Piggy’s Blog - Journey of Success and Greatness

Imagine someone egotistical… how are they like? I predict you have the image of a flaming jerk in your mind. What does it mean to be egotistical? How is it that some people have more ego than others? Following is how I will break it down.

Ego is a product of thoughts. It is a composite of all of our thoughts that project into a self-image of what we think we ought to be. One may think he or she needs to be confident, pretty, macho, skinny, full-bosom’ed, wealthy, know-it-all, normal, non-conforming, etc… Take a moment to look inside yourself to see the qualities and attributes you think you should have. All together, that creates an image of what you think you should be like. That is your ego.

Ego exists in all of us, and it is not necessarily negative. It is okay to have ego. Saying ego is a bad thing is like saying the fact that we have emotions and thoughts is a bad thing.

Most non-physical pain and suffering spring from the fact that the ego becomes threatened. The ego can be threatened by external attacks or through your internal dialogues, where you struggle because you feel you must be exactly like your ego but you are not. Negative emotions are producted in the process, such as anger, resentment, fear, envy, and jealousy. However, it does not have to be like that, with the pain and suffering.

Imagine someone said something to insult you, or perhaps a rumor going around about you. Something to the effect of “You are worthless.”

Do you feel hurt?
How would you feel about it?
In reality, do you become worthless?

You will probably feel hurt and angry, even though it did not make you worthless all of a sudden or take a part of you away. If anything, it is part of the ego that is lost. Your ego says that you are have some or a lot of value, and as this person challenges that, you become angry.

In such a scenario, there are 2 outcomes(choices). You can choose to react purely base on your ego and the resulting emotions. Or, you can choose to react objectively and optimally with the knowledge of your emotions and thoughts. It is obvious which choice can provide a better ending. Hence, ego produces pain and suffering for you when you react to situation base entirely on your ego and your emotions. And you do so because you may yet see your own ego, and it becomes out of control when you act like you are it.

Now that we are clear about ego being a matter of thoughts and emotions, dealing with ego is the same as dealing with emotions and thoughts. Sorry for being repetitive, but I can be sure you get the point now :)

Once again, the key lies in awareness. As stated, ego is not a bad thing per se. The goal is not to get rid of ego, just like we should never aim to remove or suppress our emotions and thoughts. You must embrace your ego as your emotions and thoughts and at the same time, be aware of their existence. Once you start to become more and more unaware, you know that you ego is not you.

In the above scenario, once you notice what you are thinking, the anger can go away because you know the other person did nothing to you, although he did something to your ego. And because your ego is just what you feel and you think, there is no reason to be so dramatic. Unless you feel you are very very important and are at the center of the universe… which is another form of ego.

For more details, please read Dealing with Emotions.

As a personal observation, a lot of thing is out of whack today is due to out-of-control ego. More and more so, the society puts a huge emphasis on monetary and materialistic wealth. THE RULE is that only with abundant or excessive wealth should you be considered successful, and ONLY THEN you can be happy. What craziness.

But as a result, people think they need to be rich. They HAVE TO be rich. Their ego is a rich and “successful” person, and without being aware, people act base solely on such ego. As a result, people do whatever it takes to make money and often do terrible things to the environment and other people. It is truly a sad state of affair, and I studder watching people continue to act upon such runaway-train-like ego. If they keep doing it, a train wreck is simple inevitability.

Today is supposedly Earth Day, but I am not a big fan of these specially designated days. Shall I mention Hallmark holidays?

This does not mean that I do not understand the meanings of them or that I do not celebrate special occassions. I love to have the opportunity to spend time with friends on birthdays and holidays. I also do my best to act in ways to show people how much I care and appreciate them.

Raising the awareness of the population to care for Earth is of course a positive thing. The reason I do not like these “special days” is because they show such fakeness. Though I do not want to generalize too much, but what generally happens inside and outside of the special days during the year is…

We spend 1 day saving Earth and the other 364 days not caring, if not unearthing (destroying), it.
We spend 1 day showing our love and making the other person feel important and the other 364 days overlooking him or her.
We spend 1 day being thankful to family and friends and the other 364 ignoring, if not being angry and frustrated, at each other.

The list of holidays goes on.

This kind of manner resembles that of people display for their new year resolution. Let alone how we spend a crap load of money on gifts on people while the most important thing is having and building the connection among us. It is something called relationship. Gifts are nice, and especially nice if they are thoughtful, but they are still not THE point. Relationship does not build on gifts.

Having special days are fine, but do not forget to do the same in the other 364 days in the year.

This is a rewrite of a post that I improved and not want buried in archives. I hope you enjoy.

Today is a continuation of the discussion in Money is not the Root of all Evil nor by Itself Evil.

At this point, you should no longer feel negative and apprenhensive about money, learning about money, talking about money, and having money.

Now that we treat money as tool, it follows that the value of money is entirely dependent on how we utilize it. As such, the responsibility becomes yours to decide what to do with your money.

While that mentality is sinking in your mind, let us talk about how money can buy happiness. You may ask, “What happen to the old saying of money cannot buy happiness?” I will clarify the fact remains that money cannot directly buy happiness; however, it is also a fact that money can buy a lot of things, which may or may not bring happiness. And certainly, we all know that money cannot get us everything we want.

Money cannot buy friends, real friends.
Money cannot find you love.
Money cannot magically give you new abilities.
Money cannot revive the dead.

So what then?

Money Means Survival

Remember in the old days our ancestors had to hunt for food and find shelter in caves or otherwise be dead… Well, earning money is a subsitutation for that. Money lets us buy food and a root above our heads. Money allows us to survive in this society. We are animals too, and survival is a priority, so let us be glad that each of us is surviving because we have some money, if not a lot.

