What do you want?

Finally finish the 3rd leg of my training. Phew, lucky the class is small and they have prior relevant experience, and this was a bunch of nice fellas, so we had quite a lot of fun for the last five days. Thank goodness. And I have made a decision to leave the lady that I want to pursue, so no more writing of her in the blog anymore. Difficult decision to make but I think it is the best choice given the circumstances now. And maybe considering taking a different career path that I planned out. Seems like I made quite a lot of major decisions this week even though I had a tiring week.

In life, we are most of the time faced with a lot of choices. Some choices are difficult to make and some very easy. And to complicate things, people make a decision that can be easy to make into one that takes an uphill task to make. For example, at lunch time, some people will take their own sweet time to decide what to eat, they have to raise their eyebrow, scrunge their face or knit their eyebrow and still cannot decide what to eat. Such is an easy decision, but they make it difficult to make, and in the end lose their precious lunch time. And some people make a difficult decision to make, looks easy to make. Let's explore how come this is so.

Why a decision is difficult to make is most of the time, resources are scarce but choice are limitless. And being human, we are greedy and we want everything. But in life, we cannot have what we want or else life would be too perfect and not challenging anymore. So we have to make decision which sometime is very difficult. But I think the first step to making a difficult decision is to first realise that, you cannot have everything. This is the first step we need. Only then can we remain in the correct mood to tackle this 'problem'.Once we realise that we cannot have everything, the natural next step is to ask, what we can have or should I say, what we want to achieve in life ultimately. Once this qn has been ask and you have clearly provide a clear answer to yourself of what you want, the fourth step would be to look at the available choices and decide which path has the highest probability of taking you towards the goal and to what extent. Once the information gathering has been done, then the decision would be easy to make. Just choose the one that has the highest probability and can get you closest to the goal.

I personally think by following this path of decision making, you would be able to make a difficult decision seem easy. And you would be able to make right decision as well. So what is your opinion?

Cheers!

Are you sure that is branding??

Recently caught a TV show abt budding entrepreneurs who have started their own business. Well for someone who does not have his own business, what right does he have to comment abt people who have done business? Well, I don't care I will still make some comments. Haha!

During the show, there was this shop that was talking abt branding. So what he does is have the brand to be found everywhere, and also have membership card printed with their brand, and he calls that branding. Reading so many books on business, I can confidently tell you, that is not branding. That is only raising brand consciousness. Make sure people know that, THAT is a brand and nothing else. It is not branding at all. It is only part of it. When you want to do branding, of course you have to raise brand consciousness, but when you do branding, you should actually be selling an EMOTION or EMOTIONS! When you see NIKE, what does it mean? It means wearing them you can feel the courage/confidence to take on challenges, which explain the "Just Do it" slogan. When you buy an LV or Chanel, you are buying the glory and limelight of owning one.

The membership card is to promote customer loyalty, but for a business that is selling handbags, is there a need for such thing?? Ladies buy handbags because they are nice looking, what loyalty is there? Unless your handbag is so superb and can always appeal to a large crowd and pray that handbag will spoil or like computers can go out of fashion very fast.

So please people, don't trivialise any part of business. If business is what is thought to be simple, you are in for some trouble.

Just another Sunday

Was reading the Chinese Newspaper this morning and the headline is 1 out of 4 local men are marrying overseas bride. Hmmmm..... interesting but I think this trend will definitely be increasing since Singaporeans need to embrace globalisation more than anything else. Just in case, there are local ladies reading this, there is also increasing number of local women marrying overseas man, but there were no exact figures given. With Singapore needing to welcome more talented foreigners into our land, locals having overseas spouse would be increasing. Maybe it is time Singapore look at our marriage laws in our land and see if we can be more accomodating (as in less red tape for these people to apply permanent residency here) As for me, I still think there are some good ones out there (have found one but ...), so I will keep looking. I do prefer locals but that does not mean I will stick to my preferences without flexibility. Most important is the character and intelligence I am talking abt in the last blog entry.

