Copyright (c) 2010 Stephen Lau

You live your own life, and nobody can live it for you. So, you are responsible for your own life management.

Life management is an ongoing daily task. To be sure, managing life is not easy, and it is never meant to be easy. But somehow everybody has to learn it--just like learning how to stand up and walk.

Life management requires tools. Finding and using the right tools hold the key to the art of living well. Therefore, the art of living well is all about living your life, and using your own life management tools.

The essence of living for life or living well is life appreciation, which begins with finding out who you are.

Who are you? Nobody can answer this question for you: you must answer this question out of your own life experiences. Specifically, you have to know precisely the life you are living right now, and the experiences associated with it.

Then you must understand what is life and death. We usually think of life in terms of lifespan--sixty, seventy, eighty, or ninety years. Most of us are concerned with only how long we will live. To manage life effectively, you must see your life clearly, not just in terms of the number of years you will live.

According to Buddhism, we must forget self in order to see life with clarity. Forgetting self means appreciating life in a broader and unrestricted way. Forgetting self is not self-denial; instead, it is demonstration of compassion for others, and putting others before self.

According to Christianity, we must deny self in order to appreciate God's purpose-driven life for us. In other words, the most important life management tool is focusing on others, rather than on self. By focusing on others, you will see everything in perspective, including your own life problems, and thereby enabling you to become more expressive of love and compassion for others. Mother Teresa's words: "It is more blessed to give than to receive" may sum up the importance of this life management tool.

To enhance this life management tool, you can practice meditation. Through meditation, which focuses on seemingly insignificant and irrelevant things, such as your own breathing, to the exclusion of everything else in your mind, you come to terms with your innermost thoughts, and thus you may become "enlightened." With clarity of mind, you begin to perceive your priorities in life. Once you know who you are, and what you want from life, you will learn to live your life accordingly.