Money Provides Sense of Security

Because our survival is linked to money, having more money allows us to thrive by reinforcing a sense of security. Having money saved up means less stress about survival.

How do I pay all the monthly bills?
What if I get laid off?
What if my car breaks down?
What if I have a health-related emergency?

If you have one or more of those scenario above, you can come out with no or less worries and stress if you have enough money. I can subscribe to that because I worried a lot about making it through my graduate school, paying tuition and living expense. Fortunately, I made it out alive in fair shape by taking leave of absense to work full-time and selecting only subsidized loans, along with some support from my dear sister.

Since I mentioned loan, let me add that lowering and eliminating debt has the same effect as having more money. That’s why we should also strive to be debt free.

Money Provides Flexibility

Laid off is mentioned above. If you have money saved up and not have to worry about financial burden such as mortgages, you have extra time to look for your next job. Laid-off aside, if you current job is unpleasant, you can choose to venture into starting your own business, or simply take some time off to find the right direction, or travel the world. By flexibility, we can also think of it as the next topic…

Money Lets Us Manifest Our Values

Despite not able to let you buy everything we desire, you can still put your money to good use toward the important things in your life, like:

• Continuing education
  With money, you can go ahead and get the master, PhD, MBA, CPA, degree in whatever field you have always wanted
• Assiting parents and family members
  Some of us have aging parents that could use our help financially. Actually, having money may also make it easier for you to help them out physically too, through flexibility in selecting schedule and location of the new job.
• Hobbies
  Use money toward the classes and equipments for your favorite hobby. I do for lessons on singing and piano!
• Buying things that you like
  Let’s be real. We all have things we like. Clothes? Shoes? Watches? Artwork? I love gadgets… A little indulgence can be constructive on our well being.
• Vacation
  Travel the world. See other cultures and people. Build perception with extra experience. What great ideas!
• Housing
  Having a comfortable, cozy place to call home lets us feel safe. Though I would say it is overkill where 2 people living in a 10,000 sq. ft. house. Oooooh, ain’t I sarcastic.

After all, it is not About Money…

Being rich does not automatically make you happy.
Nor can being poor make you happy either.

What money can do is… Money can contribute to your happiness depending on how you spend it. Therefore, it goes back to the general theme here that much like success, happiness has everything with knowing yourself and your values. So I suppose I should say that money can indirectly buy happiness, that is, only if you know what you want in life.

You can choose to spend all your money on materials, but that means you value materials above all else. If that makes you happy, be my guest. As Wolverine kindly said to Rogue in X-men: The Last Stand, “I’m not your father. I’m your friend.” I am not here to tell you what to do. I am here to get you to think for yourself.

This is a rewrite of a post that I improved and not want buried in archives. I hope you enjoy.

Money is evil is a misconception and self-limiting thoughts.

We know that…
The world appears to be obsessed about money.
The entire human society runs on the circulation of money.
Almost everyone is into making money, one way or another.

We also often observe that…
People dedicate their lives hoarding money.
People stuck worrying everyday about money.
Friends turn against each other for money.
Family and relatives break blood bonds on money issues.
People of authority sometimes do horrible things for money at the cost of the public.

The list keeps going… but…
Money is not evil.

People mistakenly carry this antagonistic mentality about money despite they would like and even love money themselves. So then, they prefer not to talk about it because of their mentality. They may worry that having and liking money will cause other people to think they are evil. However, whether they show it or not, they want more money. And don’t we all. What a paradoxical relationship.

The society supplies and feeds this negative connotation that the word “money” carries because of the bad things that happen when money is involved and what people would do for money.

At the end of the day, humans are the ones responsible for the evil.
The people who made the choice to do bad things for money are responsible.
There is no other explanation.
Stop blaming.
The responsibility is on us.

Money is not a negative thing.
Money is just a tool.
It is just a dead object.
It is just an invented abstraction for us to trade like people trade goods in the ancient time.
Let us stop putting the responsibility on a dead and abstract thing.

Mone is like any other tool we use in our everyday life.
Screw driver, hammer, drill, etc.
People can kill people with those tools, but we never say a screw driver is evil, a hammer is evil. Heck, we can kill people with our fists, aren’t we the evil one then?

As a tool, money provides us leverage.
It gives us power…
Ah, power…
That is the key.
That is where we can attribute why people consider money evil.
As the old saying goes, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Money provides power in this society.
Lots of money provides lots of power.
Having an inexhaustible amount of money means absolute power.
Money cannot buy everything but you will have “nearly” absolute power, at least.
So I suppose we can suppose that having a lot of money can screw with your mind if you had not master your mind in the first place.

That is exactly why I write this post.
To get your minds out of the gutter where money is evil.
To clarify that money is a tool.
Money is just a tool.
It is neither good or evil inherently.
It is all about what you do with it that matters.
It is why it is important to understand your values and priorities in life.
What you do with it will dictate its usefulness and meaning, which is why hoarding money for no reason is not good (save, save, save… without spending). And that is exactly what some people are doing.

Another good reason for the clarification is when people think money is evil and as a result…
They don’t think about it.
They don’t learn about money management.
They don’t read about personal finance.
They don’t learn the rules and laws concerning money.
Which becomes a bit of a problem…

It is going to be a problem because they won’t care to read my post!
Ok, just kidding.

It is going to be a problem because in this society, we simply cannot do away with money.
Their ignorance will incur extra cost.
Their ignorance will make them lose their hard-earned money.
They will likely be trapped in “rat race”.
They will likely stay poor.
If they are born rich, they may cease to have financial stability.

Any of that happening would suck. Majorly suck. And it sucks for me too because it is my intention and my hope that people can improve, as I always insist. A hope where people can have happier life because happiness is what we are looking for, after all.

Why don’t you help me spread this message out?