The Warrior Physicist

I attended a tea session with Professor CN Yang today, the 1957 Nobel Laureate. Somehow the topic of how Western researchers somehow do better than the researchers of the East came up, and yes, as I had expected, it was a matter of courage.

Western researchers are somehow more courageous than those of Asia. And I attribute it to the fact that their education is not as rigorous as ours, as such, their minds are often free to explore the arcane and the weird. For us, because we are forced to subscribe to a very rigorous chain of thought, we ultimately narrow our comfort zone to intense rigour and it prevents us from going on to explore.

But before you think I'm throwing stones, Prof CN Yang also did stress that rigour was important, to get the fundamentals down solid. This was the strong point of Eastern science education.

So if each of the 2 modes of education have their own strengths and weaknesses, what does it boil down to? Human nature. Humans somehow need to 'fit in' with their society, since we are social animals by nature. If everyone's trying something new, we would feel pressured to try something new as well. But if everyone's busy 'mugging', then somehow we would as well.

So ultimately, what does this mean? It means, that the ultimate form of science education combines the courage of the West, with the rigour of the East, such that both strengths are tapped. And if you combine courage and rigour, you may think of the training of a warrior. So I propose that to train the best researchers in the world, you need to train them into warriors.

A warrior physicist, the notion is pretty cool. But you would immediately point out that while such an idea seems fancy, it is definitely not easy. Well, I don't know about students who have been good students all the way, but I was once a delinquent, so my study powers are not as good as some of the other good students out there. For me, when it comes to tackling difficult equations and rigorous proofs, it does require a lot of courage. My fear of maths was a result of a lack of courage to attack the proofs and rigour. But to me, it is simply a matter of overcoming your fear, fear of failure, fear of this, fear of that... The way I conquer this fear is probably not something I should mention on this blog, it's a little weird, if not very weird.

So it's really just a matter of conquering fear. For the West, their fear may be getting into the rigour of the East, for the East, it is about venturing into the unknown and battering down preconceived notions.

Sadly, there is not a single education system in the world that can teach a person how to effectively overcome fear. Happily, this means that success in science is independent of geography.

So to every aspiring scientist out there, don't feel bad that you may not be studying in the West, the key to your future ultimately lies within yourself, no one else. Because if you so want to, you can batter down mountains, lakes, oceans, people.......

So which fear are you going to overcome today? I'm going to work on becoming a warrior physicist, anyone wants to join me?

Some reflections on stress

I decided to start the day with a post in this blog, and the topic I'm going to talk about today is stress.

Now I have read from somewhere, I wished I remembered where, that stress is actually a condition caused by wrong beliefs and perceptions. So now people may get very annoyed, how can stress be created by wrong beliefs? The pressure they face in life is real, and it's giving them pain, so how can we just say that stress is wrong?

In my opinion, stress can be managed with the right thoughts. If we just examine a little of how stress works, we realise it's through a series of programming. For instance:

O my goodness! I've slept for 8 hours! Now I only have 16 hours left to do work!

or

I have so much work to finish! There's no way my week is gonna be pleasant.

Now, how is a person who constantly thinks like that going to ever be happy? Quite impossible isn't it? But what if he now thinks like this:

I've slept for 8 hours, that leaves me 16 good hours to do my work.

or

I have a lot of challenges this week, but once I'm done with them, o would i be so happy!

See the difference?

So really,managing stress is all about telling yourself the right thing. Like there's a lot of wisdom about how a diamond is really a coal that has been through pressure? Likewise, we must learn to get stress to work for us. If we just twitch our thinking a little, just how much would our management of challenges change?

Then once we're done with ourselves, it's time to go out there and change the world. After all, it's very easy to get influenced by people whom are negative, but it is much more rewarding to be influenced by people whom are positive.

Be-The-Hero by Noah Blumenthal

In this post, I'm going to talk a little about this life changing book that I have recently read, and encourage readers of this blog to buy this book and keep it in your 'precious posessions' list.

This book can empower you to change your life in 3 different ways. It teaches you how to reframe your thinking, to begin to tell different 'stories'. It teaches you how to change from being the 'victim' to a 'hero'.

The first part is about how we view people. Viewing people in a negative way, meaning telling 'victim' stories, will only make everyone feel bitter. But if we begin to tell 'hero' stories, and begin to empathize with the person, the effects can be amazing.

Second part is about telling 'hero' stories about what we have, and feel gratitude for it, rather than telling 'victim' stories, and feel jealousy and envy towards others.

Third part is about how the hero sees hope, and begin to take action.

So this book teaches us how to bring out the hero in each of us, and begin reshaping our lives. It is written in an ingenious way, from the point of view of a fictional character as he faces life challenges, rather than bold bullet points and underlined sub-headings.

All in all, this book is a must read. It has given me much inspiration and I strongly recommend you to read it as well.

Noah Blumenthal has been listed by Leadership Excellence magazine as one of the top 100 minds for personal development. He is also the founder of Leading Principles,a consulting firm specializing in the development of exceptional leaders and teams through coaching, workshops and team retreats.