Thursday, December 28, 2006

Personal comfort is not the only thing worth seeking

"Personal comfort is not the only thing worth seeking," so says Lance Armstrong in his book, "Every Second Counts". The context with which he spoke about was on moving out of the comfort zone. You see, when things around us no longer challenge us the way it used to, we tend to either rest on our laurels or stop expanding our inner capabilities. When this happens, we become at the mercy of circumstances.



"Something in human nature causes us to start slacking off at our moment of greatest accomplishment. As you become successful, you will need a great deal of self-discipline not to lose your sense of balance, humility, and commitment."
— H. Ross Perot

I once mentioned to a friend that I'll want to be more productive in how I use my time. As time is the golden moment that we sometimes take for granted, we end up feeling lousy at the end of the day about how we've used it. Sometimes this could go on and on until the day of reckoning arrives. And this day of reckoning can be the day we lose our job, all of our savings, or it can be the day that we find out we are diagnosed with some nasty disease, or when our family and loved ones start losing faith in us, or when we are about to meet our maker.

By then, we suffer too hard a fall that some of us fail to pick ourselves up. For those of us who do, we will always remember the circumstances we were in and silently tell ourselves we will not go down that road again. But then again, we can promise not to harbour another idle thought, or not to overeat, or not to smoke another cigarette, or not to drink another beer. However we end up doing it once again. It seems like once the pain is over, when we get comfortable, we start indulging in lousy patterns all over again and self-sabotage.

It was once said to me that everyone should be motivated towards something BIG, so that the internal engine will hum and work all the time. I believe not. Instead, we must understand that we need a balance of both; motivated away and towards, and how much of which will depend on our circumstances. For instance, when I have a huge debt to service, I become really motivated to work on it so that I pay down my debts. However when it starts coming down, I become comfortable and say that maybe I could use a new watch or glasses or shoes. Don't get me wrong, it is not wrong to spend. But to spend without taking into account your current situation will lead you back where you came from.

So then what's the deal here? Again, it leads us back to how we make our choices, what our target is, and how we plan to get there. You see, some of us are motivated but only to a certain point, as described above. By understanding how we make our choices and combining it with a balance of motivation towards and away will ensure that we keep on the path. So let's say you want to quit smoking. We need to understand first how we make our choice to pick up a cigarette. Once we understand that, we now know what are the trigger points. What are the things or emotion we link to it.

So let's say you link smoking with pleasure, to relaxation, to taking a break. Then you need to know what are some of the signs that will trigger these. Perhaps whenever you feel like you've work too hard, you need break, so you reach for a smoke. So the next time you recognise that trigger, you first link it to all the unpleasantness you have identified; like you became a slave to the cancer stick, like you see yourself being shortchanged of an opportunity because of the lack of funds to invest in a hot stock, like you lose control over yourself, like your mate hates you when you smoke, like you become branded as indulgence in an increasingly anti-social behaviour, like you become sick and short of breadth, like you stink and become undesirable, like your prospect can't stand the stench and hence can't wait for the meeting to be over. Then the next step is to identify what you replace it with and how that will change the way you feel and all the good things that come with it. So, essentially, we are using a balance of both towards and away motivation to drive us towards our goal of not smoking.

The next is when you need a plan. For instance, challenge yourself that for the next 30 day on, you will stay off smoking and reward yourself with a variety of the towards motivation to reinforce the feel good factor. Once you start doing this, and for 30 days you will then find that its a lot easier to stick to your plan. And as we all have times when we need a little motivation towards, thats when our brain will start to want more of. And thats when we will be advancing faster towards our goal.

So bottomline is this, personal comfort will lead you to emptiness; as when you achieve it, you'll start wondering, what's next. But when you have a plan and that plan dovetail with your bigger plan, thats when we can drive ourselves to our ultimate goal.

Sunday, December 24, 2006

I want you to succeed

Yes. I want you to succeed, period. You see, some people around you, be it your family and friends, do not want you to succeed. Ok, I know some of you might be thinking, "what's he on?" or "has he completely lost it?!". Now, before you start 'flaming' me or dismiss me altogether, let me share with you why I said this. But before we get to that, let me ask; how many of you are afraid of success?

So, what is success? My favourite short definition of success is by Earl Nightingale, "the progressive realisation of a worthy goal or ideal". Because success is not a destination; it is a journey, or some will see it as a marathon without a finishing line. Metaphorically, the definition means that success is something that you achieve on an on-going basis. You set a worthy goal, something that is meaningful not just to you but also to the people around you and the environment that you live in, and you identify some milestones or indicators which shows whether you are on or off track. You see, success is not a grand prize that is achieved only by yourself. If that was the case, then you know your goal is not big enough. When you have a small goal, you not only limit yourself but you are also less motivated to work towards it because it does not move every pore on your skin.

When the goal you are after is huge, you need to enlist the help of others. And when you are able to do that, it means that people get excited about your goal. Perhaps it's because they would like to achieve a goal similar to yours but they feel they don't have the access to resources or they don't have the skills to do so. An example will be Dr Myron Wentz. His dream is a world free of diseases, which propelled him to sell off Gull Laboratories and start USANA Health Sciences. Given his dream to truly spread the word globally, he enlisted the help of several thousands individuals, who as independent distributors have little or no knowledge in cellular nutrition but are excited and shared about his dream. They participant in the business to spread the word and at the same time get compensated in monetary and other intangible gains, such as helping a friend.

You see, when your dream is big, it creates synergy that brings people from different walks of life, culture, faith, beliefs together to make it a reality. By taking on the leadership role, you paint a picture for others to dream about; you create a road-map to link their current situation to the dream, and more importantly you allow them to see for themselves how by connecting the dots they too will be able to achieve their dreams.

So, what is your own definition or favourite definition of success? I invite you to write it down. Make sure there is a worthy goal, that it's big and brings about synergy so that it will also excites others to want to participate.

Next, I'll like to invite you to list down the reasons why you think you are not successful (according to your own or favourite definition and not society's or your mom's definition - sorry mom). Once you have done that, distinguish those reasons that were caused by you and those reasons that were caused by external forces. Now, I've got good news and better news for you.

