Life in today’s society is so busy these days, we barely have time to do the basics – eat, shit, and sleep.
So many things to do. So little time.
24 hours are not enough in in a day!
Can we have 30, 40, or even 60 hours?

This is especially true for those who have to spend hours working overtime and/or commuting in traffic. This not only takes away a good chunk of time, but it also takes away energy that could be expend on other, and perhaps more meaningful, activities – family, friends, beer, NBA, other hobbies…

So we know we are too busy these days. Way too busy.
So… nowwhat? What can we do? How do we deal with such crazy lifestyle?

Everything we do fit somewhere in our list of priorities, and everything we do are the results of our choices. Life by itself is nothing. Life becomes something when we take action, and each action follows a choice we make. Within every choice, there are opportunity costs, time and effort taken away from doing something else.

That is why it is important to figure out your priorities in life. Your success in life is based on your priorities. If things you do everyday is very low in your priority list, I’m sorry to say that you maybe “failing” in life, subjective to your own standard. If you spend all your time doing things that mean little to you, you will not have time to do things that are meaningful. In summation, you life will be meaningless, until you choose to do otherwise.

You can do anything if you want to. You can achieve many things if you want to. However, you cannot do everything. It’s simple as that. This is the gist of opportunity cost.

Jason asked me in his last comment…

Can a peron be simultaneously sucessful in two areas with out making any compromises? For instance can a woman enjoy her mommyhood as well as a fabulous career? A super mom and a super career woman – is it possible?

I would say it is possible, but it won’t be easy. It takes a lot of effort to raise a child and eventually build a meaningful relationship. A fabulous career will mean lotsa time spent working, and it will take away time to spend with the child, as an opportunity cost. Or, if the husband is willing to sacrifice more to care for the child, his time and effort will be the opportunity cost, along with a weaker bond with the mommy. This is a very complicated situation and depends on a lot of variables. However, it is obvious that it is very difficult to find a balance between these two priorities. I may even go as far to say that it’s one of the most difficult. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be so many women, courageously, giving up their own careers to become stay-home-mom. Whatever solution one may have to become a super mom and a super career woman, there will be opportunity costs in other areas in life, be it health, be it hobby she loves with a passion, be it other family members. Something will be given up.

Take myself as another example. Learning piano and reaching a certain level of mastery is one of my most important goals, and I am very clear and stern about this goal. I must (and have) make a lot of choices to achieve this goal, and all these choices incur opportunity cost. First of all, money spent on lessons that I could spend elsewhere. And then the fact that… at the same time of my learning piano in about the past 3 years, I have also been religiously going to gym to weight train and do various other exercises to get and stay in shape. However, I must take care not to strain myself and become too sore, nor hurt my hands, nor go too often as to tire myself out (together with school and work), so I can practice my piano daily with minimal handicap (I do my best to practice daily). Also the time I need to practice means I have less time to go out with friends, read, and do many other things. Though, the advantage is that this saves me money from going out too often. Didn’t I say having hobby can save you money?

In a nutshell, life is all about choice. Each time you choose and then perform an action, you gain something for a priority, and you lose something for another priority as opportunity cost. Since you only have a limited amount of time and effort, it is very very important to choose action that is relevant to your more important priorities and to balance your life to your set of high priorities. I cannot stress this enough.

As I just spent almost an hour writing this, I lost an hour I could spend to sleep, play piano, read… such is life.

Jason from Live Debt Free left me this thoughtful comment that provoked me to revisit my thought on success.

In today’s fast world where life seems to spin out of our control, the term “success” has become synonomous with money and power. But is success all about how many yachts you owe or how much you spend at a holiday in Greece? I am left wondering….does success revolve around only achievements we achieve in terms of money, comfort, status or power? We were taught in the school and were told that success is about making a diffrence! No matter how small that difference is ………. if you can make a disheartened person laugh the consider it as your success.

I think Jason has just spoken the mind of thousands. There is no class on success in curriculum. There is no century-old stone tablet that explains success for us. Our parents didn’t tell us what it really is, and who could blame them because our grandparents probably didn’t tell them either. Even so, since the moment you cry your first sound in this world, you are expected to succeed. Overtime, you expect yourself to succeed. These silent expectations drive you to succeed. As to what exactly is this success that we so badly need to achieve, it is never quite clear. It’s a real bummer because most of us end up just going with the flow. What flow? The flow of society…

Ah, the wonderful flow of society… What does current society tell us about success? Nothing afar the fact that you need have this and you need to have that… all these things… a giganto McMansion, sports car, designer clothings, a yacht, iPhone, etc. The list goes on and on. Once you own all these THINGS, then you will have succeeded. Then you will be happy. To obtain these things, you need money, and so you work your tails off. As such, you become so busy hoarding money and things. No, there is no time to think. You must work and worry about money continuously. You cannot waste time thinking about what success really means and why you are feeding the economy… mindlessly.

