Habits

Psychologist say that 90% of our behaviour is habitual. The way we think and the things that we do over a period of time will develop into our habits, and subsequently, these habits will determine how well every area of our life works. In other words, whatever habits we currently have established are producing our current level of results. If we want to create higher levels of success, we will have to drop some of our old habits and replace them with more productive habits.

Good or bad, habits always deliver results.

"Principle #23 - Develop Four New Success Habits A Year"

Think about this, if we apply this principle over a 5-year period, we would have 20 new success habits that could bring us the level of success and achievement that we desire.

• Start by listing four new habits you would like to establish in the next year.
• Work on one new habit every quarter.
• Research shows that if you repeat a behaviour for 13 weeks, it will develop into a habit for life.
• One powerful technique is to partner up with someone, keep score and hold each other accountable. This will keep you right on track.

"In truth, the only difference between those who have failed and those who have succeeded lies in the difference of their habits. Good habits are the key to all success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure. Thus, the first law I will obey, which preceedeth all others is - I will form good habits and become their slaves." ~ Og Mandino

A Letter from a Father to His Son in the Year 2030

June 21, 2030

Dear Son,

Congratulations on your baby-to-be! I remember the feeling your mom and I had when we discovered you would be born, way back in 1992. I know, I know—it was another century. But I remember the anticipation and the angst we felt knowing we were about to introduce another child into this world.

I’ve intended to say something to you for a long time but never found the words. I guess it’s easier for me to write them than to say them to your face. I know it sounds cliché, but you’ll be raising your child in such a different world than the one you grew up in. Everything’s changed. In your early years, life seemed so easy; you were on top of the world. We hovered over you, intending to pave the way for your college and your career. We wanted you to know we believed in you; that you were special and could do anything you set your mind to. We wanted your self-esteem and self-confidence to be rock solid.

Looking back, I realize that in our efforts to help you, we actually hurt you. Please know, we meant well. As I ponder your situation now, with your marriage contract ending this month, I can see you’re in a difficult spot. What’s more, because we let you move back home with us after college, you weren’t prepared for the world that awaited you. We just didn’t know what to do. You depended on the meds to get you through each week, you lacked a realistic plan (what with the economy in 2014), and you were as addicted to video games then as you are today. We couldn’t seem to find a way to prepare you for the future you now face. Now it’s too late to change things.

Son, I feel I have failed you. With all the help your mother and I tried to give you, we ended up doing just the opposite. We hindered you from becoming the best version of you possible.

All of this hit me like a ton of bricks last night. I watched a documentary on culture change, and I was shocked to see the impact my generation (parents, teachers, coaches, youth workers, retailers, and employers) has had on yours. The program painted an all-too-familiar picture of you and so many of your friends:

• Adults living in isolation because they can’t stick with their marriage contracts – even those short-term contracts that have become so popular.

• Social media junkies with little to no emotional intelligence or people skills.

• Obese adults who are stressed and don’t have the discipline to eat right and exercise.

• Nearly an entire generation addicted to “happy pills” because of chronic anxiety and depression.

• A generation of adults we allowed to pass through school without really learning.

• People confused about their gender and identity because of the BPA you all consumed.

• Midlife adults who are in a “love you hate you” relationship with their parents. (I keep wondering if that’s true of us.)

All this saddens me because it’s so unnecessary. With the baby coming, now it’s your turn to lead, and I fear you aren’t ready. We let you down.

What scares me most is the violence today. In 2010, we all began to read about the youth bulge. Your generation worldwide is huge. Remember what I told you then? When a nation’s population of young people is over 30%, violence almost always follows. I’m afraid the terrorism you’ve seen in the last twenty years will only get worse due to the sheer size of your generation.

Son, I hope you can forgive me—forgive us—for not leading you better. But more important, I hope you can somehow make up for our mistakes. You’re about to become a dad and make me a granddad. Please lead this little one well. Do better than we did in raising the next generation. It may be our only chance to save our future.

I love you,

Dad

Source: http://www.savetheirfuturenow.com/pdf/generation_iy_book_excerpt.pdf

Accomplish or Do Not Begin

Have you ever felt that your life keeps getting heavier and heavier with every new task that you take up? One possible reason is that you have been carrying some "old baggages" together with you.