The good news is, for those of you who've got more external reasons than self-inflicted reasons you now know that you have mindset that needs to be changed. I mean, sure you can go out and blame your boss, colleagues, parents, friends, spouse, or even your cat for being the impediment to your success. Thing is, then who has control over your own success? Them or you? For those of you who've got more self-inflicted reasons or purely self-inflicted reasons, you now understand why you are yet successful. And the better news is, you are in control of whether you succeed or not from hereon.

Now that we have gotten over this, let us talk about why some people, including myself in the past, are afraid of our own success. To some of us, success, the way we define it, will result in some or massive changes depending on your size of the goal. The bigger it is, the more changes we anticipate. And being human, or the result of our conditioning, has led us to resist change. Why? Simply because we don't want to feel uncomfortable but like what Anthony Robbins said, "we want to move away from pain". By our definition of success, we foresee that it will cause us to become someone we don't want to be.

Some of us have strange prefixes such as filthy-rich or preconceived ideas that to be successful we have to be mean or cunning, or worse still, evil. Perhaps its something we picked up from shows such as Snow White (and her wicked but rich step-mother) or Working Girl (where the successful but lonely boss played by Sigourney Weaver). Or maybe it was your parents or relatives who related stories about how so-and-so who became successful by engaging in underhand or unscrupulous activities. Either way, these subliminal messages that reside in your subconscious mind are holding you back from your own success; hence you become afraid of your own success. Now, you need not go out and tell Walt Disney or your parents that they are wrong. As they serve a purpose. The purpose was to protect you, to show you the pitfalls before you fall. And these are useful because you now know that you can be successful doing the right thing. You can be successful being nice. You must not violate your own core values or you'll be sorry. So, embrace and acknowledge these messages and let yourself know that you will do the right thing and yet be successful.

So, the reasons why your friends or family don't want you to succeed is also because of such messages. It may not be the same as yours but they serve the same purpose. They don't wish that you lose your soul or become a totally heartless person when you become successful. Or on a less dramatic level, they want you to be around for them and to treat them the same as before. They do not want you to get hurt too. So, acknowledge that and better still engage them in your journey so that they can not only take part, but also contribute to your success.

Now, why do I want you to be successful? Why does this person who do not know you at all or well enough want you to succeed so bad? Because your success does not rob me of my successes. In fact, when you succeed it does not make me any less successful. It's not a zero-sum game. Or put it bluntly, your success has got nothing to do with me. So then why am I so darn serious about your success? It is because I believe that your success will bring about a better life for you and the people around you, providing your success does not accrue all benefits solely to you. And when that happens it allows others to gain their own successes.

Also, another important belief is that of abundance. Success, like I said is not a zero-sum game. In fact, there are people who wish you not succeed because they are envious or they want to feel superior that they are better than you. These are the people with the scarcity mindset. And not only will they hurt themselves as a result of this mindset, they will also impede others. And by adopting a scarcity mindset you do yourself more harm than good. So engage in an abundance mindset, a mindset that with more successes, it will bring about even greater successes. Hence, I really want you to succeed, period.

Friday, December 22, 2006

Its a choice you won't regret

I once bumped into an acquaintance, someone who was a friend of my friend. I called him and we spoke for a while. Initially he had trouble remembering my name; he still couldn't recall after a while. I reminded him but to no avail. Finally, I told him and it didn't ring a bell to him. However, after describing to him, he recalled, not my name but my actions he did. He said, "oh, you are the chain-smoker, I always see you with a cigarette in your mouth!". That was definitely not very flattering.

And that's how I was remembered. Question. How would you'd like to be remembered? For the wonderful things you did? Or for some actions you wouldn't be proud enough to brag about it? Certainly, if you are like most people, it will be the former I hope. Many of us behave in a certain manner that sometimes caused other people to recognise us in ways that we may not appreciate.

For instance, there are a few people in my Aikido class that aren't as popular as others. Not that they are mean, it's just the way they behave that caused others not want to be around them. There are also others who tried extremely hard to suppress or delay their emotions who after a while caused others to doubt their sincerity. Like I said, they are just like you and I who wants to be accepted; who wants to be liked (who here does not want to be liked?); who wants to blend in with the rest; who wants to belong to the group.

And that's fundamentally a human desire. The desire to be connected. I mean, I have yet to come across anyone who prefers to be by themselves. Even those weirdos, as we ignorantly called them, also have an innate desire to be connected to other people. Just because they don't feel comfortable with you and I doesn't mean they like to be alone. They probably feel more comfortable connecting with others through the computers or through pen-pals (how many of us still remember pen-pals?). Having said that, being connected through different channels will also, over time, shape your personality. Because of their affiliation with the computers and text messages, some of these individuals are viewed as "no EQ".

Personally I have encountered many such people through my course of work, and also others by the nature of their occupation, they treat people like how they would in their job; both positive and not so positive.

So, the point is this. How you identify yourself, your identity, your personality is something that some of us don't pay much attention to. For instance, by the way that acquaintance identify me could lead me to identify myself as a "chain-smoker". Can you imagine when I am trying to quit but that "label" stays with me subconsciously? Just like if someone identifies himself as the keeper of the law, he will tend to make sure that no one breaks the rule or he'll give them a earful. Or if someone identifies himself as a doctor, a healer; he may extend that identity to superiority! Or if someone is a consultant, he'll always be ready to dispense with advise.

Therefore, it is critical that we identify the identity that we want others to remember us for, something that we can be proud of, something that allows us to connect with other people; many different types of people. The company you keep will give you an idea. This is a choice we need to make as soon as possible, as its not only going to make our eulogy sounds much better; its also going to impact on our behaviour and hence how people treat us. Its not their fault if they think you are weird; its not their fault to think you are aloof; and its certainly not their fault to not include you on their Christmas get-together guest list. Its how to choose to be identified as that is causing people to treat you the way they do.


