I still remembered how I was totally thrilled when I heard the news that two pandas are coming to Singapore. The simple reason for it is because I have never seen a real panda before in my life, they are like creatures of legend to me. This is the portrait of Kai Kai, one of the two pandas now living in Singapore.

I remembered vividly how I took my camera and went down several times to try to take a close-up portrait of the pandas. The first few times I couldn’t get a decent capture as they were sleeping most of the time. The excitement of wanting to accomplish this causes a surge of energy for me to be persistent, if not I wouldn’t have taken this photo. As much as it was exciting for me, I heard from my friends that the ones in China looks better and it makes me wonder sometimes why when we see something too often, it diminishes our interest in it? I think it is all due to comparison. When we think we know something, we lose the wonder in it because there is always something better to compare to. The trick I guess to remain in awe is to look at everything as if you are seeing it for the first time, be like a child again and you will have an abundant amount of energy—the world will then start to look miraculous again.

When we ask what are the most important things in life, most would refer to money, love or happiness. Those things are important in some ways but none of them is possible without energy. In order to understand how the world works, we should put all our ambitions on hold and take a look first at the building block of life itself—energy. It is not a surprise to creatives and entrepreneurs that they understand the basic currency is actually energy and not money, for without nothing can be created and nothing can be gained.

Since I am an artist, I understand my energy pattern and its effect very well, I can feel it in every single moment. There are times when I am trying to produce a work so that I can publish it on time but sometimes the mood just isn’t there. I can still force myself to do it but the outcome would be less than desirable. It is not a matter of time spent, sometimes you can produce the most amazing work in a short amount of time and sometimes you can grind for days but the results are much worse off. It feels a bit like the Pareto principle, also known as the 80-20 rule, where roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Knowing this, I try to do things differently to get into the mood so that I can have a higher chance of going “into the zone” when I create.

This “zone” that I refer to is a very special place. It can be quite challenging to get into especially when the rest of your life are not in order and everything is a distraction. In my experiment, there is a higher chance of going into that state when I am alone. Alone and lonely are two very different words, being alone has empowerment where being lonely actually saps more energy from you. When you are alone and totally absorbed in what you are doing, especially when you are very interested, passionate and curious about the activity, there is a higher chance to go into the zone. Most of us would have experienced that full sensation of focus and absorption in the things we are doing where time is irrelevant and comes to a standstill. During that phase, creativity is at its optimum level and we are most productive. It is challenging to maintain that state though as any distraction might stop the flow and it requires a certain amount of momentum to get back into the zone again. If you can ride the flow to its completion, your energy would be spent in the most optimum way and of course you would have to make sure the activity you are spending your precious energy on serves your intention, or you can spend it totally focused on unnecessary things that furthers your life into nowhere.

When we are in the zone and going with the flow, one of the most significant thing that I noticed is that the “self” is dropped; there is only the activity and the focus, there is no “I” in the picture. This “self” that I am talking about refers to the ego. It is very difficult to stay in the zone and create when everything becomes a reason for self-gain, then the reason for doing anything comes from the mind and not from the heart. If it comes from the mind, you will see that everything you do is limited and there is a higher chance that you are just mimicking someone to try to gain the same benefits. When you create from your heart, a place where the energy is unlimited, the sky’s the limit. This is where I realized that the lower the ego, the more energy one has; the more receptive and open one is, the lesser the energy is wasted on creating drama in the form of confusion, worrying and aggressive competitiveness.

So where and how do we find this place where the energy is unlimited? The truth is that your body is telling you the answers all the time. You know when you become restless and lethargic and you totally have no interest in what you are doing at the moment. When we are truly interested in someone or something, there is always a surge of energy that pushes our curiosities into wanting to make something happen. We become curious about how things work, we start having our visions and the journey of experimenting with these visions becomes our experiences and destiny that ultimately crafts our lives.

We live in an attraction based universe where everything is a vibrating form of energy. Like attracts like and opposites repels one another. I briefly touched on this and how it affects you on a previous post. Once you understand that the situations you invite into your life is based on your energy patterns, especially your thoughts, you become more aware of how you are using your energy each day. There is a saying that when you are not fully utilizing your energy, you are not living life to your greatest potential. This can result in dreams when you are sleeping because all the unspent energy is welling up in your brain and dreams are an outlet to expend the reserve energy of the day. There is even a village that thinks something might be wrong when one of their villagers starts dreaming, for them it shouldn’t happen if one lives intently during the day so that one can sleep soundly into the night.

Whatever dreams you have for your life, understand that it takes hard effort and a significant amount of time. If you cannot sustain the energy required for the long run, most probably the results will be half-baked and the only way to maintain the energy level is to be really interested and passionate in what you are doing and hopefully the attraction based universe will bring you the results you deserve. If you don’t have this abundant amount of energy, most probably you will just find the easier way out in life.