This can be explained with "Principle #22 - Clean Up Your Messes and Your Incompleteness":

The Cycle of Completion above shows the six steps which are required to succeed at anything, to get a desired result, to finish. Yet how many of us never complete? We somehow would tend to leave one last thing undone in our way towards the finishing stage. When you don't complete the past, you can't be free to fully embrace the present.

"If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?" ~ Laurence J. Peter

Getting into completion consciousness, do you agree that "20 things completed have more power than 50 things half completed"?

One way to keep us in completion consciousness is to apply the "Four D's of Completion":

• Do it - if you can take care of it within 10 minutes, do it immediately.
• Delegate it - if you can't do it yourself or don't want to take the time, delegate it to someone you trust to accomplish the task.
• Delay it - if you have to take care of it yourself, but know it will take longer, delay it by filing it in a folder of things to do later.
• Dump it - if you have decided that you'll never going to do anything with it, then dump it.

By driving things to completion, you'll be free of the mental burden of having to deal with clutters, and thus freeing up attention units to take up something new.

Accomplish or do not begin. It's time for some "housekeeping"!

Blinded by Ego

I used to be a curious child. I always wondered how things work. I would always ask her questions.
But these were the usual answers that I would get:

"I'm busy. Go ask someone else."

"If you really want to know, go find out yourself."

So I grew up learning how to find the answers to my questions. And I am forever grateful for this.


I used to be a careless child. Sometimes when I made mistakes, she would yell at me:

"Such a simple thing, and yet you get it wrong. Stupid!"

"Where is your brain?"

So I grew up learning how to be more thoughtful and attentive. And I am forever grateful for this.


I used to be a timid and over-protected child. When I was confronting my fears, she would say these to me:

"At your age, your cousins were already good at socializing with adults and strangers."

"Look at how independent your cousins are."

So I grew up learning how to seek inspiration to motivate myself. And I am forever grateful for this.


Nowadays, sometimes I would still hear yellings from her, but the context has changed:

"All of you are useless. I just wanted to know how to do this but none of you can teach me."

"Just do it for me. I'm lazy to read the manuals. Don't ask me to think."

"You have wings now. Everything you say is right."

As much as being thankful for her upbringing, I'm also saddened and feeling helpless for her "blindness" which has been caused by years of ego and self-ignorance.

Just when you think you're at the top of the league or at the forefront of technology, do remember that time flies and one day you'll be back among the chasing pack if you don't stay humble and diligently upgrade yourself.

When your ego swells so huge inside your head, it blocks you from seeing and thinking ahead clearly.

When your glass is full, whatever being poured into it will just spill out.

Watch your ego.

25 Lessons I Learnt from LEGO

I have grown up playing LEGO, but only today I got to learn about the remarkable history which is both insightful and inspiring.

Here are 25 lessons which I have learned from the LEGO Story:

