Enough pain??

Just want to share a story with those that are reading my blog.

John always pass by this beautiful house with a great porch on his way back from work. Usually , there would be a dog lying down on the porch, probably waiting for his owner to get back. But for the last two weeks, the dog has been giving loud moans although it is still lying on the same spot on the porch.

Curiousity got the better of John so he waited at the porch for the owner to come back and ask how come the dog has been moaning for so long and the owner did not do anything. When the owner came back and John pop the question to him. The owner answered: " Oh do not worry. Roger (the dog) is lying on top of a protruding nail, it will move away from the nail once it is painful enough."

Does this sound familiar? Everyday, everytime, we heard complaints from people like they hate their jobs, how the superior claim credit over their work, how the superior never appreciates his efforts, why the boss never gave him a raise and many more. But after the complaints, the complaining guys went back to work the next day.

These 'pain' that we are experiencing from life and job are the 'nails' that we are experiencing. But why did we went back to work the next day? Because we are 'addicted' to our income. Ask yourself this qn " Can you do without your income for 3 mths?" High chance you would say, if there are no income how can I pay my bills, how can I pay the income tax, how can I settle the monthly housing and car loans......

It is difficult to do without your income for just 1 mth, let alone 3 mths. This is most likely YOU have allowed your expenses to expand to as large as your income. If you had actually maintained a low expenses profile, maybe you can do without income for a few mths, living off a small amt of your savings.

The other thing is that dog in the story has been lying on the same spot for so many days, naturally, that spot has become his comfort zone. The pain is not enough to overcome the satisfaction derived from lying on his fav spot. If the dog has move out of his comfort zone, grabbing his discomfort zone and turn them into comfort zone, the dog would have a larger comfort zone.

We humans always tend to move back into our comfort zone once we hit out discomfort zone.
This is bad, because then you would limit your growth. Only by expanding our comfort zone, would we have greater space for maneuvring in times or emergency or disaster.

Did you experience pain in your life? If you do, that means something is wrong. Make a decision whether you want to correct it, or bear with the pain and be like the dog in the story. Or do you want to expand your comfort zone, so you can lie on another spot, when the pain comes into one part of your comfort zone?

Cheers.

Wrong Point of Contention

Recently, the three universities in Singapore, NUS, NTU and SMU release the employment result of their latest batch of fresh grads. It seems like the Universities are releasing these results based on two categories of gauging, how many job offers and starting salary.

But people who are choosing the Universities must note that which universities can provide them with more than just a range of job offers and starting salary, translating to a good headstart. What is more important as I mentioned so many times is whether the universities are able to provide a lot of platform to brush up individuals soft skills like people skills and personal finance skills.

So what if you are offered a range of jobs, have a higher starting salary when you cannot work well with your team-mates, does not gain the respect of your subordinates, cannot communicate and bring your message across well or insensitive to other people cultures and thinking. No matter how much working knowledge you have gained from Universities studies, they can only have limited effect in your career and future. And with the increasing need to have employees that are team player and having a larger mix in a team, soft skills is now extremely important.

The first Han Dynasty, Liu Bang did not build his empire based on his knowledge of how to run a country. He was able to establish and build the dynasty because his people skills is good. He is able to use to the fullest potential and gain their loyalty and respect of, the Major General Han Xin, Political and Military Advisor, Zhang Liang and Chen Ping and Prime Minister Xiao He well.

As I mentioned so many times, A level holders have to really look carefully which Universities can give them the platform for picking and brushing up their soft skills.

Cheers!

Information Bombardment

Was discussing with a friend about children nowadays compared to our times (I am still quite young ok? It is just that the world is progressing very fast. Haha.)

During my time, our main source of information actually came from television, books, encyclopedia and adults, so information is kind of restricted by the amount of money and the social circle the parents have. The more money one have the more spectacular his encyclopedia is.

Kids nowadays would need a computer and they can access all kind of information, which has its good and bad points. But like someone said, as long as you open your window for a large amount of fresh air, you would expect to deal with a few flies that come in as well. The access speed to these information would be restricted again to money, which internet plan you have sign up for example, dial up or broadband. But that is speed, the information is still accessible to most children.

With the proliferation of ‘search’ science and on-the-go technology, kids are now able to access to the information they want fast and furious. This cut down the time to search for information which could be spent on obtaining the information. So kids nowadays are far more knowledgeable and ‘experience’ than my generation.

But one of the worrying trend here is that, kids are becoming more isolated in their own world because of the same technology that are making them more smart and knowledgeable. They would lose the ability to mix with people, picking up good PR skills that is now very essential in the working world because of globalization.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, we would have more and more opportunities to work with people from other countries. Having good PR and EQ skills would really come in very handy in this environment.

Again, the whole point here is that I would like to advocate that schools and parents should allocate some time to teach the culture of different countries, to increase the sensitivities of our future generation and teach them more on how to handle human relationship better. With good PR and EQ skills will enable us to harness the power of leveraging on the best people thus achieving success (on individual definition, of course).

Cheers!

Charity begins with me

This is just something want to share with the people who are reading my blog.

It is about charity. I would like to encourage more people to donate to charity. Especially pple who wants to be rich or at least a certain level of financial comfort in their life.

All these are base on what is happening to me and, again, my thoughts and knowledge. When I read any biography of succesful men, they would have a column telling pple to donate to charity or to their religion if possible. And I think I found the reason why they do that.

Based on my experience, whenever I make a reasonable amount of donation to charity, like more than $50. Something good would happen. Not convenient to give examples but people who knows me know what went well for me! :)

Well you could say this is only base on my experience and should not generalise to other pple. I shall proof to you, that such thing does and it is possible to happen. For those of you who has studied economics (or does not study economics, this is for your information), you would know that the economy expansion depends on the velocity of money, in layman's term means the more circulation a dollar note has, the more the economy can grow. That means the more money there is circulating, the faster the growth of the economy.

And money will circulate to places that offers the biggest value for money. (That is the backbone of business.) Do not believe? Well, have you actually patronize a food stall that offers the least value for money, TWICE at least?

Charity will definitely spend ALL donation received, in economist's terms, it means their marginal propensity to consume is 100%, 1 dollar donated, 1 dollar would be spent!

Okay, so the money is out circulating and snowballing itself! But you would say, "my salary is determine by my boss, there is no way I can increase my cash inflow!" Well the big Assumption here is that your SALARY is your ONLY source of income. Try to open more sources of income or grab money making opportunity, so that you can make your 'door' wider to receive the big snowball that wants to come in. More sources of income could be investment and business (they should be legitimate).

Now I am not saying, you should any how invest since your money is snowballing outside and 'wants' to come in. Proper due diligence has to be made, like which market is best to invest, timing is correct now or not and so on. This would make your 'door' wider to receive more of the 'snowball' that is coming in.

If you do not believe in investment, maybe there is another chain of events you can count on. The more money circulating, the larger the economy grows, the larger the growth of economy, the higher the consumption power of people, higher consumption power transforms to higher sales for businesses, in turn more profit, and you can pray and hope the boss gives u a large bonus or raise (the keyword is 'hope').

No matter what, I strongly encourage pple to donate (intelligently, of course). You will be helping less fortunate pple which gives you intangible benefits and you are able to make the economy grow, making your job more stable, making your investment stand a higher chance of earning money, make your business more viable because of higher consumption.

In this world, there are still some rules that do not change, you have to give in order to receive. But note here is, I did not mention how much you should give and how much you will receive.You decide. Cheers!!