I don’t hold inside my feelings, my thoughts, or my hopes.  I share them with my friends and family.

I believe people who hold things inside tend to feel isolated, believing that others do not understand them.

I believe those who share feel both supported and more content, even if events do not go exactly as they wish.

Bad things happen, but usually I do not feel their effects on me forever. It’s really true that time heals wounds. My disappointment and pain are important and serious, but my distress will pass and my life will take me in new directions. I just need to give myself sometime.

There is no point in competing in a game that you do not really care to win. Don’t allow your life and expectations to become anything but deeply personal reflections of what matters the most to you.

Many of us are constantly in competitions where we don’t really want the prize. We find someone to be in a secret economic competition with a friend, a neighbor, a loved one.

We size up their home, their car, their lifestyle and try to do them one better. But our life is not changed for the better if the engine falls out of their car or if they suddenly have to cancel a vacation because of finances. Others look around at work for a rival and measure their relative progress against the other person.

But is this really our goal? Were we born into this world to get promoted before one of our co-workers? Were we born into this world to get a better car than our neighbors? Let our real goals guide us, not meaningless competitions we don’t really benefit by winning.

If you hold back the one product that the market could get by itself, rather than focusing on providing new and different things that the market couldn’t get and that the market actually wanted and to now blame them for not buying the late-to-market, seriously overpriced DVDs misses the point by a wide margin.

For those of you who aren’t aware, my grandmother of 74 passed away on Sunday afternoon. She was a wonderful person and a true angel to everyone she met. She had lived with my family for 6 years before succumbing to cancer. During her life, she had many obstacles to overcome, but she always overcame them, and became a better person because of them.

I miss her dearly now, her smile and voice mostly.

My life is an expression of my being
- Ganz

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
- Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)

To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our worst enemies.
— Roderick Thorp

If we can stand on our own two feet, it is because others have raised us up. If, as adults, we can lay claim to competence and compassion, it only means that other human beings have been willing and enabled to commit their competence and compassion to us through infancy, childhood, and adolescence, right up to this very moment.
— Urie Bronfenbrenner

What matters is that your attitude toward life shifts. Instead of being hopeful, maybe you start feeling depressed. Perhaps you begin thinking your life isn’t going anywhere, that you’ve peaked and are heading downhill.

It could be you stop looking for ways to improve yourself and your life. You may make all the right noises about “staying active and engaged,” but inside you downshift, pull over into the slow lane, and start looking for the exit ramp.

You stop looking at time as a positive force and start seeing it negatively. You stop looking forward to the rest of your life, eagerly anticipating tomorrow, and instead start looking backward, afraid of what the future holds. You view the day as something to endure rather than enjoy. The hours drag by rather than ?y by.

The tipping point of your life doesn’t need to be a harmful moment when you shift from optimism to pessimism, from hope to resignation, from enthusiasm to complacency. It can be a positive moment, a second birth, a reinvigoration, a rekindling of dreams. It can be a chance for you to re energize your pursuit of tomorrow. All you need is the right attitude about time.

The attitude you need to adopt to insure that the spark of life remains vibrant, to be happy today, is simple: It gets better. The simple passage of time enhances your life. Keep breathing and your life will improve.

It doesn’t matter whether or not you immediately overcome every obstacle you face. You learn just as much, if not more, through failure as you do through success. Learning what doesn’t work is still learning. As time passes, experience becomes wisdom. You may not be able to work long hours a day, as you did when you ?rst started your career. But now you don’t need to work long hours a day to get the job done.

You work smarter rather than longer, and as a result, you get more accomplished in less time with fewer mistakes.

Time doesn’t just add wisdom, it takes away suffering too. As time passes, injuries you’ve suffered, whether physical, emotional, or psychological, become less painful. Sure, there may still be a scar or a soreness, but the pain isn’t as intense or potentially debilitating. 

Broken hearts mend. The death of a loved one never leaves us, and there’s always a missing piece in our lives. The dissolution of a serious relationship cuts deeply. But the passage of time helps shift focus from the negative to the positive.

The more time passes, the more time you spend thinking about the good years and the less time you spend thinking about your ?nal days.

As you age and come face-to-face with your own shortcomings, it’s also easier to overlook the shortcomings of others. The older we get, the wider our perspective on the world.

Think about how long the school holidays felt when you were in school. You could become “best friends” with someone you’d never met before. “Romances” could begin, ?ourish, and fade all in the  space of  two months.

Each day, each week, and each month seemed to go on forever. Now fast-forward to today. Think about how quickly the holidays pass. You never get around to playing golf or soccer with your friends because you’re  too  busy. 

The younger you are, the higher the percentage of your total life each day makes up, so the higher percentage of your total life experience each mistake or disappointment represents. The longer you live, the less impact each incident can have on your life.

Experience brings wisdom and happiness. Time heals wounds. Anger fades. As long as you keep living, keep moving forward, your life gets better and you grow happier.

I’m always amazed at how people in Singapore, no matter how successful they are, are constantly ?nding some part of their lives in which they don’t measure up. We compare themselves to others in millions of different ways.

What’s their salary as compared with those of their co-workers or friends? How does their house compare with their sibling’s? What cars do they and their neighbors drive? Are they in better shape than their friends? Are they going to more prestigious university than their nephews and nieces?

I have been telling you time and time again; this kind of comparing will make you miserable. You’re entering not just one but hundreds of races you can never win.

And in the process you’re doing things not for yourself, but for others. The truth is that you’re just where you’re supposed to be.