1. Opportunity presents itself during adversity, only if you have not given up.
2. When you hold yourself accountable to others, knowing that their good fate lies in your hands, you're more likely to persevere through the toughest of adversities.
3. Imagination without action is still just an idea.
4. Some of the things that you have brought from your past could serve as valuable assets for your future.
5. The core of success in any business is to have a die hard determination to deliver the highest quality products and services even during testing times.
6. Sometimes just when you think you have finally come to the end of your hard times and start to taste the fruits of your effort, life will throw you another huge blow or challenge to test your resolve.
7. There is no point comtemplating on your bad luck or blaming others for your circumstances during adversity because it will only drag you down into the pool of self pity. Instead, step forward and take ownership of your own fate, because you are the captain of your own life.
8. When you are taking charge of your life, you will always find ways to get over your weaknesses and move ahead.
9. Sometimes life showers you with little drops of favour, only for you to make those favour count.
10. Keep going, don't settle. Successful people always look for ways to improve and upgrade themselves.
11. You can lose money in business, but never trust and integrity.
12. Every detail matters. Only the best is good enough.
13. Inspiration can come your own hope, or the hope others put on you.
14. Successful people see opportunities when others don't.
15. Successful people always challenge the norms, make no excuse and swim against the tide.
16. Your spouse and children should be the reason for you succeed, not the excuse for you to remain in your comfort zone.
17. Every business needs an idea to begin with and a sytem built around it to become sustainable.
18. The people you serve don't just look for a ready made solution which make them feel dumb. They like to feel empowered by the products or services that you deliver to them.
19. A building made of bricks stacking up without cement would easily fall apart. The same goes for an organization. An organization (building) needs common/compatible values (cement) to hold its people (bricks) together.
20. With its simple modules and system, one can build virtually anything out of his imagination with endless possibilities using LEGO. The same applies to success. With success principles (modules) and learning programme (system), one can build virtually any size and form of success with endless possibilities, over and over again.
21. Only organizations which are built on right principles and values will survive the test of time.
22. You need to get the best out of any situation and never give up.
23. Successful entrepreneurs always think ahead and focus on their core competencies.
24. Your achievements can only be as big as your imagination.
25. Successful people leave behind their legacies in the form of principles and spirit which will continue to inspire and build their next generations.

Share this story and inspire others  :)

Meet the Generation iY

Some of us are wondering how the future world will be like.

Here’s a hypothetical scenario which clearly spells out the potential issues facing the future generation. This is very relevant to all of us here who will still be alive in year 2030 – as parents, employers, teachers, etc.

Take some time to read this article titled “Mini-Novel: Class of 2030 High School Reunion”
Link: http://www.savetheirfuturenow.com/2030

A better future starts today.

The Importance of Having Right Association

"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with." ~ Jim Rohn

Do you realise that your more successful friends/relatives rarely spend time with your less successful friends/relatives?

The answer is found in "Principle #21 - Surround Yourself with Successful People":

John Assaraf was a street kid who had been entangled in the world of drugs and gangs. When he landed a job working in the gym at the Jewish community center across the street from his apartment in Montreal, his life was changed by the powerful principle that you become like the people you spend the most time with. In addition to earning $1.65 an hour, he received access to the men's health club. John recounts that he got his early education in business in the men's sauna. Every night after work, from 9:15 to 10pm, you'd find him in the steamy hot room listening to successful businessmen tell their tales of success and failure.

Read his full story here: http://johnassaraf.com/about

Another interesting read that I found was a remarkable quote by one of the most powerful persons in the world during the last decade:

"The less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve. Any time you tolerate mediocrity in others, it increases your mediocrity. An important attribute in successful people is their impatience with negative thinking and negative acting people. As you grow, your associates will change. Some of your friends will not want you to go on. They will want you to stay where they are. Friends that don't help you climb will want you to crawl. Your friends will stretch your vision or choke your dream. Those that don't increase you will eventually decrease you.

Consider this: Never receive counsel from unproductive people. Never discuss your problems with someone incapable of contributing to the solution, because those who never succeed themselves are always first to tell you how. Not everyone has a right to speak into your life. You are certain to get the worst of the bargain when you exchange ideas with the wrong person. Don't follow anyone who's not going anywhere.

With some people you spend an evening: with others you invest it. Be careful where you stop to inquire for directions along the road of life. Wise is the person who fortifies his life with the right friendships. If you run with wolves, you will learn how to howl. But, if you associate with eagles, you will learn how to soar to great heights.

"A mirror reflects a man's face, but what he is really like is shown by the kind of friends he chooses."

The simple but true fact of life is that you become like those with whom you closely associate - for the good and the bad.

Note: Be not mistaken. This is applicable to family as well as friends. Yes...do love, appreciate and be thankful for your family, for they will always be your family no matter what. Just know that they are human first and though they are family to you, they may be a friend to someone else and will fit somewhere in the criteria above.

"In Prosperity Our Friends Know Us. In Adversity We Know Our friends."

"Never make someone a priority when you are only an option for them."

"If you are going to achieve excellence in big things,you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude." ~ Colin Powell

Do you have friends who constantly attempt to bring you back down to their level? If so, it's time to consider having some new friends!

