Cow’s Life - Thinking Outside Of The Barn

I was chatting with a girl one day when I was attending my best friends’ wedding in Charlotte, NC. She kept on complaining about how boring her life was in this not-so-exciting town.
“So, what are you doing for fun?” I asked her.
“Eh, just watch some TV… “
“You like doing anything?”
“Like what?”
“Well.. hmm. maybe you want to try something new?”
She said she wanted to attend arts school and learn how to make arts and crafts. But she never got a chance to do that.

I am going to put on the Psychology hat again. Researches show that those people who are in the process of learning new things and trying something adventuroues tend to feel more positive and exciting about their lives. They have something to look forward to each day. But many people find excuses not to give their dreams a try. They go back to their groundhog days.

I have first hand experiences in terms of the relationship between hobby and hapiness. I was a boring girl for a long time. But somehow things turned around and I started picking up new hobbies that I have never given myself a chance to.

Here is a summary of my hobby lists broken down by year
2003
1. video games
2. making video games
3. Personal financing

2004
1. Decorating homes
2. video games
3. Personal Financing

2005
1. Rock Climbing
2. Snowboarding
3. Hiking
4. Camping
5. Blogging

2006
1. Rock Climbing
2. Snowboarding
3. Personal Financing Blogging
4. eBaying
5. Golfing

I was a miserable bitch before 2003. Now, I feel happier and more confident than ever. I think that has something to do with my ever-growing new activities. The best part of having hobbies is that these activities brought me a lot of great friends. It’s so important to have a group of supportive friends. And my hobbies have given me the precious friendships and happiness.

One genuine laugh a day is all you need to lighten up about life. I think it is not that hard to look for at least one thing worth laughing a day for every one of us. Whether it is reading a comic book, some stupid jokes on the Internet like what I just posted (Dumb and Dumber) or chat with friends… There are too many things that can make us laugh. However, finding humor in a difficult situation is much harder to do for most of us. But this is one thing you can do for yourself to push forward even when things look grim.

According to the scientists, Laughter also triggers a spike in feel-good hormones like serotonin, while levels of the stress hormone cortisol drop. So keep on laughing!

Thanks to a natural zest for life, the happiest people are always on the hunt for new experiences. I must admit that I am a lot happier after I did something that was unthinkable a few years back : rock climbing, camping, and snowboarding. Not only these sports have shaped up my confidence in my own physical and mental capabilities, the experiences also offered me a chance to look at nature and life in a totally different perspective. To the least, I just don’t get hung up on small things anymore (most of the time… ).

As the snow season closed up, I started a new gig these days: learn how to play golf. Today is my second time taking a few swings at the driving range and I sucked. But just like every other new thing I have tried, I am going to keep going back to the driving range until I graduate. Part of the fun while learning a new stuff is the experience of failure and the journey from “can’t do it” to “I did it”. It really keeps you motivated everyday hoping tomorrow is the day that “I will finally get it”.

The experts have suggested to set a goal of being willing to make one mistake every single day. This encourages you to try new experiences you might otherwise have avoided out of fear of failure. Plus, exercising your curiosity in this manner has been proved to promote happiness: Neurology researchers have found that diving into a fresh experience triggers the production of dopamine, one of the body’s feel-good chemicals.

I am a living proof. I am a much happier person once I started trying new things I sucked at or never thought about doing.

I was taking a flight back home from Austin last week and got to the gate kind of late. I had to stuff my bag in the overhead compartment and might squash somebody’s duffle bag a bit. Since the duffle bag was pretty loosely packed, I didn’t think it was a big deal. But when the plane landed, the duffle bag owner started to yell at my face, “You are the stupidest bitch I have ever seen. See what you did to my BAG!” Of course, I wasn’t happy to hear the B word. But trying to be polite, I asked him if there was any damage so I could pay him some money. He kept on screaming, “Just stop being an idiot!” and stormed out of the aircraft. I wanted to cry. Actually, I did cry on the way home and even at home. I couldn’t understand why people would say such mean things to me when there was apparently no damage done to that person. I even offered to pay the damage if there was any. To be honest, it was hard to let it go. But finally I convinced myself, “Well at least I am not an angry miserable unhappy person like that guy.”

