Life Management

You live your own life, and nobody can live it for you. So, you are responsible for your own life management.

Life management is an ongoing daily task. To be sure, managing life is not easy, and it is never meant to be easy. But somehow everybody has to learn it--just like learning how to stand up and walk.

Life management requires tools. Finding and using the right tools hold the key to the art of living well. Therefore, the art of living well is all about living your life, and using your own life management tools.

The essence of living for life or living well is life appreciation, which begins with finding out who you are.

Who are you? Nobody can answer this question for you: you must answer this question out of your own life experiences. Specifically, you have to know precisely the life you are living right now, and the experiences associated with it.

Then you must understand what is life and death. We usually think of life in terms of lifespan--sixty, seventy, eighty, or ninety years. Most of us are concerned with only how long we will live. To manage life effectively, you must see your life clearly, not just in terms of the number of years you will live.

According to Buddhism, we must forget self in order to see life with clarity. Forgetting self means appreciating life in a broader and unrestricted way. Forgetting self is not self-denial; instead, it is demonstration of compassion for others, and putting others before self.

According to Christianity, we must deny self in order to appreciate God's purpose-driven life for us. In other words, the most important life management tool is focusing on others, rather than on self. By focusing on others, you will see everything in perspective, including your own life problems, and thereby enabling you to become more expressive of love and compassion for others. Mother Teresa's words: "It is more blessed to give than to receive" may sum up the importance of this life management tool.

To enhance this life management tool, you can practice meditation. Through meditation, which focuses on seemingly insignificant and irrelevant things, such as your own breathing, to the exclusion of everything else in your mind, you come to terms with your innermost thoughts, and thus you may become "enlightened." With clarity of mind, you begin to perceive your priorities in life. Once you know who you are, and what you want from life, you will learn to live your life accordingly.

Copyright (c) 2010 Stephen Lau

The Life Of Challenges And How To Overcome Life Obstacles

We live in a life of challenges and at one point or another in life you must have felt so discouraged that you seriously considered giving up. Everyone reaches a point of weakness, emotional breakdown and extremely low morale. But you must never give up or lose hope. Always arise after falling and inspire yourself even to achieve more than ever before.

Before undertaking any venture, it is advisable that you consider this life of challenges is inevitable. You must never undermine life obstacles or assume that you are strong enough to cope with them. It is very vital that you acquire the right mental preparedness to handle problems and to move on after setbacks.

In this life of challenges, problems will always arise and the only way to counter is to face them. Do not to try getting around challenges. If you put your best foot forward trying to find a solution, more likely than not you will succeed. In most cases it may not be easy to get a fully satisfying answer but remember, in case of a setback it is always imperative to find the quickest way to get back on track.

Therefore, do not look for the perfect solution or ideal circumstance to tackle this life of challenges. We human beings are imperfect thus the pursuit for perfection will be futile. You need to work with the current conditions and what you have at hand thus be in a position to move on.

In any case whenever you delay solving a problem or spend too much time on it, you lose precious time. Hence you need to tackle them as soon as they arise. A positivism of thinking will do you much good and always know that if you tackle an issue now you may not have to worry about it later.