Just realise that I have more than 100 entries in my blog already, so was looking through the entries that I have written before. I am amazed at some of the things I have written, and like what was written in my friend's blog, I have seen my growth and thinking grown and bloom. EQ at work, biz and networking has grown. Knowledge has grown tremendously as well, especially on the health side. Of course, I also witness my biggest mistake made in my life (and still regretting and finding the meaning of it) when going through my blog.

Things have been going well for me on most fronts, as most of you who have been following my blog would know. But it seems that I have not been able to achieve my goals set out as quick as I wanted to be these few months. I do attain the goals I set out to do but most of the time it missed the deadline that I set out. The motivation level is just not there like last time anymore, something seem to be missing, and has yet to find it out. I need that extra thing to push me to the next level, but something seem to be missing. Mixed feelings! But no matter what, I will not let such thing stop me from achieving things, at least I am still achieving them so things are not that bad. Maybe I will discover the missing 'ingredient' as I move on in life.

Today was reading this book called "Making Strategy Work" and "Built to Last" both are business books. "Making Strategy Work" as the title says, is about how to make strategy work. Basically the book was written base on two surveys that was done. One of the surveys, was conducted by Wharton School of Business. I have read half of the book and make comparison with Sun Zi Art of War. As most of you would know, I am a fanatic about Chinese Ancient Military Works, and always find a lot of applications of the works in business books and "Making Strategy Work" is no exception. The main points mentioned in the book so far is that, knowledge sharing and information flow, incentive system and organization structure may impede the successful execution of strategy. But all these points have been mentioned in Sun Zi Art of War. Knowledge sharing and information flow was mentioned in Sun Zi Art of War Chapter 7 and the rest I have mentioned are found in Chapter 1 but they are briefly mentioned. So you see we can find a lot of business applications from Sun Zi Art of War. Mixing my passion of Chinese History with Business, YEAH!!! Now is to take steps to make this mix of two passions into my 'job'. People who are doing business or are interested in doing business should read up these works. Sun Zi Art of War is definitely a good book to start with. But in my research so far. Sun Zi Art of War, touches a lot of areas briefly, so you will need to read other works as well, and since there are lack of good literature on others, maybe you should consider picking up Chinese. :P

Going to start on my third leg of training, but I got news that there will be a fourth leg! Another three more days! Haha! No need to go back to the desk job for another 3 days! YES!! Crossing my fingers I am able to conduct training for 5 days per mth, so that I can have more time to work on my other passion. As most of you would know, I like the lifestyle I am leading now although definitely it can be improve further and I will definitely work on it. Life is definitely more fulfilling as well, gaining knowledge in my interest areas and making an impact on others through training and blog entries. Onward, MARCH ON towards my life vision!

Cheers!

Nice Fit!

Yesterday nite just went to a couple's place for dinner. I got to know this couple through a gd fren of mine. We were there to have a sharing session although most of the time the couple was sharing with us their experience. Haha! So paiseh. But anyway, it is not the content of the conversation that I want to share with you guys. What I wanted to talk abt is the interaction and quality of relationship the couple has shown to me.

The husband was trying his hand at frying fish fillet for us, guests. I think it was his first time trying his hand on it, so there were some embarrasing moment, and of course like all first time cook, some of the fish got burnt (actually when I look at it, it was not that bad, I might have done worst than him. Haha!) Of course being the guests, we were offered the better tasting & looking fish fillet. What I saw was something I hope I can bring to my relationship with my future wife (if there is one). The husband took out the 'defect' fish fillet and offering to his kids and wife, apologising to them for letting them eat the fillets, but the wife was very supportive, by telling her spouse that, she will eat whatever he cook. After marriage for more than 5 years, I am surprise to see this form of encouragement and also the affections between them still strong, because they still call each other 'Dear'.

Most of the time when I see couples that are married, this kind of show of affection seem to die down very fast. Sometimes when they go out, they even stop holding hands. And also the encouragement that they give to each other is gone. They are like two people living together because the marriage certificate dictate so.