So, if you treat people with respect and love, they will reciprocate. May not be in the way you'd imagine or prefer, but it will certainly be on their minds. Its a two-way traffic; how you perceive others will treat you, you will return the favour. And as a result of them doing so, it will also mean that they love and respect you. With that, you will feel more comfortable being with them and hence you will start to act in a manner in which they will accept and return. If you think the best of humans, they will live up to your expectations; and same applies in reverse. Would you be disappointed from time to time, when someone fail to live up to your expectations or worse still, take advantage of you?

Yes, it will happen. The thing you need to remember is you can be responsible to them but you cannot be responsible for them. The actions or behaviour that others choose are entirely their choice. You just need to do your part and understand that their intentions are always good; may not be good for the people around them but the only reason why they behave in that manner is solely to protect themselves. Ultimately, its not your fault if they take advantage of you. As we discussed before; you can be responsible to them but you cannot be responsible for them.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

What would you do?

I was invited to facilitate a school's strategic planning session recently. The participants were totally sweet, participative, positively oriented, and totally pragmatic. Too pragmatic perhaps. You cannot fault them, as their environment has conditioned them to think that there are certain fundamental issues to address and address those issues well they will.

In order to help them see beyond the current situation, to explore for a while in the near future, to take a step out of the present moment, and to open their minds to new possibilities; I asked them a critical question that was directed at me several years back.

The critical question was, "If time nor money were an object, what would you do?"

From time-to-time I asked myself this very same question. And if for a few days in a row I am not satisfied with my answers, I know its time to go to the drawing board. Sometimes, we can get a little caught up in the current situations, and also some of us may even be in a state of denial, "of course it is what I am doing!" However, just ask ourselves the follow-up question, and that is, if its what you are now doing, then are you happy? Can you rate your happiness a 8 or 9 or maybe even a 10, on a scale of 1 to 10? I discovered, if you can rate your happiness on that level, then you're alright. Just go back to work. But when you find yourself not comfortable with the level of happiness that you have appended, then its time to start asking more empowering questions, as its a sign that things are not as well as you want them to be. Don't brood over it, its perfectly alright if you are not yet happy. Its perfectly fine if you cannot give yourself a 9 or 10. Its perfectly okay that you may not be as happy as you want to be.

And the reason is because, there is still room for growth. There is room for improvement. There is room for excellence. There is room for expansion. There is room for acquiring new knowledge, skills, habits, competencies. There is room for accepting more challenges in your life. There is room for strengthening your strengths and acknowledging your enhancement hotspots. There is room for creating more opportunities.

Once you acknowledge this rather than beat yourself up and start asking disempowering or lousy questions or worse still start affirming negative beliefs about yourself, you'll be alright; for now that is.

When this happens, will it be more assuring to ask yourself what areas can I still improve upon so that I can be happier or would you rather be asking yourself, why is it that everyone seems to be getting on and moving up except me? If you are like me, I'll prefer to ask the former. Reason is obvious. The former allows you to gain a foothold, to plant a seed of possibilities in your mind, to stretch your imagination, to push you out of your comfort zone to make improvements in your life.

Its probably also a good idea to re-evaluate what you are doing and if what you are doing is making the best use of your time and money. Money, to me is just like oil. You need oil to push growth in an economy. You need oil to transport goods around. You need oil to get you to the other side of the world. You need oil to get your electricity. You need oil to get your automobile moving. You need oil even to sleep; well, at least to keep the air-conditioning or heater going. When there is a shortage of oil, growth becomes limited. With prices of oil going up, prices of related goods also start rising. With prices of goods rising, you are going to need an increase in your income as well so that you can, at the very least, still on par with your current lifestyle (even if its a frugal one). When you start asking for a raise, the cost of doing business for your employer goes up. When that goes up, your employer are going to start charging the clients more. However, if they are not able to raise their fees as they see fit, they are going to have to look at ways to trim costs. Maybe we will conserve energy. Something I read during the tech-bubble bust was, "due to recent cut-backs, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off
". Just like this bumper sticker, perhaps we will cut down on other areas. Non-essentials. So your employer starts to go back to basics without the bells and whistles. Or maybe your employer decides that you should work longer hours just to keep your job as the increase in cost is eating into profit margins. As a whole, the economy will need to generate more income for everyone to keep up with the increase in oil prices. And in order to do that successfully, it will depends on whether the economy is heavily leveraged. If a lot of individuals are highly leveraged, in consumer spending and also in properties, then unless an increase in income happens, it will be difficult for them to keep up with their payments, or their homes. If the economy is not highly leveraged, then it is possible to get everyone to tighten their belts, and bite the bullet for the time being, until all is well or the cycle continues, viciously.

So, why is oil like money? You see, many people become slave to money. Working day and night for it. Doing anything possible and I mean ANYTHING, just to make a few more bucks. Some even do it at the expense of their health, integrity, or even their soul. When they adopt a mindset like that, do you think when they have made enough, if there is such a thing as enough for money, will their health, family, friends be there still? Maybe, maybe not. I'll bet on the latter. When you view money as a form of "energy", you then start to adopt a different perspective of things. Assuming that oil (it is not, but for the sake of our discussion I am making this bold assumption) or all collective form of energy is unlimited. As in, when all the oil wells dry up and peak production is reached; we will have alternative form of renewable energy such as wind. Therefore assuming that all collective form of energy (nuclear or otherwise) is unlimited, will you be willing to share or will you be keeping it all for yourself? By adopting a mindset of abundance, you not only allow the form of energy to flow through you, and not stop with you. Let's say suddenly you become pessimistic and start to keep barrels and barrels of oil in a warehouse in anticipation of an oil drought, and even when your neighbour or your best friend come asking you for some, as they are suffering from the lack of heat, and you unwillingly turn them away. Why, because you anticipate that you will need all the oil that you have to last you a lifetime. While it may be true, what you really need to focus on is not whether it will last you a lifetime. What you need to focus on is, if you are able to share your oil, will you also help others find ways to explore more oil fields; and as a result of that, they no longer need to bug you for oil and also, at the same time, now everyone has more oil!

So, my point here is, money is just a form of energy. What you really need to focus on is not whether you will have enough. But more importantly is whether in times of crisis, even if you need to cut back on your oil consumption; will you be able to afford it. Are you more heavily leveraged now than before? Are you able to use your time to equip yourself with the best resources available so that oil will always be there for you?

