Motive That Lasts

this is my draft email reply to Brother George Chu:

Thanks for your encouragement. Motivation does make a difference. I want to chime in with my first hand experience. Growing up in the post-culture revolution era, my motives had been shaped by the harsh society. Motivation is to survive, to survie means to get ahead of others. This singular motive worked well at the time, but things have changed. As you explained in your recent lectures, character-centered value system can motivate us far better for the modern day work place, because of 3 main things: it builds trust, it gets the results, it begets win-win mindset.

If my motives are centered to compete and get ahead, I may lose it when the going gets tough, such as during life's inevitable set backs. I just experienced such a set-back.

Last year, I traveled every other week for 6 months on a big project. When the project failed, everyone felt a big set back. Some team mates left as well: a big blow to my ego.
Regrets began to get the better part of me. From time to time, in early morning hours, I would wake up and question what I could have done to save the project. More over, I started to feel hopeless for the future.

Deep down I struggled to motivate myself. My natural reactions kept pulling me down-spiral. Around that time, I had the fortune to attend your lectures on proactiveness, especially your emphasis on the freedom to intercept between an event and our reactions. Freedom to choose. Choose to fight the odds. Some people do not see the reason to fight on, though.

You shared with us that your motivate since early days has been to honor God at work. I was fortunate to have a co-work with this same mentality.

Proverbs say: an iron sharpens another iron. Because of my co-worker, I gradually changed my attitude towards the set back. I can accept that my painful set back will someday be used to benefit others, to purify my hidden motives and purge inner trash through firey trials, or to achieve other higher purpose that I don't yet understand. My motivation at work can be to serve as a faithful stewart, regardless of external recognitions.

A set back can be turned around if we possess the attitude to suffer the set backs in the right way - an honorable way, as I learnt from the book, "Men's Search for Meaning", by Viktor Frankle.

An example of Frankl's idea of finding meaning in the midst of extreme suffering is found in his account of an experience he had while working in the harsh conditions of the Auschwitz concentration camp:
... We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."
That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth -- that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory...."

真正的生活是内心生活。

Cast My Burden on the Lord

This past weekend was the holy Passover and Passion weekend, during which I taught a Track 1 class on Psalm 139. I am grateful I grew stronger out of the preparation and teaching experience.

Since I told Pastor Dora on April 19 that I am suffering a minor depression, I have experienced healing power, in some mysterious ways. The breakthrough was the words from "Praying to the Names of God", page 38, as recorded in my blog 4/22/2011.

The message was reinforced during Sat accountability group. The sharing of hearts brought a sense of freedom, reduced my loneliness. I made commitment to serve Sat mission. I now understand that the way up is to seek first His kingdom and his righteousness. Also on 4/23 Sat, the title of my daily devotion is amazingly fitting: "The cure for depression", Psalm 43:5.


On 4/24 Sunday service, I received 3rd affirmation, when the message covered the verse 2 Cor. 4:17 that I prepared for Sunday school an hour later.

I believe my 4th affirmation is Psalm 51:12. Sins robbed me of the joy of salvation. Two items I will deal with:
1. I tend to have tiger head, snake tail.
2. I tend to develop the negative attitude based on imaginative fears.

On the caution side, I still feel a little bit anxiety in ~5am this morning. My inner world is not completely peaceful.

Today I received another affirmation, let's call it No. 5. Wisdom For Today:

"Peace comes when we turn those overwhelming issues over to God and cease trying to dictate the outcome. ... You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You Isaiah 26:3. But if I am trying to maneuver a situation to gain the outcome I desire, I will have distress."


Circumstances are not the key, God cares much more to build up my relationship with Him, just like Summer 2008.

Goals for Taylor and Tracy May 2011

Tracy's goals:

1. to score 95% or better in STAR and MAP tests.
2. Win a free book by scoring 10 of 10 in a weekly math quiz
3. Finish the 1st chapter of New Elementary Mathematics Syllabus D: Whole Numbers.
4. Start chapter 2: Fractions, Decimals and Approximation
5. Finish Intensive Practice 6A and the remainder of 6B


Taylor's goal in May 2011:
1. to score 90% in STAR and MAP tests.
2. To go to Disneyland.
3. Read two more Redwall series of books, The Bell Maker (book 7, 900L in Lexile.com score) and the Outcast of Redwall (book 8)
4. Conquor the octopus in Lego Starwar Clone War.
6. Finish Intensive Practice 3b (done, the rest too hard) and Challenging Word Problems Grade 3.
(may be for June 7. Challenging Word Problems 3)

I can overcome depression

In the last 4 months or so, I have slipped into a mild depression for various reasons of stresses at work and home.

Today's devotion convinced me I can overcome this depression.

How?

page 38 of Ann Spangler: Praying the Names of God.

El Roi - The God who sees me.

"If I am feeling weak in the face of life's challenges, the best way to grow strong is to strengthen my commitment to Christ. Decide to obey fully, to follow completely, and to keep my eyes fastened on him. Let El Roi take pleasure as he watches over me, and I will soon find my heart stronger and my confidence deeper without quite knowing how it happened."

Mystery of the Spiritual things.