For my friends out there who are reading this, some of you has asked me what kind of girl I am looking for. Well here is what I can say to you (but of course there are other criterias). Firstly, I must be able to see whether there can be synergy between the both of us, does our strength compliment one another, in other words do we form a great team. Now of course, I will not force her to do biz with me, but since I will definitely try my hand at entrepreneurship (as most of you would know the reason why) , I really hope that my other half would give me the encouragement and support in any form whenI am in the process. Of course this type of thing can be reciprocate, if she wants to learn new skills, I would definitely show my support and encouragement as well. If she learns to cook or bake, no problem, just bring it to me and I will gladly do the taste test. This is the type of synergy I am looking for.

Secondly, she must be smart, not academic smart though. We work in a society, we do not work in a school. People can survive school by being academic smart, but when it comes to society, just for survival, you have to be smart in the domain you are working in and also be good in emotional intelligence and people skill. Now this type of thing has to be developed over time, so I do not expect her to be very good at people skill now, but most imptly she must have the type of smartness that can survive in this society.

Thirdly, definitely she must not drink or smoke or gamble for money. I don't like girls who does that. Smoking is bad for health and you are throwing money in the wrong way (my opinion of course). I rather use the money that is used to buy cigarettes or for drinking to spend it wisely on books, supplements or travelling the world. Gambling? Well what else can I say,
family can be broken through gambling.

Now if she is entrepreneur and investment minded, of course that is a welcome attribute, but definitely not a must have. The most impt one is the intelligence she must have and I must be able to see a good future with her. Guys, does that answer your qn? :D

Cheers!

Hasta La Vista, Baby!

Coming back to the company after almost two weeks of training is certainly refreshing. Haha, breakfast in the morning, lunch break with cheap (but enak or not, that one is for you to decide) food, a biz associate happen to drop by and had a short chat. Going to leave the company again to do another week of training in less than an hour's time. (Hei this guy is writing blog during office hour leh. Haha!) Taking a breather now after almost finishing an assignment that was 'arrowed' by the supposedly 'passionate' guy. Final touches next!

And for those following the blog, yes I did saw her. After two weeks of training and meeting a lot of people, it is refreshing to go back to a desk job even if it is for a short while. In life, like I mentioned, we really need variety in our life. For me, as I mentioned before, I like the life I am leading now, working on my biz and passion, conducting training and meeting different people, working on a desk job and having fun (during lunch time of course) with colleagues, taking a break at home listening to music and reading book. And all these are sort of at random. So it is definitely very refreshing. So I am glad, I am not stuck in a 9-5 job that repeats itself, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year. I must admit having such variety in life, as in where I work also added a lot in my social life, meeting a lot of people, seeing the many sides of people, learning how to be patient, seeing the better side of things and so on. The exposure is greater, and many of my skills especially people skills are sharpened.

Well don't admire me, I never know what will happen but I will do my best to keep this lifestyle, (but maybe try to leave the desk job cos .... ;) ) You can have the lifestyle you want, the only thing is plan, have the courage and step out! Cheers to the lifestyle! :D

I would like to refund this faulty body of mine, please.

Finally finish the 2nd leg of training, nxt week will be another long stretch, 5 days straight, haha, but it means meeting with more people and have to maintain gd relationship with these people, crossing my fingers I do not get any difficult trainees, and maybe a few beautiful ones :P

Very tired cos trainings can be quite tedious like I mentioned in my previous blog entry and I have not done such thing, as in long stretches of training before, but like always I view this as a challenge and people who knows me will know that I will gladly take it up and overcome it. And what makes this more challenging is I have sore throat now, and have three days to recover from it. Haha, anyone can tell me a remedy to cure sore throat fast?? :P

Yesterday attended a health talk on how to choose supplements, as in how can we decide whether the supplements we are taking of the highest possible effectiveness and efficiency. Well, most of the stuff I know, thanks to my good friend cum supplement consultant, who always share his health knowledge with me. Very informative, thank you.