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Break that Mindset!

The very word itself, mindset. It keeps us in a frame of mind that is set in its thinking.

What we really need to do is to break that Mindset!

In fact, stop using the word altogether!

We will need our frame of mind to be fluid and flowing. Always adaptable, always willing to seek new insights.

Be open and be respectful too.

If you look at the waves that have been happening over the last few decades, you will find some phenomenal changes that have happened. Some survived, some ultimately survived anyways but not at the expense of something else.

Looking back some 3 or 4 decades ago, you will find that companies were competing with each other largely on price. The, "You think you can go low?! Let's see who can go lower!" And obviously for these companies, the ones that were able to go lower win. Its like the Japanese dumping their goods in the US markets, only to drive the competitors out of business and then increase their prices thereafter. However, not every company is like the Japanese. Some can only go that low. Because there are still wages to pay, loans to service, bills to keep up. So, there is a limit as to how much lower any company can get, without lowering itself out of business.

Then came the, "Well, let's cut our costs so that we can go lower!" With this came the management restructuring, company downsizing, and process re-engineering. So you have a bunch of cost-cutting consultants who advise you where the fats are (not that you do not already know), where you can trim, how if you reorganise your shop floor will be able to streamline your processes, and hence viola! costs are brought down, you can go lower still, and drive out the competition.

After a while, it seems like we are streamlined to our neck! What else can we do? So, what if we do not carry stocks ourselves but let our suppliers carry the stocks for us until we need it? Great idea! Dell did it. JIT manufacturing became the next buzzword. Companies start pushing the baby to the guy lower in the value chain. That caught on quickly, and soon everyone is trying to do the same!

Now, there's no more costs to cut. So let's think out-of-the-box. Do more with less. Go for higher productivity. Let's do benchmarking. Go copy what the best in class is doing and if we can achieve that as well, we'll be ahead of the competition! So here comes the benchmarking consultants and their delivery of the best possibility frontier, to borrow an economics term. Now, we've copied everyone in the industry and more. What else?

How about we innovate? Develop a product where people will need where no one else is doing now! Great concept! Everyone now tries to create a brand, value-add, innovate, creativity. Then comes the creative thinking people. The ones who says you can use your left-brain and your right-brain! People start showing up at work with nose rings, ear-rings, nipple-rings, and what have you. Suddenly its cool to be creative! Let's drop the suit and put on our jeans. Lose the shirt and wear a round-neck. Having a goatie means you are a dude. Being bald is in! For a while, the deal was good.

Then of course, coupled with the fact that everyone was starting a new dot-com company faster than you can say dot-com! All projections and business models were written on napkins, back-of-the-envelopes, on your under-arm! Suddenly new players can now threaten the big boys! Boo-hoo! As you know it, the tech-bubble burst!

Now, everyone is out of job.

And the good news is, the change is not over yet!

It took 3-4 decades for all that to happen.

It will take half (or even less) the time for EVEN more changes to come on!

So, do you need to break that MindSet?

How you may ask!?

Stay tuned....

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

REIN-TIME

I've had this obsession for some time now, and that is what are some of the traits of successful people. One of the common traits that I've found out is, and I'm sure you'll have some references for what I'm about to say, how they use their time.

Someone once said, time is like a suitcase. Give the same suitcase to two different people and the amount of items each will put into their respective suitcases will differ. One may put more items in a suitcase then the other. Additionally, when you look at the kind of items each pack into their suitcases, it will generally reflect their personality. Perhaps one may wish to leave more space so that it can accommodate additional items. You get the idea.

Bottom line is, we can draw a parallel between time and suitcase. How for someone, it seems like they get a lot done within a day, while for another; its never enough time. In fact, I'm a proponent of being able to use your time in the most optimal fashion. Saying that puts me in the spot sometimes. You see, most people want to be able to spend time chilling out and just doing "brain-dead" activities. I don't deny we all need time to rejuvenate ourselves and we all need time to relax and stay away from 'work'. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

True. Having said that, Jack needs to be able to create a Balance between what's 'work' and what's 'play'. So for instance, if Jack chose to select a 30-70 rule in proportion to his work-play time division, then he needs to understand the returns this will give him. Should Jack be happy with the returns from this 30-70 division, so be it. Now, what I begin to hear about certain people is that they are not happy with the returns they have. "... but John has a bigger house!", "... but Jill now drives a BMW", and so on. However, they are not willing to relook at the fundamental equation of work-play time division. Worse they turn around and say, "... but I have a life you know?!"

One of my friends say, but you do not always put your time to 'productive' use. You need to relax your mind. Get away from the subject. Stand back. Ponder. Gain a new perspective. And I totally agree. I didn't say anything about making money! I only say, you put your time into the most optimal use. I don't think Mother Teresa spends her time reading trashy magazines or watching trashy movies! So, some may say, "... but I am not as great as she is you know?!" My respectful response will be, "You can if you choose to. In your current situation, you may choose another course of action, which doesn't confine you to only reading 'useful' materials and watching 'relevant' tv programmes." Of course, there are research out there that shows that sometimes staying away from the 'herd' instincts does pay. Just like in investment, where George Soros, Warren Buffett, and John Templeton certainly do not confine themselves to reading and watching what everyone else is reading or watching.

You can, and probably should; divide your time in an optimal fashion that you can get the highest returns, whatever your definition of returns may be. If you can just picture a downward slopping curve, with work on one axis and play on another. Any point on this curve will determine you work-play time division. And the curve that you are on will determine your returns. Let us assume that everywhere on this curve will give you the same level of returns now. In the immediate term. However, your choice of the position on the curve will determine how your time curve will look like in the future.

Let's take an example that, you have a fixed amount of monies in a time deposit. It will generate a fixed amount of income for you, based on the existing rate of returns. Now, assume you do not do anything to cause this amount of monies to grow overtime, do you think your returns will remain the same over the years? In fact, for most of you, you'll already know that your returns will diminish in value over the years. Faced with an inflation, you could even possibly run the risk of drawing on your fixed amount of monies, thereby reducing this sum and causing your returns to diminish even more. So, certainly you can still engage in the same work-play time division, but your returns will change over time.