We hit bad luck here and there. We all had to go through some terrible experiences somewhere in life. Even the worst experiences have their bright sides. Take that airplane story as an example: at least I know I am not a crazy angry bitch.

Embracing all of your life experiences - even the really painful ones - with the knowledge that something good inevitably will come out of them is what optimism is all about.” It helps minimize fears about the future and could otherwise become debilitating, allowing you to move past them more quickly and ultimately lead a more carefree life, ” says Baker.

A classic study from University of Massachusetts found that accident victims who had become suddenly paralyzed were more hopeful about the future than lottery winners. A possible reason: The tragedy allowed them to see that most of the stuff that gets us down isn’t really worth fretting over.

So how to be a “Glass Half Full” thinker? There are many ways, but what worked for me was trying to approach a bad situation with an open mind and try to find the upside of it. So far, I have found the “bright side” in everything, good or bad.

I still believe that being happy is a personal choice: whether you choose to stay in a bad mood or let it go; whether you choose to step out the bad situation or sink in; whether you choose to do something that is meaningful and productive or be lazy and worship TV all night long; whether you choose to get out of the house and meet other people, or sit at home and feel lonely and sorry for yourself.

Research shows that people who describe themselves as autonomous and self-governing are up to three times more likely to be satisfied with their lives. These individuals know they have the power to opt out when a situation no longer suits them. So when they are not happy with their current situations, they make the active choices to change matters.

It was a while ago that I had to teach myself a simple exercise to feel happier:
Whenever the bad mood strikes, I consciously make the decision to let it go and look at the brighter side. I know it sounds dumb. But after all, everything is related to what we decide to do. When my brain decides not to feel grumpy about whatever I am feeling grumpy about, my attention shifts to something else and before I know it, I am happily doing something else.

I am sure a lot of us know a few things about the true happiness. It ain’t money, it ain’t big house.. and it certainly won’t be the 15 min fame on a Reality Show. So what is it? What are these magic ingredients that truly make people happy?

I saw an article on this month’s Redbook and I am going to turn that article around and run a 12 day series to make a Happy List.

So here they are:

Happy List Day 1: It’s a Choice
Happy List Day 2: Optimism
Happy List Day 3: New Experience
Happy List Day 4: Finding Humor
Happy List Day 4: Finding Hobbies

Ok, I know this is a weird title.. but please bear with me and you will know what I mean…

If you have seen the movie Groundhog Day, you know what I mean by doing the same thing over and over again: get up, go to work, work your butt off, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed and then start all over again.

Have you ever asked why we are living like this? For what? What is the purpose of going to work everyday doing what we do right now? Just for a paycheck? Life is so short. Is it worth while to devote our lives into these paychecks? If the job is fulfilling, then you are the lucky one, but what if it is not?

Anyway, ever since I started this new lower stress job, I started to ask these questions seriously.

I felt like being a cow in the last 10 years. I was milked by my employer day in and day out. When I got too skinny, they would threw me on a grassy land (an easier project), fat me up and then milk me again until I couldn’t be milked anymore…Now, I am on a grassy land again taking on an easier job. But how long is that gonna last?

I don’t want to get fatty and thrown back in the barn to be milked again! I want to be able to go to grassy land at anytime I want to and I want to milk myself, not by others!So here comes Yuna’s

FREE-THE-COW PROJECT!

That is, I want to control my own future. I want to be able to generate multiple income streams so one day I don’t have to work for anyone else. After years of services in Corporate America, I realized that I have no control of my life and every dollar I make ends up in someone else’s pocket. I just can’t picture myself working for a company for 30 years, hoping that my paycheck will still be there tomorrow. Last year after I received our HR announcement about the cancellation of our pension program, I completely lost the trust in our corporation structure and my own employer.