One thing to note abt the seminar is most of the attendees are aunties and uncles, well relative to my age of course. Haha! But if you look at from another point of view, youngsters are not taking an active role in maintaining their good health. The number of youngsters at the seminar can be counted with two hands and a rough estimate of the attendees at the seminar is around 200. Now when we are young of cos our health is at the best condition, similar to a new bought machine. Of cos you expect the best condition for your body. One thing to note though is that machine, which you just bought can be returned if some parts are found faulty, but the body you are born with, no such thing as return to your parents and ask for a new one, you have to LIVE WITH IT. With a 'new' body, of course you will be feeling great and can do a lot of stuff.

But again, like machines or computers, you need to do maintenance and the body is so complex, the maintenance will require knowledge and time. So in order to have the health of our younger years, we need to keep on gaining knowledge and spend some time to maintain it. Like I mentioned before, once the body you have are faced with challenges, there is no way you can return it and ask for a new one. SO TAKE CARE OF IT and stop giving excuse that you are still feeling great and doing a lot of stuff.

So it is the same old thing I want to say, we need to do maintenance to our body!! So resolve and do it NOW!

Cheers!

See no weapons but be warned, I am armed!

So how can one be still armed when he does not carry any weapon at all?? Haha, somebody forgot abt the mouth.

Always be careful what you say to people. Words that come out of our mouth can sometime have devastating effect and worse, sometime lingering effect on people's lives. I am sure most people would have or at least seen such an example where the boss scolded a colleague over certain mistakes and later on become personal attacks like, "Why you so stupid?", "Are you an idiot, is it?", "Where is your brain?" and in the end the colleagues become very afraid to take the task again. Words coming from one's mouth completely devastated a person confidence, something that a physical weapon cannot do.

So always be careful what you said to people. Especially when one is hot-headed. It would be best to cool down during extreme emotions and once cooled down, think it through what you want to say.

If you going to say something that you are very sure would hurt someone, why bother to say it then? So that you can get it off the chest? But have you thought of the consequences?? Just because you want to get it off the chest abt certain issue and in the end cause so much hurt and grief to other people. Is it worth it? I believe we are in this world not to cause hurt but to help each other out and make this world a better place. So why bother to say something that will definitely be hurtful?

That is why i always assess what I am going to say to people. This is esp impt when I am conducting training. I try as much as possible not to make it seems like the trainees' mistake even if it is theirs. Because they are learning something at the moment and mistakes would happen. What I can or maybe others in my position should do is to help them know where the mistakes is, instead of stressing that they made the mistake, and use the mistake to help them learn and encourage them to explore more.

Now many would say, what if I have a scenario where I discover my best friend's spouse is cheating on him/her. Should I tell my best friend abt it? Well, I for one would, but I will choose an appropriate time to tell. The same sentence and tone when told at a different time can have different effect. Take note of this, control your emotions and learn to control what you say. In this way, you will not hurt, or at least reduce the damage to the minimum.

What comes out of our mouth can have very devastating effect. Please take note of this. :)

Cheers!

Do you want to teach??

Ok, I am going into my second leg of training for this month this week, the final leg will consist of 5 days in a row! Challenging and glad I have the opportunity to take on this challenge, cos not a lot of people have such an opportunity. To date, I have clocked 25 days of training and met more than 50 people already.

I like conducting training, cos firstly, I can meet with a lot of different people from all walks of life and it is complementing to my research job. Because we all know research job is a desk job, so you do not meet a lot of people at work, so conducting training gives some freshness and excitement to my working life. Secondly, because if you want to conduct training, you must be exposed to the questions that are asked, so your professional knowledge mustbe adequate or at least must be well-versed with your techniques of handling the questions so that you do not offend the trainees and let the trainees felt they have learnt something.