Of course relating this to real life, when you fail to invest your time in a manner that places you in an advantageous position that in the event of certain fundamental shifts in the economic structure, social conditions, or political upheaval.

For the second part of this blog, I'll like to touch on the systems perspective to respecting your own time. Picture this for a second. Say, Jill, a good-natured graduate who left her employer to start her own enterprise. With her experiences and educational background, she is able to provide consulting services to small business on their marketing plans. Being a one-woman outfit, she then decide to be contactable and so got herself a blackberry where she will always be able to answer to emails on the fly. Great for the customer. They feel like they are the only customer and that she is dependable. Of course, Jill does a decent job (probably more than decent as she needs to prove herself). After a while, it got the client thinking. Wait a minute, if she is able to answer to my mails so promptly and is always contactable whenever I need to speak with her, then she might not have a very large client base. If she doesn't have a large client base, which means she will be hungry for business. And if she is hungry for business, she will be willing to accept a lower fee than others who have more clients and are more successful, and possibly better at what they do as well. Now, Jill thinks she is proving an excellent service to the client by being prompt and diligent. Meanwhile, she attempts to ask for a higher fee and find that this become quite challenging. As a result, she needs more contracts to keep herself afloat and because of that she spreads herself too thin and might even ends up compromising on her quality of work, which will prove the client's perception that "... maybe she's not that good".

Now, lets examine this illustration in detail. First, Jill does everything she could to provide the best services for her client. Second, the client is basically just perceiving all of these, where it may not be real in the first place. However, as a result of Jill, unknowingly not respecting her own time, she created a delusion for her client that she may not be too hot a consultant if she is always at the beck and call of the client. Another interesting factor involved in this is, when the client has the slightest thought that "... maybe she's not that good", the client has already activated his reticular activating system, where subconsciously he will be looking for evidences that "... maybe she's not that good". And as we all know, what the mind seeks, the mind finds. Now, the client will start having evidences that "... maybe she's not that good" and as a result of that be not willing to pay her higher fees for her services.

Please don't get me wrong here. I am certainly not advocating that you suddenly refuse to take the calls of people, stay aloof, and demands everyone to make an appointment with you just to see you. Should you do that, you'll see a slight in your popularity that will very soon make you redundant in your organisation or your industry. What I am saying is simply this. Respect your own time. If you say you are going to devote 30-70 to work-play, for heaven's sake, adhere to this and do not let others talk you out of it. There will be people who will sway you from your firm adherence to your work-play division, and that is because its not the social norm that is practiced by everyone. These people probably tried doing it themselves but met with limited success or just didn't have the courage to see it through. What I'm saying is, your firm adherence may make them uncomfortable.

Now, once you firmly adhere to your 30-70 division, you not only demonstrated to others, but more importantly; demonstrated to yourself that you are serious about this commitment and not just paying lip service. When others observe this from the outside, what they generally see is a focused individual who works at what he desires. And how would you feel when you meet someone like that? You'll respect them! You'll not waste the time of Donald Trump, or Warren Buffett, or Steve Jobs. When you respect their time, you'll find that whatever time you spend with them was well worth it, and also you appreciate them taking time off their schedule to be with you. You'll feel honoured as well. You'll feel special. More importantly, you'll find that whatever they tell you to be of value of some sort because your reticular activating system is turned on and your subconscious mind is searching for evidence to back this up.

Of course, if you are Jill, you'll need to be of certain substance. But what can you do if you are in Jill's shoes? If you totally respect your own time, you might get a voice mail instead, so that you can screen the calls and return the ones that are important or urgent. You might check your emails but choose to respond to those that are of priority to you. You may wish to allocate your time and activity in such a way that you can allow yourself to play? You don't want to work yourself to death! See, as a consultant, when you stop working, your income stops as well! What's more, you can invest in an inexpensive call answering service that will screen the calls for you. More importantly, you will be able to demonstrate to clients that when you are with another client, the time is for that client you're physically with. You want to be fair to this client who is currently with you and will give them the same priority if you are with them as well.

So, bottom line of this blog is to REspect and INvest your TIME.

Now for the challenge of the day:

1) Itemise what you do each day for at least a week.

2) Look at the time-stealers (things that are unproductive) and look at how much more you can achieve if you were to fill these (maybe not all, as you're not a dull child) with optimal-time activities?

3) Visualise yourself doing this to see if you are comfortable with this new work-play division.

4) Once you are done visualising, be sure to adhere to it firmly, respect your own time by investing it by engaging in more meaningful activities.


Love and respect,
Melvyn Tan

PS: Just a side note. There was once a friend of mine referred a website designer to me because I was looking for one. I spent at least 2 hours explaining to him about what I do and what I'll like to do for my company's website. To be fair, he did gave some good suggestions and proposed to get back to me with a proposal and quotation. He asked for one week. Its been more than a month now. I hope he's not met with some mishap that impede his speech or ability to send emails. God bless him.

Friday, November 10, 2006

Snap Choices

Oftentimes when we make certain choices we are given the luxury of time to think things through, evaluate our options, then choose to take a specific action towards a situation. However, when we are faced with situations when it require us to make a snap choice, do we always make it a wise one? In that split seconds, when we are forced to make a choice about our actions, what happens?

There are certain categories of people who encounter such situations more regularly than others. For instance, a policeman needing to make a choice whether to approach a supposedly suspect, a trader in the stock market needing to make a choice to buy or to sell and at what price, a nurse or doctor in an ER needing to make a choice whether to send the patient home or to give him the necessary medication.

Research has shown that when some of these individuals make such snap choices, they are correct on average. What that means is that given expert knowledge or intimate understanding of the situation at hand can allow the individual to make a correct choice. Are there times when snap choices when made have gone astray? The answer is of course, yes.

When needing to make snap choices, especially when in situations that are really high pressured or when the person is highly strung, what happens to that individual is that their ability to make a correct snap choice breaks down. They no longer take into consideration the peripheral information available and hence make a wrong choice.

Hence, the next question is, can such wrong choices be avoided? The answer is of course, yes, again. The ability to make a better choice can be trained, conditioned in the mind of the individual such that when a similar situation arise, it allows the individuals to draw from their previous encounters and choose accordingly.

