SHENMO MOTTO: Virtue & Wisdom

 “Golf balls” and “the sun in your heart” have been high-frequency hot words since Shenmo’s twenty-ninth summit was held—Professor Lilly’s lecture has impressed the participants of the summit deeply.

Find your “golf balls”
There was a professor who held an empty jar in his philosophy class, and when the class began, he put golf balls into the jar.
And then he asked his students: “has this jar been filled already?”
The students answered, “Yes”.
Then he took out a pack of small stones and put them into the jar one by one, and soon the stones filled the jar.
He asked his students again: “has this jar been filled already?”
The students answered, “Yes”.
Then he took out a pack of white sand obtained from the seaside, and then slowly poured into the jar.
He asked his students again: “has this jar been filled already?”
The students answered, “Yes”.
Then he took a cup of chocolate milk and slowly poured into the jar.
The students all laughed.
The professor said: “I want you to know one thing that this jar represents your life. Golf balls are the most important thing in your life, such as your family, your children, and your health; stones are also important things, such as your house, your car and other material things; sand represents things that are less important. If you put the sand into the jar first, you have no place to put stones. So you should find a goal for your life.

Remember that “golf balls” are things that are important and you need to do often. Therefore, what you think is important needs to be set up and finished.

During the Spring Festival of 2016, Mianjun Li had an investigation in the United States for a month, and the keyword “golf balls” was mentioned in exchanges and conversations almost every day, because it can accurately and quickly remind them to find and achieve goals, so that life and work wouldn’t be messy and fruitless.

 “Golf balls” represent the core or the main things. We are busy to deal with our daily work and life, but we need to distinguish between primary and secondary things, namely, to distinguish which are “golf balls”, which are “small stones”, which is “fine sand” and which is “chocolate milk”.
“Many people work busily, like “making a mud pie”, and that’s because most of them have lost “golf balls” and sunk into the “fine sand” and “chocolate milk”, which are turned into mud—life is always busy, but in fact many people has always been “playing the mud”. The reason is that they don’t catch the golf balls.
We have to be clear what the “golf balls” represent in every year, every semester, every month, every day, every hour, and even the current time, so that we can handle our work clearly. If one talks wordily, and fails to express himself/herself clearly in a long time, what he/she lacks is not finding his/her “golf balls”.
Our “golf balls” are different, but this doesn’t affect their important position in our life. If you spend too much time and energy on small things, you cannot have time to do your work well and beautify your life.

Who is the sun in your heart?
(From the lecture of Professor Lilly)
There are a lot of different people in our hearts, who set examples for us. Maybe you are not familiar with all the following people I am going to talk, but it doesn’t matter because it is only the examples in my heart, and you also have the sun in your heart.

The first: Mother Teresa, who died in Kolkata of India in 1997. She came from European Yugoslavia, and was a teacher in an aristocratic school. One day, she went to the slum, and saw a lot of barefoot children. Then she said to the president, “I must come out”. After that, she donated money herself and inspired others to donate money to build a house called “mother house”, where she sheltered and educated all the people. That touched me, so I assisted her. She was younger than me, but her hands were twice the size of mine; when she shook hands with people, she was very cute. When she met the British Princess Diana, the princess said, “I am ashamed that she wears a pair of ropey straw sandals while I wear a pair of brand-name shoes.”
After she died, she is still respected by many people.

Another one comes from Yangon, Myanmar. Her English name is “Aung San Suu Kyi”. She is a politician of Burmese opposition faction, and the chairman of the National League for Democracy. In 1990, the National League for Democracy won the election under the leadership of her. However, many years later, she was under house arrest in her apartment for up to 15 years. In 2010 she won the Myanmar election. The woman advocates that man must be equal. She said: “today, everyone’s voice can be heard by the world. Every autistic child’s voice should also be heard by the world.”

The third one is a poet from Latin America. The poetry she wrote originally was read by few people, because they are written in Spanish or Portuguese; however, after she got the Nobel Prize in Literature, her works were translated in multiple languages. She misses her friends, and even her name is composed by names of several friends. Her words which touch me the most are: “The children cannot wait, and their name is ‘today’.”

Children’s education cannot wait. Their bones, their blood and their perception are growing. For their education, we should not wait for tomorrow, but to seize today, because their name is “today”.

What do I want to share with you? In your life and history, there must be some people, whose actions can be set as your example. The above people I just shared with you are the sun in my heart in my life.

There are various people in the world, who are experiencing different things. Then whether do you want to find someone to have a dinner and talk with him/her tonight?

How to train this thinking and behavior model?

The analysis found that the thinking mode of “golf balls” and “the sun in my heart” can be trained, and as long as we consciously train ourselves, the time efficiency and decision-making accuracy can be improved.

In response to this training, Professor Lilly specifically mentioned that, we shall mention “golf balls”, “mud” and “the sun” for more than 10 times every day orally, and evaluate the work of ourselves and the team with these vocabulary. Adhering for two to three weeks, you will find that you have taken good grasp of organization and rationality, tension and relaxation, and priorities. Of course, waiting to receive training must be not enough; more importantly, we need to train ourselves consciously.