One Step at a Time

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out." ~ Robert Collier

Think about this following quote:

"If you would go every day to a very large tree and take five swings at it with a very sharp axe, eventually, no matter how large the tree, it would have to come down." ~ Ron Scolastico

"Principle #20 - Practice the Rule of Five" here simply means that every day, we do five specific things that will move our goal toward completion.

Consider these examples:

• If you wrote 5 pages a day over 40 years, that would be 73,000 pages of text - equivalent to 243 books of 300 pages each.
• If you earn an extra RM5 a day over 40 years, that would be RM73,000, enough for you and your spouse to go on a long luxurious vacation to celebrate your 40th wedding anniversary.
• If you invested RM5 a day over 40 years, with a compounding interest of 6% a year, you would have accummulated a small fortune of around RM305,000.

Here is an interesting real-life story "The Daffodil Principle" which exemplifies the power of practicing the rule of five.

Do not under estimate the power of these tiny little steps, because if practiced over time, it can even move mountains.

Happy Chinese New Year 2013 !!! Huat Ar !!!

I would like to dedicate these heart-warming short videos to you..enjoy  :)


"Ka Fan" (Add Rice) by BERNAS

"One of the best gifts in life is time that you give to your family."

"Tau Fu Fah" (Tofu Dessert) by PETRONAS

"Look back on a great life, look forward to an even greater one."

And my all time favourite...

"Old Folks" by PETRONAS

"Love of the family is life's greatest blessing."

Hang in There!

Principle #19 – Practice Persistence

“Most people give up just when they’re about to achieve success. They quit on the one-yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game, one foot from a winning touchdown.” ~ H. Ross Perot

Some people have even quit when they’re just “three feet from gold”. What a waste!

“History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.” ~ B.C. Forbes

Consider these real life examples:

• Admiral Robert Peary attempted to reach the North Pole seven times before he made it on try number eight.
• In its first 28 attempts to send rockets into space, NASA had 20 failures.
• Oscar Hammerstein had five flop shows that lasted less than a combined total of 6 weeks before Oklahoma! which ran for 269 weeks and grossed $7 million.

Whenever you bump into an obstacle or run into standstill, you just need to stop and think of three ways to get around, over, or through the obstacle. Always be solution-oriented in your thinking and persevere until you find a way that works.

Success is not just about what and how much you’ve achieved, but rather who you’ve become in the process of getting what you’ve achieved.

“Success is something you attract by the person you become.” ~ Jim Rohn

Kaizen

Principle #18 – Commit to Constant and Never-Ending Improvement

The Japanese calls it “kaizen”.

If you want to be more successful, you need to learn to ask yourself, “How can I make this better? How can I do it more efficiently?” And so on.

The problem with most of us is, the moment we set our sight on our ultimate goal, we tend to want to achieve it so fast that we get ourselves paralyzed by the humongous gap between where we are now and our ultimate goal. If we could just learn to begin in small, manageable steps instead, we would have given ourselves a greater chance of long-term success.

One of life’s realities is that major improvements take time; they don’t happen overnight. But because so many of today’s products and services promise overnight perfection, we’ve come to expect instant gratification – and we become discouraged when it doesn’t happen. However, if you make a commitment to learning something new every day, getting just a little bit better every day, then eventually – over time – you will reach your goals.

Consider this interesting statistics:

In professional baseball, a player who bats an average of .250, or 1 hit for every 4 times he comes to bat, can expect to do well in the majors. A player who bats an average of .300, or 3 hits for every 10 times he comes to bat, is considered a star player. 

Statistically, the difference between star players and average players is only 1 hit out of 20! The margin of greatness is only 1 more hit out of 20! 

This shows that it takes only a little extra bit of performance to go from good to great.

Whatever your goal, decide where you want to improve, and what small incremental steps you’ll need to take to achieve that improvement.

If you do, you’ll enjoy the feelings of increased self-esteem and self-confidence that come from self-improvement, as well as the ultimate success that will inevitably follow.

“He who stops being better stops being good.” ~ Oliver Cromwell

The Breakfast of Champions

Principle #17 - Use Feedback to Your Advantage

There are two types of feedback that you'll get - positive and negative.