Thirdly, is it quite challenging and does test your mental toughness, especially handling 'difficult' trainees, that needs patience to teach them well. When you talk to the audiences, you have to capture their facial expression to check if they understand what you are saying, and also because people comes from all walks of life, you have to keep on thinking how to make what you are teaching easily understood and be able to help them to apply to their jobs. Because of this mental strength training, I would usually use the lunch break to catch 20 winks so that I am able to give my best for the later half of the training. Thus, I guess the side benefit is I am able to save lunch money, but the down side would be I would be extremely hungry by 3pm and have to cross my fingers that my rumbling stomach would not be louder than my voice. Maybe should get a personal assistant to help me buy lunch. Haha! :P

I guess I am built for this line, given the volume of my voice, the mental challenges and ,the professional knowledge I would gain before I conduct training for people, and I am not afraid of public speaking, well at least to a crowd less than 30. :D I think it would be more fun and challenging to conduct a talk for hundreds of people. The challenge would be capturing as much attention as possible because 300 audiences means 300 types of personalities and characters and it would difficult to find a common ground of attracting attention compare to a smaller group.

One of my dream is I to be able to spread appreciation of Chinese Culture, conducting seminars abt linking Ancient Chinese Military Strategies and Political Governance with Business Strategies and Management. So looking forward to speaking to crowds of hundreds or even thousands! :)

Well just some insights to those people who are comtemplating of becoming a speaker or a trainer. Hope it manages your expectation from this kind of job and all the best!

Cheers!

Learning is a Life-Long Process

Just attended a biz partner cum gd fren wedding. There are a lot of things to learn from for example what is a montage, coordination skills, handling of guests and many more. Besides, the joyous occasion and minor hiccups, what makes this occasion even more joyous is the fact that the admin people that I get along so well have volunteered to help out in my wedding, if there is any in the first place. I am touched with the offer. And the groom who is my gd friend, got me a large bowl of shark's fin soup for helping out even though I was really kidding with him. I really did not want anything in return for helping out. The friendship is more important. Both situations goes to show that I have been doing something right with my people skill.

Within a day, I have learnt a lot of things like the back end process of a wedding dinner, gotten feedback on the people skills that I have, networked with friends. So coming back, in life it seems, things will alway be exciting, there will always be a lot of things to learn, and feedback to whether you are doing well, are everywhere, everytime, and again the most important thing is to have a open mindset and keep on expanding your network. If the network you are in is always a constant, I doubt there will be any excitement in your life, because it is the new people that have joined your network that will provide some freshness and sparks in your life. I used to be an introvert, very afraid to step out and make friends, which looking back, yah my life seems very boring then, not say my friends are not the fun batch, just that there are not a lot of new elements introduced to my life and the only source of excitement is examinations.

I am glad I stepped out of my comfort zone and made quite a lot of friends and things are now more exciting! Cheers to that!

Misconceptions & Thoughts

Well, it has been such a long time since I updated my blog. So I thought I write somethings that happened and my thoughts on it.

Losing cool can have high consequences

Recently, or should I say 2 days ago, something happened at the Clementi MRT Station. Some guy lost his cool and actually pushed a lady onto the MRT tracks and thanks to her quick thinking, the lady avoided being killed by the incoming MRT train. Just finish the newspaper which gave a more detailed account. So it seems like the guy had an argument with her just patched-up girlfriend and it a pique of anger, dragged the lady and pushed her to the MRT track. Another folly done because cannot control anger. Now this guy could be charged with attempted murder, which highest penalty that can be accorded would be life imprisonment. Such a high consequence, an action that took less than 2 seconds to carry out would cost the graduate his life freedom forever. Graduate somemore! Aren't these people suppose to have high level thinking? Life skill man!!! Life skill! A lot of people think that emotions control people, but ask you something, where does emotions come from? From yourself leh! That means you can control it!!! So when you are abt to reach a stage of extreme emotions, do take note of what you might get yourself into.