So here I am, determined to find a way to one day support myself and my family with investment and other projects. So I set up “Free The Cow” Project site to document my ideas, progress, failures and success. I actually launched the project about a week ago, thanks to Cyco Miko’s help again as usual, we pretty much got the site nailed 80%. I have already laid out the ground work and defined the 3 projects of 2006.

Many of us have brilliant ideas, wonderful dreams and incredible talents, however, only few of us succeed at the end. I realize the hard part is actually doing it. Being said, another reason why I set up the second part of Yunasville is to force myself to keep making baby steps, document the baby steps so eventually I will get to where I want to go. I wrote a post a long time ago about the Turtle Theory. Although when I wrote it, it was meant for rock climbing, however, I think the Turtle Theory applies everywhere in our lives:

Even the smallest step will get you to where you want to be.

So I am hoping one day when I close this project, I will be sitting in a beautiful grassy land of my choice and never need to go back to the barn again.

Everything sort of went wrong since the Christmas day. I received a black video iPod as my Christmas gift. Turned out just like my first iPod mini I bought a year ago – it didn’t work! I spent about 3 hours on Christmas day trying to get that thing to respond to a series of reset-reload-reformat-reprogram activities and all I got was a bright shining “Do Not Disconnect” screen. When I took it back to Best Buy to exchange for a working one, they told me they had no iPod in stock and didn’t know when they would get one. So much for the iPod excitement…. That was my bad luck #1 on the Christmas day.

My bad luck #2 came a day after the “no-iPod-for-you” incident. The shower in my bathroom on the second floor had a leakage. Coincidentally, the seal was broken in the bathroom so the water came through the ceiling dripping all over on our breakfast table. Also coincidentally, I left my Laptop dead on the spot on the table the night before. The poor computer was receiving every drop of the leaking water. When I got up in the morning, my computer was completely soaked in water. It was almost like someone had plotted a perfect plan to fry Christine’s computer. I called the help desk to seek for any hope to rescue the hardware. 8 hours later, my computer was pronounced dead. I need a replacement. Great! I just lost an iPod and now I lost my Laptop.

I was so upset that I didn’t even feel like eating dinner with my family. “Gee! I never had any luck winning a 5 dollar lottery. But I keep hitting the bad luck Jackpot! This holiday is ruined!” I couldn’t stop complaining. My mother finally said to me, “If you want to talk about bad luck, those people who are dying from cancer or had a retarded baby are hitting the bad luck Jackpot. You know Mr.Lee, the nice guy who owns that computer factory. He never smoked a cigarette in his entire life and he was just diagnosed with lung cancer. That’s bad luck. Life and death is a big deal. Your computer is fried, but it’s only a computer…”

I am not a negative person, however, it is quite hard to be positive all the time when these annoying things keep happening to me: car got wrecked, missing a flight; losing a baggage; breaking a tailbone; iPod’s come and gone; and unintentionally positioning the computer in the flooding zone. But my mom is right. Comparing with those very unfortunate events, these little things are truly little and repairable. Once I started to realize how insignificant my bad luck was, my dinner became quite tasty and I finally switched the topics to something else.

It turned out to be a great evening with my family. I am glad that I finally let the bad luck and sad emotions go.

Let’s just hope that nothing goes wrong on the New Year Day!

This afternoon, my project manager made an announcement in front of all of my project members that they will transfer me to a development position. Another person will take over my design/architect job in the next a few weeks.

Was I upset? You bet! I was disappointed and it did hurt my confidence a bit after losing my design job. But on the other hand, I looked back at the history of my professional consulting career, whenever I took the “talking” and “drawing” role as an architect, I got all stressed out and depressed. And whenever I was the “worker” on the project writing programs and putting systems together, I always had a pretty good time. I asked myself many times, “Is it true that I am just not cut for the architecture job?”