We like positive feedback because it tells us we're on course.

We tend to dislike negative feedback because it tells us we're off course. However, knowing that we're off course is just as important, because it gives us useful information about "improvement opportunites".

Usually in life, we tend to go off course more than we go on course, but in the end we still get to our destination, just by continually taking action and constantly adjusting to feedback.

Some of these responses simply don't work when responding towards a feedback:

1. Caving in and quitting
• Caving in and quitting will only keep you stuck in the same place.
• Think of the automatic pilot system on an airplane. The system is constantly telling the plane that it has gone too high, too low, too far to the right, or too far to the left. The plane just keeps correcting in response to the feedback it is receiving. It doesn't all of a sudden freak out or break down because of the relentless flow of feedback.
  
2. Getting mad at the source of feedback
• All it does is push the person and the feedback away.
  
3. Ignoring the feedback
• You'll never know whether you're on course or off course.

Just as most people will tend to resist negative feedback for fear of getting hurt, most people will not voluntarily give you feedback for fear of hurting you. Therefore, it makes it easier to get feedback from others by ASKING.

"How do you see me limiting myself?" 

"On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the quality of our service over the last quarter?" 

"What would it take to make it a 10?"

Not all feedback is useful or accurate. You must consider the source. Some feedback is polluted by the psychological distortions of the person giving you the feedback.

"If one person tells you you're a horse, they're crazy. If three people tell you you're a horse, there's a conspiracy afoot. If ten people tell you you're a horse, it's time to buy a saddle." ~ Jack Rosenblum

Here are some things you can do when the feedback tells you you've failed:

1. Acknowledge you did your best.
2. Acknowledge that you survived and you can cope with it.
3. Write down what you've learned.
4. Thank everyone for their feedback.
5. Clean up any mess and don't try to hide the failure.
6. Revisit some of your past successes.
7. Regroup and reaffirm your worth and contribution.
8. Refocus on your vision by incorporating what you've learned from the failure.

"Feedback is the breakfast of champions." ~ Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson

Good Money vs Bad Money

Last month, I bought this book from Popular bookstore because I wanted to use up my cash vouchers. At first, it was its striking gold-coloured title which had caught my attention, but soon after I flipped through the first few pages, I was immediately drawn into it and finished the book in just 2 days!

It was quite a technical book, thus I’m not able to share much of its contents in brevity. But here are some of the important concepts that I had learned in the first few pages of this book:


Gresham’s Law of Money

Gresham’s Law defines good money as money that has little difference between its face value (the value nominated on the money) and its commodity value (the value of materials on which money is being made). On the other hand, bad money is money that has a commodity value with a considerably lower value than its face value.

When both good money and bad money co-exist in the market, good money which includes gold and silver is hoarded and goes into hiding, while bad money such as paper money swells in circulation. Thus, bad money usually drives good money out of circulation as people hoard good money and prefer to conduct trade using bad money.


The 8 Symptoms of Bad Money Economics

Symptom #1 – Exploding US monetary Supply

In the past, we could refer to the Federal Reserve’s M3 report to know the volume of US Dollars in circulation throughout the world. However, on March 23, 2006, the Federal Reserve decided to stop publishing the M3 report (you may be guessing why). From 1990 to 2006, the total amount of USD in circulation had risen from US$ 4,091.7 billion to US$ 10,276.1 billion. After the recent years’ series of QEs, it scares me so much to even guess how much USD is in circulation.

Symptom #2 – US Current Account Balance

From 1982 to 2010, the United States had recorded a cumulative US$ 8.2 trillion in the red in its current account balance. It is currently the world’s largest consumer.

Symptom #3 – US Budget Deficit

With out-of-control monetary supply, the US government incurred a cumulative US$ 7.74 trillion in budget deficits from 1971 to 2010. From its projection in 2011, the estimated deficit to be incurred from 2011 to 2016 is US$ 5.41 trillion (equivalent to a whopping 70% of the total budget deficits incurred in a 30-year period!).