We are never going to own EVERYTHING, nor are we to own many of the things we are told we should own. Does that mean no sucess for us? Does that mean no happiness for us? Like the Nazi used to say, “No Soup for You!” That’s kinda sad.

Fortunately for us, success isn’t about bank account, stock options, big houses, half a dozen yachts…

In my post a year ago, I couldn’t quite provide a fully concrete outline of what I think success is besides stating the need for continuous self-improvement in various areas in life. I will take a crack at it again today and give you the benefit (or handicap?) of my thought :)

Success in life is ultimately happiness.

Whether you like it or not, every action that people take, is directly or indirectly an attempt to achieve happiness. And your priorities in life has everything to do with happiness. Happiness is base on your priorities in life. It is about understanding yourself and knowing what are the important things to you. The final step to success then, is once again my proclamation of self-improvement, where you spend your time and effort in improving in areas that fit your priorities.

Base on this principle, our society has placed money and power in the highest priority. Shallow? Yes. True? Yes. Nobody can deny this. Knowing this, what you have to do is to make a choice. You can choose to buy into the society’s (broken) culture, or you can choose to think it through and act according to your own set of priorities.

Some help in defining your priorities is in the the post, Understanding Yourself, where I talked about “beginning with the end in mind” .

There is another method for which I don’t remember where I have read it. It is a little quiz, where you first make a list of 10 important things in your life. With this list, you need to cross out an item as if you can only live with one less thing each time. Repeat until you come down to one item. It’s a process that will surely make you think. Take some time to think through every step. Below is a sample list. Just alter it for your own needs.

1. Direct Family
2. Husband or Wife
3. A Meaningful Career
4. Friends
5. Travel and Advantures
6. Money
7. Health
8. Power
9. Personal Passion
10. Respect and Dignity

To succeed, your actions must align with your priorities. Your priorities are your compass to success and happiness in life.

I like simplicity. As part of my continuous effort to simplify life for you and myself, I’d like to propose to you how understanding bottom line in any give situation can help us simplify it and find a quicker solution.

Sometimes, you may get stuck in a situation because you get too caught up in the details. These details may even overwhelm you and lead you to inaction. Or, these details may have little relevance in solving the problem. In such scenario, it is often helpful to revisit the bottom line instead of trying to solve the details and not the main problem. You have lost sight of the big picture, and hence, whatever you do, it has a large chance of being something that won’t solve the problem and likely something you will regret later.

What is bottom line? Bottom line means the single most essential point in a problem, as far as this post’s concern. By asking yourself what the bottom line is and once again defining it, you can re-focus on the main problem and the actions to solve it will be revealed. Let me quickly walk you through some examples.

Example 1 – You are in bad financial shape or you simply want to get rich
Bottom line: You need to spend less and make more.
There are many ways to do spend less and make more. Those would be details.

Example 2 – You want to get healthy or lose fat
Bottom line: You need to exercise and have a balance diet.
Get up from your behind now and do some real exercise. Get sore!
Oh, and stop engulfing them junk food.

Example 3 – You want to gain muscle
Bottom line: You need to adjust to a higher calories + protein diet and go pump irons.

Example 3 – You and your partner are arguing
Bottom line: You both love the other person, and therefore wish good things and happiness to happen to them.
Why are you still screaming, fighting, clawing, and divorcing each other?

Example 4 – Coworkers arguing in a meeting
Bottom line: You want to provide a product/service wanted by customers to profit the company in order to get paid.
Everyone one of us workers are just trying to bring bread home on to the table. There is no reason to fight and hurt each other…

Example 5 – Girlfriend came to talk…
Bottom line: Does she like me enough?
(At least, I believe this is the bottom line.) If the answer is no, there is no point to beg on your knees because she won’t stay anyway. If the answer is yes, there is no need to beg on your knees because she probably will stay before you get to your knees. Aha! There is no reason to bruise your precious knees.

I’m not saying to ignore details, and I’m not saying they don’t matter. Just that, next time you get confused and lost in a situation, try asking yourself what the bottom line is. If you cannot do or accept the bottom line, then maybe you are not ready to solve the problem, or there is a bigger problem.

I hope this will simplify your life.

Talk about having fun, kids can easily beat their adult counterparts, like taking candy from a baby. Seriously, adults can be so bad at enjoying the moment and having straight fun that they may as well just watch the weather channel.

My observation is substantiated by watching my niece who’s only slightly over one year old. It’s fascinating watching and paying attention to her. If you know a toddler around you, try to pay attention yourself.

I talked about living in the moment previously, young children are the ones who can really do it, probably because they are at a stage before they learn to have the kind of thoughts that we adults have, which in most cases, are simply illusions.

If a kid sees someone they like, they smile and is very excited.
If an adult sees someone they like, he or she may think, “Is it appropriate?”, “Does that person also like me?”, “Is that person going to return the favor?”, before smiling and show friendliness toward that person.

If a kid enjoys doing something, they are simply doing it and enjoying the moment completely.
If an adult enjoys doing something, they think about if it’ll last, if they can hold on to it, trying to capture the feeling, instead of simply doing it.