In all business there is a chance of failure

On the way to the office to conduct training, I was in this bus where a lady was reading materials on network marketing, or commonly know in Singapore as Multi-Level Marketing (MLM). She was reading this Chapter titled " You can never fail in MLM" When I saw the title, my thought immediately is " What rubbish title is this?" Many of you who know me will know that I did fail in network marketing. This title is misleading. Imagine if you cannot fail in network marketing, everyone would have rushed to do it and earning big bucks now and there would be less complains abt the bloody bus fare hikes! :P In ALL business there is always a chance of failure. Failure could come from internal and also external It is because of this chance of failure, the payoffs for doing business is higher compared to holding a job. So I feel this title is totally misleading. People who are considered doing networking marketing now, this is to help you manage your expectations because the reality is you still can fail in network marketing. It is a semi business but it has still a business element in it so you still can fail in network marketing. Take Note!

RICH DAD poor DAD

Recently, I heard one case that someone read Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, and decided not to get a job anymore. Now RK did not say you should not get a job. RK said that you should first start on a job and use the job as a means to get skills that is needed when you, in your later stage in life, start to build a business system or starting to invest.

Remember when you read RDPD, RK said that he started work in Xerox as a salesperson there because they offer the best sales training program. He was able to brushed up his sales skills through its training; sales skill being one of the essentials skill of an entrepreneur. His stint in the US army and tour of duty in Vietnam was able to trained up his mental toughness, another essential skils of an entrepreneur.

I made the same mistake last time when I wanted to work on full time in my network marketing business. But that time there were other factors like the network markeitng company I joined started in only 4 ctries only so the potential for growth was great. Secondly, the economy was very bad then, so it was difficult to find a job then. But I failed in network marketing because I did not want to step out of my comfort zone too much and I lacked the capital to push the business further because I just stepped out to society and was burdened by the great debt of University tuition fees!

Now I am using my job as a platform to provide me with analytical skills and my training opportunities to interact with people, widening my network and improving my people's skills so that I would be ready for entrepreneurship.

So I would like to stress here, RK did say that job is not something you should cling onto for the rest of your life but he did not say you should not get a job. If you believe in his ideals, you should get a job that can offer you a platform to pick up essential skills and get some capital for business or investment and settle your intermediate bread and butter issue. Have fun during the process!

That is all for this weeks round up of thoughts! :D

Cheers!

2 Bad Bricks vs 2 Good Bricks

Recently a friend share some encounters with me. And trigger some thoughts in me. There was this story that I read. This monk, called Ajahn Brahm was building a wall. He painstaking use bricks to make the wall, stack the bricks as nice and straight as possible, all in all used 1000 bricks to make the wall. After the wall was built, he took a step back and suddenly notice that there are two bricks that are not stack in properly in the wall. The thing is the cement has been set and there is nothing he can do with the two bricks, he was so saddened by it, focusing his thoughts on the two bricks, pondering what a nice wall it would be if the two bricks are stacked in properly. Throughout the day and night, his thoughts was focused on the two bad bricks. Until one day, another monk from another monastery came and saw the whole wall. And said "Wow what a nice wall you have built!" Ajahn Brahm said:"But there are two bad bricks over there, that spoil the look" The other monk said" Well but there are 998 good bricks on the wall, so the wall is still very nice."

As I mentioned in my previous blogs, what is your focus? Are you focusing your thoughts on the two bad bricks and ignoring the overall picture which is the 998 good bricks that form most of the wall? Nothing is perfect in this world, if we focus our thoughts on the negative of an overall good stuff, we might missed out what could be beneficial to us.

Humans has a very bad tendency and that is choosing to believe things that they want to believe. For example, someone said coffee which is your favourite drink is bad for health. Then you will find ALL kinds of reasons and excuse to argue with this guy and after the argument still choose to believe that this guy must be talking nonsense. But if you happen to find an article that show drinking coffee is good for health, you will readily believe that it is true without even reading the whole article even.

This could mean that there is a wall that has 2 gd bricks and 998 bad bricks and you choose to focus on the 2 gd bricks and ignore the rest, you could be killed by the wall when the bricks come tumbling down on you. Worse thing could come if u are in a house, that has a lot of walls that are made up of 2 gd bricks and 998 bad bricks. That house would come tumbling down on you if u do that. So again focus is the key, are you focusing too much thoughts on the 2 good bricks or the 2 bad bricks?? Check it out and refocus if there is a need!

