I think probably there are three aspects: taking care of ourselves physically, mentally and spiritually.

Physically, eat when it is the time to eat, sleep when it is the time to sleep. It sounds easy, but it may not be easy to follow day by day.

Mentally, You have to be mindful and be aware of your working habit of mind, pay attention to what you are thinking. I am sure worries will not help you on whatever you want to achieve. For something, don’t think about it too much, let it go with the negative thoughts, and leave the space for position and creative ideas come in.

Spiritually, Yoga, meditation, they all help. Every day we need to clean out our minds and connect ourselves with pure world. Enjoy the moment, happiness will fill in our daily life.

Here is a recipe you may want to have a try.

Winter Melon Soup

By Rhonda Parkinson, About.com Guide

This popular soup, featuring the mild sweet taste of winter melon, is often served at Chinese banquets.

Serves 3 to 4.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup winter melon (1/2 pound)
• Water to boil winter melon
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 4 Chinese dried black mushrooms
• 2 – 3 slices ginger
• 1/4 cup cooked ham, diced
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 green onion, green part only, washed and cut on the diagonal into 1-inch pieces

Preparation:

1. Wash the winter melon, remove the green skin, seeds, and the pulp. Cut into 2-inch pieces.
2. Reconstitute the Chinese dried mushrooms by soaking in hot water for 20 – 30 minutes until softened. Squeeze out any excess water.
3. Place the winter melon in a pot of water, bring to a boil, and simmer for approximately 20 minutes or until the winter melon is tender.
4. Add the chicken broth, mushrooms, ginger and cooked ham. Add seasonings as desired. Simmer for about 20 minutes. Add green onion for garnish. Serve hot.
 
Variations:
Purchase a whole winter melon (about 8 – 10 pounds), cut off the top, remove the seeds and pulp, place the other ingredients inside and steam for 1 – 2 hours. This makes for a fancier looking dish.
Add barbecued pork and/or shrimp.
Try adding other vegetables, such as bamboo shoots, carrots, or silk squash.

勤   学  如 春 起 之 苗，不 见 其 增，日 有 所 长；

Chuò xué  rú  mó  daō  zh ī  shí, bú  jiàn  qī  sǔn,  rì  yǒu  suǒ  kuī.

辍 学 如 磨 刀  之  石，不 见 其 损，日 有 所 亏。

                                                                      Tao Yuan Ming

                                                                      陶 渊 明

Study hard is like the seeding grows everyday in spring, even though you can not see its growing;

If you don’t study, you will be like the grindstone, whose shape becomes less by sharpening the knives every time even though you can not notice it’s changing.

1. Put slides of cucumber on the sunburn area, or using cucumber rub the skin. This method give the burned skin enough nutrition and vitamin.
2. Put the slides of rind of watermelon on the skin or use it to rub the skin.

Use the method as many times as you can, until you feel your skin comfortable.

So what can we do?

1. Watching more movies, TV shows, read more books, all full of stories of other people.
2. Offering your help to others, helping others is actually helping yourself.
3. Share your stories to other people; give others an opportunity to help you.

Hope your life smoother than you thought.

Here are some kind of food can help you to increase your memory. Please add them in your daily dinner.

“Some of the best cruciferous vegetables are broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, and cauliflower. The best green leafy veggies are spinach, kale and collard or mustard greens. Other foods known to increase memory are ones with folic acid, such as, lentils, black-eyed peas, artichokes, wheat germ, beets and oranges. Fish has also shown to aid in memory retention“ –from Food For the Brain

 All we eat build what we are. If you want a happy life, please eat the food that make you happy.

A British Writer, William Makepeace Thackeray, Wrote in his book:

Sow a thought, and you reap an action;

Sow an action, and you reap a habit;

Sow a habit, and you reap a character;

Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.

Watch your thoughts at the very beginning, don’t give the negative seed any chance to grow, your garden will be full of positive flowers in the future.

There are many questions related “What should I do with my life” that challenged or confused people in the middle of their journey. Such as: “Is a career supposed to feel like a destiny? How do I tell the difference between a curiosity and a passion? Should I make money first, to fund my dream? If I have a child, will my frustration over my work go away? Should I accept my lot, make peace with my ambition, and stop stressing out? Why do I feel guilty for thinking about this?” Using these questions as a chain, the author arranged the stories in groups in which people have similar fears and misconceptions. Readers can read along each story and have their own awareness from different angles. .

Many people have struggled and pondered and tried to look for guidance and courage at their crossroad. “How often we hold ourselves back until we have no choice”. By reading the look, look at how people took actions, kept trying, even they didn’t succeed, but they found something shaped their character positively. By reading the book, we can learn and discover that the hard-earned skills mean more to us than the talents we were born with; we can learn that  it is important how we can hold ourselves accountable to the opportunities we’ve given; we can learn that the worst enemy is ourselves; we will learn that for the question What should I do with my life, is “ok not to have an answer, but it’s not ok to stop looking for one”, we need to live up to our potential. By reading other people’s stories, we may find our way of thinking about life.

References:

1. Bronson, P. (2002). What should I do with my life: the true story of people who answered the ultimate question.  United States: Random House, Inc.

Monkey King, another name Sun Wu Kong, is a main character in the classical Chinese epic novel – Journey to the west. In the novel, he accompanied the monk whose name was Tang Seng on the Journey to retrieve Buddhist sutras from India.

