Looking back, there are many occasions that I am annoyed and overwhelmed when my surroundings gets messy and cluttered. Especially back in those student days with schoo, work, and life all going that I really didn’t have time to clean. When I finally get the chance, it’ll be such a clutter that I’m not sure where to start, which makes it EXTRA annoying.

That being said, those are my main motivations to stay clean and organized, and also the reason for spending a good portion of my memorial weekend cleaning my apartment of things from past years. Now that I am more aware, I realize how my mind can be more peaceful having a surrounding that is clean and rid of clutter.

I want to share this because this is something that we all have control over that can contribute to the peace of our minds and put ourselves more at ease. Cleaning is something that we can all do by choice!

So I suggest let’s all allocate time to clean and keep it clean. Not only living area, but also work desk, office, car… Clean up junk mails/paper, recycle things we don’t need anymore, mob the floor, reorganize furnitures for more spacious, cleaner look, etc.

By staying clean and organized, we can focus our energy and attention on other things in life, instead of having the burden of uncleanliness on our minds.

On a side note, I bought a few pieces of furnitures that both help to keep things organized and provide a more unified theme for my apartment. I spent arond $130, but it’s worth it. I brought this up because we need to remember to live frugally without being cheap! :)

Watching TV, we see commercials.
Listening to radio, we hear commercials.
Surfing online, we see online ads.
Driving on the roads, we see billboards.

What do most of these commercials and ads have in common?
They are telling us to spend!

This past weekend is memorial weekend. Along with New Year, Valentines, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and all the other special days and holidays, what do they have in common?

All the stores will be enticing us to spend money with deals on those days!

I am not against spending. Hoarding money is not our purpose. I believe in spending money to reach a certain quality of life that bring us and people around us happiness, so long as we follow the simple rule of spending less than what we make, distinguish want from need, and/or really understand that the things we are purchasing WILL increase the quality of life. For example, I love music, so mp3 brainer is a no brainer. It is okay to spend!

But observing all the ads/commericals and holiday deals, I am amazed at what these marketers are doing. In this age and days, they have associated the idea of spending with saving. If you pay attention, most of these ads basically say something like “Spend $x to purchase [item] and save $y” or “Get this deal and you will save x%”. Obviously, they want to manipulate/brainwash people into thinking that buying these things will save them money. It would be true IF all those items are a necessity in life.

Maybe I am pointing out the obvious, but I think it is important to point it out in order for all of us who are in pursuit of financial freedom to be clear and understand not to fall fow it :)

Bottom line is, Spending does not equal saving.

My fellow readers, I’m sure a lot of you are college students or graduates. Either way, I think it is safe to assume that we all have gone to friends’ or relatives’ commencement ceremony. I think it is also safe that there is one element of the ceremony, that we are ever so fond of, or perhaps dread it the most.. that’s right, THAT is the commencement speech.

Over the years, I have gone to many ceremonies, and needless to say, some maybe somewhat inspirational, some maybe fill with mundane phrases such as “you will be the pillars of the society tomorrow, etc.” and some are just utterly boring and filled with jibberish.

However, there is one exceptional commencement speech that I would like to share with everyone some interesting highlights from it, by Steven Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005 at Stanford University.

• I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. – He made a decision, committed to it, and BELIEVED that it will be okay. Sometimes we just do not know where life is leading us, but a decision has to be made. After making the decision, trusting that it will be okay may just the the key that “it will turn out okay”!
• And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. – We have to learn to trust ourselves and our intuition. There has gotta be something right about doing the things that our gut tells us it feels right. Make sense? We may not have the beautiful typography we see on computer today if Steve Jobs had not done so!
• The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. – This is a good synonym to keeping an open mind.
• Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. – Again, trusting, having faith in your decision and yourself is important. Persistence is what takes us to success eventually.
• You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. – Work and lover together essentially ARE a major part of our lives… how do we love life and live happily if we don’t love them? If you don’t listen to me, listen to Steve Jobs, “Keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”
• Here is the best piece of advice from the speech:
  

  “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

  Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

  He is right. If I know I’m going to die soon, I don’t have time to NOT do the things I want. If I ask myself the same question he did and I cannot answer with one thing that I would STILL do if I will die tomorrow for too many days, some changes are definitely needed.

• Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. – Understanding your life is completely your own responsibility. Do not get bogged down or fear others and what they think. Do not live life based on others’ expectation.
• Steve’s last words, “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” Just as the description of my blog suggests, life is a journey, an endless journey. It only stops when we choose to stop. As the earth is ceaselessly spinning, the world is constantly changing, and therefore we will never know everything and are always foolishwe. Knowing that, “staying hungry and staying foolish” becomes the only path.

Click here for the full commencement address.

Let’s all thanks Steve for his words of wisdom.

“The Poverty Business” is the title of an article from the May 21, 2007 issue of BusinessWeek. An excerpt from the article:

In 1989, households earning $30,000 or less a year paid an average annual interest rate on auto loans that was 16.8% higher than what households earning more than $90,000 a year paid. By 2004, the discrepancy had soared to 56.1%. Roughly the same happened with mortgage loans: a leap from 6.4% gap to one of 25.5%.

Does this help explain why the gap between the wealth and poor is expanding rapidly in the past years? Not only are these people making less, they also have to pay more. It’s a double whammy!

Another thing is, the poverty business, which includes service like pay-day loan, subprime mortgage, etc., use procedures and strategy that entice the poor or make use of their ignorance to use their service and then hit them with outrageous interest+fee (BlueHippo?). It is always my insistence that we are the results of our own action. Based on that principle, these people should educate themselves financially and know they are getting themselves into, otherwise, it’s their own fault. However at the same time, it’s also problematic that these business are exploiting these folks who are already making less. That’s just adding trouble to misery, kicking them when they’re down, and get them stuck in a vicious poverty cycle.

Who is responsible for this “poverty problem”? The business? Or the people themselves? What do you think?

Either way, this raises another point – there is a need in our society to better educate people on personal finance and raise their financial awareness.

Emerson has a wonderful and extremely relevant quote in regards to personal development IMHO:

What you are shouts so loudly in my ears that I cannot hear what you say.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Closely related to that…

“I cannot hear what you say for the thunder of what you are.”
- old Zulu proverb

What I understand from these quotes…

… if we want to change ourselves, we need to work from the inside out. However, this approach to change and improve takes time, in fact, it takes considerable time and effort. But this is also the only way to make changes to ourselves effectively and allow us to keep them permanently. This is something we must understand.

My observation in this age and era is that frequently, people look to improve themselves but what they seek are in fact only “quick fixes” that do not last. I see this from people in search for a better body where they rely medication and limiting of food intake but not together with exercise, to people relentlessly looking to boost their skill sets such as by trying to improve their communication skill where they seek superficial techniques but with no genuine desire to listen (and “listening” is a major part of communication, some research/references even claim it as 80-90%).

When we understand this, and with patience and perseverence, change and improvement to ourselves are no longer impossible goals.