Cheers!

Letting go

Was reading through Sun Zi Art of War and attended a seminar on How Sun Zi Art of War can be used in Business. There was this sentence in Sun Zi Art of War. For one to know whether he can predict victory in a war, one must know which battle that can be fought and which battle that cannot be fought. Which means that one must choose to fight battles that one can gain something from and avoid battles that will result in nothing but LOSS.

In Investment, one also must need to know when to let go off an investment when it has become sour, or will run into too large a LOSS. In Business, there are certain circumstance where we have to let go certain customers or mkts because there is very little to gain from or nothing at all or even worse, LOSS.

Looking at all these, knowing when to let go, is truly part of wisdom. There will definitely be an instance, where you would say," Aiyah, if only that time I ...... then now would not be like this." Recently, things happened for me did not turn out to be what I expected and it was beyond my control, so keep thinking of it, sometimes lost motivation because of it, so it was loss all the way. So after chatting with a good friend and because of my recent research in Sun Zi Art of War, I finally realise, if one want to survive and be successful in life, we must learn to and when to let go things.

Of cos, we may make mistakes, but like i said before, mistakes once made, the best thing is to make use of it, by learning from it. But if you are suffering loss and you know carrying on would suffer more loss, then why aren't you letting it go? Because you have put in a lot of effort in it? Let me put in a scenario. You are driving your car and you thought that in front is suppose to be a beautiful lake waiting for you. But suddenly you realise that actually, in front is a huge cliff. So do you still drive on and go over the cliff because you have spend so much money on the gasoline? Or do you let go, make a detour and take a new direction to the beautiful lake you want to go.

Caught in a dilemma now? Maybe it is time you decide to let go some things. As for which one to let go, you are the best person to answer that question. Don't expect your friends or family to make the decision for you so that later you can blame someone, cos that is the lamest excuse one can come up with. :)

Cheers!

Donkey, Father and Son

I have shared this story with a lot of my friends, but thought put it on the blog so that it can benefit more people from this story. So here it goes.

Once upon a time, (of cos I start from this lah, what you expect? Bored? U give it a time lah :D) there was this grp that comprise the father, son and a donkey. They were travelling to the market that is a long distance away from their home.

On the way, two passerbys saw them and one of them commented to the other:" These two people are crazy, got donkey also don't want to ride." On hearing this, the father ask the son to ride on the donkey while he himself walked.

A father's friend came by, talked to the father for a while, then look at the son and said:" You should be filial to your father, how come you are riding the donkey while your father is walking? You should let him ride while you guide the donkey." So down came the son and the father ride on it.

Further down the road, two aunties came along and one of them commented loudly:"Aiyoh, the father so bad, make the son walk while he himself ride the donkey. This must be a bad father." So expected, the son and the father now ride on the donkey instead.

Next, they reach a wobbly wooden bridge that does not have any safety barrier to prevent things from falling off the bridge. Because both of them are riding on the poor donkey and the center of gravity is high, the poor donkey lost its footing and all three of them fell off the bridge and into the rapid flowing river below.

Does this sound familiar? Everytime you want to do something, and when you tell your friends. There are people who are so enthusiastic to give advice. Especially those that are against what you are going to do. For example, "Why you want to do business?", "MLM is bad, they are cheats", "Don't invest in equities, they can make you lose money!" And because of these comments, you decide to halt what you want to do and think again whether you should continue with your decision.

The thing here is I am not asking you not to listen to people's opinion. The key here is these are your friends. You know what their backgrounds are, so I am sure you can access why they said such thing. Why a friend may say that investment is bad? Did he lose money in investment? How he lost it? Why a friend say that doing business is risky? Has he done it before? If he has, why he failed? Are you likely to repeat his mistakes? U really have to assess why they say it. Like I said, you take advice from people who have been there and done it. You want to be rich, you ask opinion of people who are rich or going to be rich. You want advice to invest smartly, you ask people who are already successful in investment.

