efforts need to be put into those ‘quick fix’.

—

However, in traumatic settings (as the video below), it takes more than ‘relearning method’ presented above to relearn a set of previous skills.

Although for most people, walking can be easy and can be done almost unconsciously, traumatic condition such as spinal-cord injury can really prevent someone from walking.

To relearn walking, it takes more than the mind and patterns, it takes spirit and courage.

These come from the inward entity of a human being, the heart (or the soul).

—

As shouted by Dave Grohl.

Related articles

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• Learn Unlearn Relearn – The Art of Learning (positivepsyched.wordpress.com)
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Sacrifice in Chess

In chess, a sacrifice is a move giving up a piece in the hopes of gaining tactical or positional compensation in other forms. A sacrifice could also be a deliberate exchange of a chess piece of higher value for an opponent’s piece of lower value.

Any chess except the king can be sacrificed. Because players usually try to hold onto their own pieces, offering a sacrifice can come as an unpleasant surprise to one’s opponent, putting him off balance and causing much precious time to be wasted trying to calculate whether the sacrifice is sound or not and whether to accept it. Sacrificing one’s queen (the most valuable piece), or a string of pieces, adds to the surprise, and such games can be awarded brilliancy prizes.

~Wikipedia

In Abrahamic traditions, sacrifice is an act of giving up worldly possessions to serve a better purpose to God. Just as chess, God is seen as the King, which is the most important figure. The whole purpose of playing chess is to keep the king alive while attack to kill the king of the opponent.

In relationships, sacrifice can be seen as acts of giving up some characters or possessions by one party or both. This is done to serve the higher purpose, to make the relationship works.

In professional settings, sacrifice can be seen as an act of giving up some things to require a better set of skills, good connections or great opportunities. The purpose is to get into better career advancement.

—

In chess, Abrahamic traditions, relationships and professional settings, the act of sacrificing revolves around the thoughts of keeping the higher purpose or the important thing works.

However, in chess, while the right kind of sacrifice might lead to better tactical positions, the wrong kind of sacrifice may be fatal. Thus, this calls for chess players to know the art of sacrifice in order to implement the sacrifice strategy in their playing. If they didn’t have the natural talent, that must be required from lessons through knowledge and training.

—

These show the importance of purpose. Outlined them clear, make them your fundamental ideas, just then you can trust your intuitions.

Hajj: The Journey of a Lifetime

This is the story of 4 different souls performing the Hajj. Hajj is the fifth pillars of Islam, a religious duty that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so. Scotland Yard officer, a college student, a neurosurgeon and a man who walks all the way from India to Saudi Arabia, all with one intention to perform Hajj as a form of submission to God.

This is how ‘what’ (performing the Hajj) and ‘why’ (to submit to God) drives these souls in action regardless of the challenges that comes.

When there’s a will, there’s a way. Be clear about your vision, everything else is secondary, but also important.

Learn Unlearn Relearn – The Art of Unlearning

The idea of too much emphasis on education that makes someone becoming an egocentric and rigid monster had been popularized by Pink Floyd in Another Brick in the Wall.

Through the years we should know that the real problems is not really about what had been thought, but rather how receiver received their lessons.

The Japanese master Nan-in gave audience to a professor of philosophy.

Serving tea, Nan-in filled his visitor’s cup, and kept pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he could restrain himself no longer: “Stop! The cup is over full, no more will go in.”

Nan-in said: “Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup.”

—

Think learning as your work and unlearning as your vacation.

As important as learning, knowing when to ditch something that you know is also important, as pointed by Jim Copanico in the following talk.

In this video, Jim Copacino talks about The Art of Unlearning.

Jim claims that the best creative ideas come from the willingness of people to learn new stuff and also the willingness to unlearn.

That comes from the essence of fresh, un-schooled and unfeathered mind.

Success comes from toggling back and forth between expertise and purposeful naivety.

Jim shows some ads revolving unlearning for you to unlearn some stuff.

Enjoy the video.

Learn Unlearn Relearn – The Art of Learning

I’ve reblog this video on Oct 20th. In explaining Learn Unlearn Relearn, here’s my commentaries.

Eddie talks about the right kind of learning in this current fast-paced world.

While challenges are increasing rapidly, the creative output cannot keep up.

This calls for a stretch in business’ learning curve – to keep up with the challenges ahead.

In doing this, we must cherish failure as a tool of learning, have peace with the fact that we fail and keep moving forward. That will get us more benefits rather than demonizing it.

So, when you learn, keep up the pure heart.

Learn Unlearn Relearn

“The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”  ~Alvin Toffler

Jack is an aspiring architect who had just graduated from college. The fresh-young-blooded lad is inexperience. He joins an architecture firm with vision to earn and learn.

“You learn something everyday if you pay attention.” ~Ray LeBlond

However, the company he joins using a different approach of work, really different from what he had been taught in school. He has to unlearn what he knows before.

“Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.” ~Mark Twain

One day the company secures a project which pretty much works with what Jack had learnt in school. Guess who is the project leader?

“Each day learn something new, and just as important, relearn something old.” ~Robert Brault