Identity - The True Power of Change

How to Find One's Sustainable Joy, Part 2 Two weeks ago, the blog discussed Walter Orthman of Brazil as an example of being happy in one company for more than 85 years. This week, the focus is on Harland David Sanders of Henryville, Indiana, USA. Harland's father passed away when he was five years old. He had to cook for his siblings at the age of seven and became skilled in making food from the ingredients foraged in the wild. By age 10, Harland started working as a farmhand. He worked various jobs throughout the majority of his life such as painting horse carriages, a streetcar conductor, a soldier in the Army, a blacksmith's helper, and a steam engine stoker. He earned his law degree by correspondence courses and started practicing law. His career as an attorney ended when he had a brawl with his client in the courtroom. Harland then worked as a life insurance salesman. In between all these jobs, he always knew that he wanted to be his own boss for his own business. Harl

  I am NOT a TWIN! Andrew and Kyle Godfrey are students at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU). Andrew majors in computer science and Kyle is in accounting. You will probably run into them either having lunch with friends or at the CCSU gym working out. At the first glimpse, their outer appearances are nearly identical. However, they cringe whenever others refer to them as twins. Andrew, despite the relatively mallow attitude, dislikes when people would comment about them by saying, "The twins... ." In fact, both of them insist that they prefer being recognized as Andrew and Kyle, not the Godfrey twins. Kyle performed exceptionally well in one of my very challenging courses. He was quiet in class, but often ready to contribute learning. Kyle exhibited the traits of a deep thinker and was not afraid of telling facts without worrying how his peers viewed him. On the other hand, I got to know Andrew from our overlapped time at the campus gym. He often worked out in the m

How to Find One's Sustainable Joy? Part 1 Before the blog goes on to Step three of finding one's true identity, I thought I would address questions from my students that I believe is of great importance to many through the years of teaching in higher education. Some of my students asked me whether they should be actively looking for an internship, a permanent job, or starting their own businesses. My answer is usually all of the above. Receiving an offer for an internship, a permanent job, or funding for a new startup is not mutually exclusive. I usually encourage them to engage in an activity for a period of time before deciding whether such activity provides them with the sustainable joy most desired. I will use some real-life examples to demonstrate this idea of finding one's sustainable joy in their path of life. I will attempt to accomplish this in the following few weeks as I will provide a real-life example each week to avoid a lengthy weekly post. Walter Orthman, Br

Feeling Good is NEVER Enough I asked my students what they spent their time on. A majority of them admitted that they checked Instagram posts and reels most often. I decided to sign up for an Instagram account after receiving this answer. I thought it would be effective to post something on Instagram to connect with my students. However, my experience with Instagram was a bit shocking. The majority of posts are advertisements. For non-commercial posts from people, most men do not own a shirt and women seem to have gluteus works done by Cardi B's plastic surgeons. Furthermore, pictures and reels that showed people tended to be extremely filtered that they looked almost like animated characters instead of real people. I wondered how my students, who are mostly in their late teens to early 20s, felt as social media such as Instagram seemed to popularize certain body types and superficial aesthetic. If I felt intimidated by all the shirtless men on public display, were my students unde

"Go Big or Go Home" Does NOT Work The band American Authors in 2015 released "Go Big or Go Home" (GBGH) in their "What We Live For" album. The song itself is quite catchy and the tune is very upbeat. The general public seems to have taken the title of this song and applied it to nearly all our life events where if no big gestures are made, then one's actions are not worth it. If one pays closer attention to the lyrics, the song itself seems quite depressing where the lead in the song appears to be quite desperate. I personally believe that the overly quoted and applied phrase of "Go big or go home" rarely works. If a man wants to get a bigger chest, then benchpress seems to be quite effective to stimulate the mid-chest muscles. If GBGH works, then he should strive for a benchpress of 200 lbs with 100 repetitions since that is BIG for most people. However, how many people can go that big when one starts on the journey of getting a bigger chest

  The Man by the Mausoleum Cedar Hill Cemetery is about one and a half miles away from where I live. From time to time, when the weather permits, I hike there. Famous individuals such as John Pierpont Morgan Sr. (JP Morgan, financier) and Samuel Colt (inventor of the Colt revolver) call Cedar Hill Cemetery their final resting spots. The cemetery sits on a massive 270 acres of small rolling hills and running brooks. The mature trees and beautifully maintained landscaping adorn throughout the entire cemetery. I usually enter the cemetery through the main entrance, and the stone chapels on both sides of the gates exhibit European styled old cathedrals that seem to witness the passing of time. The magnificence of these stone chapels appear to signify how insignificant humans are in the tide of time. I especially enjoy my hike during Spring and Fall seasons as the entire cemetery puts on different dresses of splendid colors. The flower scents permeate the air during the blooming springtime

  What Moon the Humpback Whale Taught Me on Her Last Journey from Northern British Columbia to Maui Moon a female humpback whale that has been tracked by scientists for years was discovered near northern British Columbia (BC) in Canada with a broken back on September 7, 2022. Nearly three months later on December 1, 2022, Moon was spotted on whales' breeding ground near Maui, Hawaii, USA. Scientists believed that Moon's broken back was caused by being struck by a large vessel. The broken back rendered Moon's tail completely immobile and she could only swim with her pectoral fins. The approximately 3,000 miles of journey for whales from the BC feeding ground to the Maui breeding ground usually takes a healthy female whale about 36 days to complete took Moon more about three months. Not only did Moon have to endure the paralyzing pains from the broken back and completely relied on the strength of her pectoral fins and sheer will of her desire to complete this final journey ba