Don't take people's opinion at face value. Assess and decide whether you want to listen to their advice. You are the best person to assess what you want to do. Do not let other people's opinion affect you until you are paralysed and not do something that can benefit you.

Cheers!

Be Proactive

Have been to some of the famous hawker centre recently, like Tiong Bahru and People's Park. Usually these places are frequent by a lot of people. And because of the traffic they attract, usually the tables are not cleared that fast, especially those people who are willing to do such jobs for long term subsistence are the elderly.

I notice something whenever I was at these places, the people who are going there to eat, will always wait for someone to come and clear the tables, no matter how long it would be. If not they will try to locate the cleaners and ask them to come and clear the tables. And if they cannot find one or there is no cleaners willing to come over immediately on their request. They try to seek a cleaner table or wait.

Now the thing is what is wrong with taking the initiative to clear the tables yourself?? Too dirty? Well better than sitting down there and do nothing abt it? Just clear the table yourself and you have a 'clean' table to eat from. Beats eating at a table that is cluttered or waiting there and do nothing. It cannot be too dirty lah, just grab tissue paper and start wiping lor. One pack of tissue paper cost only 30 cents at the most, compare to 10 mins of your precious lunch time, u weigh the cost lah.

Take initiatives to bring positive changes to your life. Be proactive and keep on improving the situation you are in, change things that you can change and leave those thing that you cannot control, to people who can control it, and make plans for their different decision. So at least you are not too reactive to people's decision.

Cheers!

This 'health' challenge can be avoided if you know yourself

Well I guess I have wrote a lot abt being the importance of doing maintenance to your physical health. Time to talk more abt another health that most of us are concerned, financial health. This is a 'health' challenge that is easy to overcome compare to health challenges from the physical sense. At least for financial health, it is straight forward, to have enough money or not enough money and usually the solution are two; Take medicines (which are loans) or do maintenance (which is build more income streams).

How come so many people have bought insurance for disability and death?? This is because they thought of what would happen to their family if they lose the ability to work especially if one is the only breadwinner of the family. Now just ask this question. Which has a larger probability of happening? Death/Disability or the dreaded RETRENCHMENT? Now in life, we only experience once Death/Disability at the most (TOUCH WOOD, everyone!) But we may come across 2 or 3 recession in our lifetime. (I just started working and I already experience one and now there are talks of recession again) Not only recession, then we experience retrenchment. Retrenchment may even come out of the blue, esp if the company found a cheaper alternative compare to you. And retrenchment is not restricted to a certain grp of workers. It can affect a range of workers. So think of this qn. If we are prepared for death/disability by buying insurance, how come you have not prepare yourself for retrenchment, loss of jobs which has a higher probability? Right?

Now the next qn to ask would be how can I go abt to get an extra stream of income? Well, you have to ask yourself. This is a qn that you yourself can answer. By mixing your passion with your extra source of income then you are able to build it up as a strong source of income. So ask yourself what would you like to do to generate this source of income. For example, maybe you like photography? Well how abt helping restaurant to help take nice pictures for their menus?
Like reading books? How abt selling book summaries to busy executives? Well the choices are limitless. It is limited to by your imagination only.

Now the key here is to turn your passion into business systems so that you can slowly break off from using time to trade for money into having a system that can generate money for you even if you are not around to work the business. By doing this, you can still have your income stream and have more time to pursue other passions and interest that you have, for example travelling and experience the rich culture and history of the world. Spend more time with family and friends could be another way to use the extra time.

The best thing is, by working on this extra sources of income, you have bought yourself another insurance, an insurance that can help you tie over the situation of losing a job but not the ability to work. And better than the insurance you bought for the event of disability/death, it will benefit you even if the event of losing your job never happens? Who would be unhappy abt having more money in their pockets? If there is such a person, please intro him to me so that I can ask him to empty his cash and put it in my pockets. :P

Think abt it guys. Want that extra source of income or depend on the only source of income which is your job?

Note: I am not asking you to quit your job hor! Do it simultaneously, have a job and work on having an extra source of income.

Cheers!