Monkey King is a humanized monkey with many Magical powers that people could have imagined in 16th Century. Now I will compare those Magical Powers with the modern technologies in 21st century, you will know how ancients’ dreams influenced our modern life.

The first one, Monkey King could fly over a distance of 54000 km in one somersault. He could jump to the moon in a few minutes. Now, we can take plane going through the sky; we have rocket to go to moon. Flying in the sky and going to the moon are not dreams anymore in 21st century.

The second magical power, he had Fiery Golden Eyes and amazing ears. If monsters talked 500km away: “ah, do you know if you eat the meat of the monk -Tang Seng’s meat, your life will be everlasting, you will not die, so we need to kill him and eat him” Monkey King could hear that and jump in front them to fight immediately. Another example: a beautiful lady stand in front of monk Tang Seng, and pretend: “ah…e…e…, Please help me, I am sick, I can not move” Monkey King would recognize her using his fiery Golden eyes, “she is changed from a monster, don’t believe her”. Comparing amazing abilities of him, Now we have TV, telephone, internet, not only we can see and hear far away but we can also talk with each other just like face to face. We have lie detector to know weather people are lying or not. We can do what Monkey king could do.

The third, he could do 72 transformations. He could transform himself into other people, various animals and objects such as a tree, a bird, a mosquito on your nose. He could pull out several hairs and blow them, many monkeys would appear, all have his power, and help him to fight against enemy. Even though we haven’t totally realized this dream of our ancient, but somehow we can do them. For example, if a lady through surgery changed the contour of her face – from eyes, nose to mouth, and body change, voice change, making her more beautiful and charming. Even her husband can not recognize her; she totally changed to another person. A Man can be changed to a lady, a lady can be changed to a man. Our science becomes so amazing. Clone technology almost realizes copying and creating the same animal…

From Monkey King, we know how many dreams the ancients had in 16th century. Our modern life almost has realized all of them. Don’t you think it is the ancient’s wealthy imaginations directed and created our life?

Someone may wonder what the lives will like after 400 years. So, dare to dream. Our descendents’ lives are just in our imagination.

Person A and Person B were walking in the desert for a very long time. Person B is far behind person A. They both were thirsty and hungry to die. Suddenly, person A found there were bread and a bottle of water in front of him, and also a pile of gold beside, but he could only choose either food or gold. He could not have both. If you were him, which one do you think he would choose?

Person A chose the food, because he didn’t want to die. He ate it and gained the energy, and walked forward again. Person B took the gold with him because he had no choice but he knew he might die after a while and the gold was not useful for him in that situation. He moved forward more slowly than before. Three hours later, they entered a small town. Person B who almost died bought everything he likes. He enjoyed the happiness that gold can buy. He did some investment and he became rich. Person A was so regret about himself not taking the risk choosing the pile of gold. He had to do some survivor job for daily life. Here is another question, if you were person A, do you feel regret for not choosing gold before?

I made the story, because I always feel the journey to immigrant in a new country like this. Almost everyday we have to make decisions for our life, without enough thinking time, and no one will tell us if our choices and decisions are right or not. Our life is a consequence of big and small choices and decisions made by ourselves. We are not lucky to get some gold like person B, most time we like person A, we have to struggle to do some survivor job to bring bread home. And then we forgot our original goal of immigration. When we remember our old dreams, we suddenly notice why our life went the way we never thought of. Did we do some thing wrong before?

I can give you a real example for this. One of my friends, his goal was to get a MBA certificate in a famous university as he immigrant to Canada. When he arrived, he decided to do a labor job in a factory to survive and at the same time in his spare time he would learn English in order to pass the entrance examination of the university. But later on he found he was so tired after daily work and he couldn’t study well because he was not used to do the job in the factory. Any jobs were not easy for him because of his lack of English language skills. So he decided to look for welding job to earn some money first. He studied welding at a private school, and finely found a welding job. But the fact was he could not earn the money he expected, and also he was also very tired to do that job because he was a beginner. Then he quit his job after 3 months, he found a job in Tim Horton’s, he thought this time, he could study in his spare time now. But the fact still made him disappointed. Even this kind of entry lever job made him tired everyday. Then he decided to do door to door sale. Time flies, five years passed by. When I called him, and asked him, how was his MBA going. Guess, what his answer was? “I don’t want to get MBA anymore. I am too old to go to university. I want to be a stock trading person.” And I asked what he was doing now. He said he was still a door to door sales person.

Is that miserable? I hope he is enjoying his job right now. This is really life. And life is hard, isn’t it? How can we make decisions and made our life successful and full of happiness?

Let me remind you the story I told you at the beginning. Do you think Person A made a wrong decision choosing the food instead of gold? No, I don’t think so. How about if there was no town in front of him? Did he know how much pain the person B suffered and how jealous he was because he didn’t get the food during the three hours before they entered the town? Who do you think had a happy life? Person A or person B? In my opinion, if they had good attitude towards life, they appreciated that at least they both were alive after having gone through the harsh time until they entered the town. They both had a happy life.

Here are some words I want share with you:

1. Set your goals, and in everyday life, keep an eye on your goals and then let your intuition suggest you the right choice.

2. We have to learn to be content, whatever the circumstance may be.

3. Making your own decisions and accepting the consequences is the only way to stay in control of your success, and your life.

4. Life is a journey. Enjoy the ride, because there is no return ticket.