Losing Your Money

Making money is all about your being and your doing: being who you are and doing what you can with what you have.

Not knowing your true self and not doing what you are supposed to do, and yet wanting your money, and even lots of it, leads to your “money fantasies”, such as becoming a professional gambler, lining up for hours to get your Power Ball, and even engaging in burglary or bank robbery.

No matter what, you may lose your money at some point in your life, and that is a reality. Remember, the opposite of "gain" is "loss", and what goes up must also come down, and this is a universal truth.

LOSING

Even if your life is a bed of roses, it must also have some thorns to go with it. What goes up must also come down. Gains are followed by losses. That is the natural cycle of all things.

While pursuing your careers, you might have encountered your discharge or unemployment, and while making your money in your businesses or financial investments, you might also have been overwhelmed by your money losses.

Freedom

Free yourself from “money miseries”—living from paycheck to paycheck; not making both ends meet; always seeing your lack and deprivation when compared with others.

Remember this: Even wealthy celebrities went broke, and you are not alone. For example, Mike Tyson, a boxing champion, earning over $300 million dollars, ended up in bankruptcy in 2003; and Michael Jackson, a recording artist, dancer, singer, and songwriter, earning over $500 million dollars, was heavily in debt when he died in 2009.

So, fight the good fight to recover, restore, and rejuvenate yourself from the bondage and wreckage of losses. 

Bondage

Money is emotional, especially when always feeling the lack of it. Yes, money can cause many mental problems, including depression.

With more money, you can live rich. But even with less money, you can still live richly, and free yourself from the bondage of lack.

But how to live richly if you have less money? The answer is thrift, which is an alternative lifestyle to consumerism, materialism, and over-consumption in this material world you are living in.

Thrift may help you work less, and not more. Many people are not paying with their money; instead, they are paying with their time from their lives. Are you one of them? Are you doing two or more jobs just to earn that extra money to spend more? 

Thrift may promote your positive consumption values. Are some or most of your purchases aimed at your instant gratification, or just enhancing your self-esteem, making you feel rich, such as wearing a designer’s dress?

Thrift may encourage your savings. It may give you more space to save, thereby instrumental in protecting you from negative income shocks, such as an unexpected unemployment.

Yes, living richly with thrift may turn you from bondage to freedom.

FREEDOM with BONDAGE shows you how to free yourself from your bondage to the flesh that gives you the "freedom" to make the wrong choices and decisions in your everyday life.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Living in the Now

In this day and age with the advancement of technology, living in the now is not easy. Speed is everything, and performance is based on speed and efficiency, which has much to do with speed too. As a result of the craving for speed, the human mind slowly and increasingly becomes more compulsive.

According to the most recent NBC news, even young children have become addicted to speed with their multi social media in their digital world that they have become disconnected with the real world and the people around them.

As a parent, you should make sure that your child or children stay more in the present. Of course, you, as the parent, should also set a good example, such as, not talking on the phone while driving.

Are you yourself living in the present? If you are, your mind should not be focusing on the electronic gadgets, which you are holding in your hands. According to the NBC news report, some children are even texting hundreds of messages a day, and they have lost physical contacts with their families and friends. Instead of eating their dinners, they are looking at their electronic devices. This multitasking is not living in the present, just as texting while driving is not living in the present

Not living in the present is akin to the mind shuffling between the past and the future. Your actions or inactions are derived and driven by your thoughts and memories of your past experiences, and how you project them into the future as desires and expectations. Accordingly, the human mind constantly shuffles between the past and the future. As a result, it seldom stays in the present moment. To illustrate, while talking on the cell phone, how often do you talk about what happened or what you are going to do next? If you think more deeply, the subject of your conversation mostly involves the past or the future. In a worse scenario, if you are talking or texting while driving, your mental focus is certainly not on the present—which is driving your car.

The first step to train your mind to focus more on the present is to concentrate on your breathing. Most of us are totally unaware of our breaths, unless we are short of breath after running or climbing stairs, or due to some medical conditions that may cause difficulties in breathing. Concentration on how you breathe in and breathe out, as well as your body’s sensations during the inhalation and exhalation trains you to develop mindfulness. It is important to know that your body is yours only, and it is always with you. Finding the moment-by-moment relationship with your body through your breathing is your key to wellness of the body, the mind, and the soul. Be mindful of the present.