What I’d like to say is: We adults have much to learn from the kids, on how to live in the moment and how to simply have fun sometimes.

Living in the Moment…
What does it really mean?
Does it mean to live it up, festivity and party every night?
Does it mean to live like there is no future and seek pleasure day after day as an hedonist?
Does it mean to spend all your livelihood for a trip to the Bahama resort at a whim?
Aren’t we living and breathing every moment? Aren’t we already living?
What exactly does it mean to live in the moment? It sounds so…cliché.

You may have your own thoughts on what it is. Below is what I understand about living in the moment.

Living in the moment means having awareness in the here and now. If you are unclear about what I mean by awareness, why don’t you read my previous post on awareness and zen first. Like I said before, awareness is inside of all us and therefore, we can all learn to live in the moment. Living in the moment can also be described as simply being, simply doing what we do in each moment, with awareness. Not letting our egotistic thoughts and emotions dominate us. Stop regretting about the past. Stop worrying about the future. This helps us to appreciate each moment, along with all the small things within each moment.

Sounds simple enough? Not so fast… Not so easy…

What happened is that we learn NOT to live in the moment as we are growing up. When we are kids, we can’t wait to become teenagers. When we are in high school, we can’t wait to get into college. When we are in college, we can’t wait to be working and making money. When we are finally in the corporate world, some of us want to go back to school and some of us get bored and can’t wait for retirement. When we are single, we want to find a girlfriend or boyfriend. When we are finally hooked up with someone, we want our single life back. By this point, we are all safe to say WTF. Additionally, from day 1 after birth, we are bombarded by advertising that conditions and always tells us this one more thing that we need to be happy and to keep up with the trend and the Jones.

If only I buy this LV bag, I’d be happy…
If only I afford this Lamborghini, I’d be happy…
If only I own a house, I’d be happy…

As it goes, we are constantly thinking about and longing for the next place we want to be, the next thing we want. We constantly chase these ideals that are thoughts in our heads instead of doing what matters.

On the other hand, we need to be cautious about our memory, as our past can become another form of ideal or baggage where we hold on to the happy times or stuck dwelling on the bad ones. Your past has contributed to what you are today, accept it and do what you can with what you have now.

Living in the moment is simply sitting if you are sitting. It is simply doing whatever you are doing. It does not involve thinking about the past. It does not involve thinking about the future. It only involves awareness and whatever that you are doing. As described above, our behaviors have been trained to do just the opposite, myself included, we need to practice in order to get better at it, just like everything else in life – practice makes perfect.

Meditation is a pronounced method to practice living in the moment and also awareness. Living in the moment and awareness go hand-in-hand. Moreover, I’d say awareness is a pre-requisite because it lets you see your thoughts as you start thinking about past and future. Now, it is not that you cannot learn to live in the moment if you don’t meditate. Meditation is a method that allows a faster pace of learning because you are only sitting during meditation instead of being in motion (i.e. It is quite hard to concentrate if your boss is talking to you). The stillness of just sitting makes it easier to practice awareness and notice your thoughts. As you sit, you maintain awareness and pay attention to your body, its tension, and the emotions and thoughts that appear in your mind. As you let the body relax and the thoughts come and go, you learn to simply sit and you come to understand better what it means to live in the moment.

Meditation is merely practicing awareness so that it becomes natural to you, so you are present in the moment everywhere you go, whatever you do.

Of course, there are other things we can do to practice living in the moment. In fact, things such as listening to music, playing the piano, dancing, drawing, riding motorcycle, playing a sport, etc., we are inherently able to do them as if we are living in the moment. As I listen to music, it’s easy for me to simply listen. As I used to fence in college, I simply fence. In those moments, the only things that exist are my opponent, myself, and our blades. There is no room for external thoughts. It is easy to be in the moment in the favorite activities. Now we must do so in the non-so-favorable ones.

You can practice living in the moment by applying this “simply doing” concept on other things. For example, when you are talking to someone, you listen and focus solely on the conversation partner, instead of thinking what to eat for lunch or which candidate you’d vote for president. Even if your thought starts to drift, your awareness will let you see that you are thinking about something else and then you can shift your focus back to your conversation partner. As for me right now, I am writing this post and its my only focus, which should allow me to write it to the best of my ability. In other words, an analogy can be drawn between “living in the moment” and “doing the best in what you are doing in the moment”.

Don’t mistaken “living in the moment” as in giving up thoughts, past memory, and plans for future. Living in the moment can provide a new sense of appreciation and enjoyment in everything we do everyday. If you learn to live in the moment, you learn also to find peace and joy in every moment, and thinking and worrying less about past and future.

And why else do we want to find peace and joy like said? Because then we can have a good time without chasing material goods and learn not to be dependent on external means to be happy. Kinda like knowing how to have a great time without being drunk.

As any topic in Zen is quite difficult to write about and my principles and philosophy center heavily about Zen, my writings may lack certain clarity. Please feel free to contact me if you have any question.