I will talk about a most significant attribute that will make a huge impact on a person’s development, change his behaviors, and allow him to see the world differently, IMHO. THAT attribute is awareness.

This awareness does not just involve paying attention to things. It has to begin with open mindedness. Because on top of observance, we have to think critically and understand, to understand the environment around us, to understand the people we interact with, to understand the different events happening… so on and so forth. If your mind is close, you only hold on to what you believe already and new observance/thoughts/ideas will not be able to enter and stay in your consciousness.

Amont those, we have to understand ourselves most importantly. This goes hand in hand with the saying that “We are our own worst enemy” and ““We should know our enemies”. Therefore, we need to know (be aware) of ourselves, and to develop ourselves, the first step shall be paying attention to ourselves, our minds, our body, our emotions. When we know ourselves, we then know which part of ourselves need improvement, and also know how to act accordingly everyday.

Beyond that, our awareness should also apply to people around us. By being aware and paying attention with an open mind, we can come to understand other people better. Hence, we will also be able to communicate better. There are also events around us we should be aware of, to understand the flow of the world, how things work in each system (by system, it could mean school, company, family…)

I have only scratch the surface of this topic, but the rest is best grasp by personal experience. Raising awareness will allow better attention to ourselves and our surroundings and then absorb and learn. It is not something to adopt in one day, and a certain mindfulness is required to learn awareness. Better way to say it is that we make awareness our habits, an integral part of us just like breathing, eating, and sleeping.

Notice I have changed the tag line for this blog from “As the Journey Continues…” to “Journey to Success”. This is a way to signify a new stage for myself, a new mindset in seeking, and also a focus for this blog. Let’s take a look at the most important word in the phrase, the definition of success from dictionary.com:

1. the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors.
2. the attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like.
3. a successful performance or achievement: The play was an instant success.
4. a person or thing that is successful: She was a great success on the talk show.

Those are good definitions that all apply to the word success. However, let me break down I have in mind about success.

I believe an individual would have to define success himself because success entails so many areas of life, despite the fact that we often associate success only with career, fame, and wealth. Here at this blog, the core of the success breathes constant self-improvement, personal development. I will talk about personal experience and learnings within the realm of personal development. I want to share them here because hopefully all of you can get something of out this, to get to a better life, to get to a happier life, while allowing me to keep track of my own thoughts and ideas.

Financial success is an element that enables easier access to success in other areas of life, which is why this blog owes it a category, the “Personal Finance” category. Hopefully I can provide some interesting and helpful ideas for everyone in that area also.

Back to the topic of success, one thing that comes to mind immediately is the philosophy of wushu mentioned in Jet Li’s Fearless, where wushu implies the strengthening of one’s body, mind, and soul all together. That basically covers the ground but to be more specific, success for us should also envelops improving ourselves mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and financially. To achieve this, we have to understand that life takes us on a path of constant self-discovery and we shall learn from the choices we make, good and bad. Here I will quote Jet Li, “The biggest enemy of Jet Li is Jet Li. I need to beat up myself. Today, we need to become better than yesterday, and tomorrow better than today.” As such, the path to success is a relentless pursuit of personal development.

With that, I will leave you to think about the kind of success and the kind of personal development that you seek. I would love for everyone to share and provide comments on this blog. Thanks!

Happy Chinese New Year to everyone! May you all have another fruitful years and have your wishes and dreams come true (or move closer to them)!

As previously mentioned, I’ve been consistently hitting the gym for weight training, and that I leave my cardio to other exercises. But due to the lenghty period of cold weather and lack of internal basketball facility (I can no longer go to my school’s facility now), I’ve been passing up basketball for about 2 months… until yesterday.

Yesterday’s weather was gorgeous and it’s too much to pass up. So I went to shoot some hoop with my good friend at work. Shortly after we did some shooting, some other folks showed up and we decided to play a game, which turned out to be a full-court game. I did not keep it mind that it’s my first return to cardio/basketball after awhile and went all-out running/jumping. It was all fun but needless to say… I’m really feeling it today!

So the advice is… keep up with your exercise consistently. Notice the keyword is consistently. If you’ve taken a break for awhile, don’t just shove yourself back into it but instead try to work yourself gradually back into a routine. Well, you can shove yourself into… don’t say I didn’t warn you :P

One of my favorite things to do is listening to music (duh). And for a very long time now, I can no longer let myself go with the stock headphones that come with the mp3 players/portable devices. I will provide some guidance here in picking headhpones. First, let’s explore the important attributes of headphones and then move on to some recommendations, it’s only several:

Earbuds/full-size(open or close): Main concern is where you want to carry the headhpones, how portable, and how weird can you bear yourself to look…it’s all personal preference here. There are some very capable earbuds exist these days (shures, sony…) But the full-size usually offer fuller sounds. For the full-size, a close headphones will keep the sound in and provide better sound isolation in most cases. An open full-size can offer better soundstage but will have much sound leak, so don’t buy open headphones if you want to keep the music to yourself in the environment.

Frequency Response (Hz): This attribute determines how high/low of a pitch the headphones can reproduce. In other words, the bigger the range, the richer the sound will appear. This is the main factor for me in picking a pair of headphones (and then the price too of course).

Nominal Impedance (ohm): The higher the value, the more power will be needed to drive the headphones. In other words, if you get a headphones with very high ohm, you will need to get an amp to make it sound louder on your computers/portable devices.

Let’s go on to the 4 headphones I own and recommend sorted based on a combination of liking/cost-efficiency:

1) Sennheiser PX100 – 15-27000 Hz, $50~, you get a open over-the-head headphones with very crisp high and deep bass. It’s also foldable, making it easy to carry around. Best bang for the bucks.

2) Sony MDR-EX90LP Stereo Earphones – 5 – 25000 Hz, $90~, I would say this pair has comparable sound to PX100. The only reason it’s ranked 2nd is because of the price. It’s around $90. It comes with 3 pairs of plastic ear pieces of different sizes, MAKE SURE you find the best-fit, which is required to get the best sound from these. This is the pair I usually travel with because it doesn’t leak sound being in-ear and provides very good sound isolation.

3) Sennheiser HD-595 Premier Headphone – 12-38500Hz, <$200, a full-size open headphones that has very comfortable paddings that surround the ear. For less than $200, you will get even better/richer sound than PX100 and also a better soundstage (spacious feeling). Though one may say the difference is subtle. You will need to judge if the difference is worth the bucks. You will need an amp to hear the best sound from these “cans”. Oh, and watch out for bad-hair…

4) Sony MDR-EX51LP Fontopia Headphones – 6 – 23,000 Hz, $25-$30, a cousin of the 2nd place sony headphones, Sony MDR-EX90LP. This is actually the 1st pair of “good” headphones I purchased. It’s also the cheapest here. It’s essentially the same as Sony MDR-EX90LP with muddier sound. Still much better than stock headphones. I use this in the gym.

All of the above headphones are comfortable enough to wear for hours, IMO. I’m by no means stereo sound professional or an audiophile like some out there, but for the love of music, I sincerely hope this is helpful for others out there hunting for headphones for hearing music on their mp3 players/laptops/computers at office.
May you find the best sound.