Mindfulness is your deliberate attention to the present moment. This purposeful focus enables you to recognize your thoughts as they occur, but without paying judgmental attention to them; in other words, they neither distract nor disturb you, and you just observe them objectively, like watching a movie about yourself unfolding before your very eyes. Essentially, letting the mind stay in the present is a simple way to meditate.

Are you living your life, or your life living you?

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Good Visual Habits Better Vision

Develop good visual habits to have better vision. Vision deterioration is a result of bad visual habits that have accelerated vision deterioration over the years. It is like bad posture that affects shallow breathing, resulting in many health issues. Over time, many of us have formed bad visual habits that affect how we see, leading to many vision problems.

Blinking: Blink constantly to relax the eye. Blinking has to be soft and complete, not rapid, movement of the eyes. To relax your eyes, imagine you were using your eyelashes to gently open and close your eyes. Make sure your movements are slow, gentle, and complete.

Shifting: Shift your eyes constantly (the healthy eye sends more than 50 images per second to the brain) and rapidly by changing your eye focus frequently. Your eyes move more rapidly when they are relaxed.

Blink and shift your eyes as often and as much as possible. Just be more aware of the need to blink and shift constantly and consistently.

Peripheral vision: Be aware of your total field of vision whenever you focus your eyes. Use BOTH central vision and peripheral vision at the same time. That is, don’t STARE! When you are looking at something, try to look at other things on the side. Cultivate this awareness.

Natural sunlight: Spend more time outdoors instead of indoors to reap the health benefits of sunlight in nourishing your visual system. Warm sunlight early in the morning or later in the afternoon is beneficial to your eyes. Form the habit of not wearing sunglasses, unless the sun is too strong for your eyes.

Palming: Relaxation of the eye cures all vision problems. The eye rests completely only in total darkness. Practice palming and visualize blackness even for as little as 1 to 2 minutes per session. Of course, the longer you palm, the more relaxed your eyes become. In addition to covering your eyes with your palms, you may also cover them with eye patches (obtainable at pharmacies). Don’t close your eyes tightly; instead, gently look and visualize the blackness in front of your eyes.

Vision without glasses: See without glasses to bring back your eye’s natural “accommodation” for better vision. However, remember not to strain to see without glasses. Reduce your time of wearing glasses, and delay the time you put on glasses in the morning. Use under-corrected prescription to slowly and gradually wean yourself from wearing corrective lenses.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© Stephen Lau

The Immune System Recovery

 THE IMMUNE SYSTEM RECOVERY

 Your Creator has given your body an immune system that protects you from disease and infection. Sadly, your immune system may attack itself in the form of autoimmune diseases, which can affect many parts of your body, including your nerves, muscles, endocrine system (the system that controls your body’s hormones and other chemicals), and digestive system.

 There are more than 80 types of autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes mellitus, rheumatoid arthritis, and myasthenia gravis, among many others.

Many of these diseases associated with autoimmunity are often chronic, requiring lifelong care and monitoring.

Most of these diseases strike women more than they do men, particularly women of working age and during their child-bearing years.

 Essentially, autoimmunity can affect almost any organ or body system. The exact problem you may have with autoimmunity depends on which body tissues are targeted by your immune system. For example, if your skin is targeted, you may have skin rashes, blisters, or color changes; if your thyroid gland is affected, you may feel extremely tired, sensitive to cold, and muscle aches; if your joints are attacked, you may have severe joint pain, stiffness, and loss of function.

Risk Factors

 (1) Stress is a major factor triggering the onset of an autoimmune disease, especially if you already have an over-stressed or a weakened immune system. As you age, your stress may increase with increased limitations on your life. In order to cope with daily living, you need to conquer your stress, which may lead to depression and anxiety, which are commonly associated with aging.

(2) The genes you inherit may predispose your susceptibility to developing an autoimmune disease.

(3) Viruses may also contribute to the development of an autoimmune disease.

 My Myasthenia Gravis

 Myasthenia gravis is one of the many autoimmune diseases, which, according to contemporary Western medicine, offer no known cure, except controlling or suppressing their many disease symptoms. This book is based on the author's own experience of battling against his myasthenia gravis: how he stopped all his medications through a holistic approach to controlling and managing the disease. This book provides insight and well-researched information that he would like to share with those who are afflicted with myasthenia gravis or any other autoimmune disease.

 This book covers every aspect of holistic health to cope with autoimmunity: body detox, diet, lifestyle changes, exercises for muscle weakness, and mental relaxation techniques for vision problems associated with myasthenia gravis.

THE IMMUNE SYSTEM REWCOVERY

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau