Believe in Yourself

Principle #5 - Believe in Yourself

Have you ever wondered why we used to learn and achieve things faster as a toddler?

Your brain is designed to solve any problem and reach any goal that you give it. The words you think and say actually affect your body. We see that in toddlers. When you were a toddler, there was no stopping you. You thought you could climb up on anything. No barrier was too big for you to attempt to overcome. But little by little, your sense of invincibility is conditioned out of you by the emotional and physical abuse that you receive from your family, friends, and teachers, until you no longer believe you can.

When we were toddlers, all that we used to think in our minds were:

• "I want to get up!"
• "I want to start walking!"
• "I want to start running!"
• "I want to start cycling like my brothers!"

And at the same time, the people around us used to also be more encouraging to us when we were toddlers. They would say things to motivate and encourage us, such as:

• "You can do it!"
• "Clever boy!"
• "Try again!"
• "Take your next step!"

But as we grew up, expectations change and people around us would become less encouraging towards us and start applying their own self-limiting beliefs on us:

• "Are you sure you can do it?"
• "Don't be silly!"
• "You better don't repeat this again! Or else..."
• "Watch your next step!"

Which eventually lead us into doubting our own capabilities:

• "Can I really succeed?"

If you want to move ahead in life, something needs to change, and the one thing you need to change is YOU.

"You have to believe in yourself when no one else does. That's what makes you a winner." ~ Venus Williams

You also have to add to your thinking that "What others think about you is none of your business". Quit worrying about what people think about you and follow your heart.

Dr Daniel Amen's 18/40/60 Rule: When you're 18, you worry about what everybody is thinking of you; when you're 40, you don't give a darn what anybody thinks of you; when you're 60, you realize nobody's been thinking about you at all.

The truth is that everyone else is just as busy as you, thinking and worrying about their own lives. And if they happen to think about you at all, most likely they are also wondering what you are thinking about them. Think about all the time wasted here in worrying. Wouldn't it be good to convert this energy to good use instead?

Believe Your Way to Success

"Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve." ~ Napoleon Hill

It is really an intriguing idea to think that your mind can deliver literally anything and everything you want, as long as you BELIEVE that what you want is possible.

Here's an excerpt from "Principle #4 - Believe It's Possible":

Scientist used to believe that humans responded to information flowing into the brain from the outside world. But today, they're learning instead that we respond to what the brain, on the basis of previous experience, expects to happen next.

Why does the brain work this way? Neuropsychologists who study expectancy theory say it's because we spend our whole lives becoming conditioned. Throughout a lifetime's worth of events, our brain actually learns what to expect next - whether it eventually happens that way or not. And because our brain expects something will happen a certain way, we often achieve exactly what we anticipate.

This is why it's so important to hold positive expectations in your mind. When you replace old negative expectations with more positive ones - when you begin to believe what you want is possible - your brain will actually take over the job of accomplishing that possibility for you. Better than that, your brain will actually expect to achieve that outcome.

It also helps if you indulge yourself in the right self talk in front of the mirror, thinking of the one thing that you really want to achieve while saying this to yourself:

"No matter how bad it is, and how bad it gets, I'm going to make it!"

One of the Biggest Brainwashing in Modern History

From the day we were born, our minds have always been a subject of programming and re-programming (or so called "brainwash"). We were taught how to do things following a set of pre-conditioned norms and rules. For instance, in some Chinese customs, if a little child starts holding pencils and spoons with his left hand, his parents would adamantly try to force him into using his right hand instead.

Everything that we do today is a result of programming and re-programming. When the outcome is perceived as being positive in accordance to social norms, we call it "education and training". When the outcome is perceived as being negative in accordance to social norms, we call it "brainwashing".

For the rest of this topic that I'm going to talk about here, I will be using the word "brainwash" because that's how I perceive this matter. You may have your own perception, and it's okay. There's no right or wrong here.  :)

Over the past year of research, I have learned that one of the biggest brainwashing in modern history is the idea of RETIREMENT.

"Retirement is the point where a person stops employment completely." ~ Wikipedia

Let me ask you this, what is the minimum age of retirement in Malaysia?

If your answer is "55 years old", please read my question again clearly.

If your answer is "60 years old", please read my question again clearly.

If your answer is "I don't know", please get more information.

If your answer is "Depends", you clearly know something that the 3 categories of people above don't know yet.

If your answer is "There's no such thing as a minimum retirement age", you're probably already on track towards your retirement or financial freedom.

Yes. What I have learned is, there is no such thing as a minimum retirement age in Malaysia. You can retire any time you want, as long as you have the means to do so. If you consider yourself to be in employment for your entire career, then yes, there is indeed a minimum retirement age for EMPLOYEES in Malaysia, which is 60 years old coming July 1 this year.

P/S: I purposely remove the word "employees" from the question to show you the so called "brainwashing" that has taken place in our innocent minds.

Some people have always been in "retirement" because of the huge stream of passive income coming into their pockets from the huge businesses they have inheritted from their ancestors.

Some people have retired at the age of 30 because they have built or acquired enough assets to provide them sufficient passive income to sustain their living.

Some people choose not to retire from their jobs even though they have enough passive income from their assets to sustain their living. Call it semi-retirement.

Some people have been forced into retirement at the age of 55 years old because companies would no longer want to prolong their employment in the company.

Some people have not even retired at the age of 70 because they still have to look for contract jobs to earn money to pay for their expenses and liabilities.

If you're financially savvy, you don't have to adhere to this retirement rule set by the government. If you're financially intelligent, you won't even succumb to the brainwashing of this retirement age thingy.

You can retire any time you want, as long as you have the means to do so.

Retirement

What is the age for retirement in Malaysia?

If you answer is 55 years old, you need to update yourself :)

If your answer is 60 years old, please read on till the very end.

Coming July 1, the official retirement age for employees will be revised to 60 years old:
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/minimum-retirement-age-act-will-be-implemented-from-july-1

Whether this is a good news or a bad news, it depends on your perspective.

If you're an employee and a subordinate in a company, it means:

• You can look forward to a longer career path.
• You can expect to pay more taxes over your life.
• You can expect your boss to be staying around for 5 years longer.
• You can expect your promotion to be delayed for 5 years longer because your boss will only be leaving by then.
• You can expect to only get to withdraw your hard-earned EPF savings 5 years later.

If you're an employee and taking a management role in a company, it means:

• You can look forward to retire 5 years later than your initial plan.
• You can expect to enjoy authoritative power for 5 years longer.
• You can expect to feel the competitive threat from your next level subordinate to replace your for 5 years longer.
• You can expect to have the need to reinvent yourself for 5 more years.
• You can expect to only get to withdraw your hard-earned EPF savings 5 years later than your initial plan.

If you're an employer and owner of a company, it means:

• You can look forward to having a bigger pool of manpower to hire into your workforce.
• You can look forward to getting better bargains in hiring employees because supply would greatly exceed demand.
• You can look forward to having lesser headache because there will be lesser turnover in your company as employees grab more tightly to their jobs because competition in the job market gets more intensed.
• You can expect to contribute more to EPF.
• You can expect to face more and more dinosaurs in your company that you try to get rid.

If you're a retail shop or restaurant owner, it means:

• You can look forward to having more sales revenues because people are going to enjoy 5 years of extended buying power.

If you're the owner of a bank, it means:

• You can expect having lesser worries of people failing to pay up their loans and mortgage.

If you're the government, it means:

• You can look forward to more people paying taxes.
• You can look forward to more people contributing to EPF.
• You can look forward to business owners paying more taxes as their revenue increases.
• You can look forward to having lesser headache in taking care of the elderly people's welfare because they can take care of themselves for 5 years longer.
• You can look forward to having a better package to offer to offshore investors in terms of workforce because the salary demands have gone down due to supply exceeding demand.

Who's the real winner?

Is this a good news or a bad news? Depends on your perspective.  :)

Trust, Believe and Empowerment

Something happened today and reminded me of a Chinese idiom:

用人不疑， 疑人不用

What this idiom directly translates into is:

When you use someone, don't doubt; when you doubt someone, don't use.

This idiom originated from ancient China, where kings had applied (or failed to apply) this philosophy when it comes to managing his country and administration. A wise king would understand that in order for him to bring peace, glory and prosperity to his country, he would first need to learn how to trust the people in his administration and army (i.e. trust in their capability and genuine intentions) to run and protect his country. As history has shown, kings who managed to apply this philosophy had enjoyed longevity because of the genuine respect and loyalty they had gained from their subjects; meanwhile, kings who failed to do so had short-lived glory because of the distrust and betrayal from their subjects.

Human nature is still indeed human nature, it never changes with respect to time.

Thus, this idiom also applies in modern day leadership:

• Do you feel good when your boss believes in your capability and does not micro-manage your work activities?
• Do you feel good when your team leader assigns an important task to you without even questioning your confidence in delivering it?
• Do you feel good when your friend entrusts you with the responsibility of safeguarding his house and car while he's away on a long holiday without even doubting your trustworthiness?

I'm sure most of us would feel good in these scenarios above. In fact, we would feel even more motivated to deliver the tasks to our best abilities, because deep inside we feel appreciated, we feel the sense of responsibility and conviction in not wanting to let our boss, team leader or friend down. We would want to honour their trust and believe in us. Right?

In my own words:
Learn not to doubt the person whom you seek help from. Otherwise, you might as well not seek help from the person that you doubt.

Trust and believe lead to empowerment.

By empowering the people around you, you bring out the best in them, and gain respect and loyalty in return.

Does Our Brain Make Right Sense?

Sometime ago, I stumbled upon this particular documentary programme on Discovery Channel which talked about how our brains make sense of our world. The programme features some of the most impressive works done by neuroscientists, and I'm particularly caught by this demonstration below (you can try this demonstration on someone else to test if it's true too).

Let’s look at how the brain works to help us make sense out of what we see. Can anyone read this?

I'm sure most of you would read the words as "JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS". Right?

 

Well, not exactly right. The actual words half-covered by the blue box are "IUMRINC TQ GONGLUSIQNS", which are words that don't make any sense at all.

 

So here, we see that the brain is using words it has learned to make a guess about what is written. Usually, this is really helpful like when we can’t read all of a sign or when we do crossword puzzles, but it is not perfect. We can fool it, and when we fool it, we can easily see that this filling in the blanks is going on.

In other words, what our brain sees are not always exactly accurate. Our brain depends highly on information stored from our previous experience to make judgements.

I tried to understand more about this, therefore I googled and found this "Top 5 Ways False Memories are Formed" at the Discovery Channel website: http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/5-ways-false-memories-formed.htm

Apparently, the "trick" that your brain has pulled on you as you went through the demonstration above is called "Inference".

If you tend to remember all the cheerleaders from high school as having blonde hair and the football players as being dumb jocks, you may be a victim of inference-based memory error, or bias. These types of false memories often occur in memory reconstruction: Put simply, when we pull out memories with holes in them, we simply patch them up with things that seem to fit. While these makeshift reconstructions are sometimes accurate, they're more often distorted by our current knowledge, feelings and beliefs rather than being true representations.

False memories due to bias usually result from a desire to reduce psychological discomfort by having one's thoughts and memories remain consistent. As a result, people tend to rely on inference in a wide variety of situations. Along with the stereotype bias alluded to in the first paragraph, studies show that people also infer they've seen an event's cause when they've really only seen its effect. People will also remember that they felt a particular way in the past that coincides with how they feel in the present, or even that they were worse off many years ago to make themselves feel better about where they are now.

Upon completing a study skills course, for instance, students remembered their initial study skills as being lower and their later test grades as higher than did students not taking the course. In another study, people presented with a list of names supposedly belonging to criminals recently in the media were almost twice as likely to "remember" seeing stereotypically black names as they were other names.

I have always heard this saying,

"F.E.A.R is False Evidence Appearing Real."

Now with this piece of scientific information, I can see really see where this is coming from.

Decide What You Want

Principle #3 - Decide What You Want

"One of the main reasons why most people don't get what they want is they haven't decided what they want. They haven't defined their desires in clear and compelling detail.

Inside everyone of us is that tiny seed of the "you" that you were meant to become. Unfortunately, you may have buried this seed in response to your parents, teachers, coaches, and other adult role models as you were growing up.

After many years of these kinds of sanctions, most of us eventually lost touch with the needs of our bodies and the desires of our hearts and somehow got stuck trying to figure out what other people want us to do.

In the name of being sensible, we end up becoming numb to our own desires."

~ Jack Canfield

For those of you who are in the midst of making your new year resolutions for 2013, it's time to reclaim yourself and your true desires. Stop settling for less than what you want.

"If you don't like the color of the notebook you have, trade with someone else and get the one you want. You deserve to have everything in your life exactly the way you want it."

For those of you who are not sure what you truly want in life, start with making a list of 30 things you want to do, 30 things you want to have, and 30 things you want to be before you die. A sort of bucket list.

Here's a story of Monty Roberts, the author of "The Man Who Listens to Horses", to get you inspired:

When Monty was in high school, his teacher gave the class the assignment to write about what they wanted to do when they grow up. Monty wrote that he wanted to own his own 200-acre ranch and raise Thoroughbred racehorces. His teacher gave him an F and explained that the grade reflected that he deemed his dream unrealistic. No boy who was living in a camper on the back of a pickup truck would ever amass enough money to buy a ranch, purchase breeding stock, and pay the necessary salaries for ranch hands. When he offered Monty the chance of rewriting his paper for a higher grade, Monty told him, "You keep the 'F'; I'm keeping my dream."

Today Monty's 154-acre Flag Is Up Farms in Solvang, California, raises Thoroughbred horses and trains hundreds of horse trainers in a more humane way to "join up" with and train horses.

Enjoy making your new year resolutions!

Happy New Year, my dear friends!