So, the challenge for today is: Think about your snap choices!

Step 1: Pick one snap choice that you've made previously that you wish you didn't.

Step 2: Identify what was the trigger that cause you to make that snap choice.

Step 3: How will you want your choice of action to be instead?

Step 4: Visual yourself in that situation again first making that unwise choice, then create another visual of yourself in that similar situation and making the better choice. Bring the first picture in full view in front of you and have the second picture shrunk to a thumbnail size and place it at the lower left-hand corner of the first picture. Now, in a second, enlarge the second picture so big that it covers the first picture entirely. Do this for at least 6 times. Now, see what happens when you visualise yourself in a similar situation again. Do you see the first or second picture?

Love and respect,
Melvyn Tan

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Consistent Choices

Building from the differentiation of conscious vs unconscious choices comes consistent choices.
Now, let me ask you. If you know someone who say he'll do one thing but instead he does something else, what will most of us think of him? That guy is not reliable. He says one thing but does another. He is not trustworthy. I'll never do business with him again. In short, what we'll say of him is that, he is inconsistent. And as human beings, we have the need for being seen as consistent. Because, we want others to see us as honest, reliable, trustworthy, and most importantly, consistent.

Of course consistent makes us 'look' good. There is another extremely important reason why consistency is great. Imagine if you decide on going on a diet. So because of impulse, (maybe it was something that someone said) you decided to lose weight. The first day you starve and even exercise. All those around you were cheering you on and you're feeling pretty good about yourself. Then the next day you decided to lower your food intake again and start taking the stairs. And this goes on for another day. Then what happens? You probably feel tired and now your body is aching. The hunger pangs start striking again. You feel like you needed a break. You then decide to stop exercising and that leads to you gaining back your weight and you start saying to yourself, its no use. So, you give up.

What happened here is a classic case of individuals who decide to go out and do something because they were either motivated by something someone said, or they were influenced by their friends. They do it for a while, then stop. By being inconsistent, we fail to reach our goals. Yes, we all slip sometimes, but until you decide to get on your feet again and commit to working on it again, this is when you really FAIL. Of course, one of the reasons why we slipped back to our old ways was because we have not changed something at a deeper level or we have not satisfied the intent with another more resourceful behaviour, this will be discussed later.

Being unaware of unconscious choices will cause us to get results that may not be consistent. For those of you who've been shopping with your little ones, you'll know what I'm saying. You go with your little ones to a supermarket, get approached by a sales person who invites you and your little ones to taste a particular food or snack in small cups or scoops. You then turned to them and asked if they liked it. They nod in agreement as their chorus of "yeahs" rang through the aisle. You buy it and when you feed them back home, they don't want to eat it after the first time. Now you're wondering if you've been duped into buying something that differs from what you've tasted. What happened here is that as you are unaware of your unconscious choices, you will have difficulty trying to figure out why something happened like this one day and then its totally different another!

And what if you are a salesperson. Because you are unaware of how you make certain choices, you are not able to consistently replicate your results over and over again. Think about that!
Now, if you want to be able to make consistent choices, then you'll need to be aware of how you arrive at those choices so that you are able to either replicate it (if its useful) or stop doing it (if its not useful).

Challenge for you: Identify your consistent choices!

Step 1: Identify one useful and one not useful choice that you've made consistently up until now.

Step 2: State how has this useful choice been helping you and how this not useful choice has been hurting you.

Step 3: How else can you apply this useful to other areas in your life where you can see some benefits? As for the not useful choice, what might be your intention behind this behaviour?

Love and respect,
Melvyn Tan

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Conscious vs Unconscious choices

Once we have learned about how making different "CHOICES" will have an impact on our action, and hence the results we get in life. This in turn determine our destiny or future. Therefore, up until now, the type of results that you have are a consequence of your choices you made earlier. Perhaps just think for a second, how some of the choices that you have made have brought you to where you are now. Further, just imagine that for some reason, if you have made a different choice, your results now could be drastically different.

To explain this, we can think of flying a plane as a metaphor. You see, at take off, the pilot will steer the plane in a particular direction based on the calculations and using the instruments to help him. Along the way, imagine just a 1-degree divergent made can impact on difference between the final destination. We've always joked that pilots making their way to Singapore, and it being such a small island, could end up in Batam, Indonesia or Johor, Malaysia if they just made a small divergent in terms of direction.

Of course some of the seemingly silly choices we made in the past could have landed us in some trouble; and in retrospect we can choose to laugh it off or we can choose to hold on to the negative emotions. Either way, we made a choice and with that choice, it can determine if we will just 'move on' or we are 'stuck'. Some of us let those choices and its consequences hold us hostage by choosing to hang on to the negative emotions. We all have experiences like this. However, some of us chose consciously, while some of us have made an unconscious choice. And because of the latter, it has resulted in us sabotaging our own plans.

To deal with those conscious choices that have seemingly not so good consequences is a lot easier (I am not saying it is easy). However, to deal with those unconscious choices can be a little tricky. First, for the person who have made this unconscious choice earlier on in life and hence caused a seemingly not so good consequence, at this moment, he probably does not even know about it. Without acknowledging or being aware of the fact that you may have made a lousy unconscious choice in the past could result in denial. A coach or a mentor may see that and alert you. But because you have made the choice in an unconscious fashion, you may even choose to not realise it.

Sometimes these unconscious choices can be good, while other times it can have adverse effects on your performance. Whether its good or adverse; the fact that you are unaware (it being an unconscious choice) means you have no idea how you arrive at those choices, which means even if you want to replicate the results you can't. Or even if you want to stop making such choices that are affecting your performance in an adverse manner, you can't. Its a typical situation like when you are on a run, and your friend/colleague ask you how do you do it; and you just say, "I don't know". Or if you are feeling frustrated because you have stopped a habit successfully in the past, but suddenly because of certain elements you are now on it again and you are feeling frustrated because you want to stop!

Challenge for you: Pick one habit you'll like to stop and do this as an initial phase

Take the following steps:

Step 1: What about this habit do you not like?