I like what I read in Martha Sinetar’s book “ Do What You Love, The Money Will Flow” :

“Most of us think about our jobs or our careers as a means to fulfill responsibilities to families and creditors, to gain more material comforts, and to achieve status and recognition. But we pay a high price for this kind of thinking….

Yet, even though we are all fairly adaptable, elastic, and multi-dimensional, we are not born to struggle through life. We are meant to work in ways that suit us, drawing on our natural talents and abilities as a way to express ourselves and contribute to others. This work, when we find it and do it – even if only as a hobby at first – is a key to our true happiness and self-expression. “

“Right Livelihood is an idea about work which is linked to the nature order of things. It is doing our best at what we do best. The rewards that follow are inevitable and manifold. There is no way we can fail. “

I can’t agree more on this topic. I suck in writing. I’ve never even read a Shakespeare book. However, my love for blogging has since injected the life sources into my blog. Soon, I will be blogging for food and officially become a “writer”, which is something I would have never thought I could do. It was all because of the power of the passion.

So, what is your passion? What are you dying to do but always find excuses not to do? What kind of job will make you so eager to get out of the bed every morning? If you can’t turn your dream work into an income-generating job, can you at least start it as a hobby?

Hopefully one day, we are all doing something we love to do and I truly believe that money will flow if we think hard, look hard and seize the chance.

Ok, so goal-free living doesn’t really mean aimlessly living. And I don’t think anyone can live without a hope or a desire. Then what is it that we desire the most ? My answer? I want true happiness. Everybody has different perspective on what true happiness is. Some say power, some want money to retire early, many of us desire love, and a lot of guys think sex is the true happy moment…

10 years ago, I believed in achievement = happiness.

“If I could become this and that and make this and that happen, I’d be happy.”

So a few years later I did achieve “this” and “that”, however, I became depressed and illed. Forget about happiness, I wasn’t even healthy. So right there I proved to myself that money and achievement didn’t bring me happiness. So what is it then? It took me a few years to find some answers. So far, I’ve found two ingredients of my true happiness

Ingredient #1– Sharing

I met Jake, Jason and Ryan when I was working on a project in Richmond,VA. We all loved games, computer technology and graphics. So when Jake brought up the topic of the upcoming SIGGraph(Special Interest Group for Computer Graphics) conference in San Diego, we were pretty pumped. But getting there and staying there for a few days was just not realistic given the high cost associated with the trip. At that time, I have saved about half million hotel points and about 150K frequent flyer miles. When I suggested using my hard earned travel rewards to pay for the trip, everybody was shocked, myself included. In my life time, I have never ever given so much to other people. Yes, I volunteer and use my labor to give back a fair share to the society. But money wise? Sorry, no way!

Jake wouldn’t believe it until I picked up the phone and called American Airline to book the tickets. Actually, I couldn’t believe myself doing that either. I was really kicking myself for being an idiot after spending 75,000 miles and 180,000 Marriott Hotel points on a few people I had just met. The San Diego trip was awesome! I think we all bonded from that trip and found each other some true friends. Most importantly, my willingness to share made this wonderful trip possible. Everybody left the sunshine California with a great experience and a piece of beautiful memory.

Ever since then, I became generous with money and my possessions. I took a lot of people to NBA games last season and I am continuing doing it this year; I have organized a few trips and paid for the expenses so other people can also enjoy this wonderful place we live in; I left more tips than I should for the hotel staffs when I was living in the downtown Denver hotels. I am not too big on charity giving. I just feel happy to put some smiles on those ones whom I have encountered because these people are real to me. Sharing what I have with my friends and knowing that they are having a great time truly makes me feel happy too. This kind of joy is something money can’t buy.

I remember the Bible says that we can only serve either God or money. And somewhere in the Bible also says that the true happiness lies in giving. Well, I am not a hardcore Christian, but God does have a point here though.

It’s getting late… so I will write up my true happiness ingredient #2 when I have some time.