Symptom #4 – US Public Debt

By 2005, the US government had increased its public debt to US$ 8.2 trillion, an increase of 15.6 times compared to the 1974 figure. It was reported in December 2011 that this figure had again risen to US$ 15.2 trillion.

Symptom #5 – Rapidly Increasing Commodity Prices

Millions of people throughout the world today felt the pinch of ever-rising prices of good, better known as inflation. The prices of gold, silver and oil have skyrocketed since 1971, the year the USD became a fiat currency.

Symptom #6 – Declining Interest Rates

The Fed cut rates to only 1% in 2003. With low rates, America went into shopping spree for property. And when the Fed revised interest rates from 1% to 5.25% in 2006, the economy went into a sub-prime crisis. To salvage the economy, the Fed made its final move to slash rates to only 0.25% in 2008, thus further weakening the USD.

Symptom #7 – Increasing Corporate and Government Bailouts

American International Group (AIG) bailout = US$ 85B 

Lehmann Brothers = bankruptcy 

US Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) = US$ 700B

Symptom #8 – Declining Value of the USD

The US Dollar Index has dropped from 109.28 points in 2000 to 81.39 points in 2011, down by 26%.

In Malaysia, a weaker Dollar means that our products are becoming more expensive for our customers, making our nation a more expensive place to invest in as cost of living and cost of running businesses go up, thus reducing investment capital from overseas.

As Malaysia’s economy is hugely dependent on foreign investments, we had to increase our money supply to weaken our Ringgit. In 2003, we had RM 553 billion in circulation. In July 2011, the volume of Ringgit had grown to RM 1.15 trillion. This means we had inflated our monetary supply by a compounding of 10.3% in the past 7.5 years.

After reading this book, I began to have a better understanding of what’s happening in our local economy. The bottom line is – INFLATION is here to stay for many more years to come (and probably forever until the whole currency market collapse). We definitely need to first find a whole new vehicle or a better strategy to hedge against inflation, before we could even think about prospering.

And if you still think that saving money is a good strategy for your future and retirement, you’re clearly in for a huge disappointment. Please…read more financial books!

SWSWSWSW

Principle #16 - Reject Rejection

Rejection is a natural part of life. Every successful person who has ever made it to the top had somehow endured lots of rejections in their life.

• When Colonel Harlan Sanders left home with his pressure cooker and his special recipe for cooking Southern fried chicken, he received over 300 rejections before he found someone to believe in his dream. Today there are more than 11,000 KFC restaurants in more than 80 countries around the world.
• When Alexander Graham Bell offered the rights to the telephone for $100,000 to Carl Orton, president of Western Union, Orton replied, "What use would this company make of an electrical toy." Today, almost every household in the world would have at least one telephone.
• In 1998, Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page approached Yahoo! and suggested a merger. Yahoo! suffested that the young Googlers keep working on their little school project and come back when they had grown up. Within 5 years, Google had an estimated market capitalization of $20 billion.

If you have ever experienced any rejections in life, that is because you're making some progress with your life. Anyone who has never experienced any rejections in life is clearly hiding in his comfortable shell and not making any progress in life.

For those who are moving ahead, the next time you ever bump into another rejection, just remember this:

SWSWSWSW

Some will, some won't; so what - someone's waiting!

Out there somewhere, someone is waiting for your ideas. It's just simply a numbers game. You just need to keep asking until you get a YES.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU !!!

59 days...

72 posts...
 

925 page views...

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU...


...to all of you for being a part of this amazing readership !!!


With your support, I will continue to G.R.O.W. stronger and share more interesting topics which I have learned from my daily reading and experiences.

For 2013, one of my resolutions is to finish reading a minimum of 25 books by 31 December 2013.

And I urge all of you to join me in setting a goal for your reading this year.

Let us spread this spirit to the people around us and cultivate a good reading habit among Malaysians!

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting. ~ Aldous Huxley

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance. ~ Confucius

The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go. ~ Dr Seuss

Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers. ~ Harry S. Truman

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read. ~ Mark Twain

Let us change the world through reading!

 

Done! (November 2012)

 

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Done! (January 2013)

 

 

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Done! (January 2013)

 

 

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