Step 2: If you stop this habit for good, what good does it do for you?

Step 3: What is the cause of you not being able to stop this habit?

Step 4: Every time when you need to indulge in this habit, what goes through your mind?

Step 5: What will happen if you do not stop this habit?

Step 6: What will you replace this habit with and yet retain the good intention of the behaviour?

Love and respect,
Melvyn Tan

Saturday, November 04, 2006

How making better choices can change the world

Starting with a singular perspective, the choices we make, personal or otherwise, will impact on the kind of action we will take. Hence, this leads to the type of results we will get. And ultimately, its the results that determine our lives. Following from this singular perspective, when we elevate to a 2-person situation, this gets a little more interesting.

Let's use an example.

Say, John is a really good-tempered guy. However, what he encountered one day really shook him up and rubbed him the wrong way. He gets really upset and this time instead of keeping his cool, he chose to let it all out. If John is a hermit who lives up in the mountain, his choice to outwardly expression of his reaction might only disturb the silence and tranquility enjoyed by the animals there. However, if John lives in the city, and he is with someone who doesn't know him very well who happened to go out with him.

This instance is going to create an impact on John's friend that she might say, "Wow, what a temper!" Worse, John might even choice to take it out on the friend (as I mentioned, this time he really lost it). Assume his friend is someone who is easily affected by others emotionally, and she choice to get really disappointed, not just with John but also choice to lose interest in what she does for the rest of the day (as her mind is now preoccupied with John lashing out at her in public and having people turn and stare). Because of the choice that John make at the initial stage, it can cause a chain of events with his friend choosing to feel disappointed, hence choosing to ignore the people around her, which in turn upset them and on and on.

I suppose you already know by know that when we view the choices we make from a systems perspective, it began to dawn on us how our choices can really impact either positively or otherwise on the people, situation, and climate around us. Increasingly as individuals living in the city and facing a rising level of pressure, either from work or at home, this can result in individuals choosing to behave in the manner that John did. And the consequence of that really has an impact on not just the people around you but also the community.

So, therefore, making better choices can indeed change the world.

Challenge for you: Watch your choices!

Take the following steps:

Step 1: What is that 1 choices that you made today, you can consider it as "good"?

Step 2: How did this choice impact on yourself and also the people around you?

Step 3: In the future, how can you use this choice to respond to a possible challenging situation?

Love and respect,
Melvyn Tan

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Are people who make good choices born or made?

As I shared with one of my Aikido friends this morning during training about my idea of writing a book on Making a Choice, he asked an extremely pertinent question, "why did you choose to write about making a choice?"

Great question! It has continuously amazed me that the way in which companies choose to embark on strategy A or strategy B can lead them to greatness or cause them to disappear from the surface of the earth. There are so many illustrious examples you can find. Just take a read of Jim Collins' Good to Great. Also, there are many individuals who made certain choices in their lives and that completely change their paths. Again, many examples to quote. Just look individuals like Oprah Winfrey and you'd know what I'm talking about.

I believe that when it comes making a choice, we all go through a process. For us, some of our choices are rather personal and we sometimes feel that as its a personal choices it ends there. Period.

What we sometimes don't see, or choose not to see, is that some of these choices we make will have an impact on the people around us. Think about a spouse who chose to quit on a job without an impending offer, and worse without a discussion with the other, and you will know what I mean. On a larger scale, the choices we make at work will also impact on the people who work with us, whom we work for, and even on our community to a certain extent.

With that in mind, we must take responsibility for the choices we make consciously, and more importantly for the choices that we make subconsciously. As a result of our subconscious choices, we fail to notice how our behaviours can cause others to like or dislike us. In terms of our professional lives, our subconscious choices can lead us to success or, yes, failures (let's call it feedback from hereon).

Expanding on that, working with executives and leaders some have shown to make really good choices, and what's equally important is their ability to make their choices in an extremely timely manner. Oftentimes, their choices will lead their organisation to leverage on a rising trend or avoid an expensive mistake.

So one could ask, are people who make good choices born or made? Of course, if we are not able to decipher how these great executives and leaders make such timely good choices, we'll tend to lean towards it being born. But once we realise that certain patterns are surfaced and when we are able to go to those people who make really good choices, ask them in retrospect to re-construct it, we are then able to allow individuals to learn how to make better choices.

Now, being able to learn how to make better choices not only help those of us who sometimes feel we can make better choices, but also to enable us to continuously and consistently make better choices. The reason why consistency is so critical is because if we are not able to make consistently better choices, then our journey towards excellence will be paved with speed-bumps. Sure, there will be time when despite all our efforts we still end up making not too wise choices (in retrospect), but because we are able to decipher why we made those choices, we can then heighten our awareness of the particular cause that trigger us to make such a choice.

From today onwards, I will want to challenge you to model what we discuss here.

Challenge for you: Be mindful of your choices!
You may want to take the following steps:
Step 1: Look out for 5 choices that you have made.
Step 2: Identify which of those choices were good or not so good ones.
Step 3: Then identify what is the particular cause that trigger you to make those choices.

Love and respect,
Melvyn Tan

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

God-given gift

We all have one God-given gift. Every single one of us. Some of us use it wisely, some of us may not use it in the best way possible, and some of us don't even realise we have it!

From my research over the last few years and also in spending time to understand what differentiate successful people from the rest, it shows up time and again, which is how they use this gift.

This God-given gift is given to us all. Everyone has it. How we use it will determine our results.

So, what is this God-given gift? It is, CHOICE.

Oftentimes, our choice is a result of our situation.

For instance, if I needed money (situation), my choices could be (choice 1) to get a job, (choice 2) start a business, (choice 3) marry a rich spouse (hee), (choice 4) just live off your parents, or worse (choice 5) to rob a bank!
So, the choice we make in any given situation will determine what kind of results we get.

Say if you chose choice 1. Yes, you get a job and hence receive a salary, which is fine. However, over some time you may see your neighbours getting a nicer TV, a nicer car, a nicer sofa; and hence you wished your salary was higher.

