Book Review: "Life's Missing Instruction Manual"

I had just finished this 157 pages super easy to read book within less than a week of time. Full of useful and easy to relate topics and life lessons. It was a very pleasure read and it's a very great book that you can read anytime because none of the ideas are longer than 8mins of reading.

Strongly recommend you to start off your positive thinking self help path with this book because it is a easy read that make you think after you read. (I can't help but to think many of the ideas and reflect upon them to help me understand life and myself better)

Over the next few sharings, I will summarize and discuss some of my favourite tips from this book. :)

Break the "Cycle of Doom"

If you thought you can change what your life and you are going through right now by not changing you and your thinking.. you would find yourself stuck in this so called "Cycle of Doom" (Hopper).

It did not work out and you feel suck, why you want to hang on to what you currently have that makes you so sad?

"Change" in your mind is one key. It has to be real change from inside you, it will come naturally once you had worked through the first four steps of the Law of Gratitude.

After You had prepared your mind, your ready to take action.

One might wonder, "how does a grateful person,.. act?" (Hopper)

To RECAP:
A grateful person, who worked through the first four steps now know that
1) There are enough good things to go around in our universe
2) "Whatever is, just is." Face the reality and appreciate what they have.
3) Happy about the present but dissatisfied, always looking forward and believe in good changes in the future. Work hard in a positive attitude.
4) Let go and forgive everyone and everything. Stay out in a distance and look. Love everyone, including him/herself

The last step in the Law of Gratitude, finally, after all the mental preparation and practice. You are ready to act.

LAW OF GRATITUDE #5
Understand the power of giving. By giving, it makes "receiving possible", "making room for more to come" by seeing what you have as a "flowing current, a river of abundance".

Don't let your life be a "Dead Sea" (with a large water body having water flowing in but not flowing out)

Make yourself a part of the "flow of life" and become once again "an inlet and outlet for the abundant universe to work through". (Hopper)

Once again, the choice is in your hand.
Get out from the cycle of being negative or not. YOU are the one who has to take action. Start today with me and take small steps toward the life of happiness!

Make yourself "Free of Debt"

Clear off any emotional debts.

We are in a "cause and effect universe" (Hopper) There are no coincidences in the people and circumstances in our lives. Often we think that these people and circumstances are here to torture us, but in fact, they are often here to teach us.

Remember the law of opposites, we know that there is "a benefit, a learning, a gift, somewhere in that experience with that person and incident. We can find that gift, if we look, but sometimes we need to have some distance from the events to see it clearly." (Hopper)

"When we reach the point where we can be truly grateful for them, when we can really wish them well, then we have cut the chains of resentment that tied them to us and we are free to move on."

LAW OF GRATITUDE #4
One word... Forgiveness.

The next step after forgiving others is to "forgiving ourselves for all the supposed mistakes and imperfections in our life. We need to be able to love that person in the mirror."

Stop the resentment.

After that point where you learn to love yourself, you will be then forgive and express gratitude for everyone in your life, and realize your past is an "incredible gift" to yourself.

Once again, the choice is in your hand.
You had just complete the fourth step. :)

Let yourself be happy and dissatisfied!

We all want to get happiness.

First we have to define the difference of satisfaction and happiness.

Being satisfied doesn't mean you are grateful of what you have. But only means you accepted things the way they are. Many can be satisfied by unhappy. "I hate this crummy job, but it's the best I can do, so I'll stick it out until retirement. " (Hopper's example)

Satisfaction prevent you from growing, expanding, to have more and experience more. We then got stuck and rust.

To "unstuck", you are to be happy and dissatisfied.

LAW OF GRATITUDE #3
Living in the present and being grateful for what we have right now.

"I'm not satisfied with this job, because I know I can do better. I am happy and grateful that I have it because it is giving me the opportunity to earn while I learn, and I am learning what I need to know to create the better job that I really want." (Hopper's example)

Progress comes from dissatisfaction - the constant quest for a better way. Happiness is the ability to look at the present and see it as good.

Make sure you don't set your happiness is coming in the future though! "When I get the job, the raise, the relationship, the house, the success.... then I'll be happy." (Hopper's example)

Focus on NOW, if you can't be happy now, you never will.

Live in the present, what you have, or what you don't have? When you are grateful for what you already have, you open the channel for more to come.

Choose to be happy or not, it is your choice.

NYC cabbie follows mother's advice to be honest, returns over $21,000 lost by tourist

By Virginia Byrne
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, cp.org, Updated: January 13, 2010 1:28 AM

NEW YORK - A Bangladeshi taxi driver in New York City said he returned a lost purse containing more than $21,000 in cash and expensive jewelry because his mother always advised him to be honest.

"I'm needy, but I'm not greedy," said Asadujjaman. "It's better to be honest."

Read more here.

Fight, but don't Argue.

"It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything." - Quotation from the Fight Club Movie



It's so true about the saying "We are Our worst enemy". Like some of you, I spent a lot of my time argue with reality. With all these time I spent complaining about how bad my life is, how the world never seem good enough to me, how there are never enough good things for me, I ended up hating everything. And it just keep getting worst.

Maybe you feel the same way about certain things in your life? Being "resistance" and continue to argue with the reality does no good to anyone. It simply do not help.


LAW OF GRATITUDE #2
Non-Resistance is taking the mental attitude that
whatever is, just is.

From Hopper: "Instead of arguing. apply one of the universal laws, the law of opposites (or polarity). This law simply states that everything has two equal and opposite sides. Every situation that looks bad has an equal amount of good, if you look for it."

Some of us, like myself, probably feel "stuck" in the situation where there is this behaviour of people and circumstances we can't do anything about it. Instead of arguing, we have to learn to apply the law of gratitude. If we have something we want but don't have, or lost something / someone we had, we tend to victimize ourselves, complaining and start crying about it. This lead to the "not-enough" thinking we mentioned in the last blog entry.

Key#1 to free ourselves is to let go and move on, there are always "more" in the world. (Refresh Law of Gratitude #1 if needed). Key#2 is to think like two sides of a coin, the law of polarity tells us everything has two sides. Why do you want to only look at the bad side out of everything.

Lose the bad and keep the good!
You get to choose, increase and prolong suffering by resisting the reality, or move on, get to the good part and be thankful of what you have (and about to have) by being non-resistance.

The decision is always in your hand.

The World is Like a Buffet of Goodness

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!! Hope your holidays were great! And shall we start our 2010 with more positive thinking?

Over the next 5 posts, we are going to cover the 5 arguments in the ebook "Power of Gratitude" by Wes Hopper.



LAW OF GRATITUDE #1
Einstein's Question: "Is the Universe friendly to our desires?"

In another word: "Is there enough of good things to go around?"

From Hopper: "Both science and spirituality tell us that everything is made out of the same original stuff. Science called it energy. So how much is there? A recent scientific survey of the cosmos added up everything they could find and determined that only about 4% of the available energy was used to make the entire universe!"

So the answer to our question is YES. We have to start thinking in abundant and stop thinking in scarcity. There are much more energy to go around, and since everything made out of the same type of energy, it means you have the choice of receiving positive or negative power - all created out of the same source.

Thinking how good your life now, instead of how bad it is.

It is your choice to being a victim of circumstances or being a benefice of these abundant power that goes around.

Think abundant instead of scarcity, there are so much more goodness for you out there.

Think the universe as a unlimited free buffet. You are hungry. Do you want to sit and look at your empty plate or you want to go grab some food?

It is your choice.