If choice 2 was your option, you may find it extremely difficult to get the first client, have a positive cashflow, you may even realise that you need to develop other skills in order to make some money. Then you may think, perhaps there is an easier way than this.

Choice 3 may lend you with someone who you really didn't love or care. Choice 4 may cause your parents to run out of retirement funds faster than you can say retire and hence you are back to square one. And choice 5, guess we all know what will happen.

Someone once said to me, but sometimes I don't have a choice! I said, "Well, you choose not to see the choice, or you choose to not choose. Now aren't those choices?"

Some of us use our choices subconsiously. We let the event or the environment drives us to choose. If XYZ happens, I will do ABC. If 123 was the situation, than I will take 789 as a step. And the reason we make these choices subconsiously is because, we are already conditioned to the fact that if this happens, I will do that. And when we do something over and over again, and each time we get the same or similar results, we then come to believe that this is law. That there is no other way. True, there are some universal laws that applies to us all, for example night must follow day; spring must follow winter. We do not want to fool ourselves that we can change the seasons or rearrange the planets in our solar system.

Notwithstanding universal laws, we will want to learn to make better choices.

RESULTS (EFFECT) > ACTIONS (CAUSE); where ACTIONS (EFFECT) > CHOICES (CAUSE).

Hence, if better choices produce better actions, and better actions produce better results, than we want to be able to do that over and over again. Sometimes, with the number of choices available to us, how do we make better choices?

I believe that there is a gap between situation (cause) and choices (effect). For instance, sometimes when we look back at how we reacted to a particular situation or to something someone said, and we think to ourselves, "I can't believe I said that!" or "I can't believe I did that!" So, there is something that affects the way we choose our actions.

I have decided to devote my life to engage people in a meaningful manner so that they can make better choices.

Love and respect,
Melvyn Tan

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Thinking BIG

You have to think anyway, so why not think big? These famous words of real estate mogul, Donald Trump, somehow rings in my head.

Thinking. When we think, we are actually putting words together in our head and trying to make sense of it. And it depends on how many different perspectives we can see it from, it will also determine our choices. In other words, how we string our thoughts together will determine what kind of choices we make. For instance, when we are upset about a particular person, whatever the person says, we will tend to take it negatively and hence choose not to believe or agree with that person. Therefore, getting the sequence (or syntax) right in the first instance is really critical, as the choices we make will determine the kind of results we get.

Remember this: TO MAKE MAKE BETTER CHOICES, YOU MUST CHANGE YOUR MINDSET!

There are many reasons why thinking big works. At the individual level, what will cause you jump out of bed every morning, a BIG goal or a tiny goal? Still at the individual level, will you be more creative and innovative when your goal is BIG or small? Will you be disciplined enough to make sure that you stay on your path, if you know that your goal is BIG or small?

Let's move to the team level. When you work in a team, will you be more excited if the goal of your team is BIG or small? Will the number of benefits or spring-offs be larger if your team's goal is BIG or small? And if we move up to the organisational level, will you be more excited to work for an organisation that has a BIG goal or one that has a small goal?

What about your kids? Do you think they will be more excited if you tell them you'll take them to Disneyland or if you'll take them to the playground in the neighbourhood?

Now, don't get me wrong by linking BIG goals to material things or being greedy. BIG goals have the energy to create synergy. BIG goals inspire you to work on your action plans. BIG goals keep you going. BIG goals keep you energised. Of course your goals can be, "I want a BIG house". Or, "I want a BIG car". However, when you do achieve those goals, the next question you'll ask is, "what's next?" If you can get a 20,000 sqft house, you may start wanting a 30,000 sqft house. And it never ends.

So, here when we talk about BIG goals, we are referring to goals that will not only bring about benefit for your good self, but also the well-being of those around you, those working with you, those whose lives you impacted.

Now, let me offer you this challenge: See how many of your original goals are BIG, as in it brings about benefits beyond yourself.

Love and Respect,
Melvyn Tan

Monday, October 30, 2006

The Power of Discipline

One of the major traits that separates the successful from the rest is, without a doubt, discipline. Being disciplined is so important for, say, a boxer who wants to win in the ring, he'll need to strictly observe the discipline of right diet, no booze, no cigrattes, getting up early in the morning to run so as to keep lean and fit. Someone who is training for the marathon, for example, will need to adhere to a strict exercise regime to gear her to be ready for the big day.

I once asked a business owner, let's say you are extremely disciplined by getting up at 6am everyday. However, if you do not have a purpose, or a reason why you are getting up that early for, then what is the use of being disciplined? He agreed that discipline by itselt will not produce great results. In fact, he quipped, that you can be disciplined and have the wrong thinking, you'll be a disaster. And that's exactly what Jim Collins said in his book, Good to Great, where he mentioned that disciplined action without discipline thought is a receipe for disaster.

In fact, as Stephen Covey outlined in 8th Habit, he mentioned that having a vision is just one part of the equation. The ability to see the current reality as it is is just as important. Very often, people see their current reality and then compromise on their vision (see Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline). While staying true to our vision, we must also cultivate the discipline to see the current situation as it is and decide what needs to be done to move forward.

In my pursuit towards my personal vision, I have indeed sometimes slipped into a lower standard or not fully following through with some of the activities that I've set out to do. I could have just stopped doing it altogether, forget about, or lower my personal vision. However, as I believed in my personal vision so much, I have came back and restart afresh. Relooked at what has happened that caused me to lose focus or slipped into a lower standard.

And instead of seeing these events as failures or evidences to convince myself that this is hard stuff, I chose to see the learning points from these events. What can I learn from these events, which can help me move forward? Sometimes I realise that there are other issues involved. So I take these into account during my next attempt.

Or, perhaps sometimes certain events might not offer you any learning points from the perspective that you have looked at it. Then I'll ask myself a different question, and usually I will get curious about the situation. And ask myself, what is it about this event that if I see it will be an empowering one for me? It has worked for me. When that happens, I go into a different state altogether and it generates different emotions for me.

So, being disciplined to your 'cause', be it your personal vision or personal goal; or being disciplined in your 'approach' about certain things will bring you great results. Of course the qualifier here is that, you must have a purpose or a personal mission that is.

Love and respect,
Melvyn Tan