Image courtesy of paulandrews77

Today blog post is about are you feeling comfortable with other people’s views on you. If you are someone who is actually persuing success, it is very importable to be aware of whether you are taking in people’s views on you. We all know that we should not take it too hard of how people view on us as it will be very busy for us to keep track of all kind of views from so many people. We must be self aware of our own behavior and whatever we do, we must be comfortable without having to care so much about how other people are viewing on us. If you are currently persuing your own success, you might feel uncomfortable about what your friends or relatives will think if you are not doing what regular people are doing. Examples are like persuing a career that most people will not go into or not working in a normal 9 to 5 job and setting up your own business instead.

I have friends who will ask me why I did not want to continue my studies and I should not persue what I am persuing right now as it might be risky towards my own future. They are saying the same old thing like the old generation mentioned, study hard, get a degree and find a good job after that. However, do they know that a lot of people are unemployed even after they got a degree or they are not doing what they are loved even after graduation. Initially, I am quite uncomfortable about their views on what I am doing and I am wondering why as friends, they did not provide the support I need but give comments when they did not try it before. Even if they have tried it before, it doesn’t mean that I cannot achieve if they did not achieve in the first place. From some research that I read from some books, I realized that it is very common for friends or relatives to give comments when they feel uncomfortable with the ideas of us venturing into something new that they have not explored before. However, we must stand firm to our own ideas and not like other people influence our decision of what we want to do.

Recently, I have a funny incident that happened to me that made me realize something about my views on how people view at me. I went out of my house without being aware that I wore my Polo T-shirt in the opposite way of inside out. I didn’t realize it until when I feel that my collar is a bit weird. After realizing that I have wore my Polo T-shirt inside out, my mind starts to wonder of what people will view of me or laugh at me. However, I message my girlfriend about this incident and she mentioned something that kick me out of my uncomfortable state. In her message, she mentioned that why do I have to feel weird when I am still considered of having my clothes on. It is true that we should not take other people’s view too hard on ourselves as people will not care so much after giving the particular remarks or comments as once they are back to their normal life, they will forget about what remarks or comments they have given previously. Therefore, no point taking other people’s views or remarks about us too hard on ourselves. If you want to have a taste of feeling the inner feeling of how people look at you and hear the inner voice in yourself, you might want to try out the exercise of doing something weird like what I accidentally did to myself by wearing your shirt in the opposite way.

Hope you are firm with your own decision and not be influence by other people’s point of views. Persist and you will definitely achieve what you want in life.

Image courtesy of wereadmail@sbcglobal.net

Have you heard of this words on “Don’t Cry Over The Spilled Milk“? If you heard this simple phrase of words before, do you really understand the meaning and take into practise yourself. Recently, I have heard this phrase from my one of my colleagues and it suddenly kicks into my mind so that why I decided to write a post on this phrase of words. What actually caused my colleague to say those words were because I was thinking of ways to recover something that we had already thrown away and he felt that it is meaningless trying to spend the time to recover the item when it has already been like that. After thinking through what he said, I realised it is true that we sometimes are wasting our time crying over unnecessary spilled milk in our life.

Most of us should know the meaning straight from the phrase ”Don’t Cry Over The Spilled Milk” as it simply means do not bother over things that has happened. Here’s the exact meaning that I got from wikitionary: “It is no use worrying about unfortunate events which have already happened and which cannot be changed.” Therefore, I felt it is important for us to start to think about the things that are keeping on pondering in our minds and go through them one by one on a piece of paper (ensure we are clear of what we are thinking at any point of time) to see whether are we crying over spilled milk. If the incident that has happened before us and is really unavoidable, why should we keep on thinking about it and wasting our brain juice while we can process better thoughts at that particular moment of time.

What I have learned from this phase of words is to understand the problem and determine whether is it worth my energy to go through it, if it is not, I should continue moving forward with other tasks that need my attentions more in order to achieve what I want in my journey to success. Let’s all start to practise putting this phrase of words into our mind by reminding ourselves “Don’t Cry Over The Spilled Milk.” I do believe it will create a significant improvement in your thinking progress as lesser ineffective thoughts were

Today I am going to post about my recent soccer game experience that I have with my colleagues. As you can see from the above jersey, we are prepared with our own jersey with our favourite number. 24 is my birth date as I have mentioned in my about me section and this is the first time I got my own jersey with my name printed behind it. This really makes you feel excited and wanted to play well with your own name. Anyway, back to the main topic that I wanted to discuss here in my blog post, the title of this post is called “Strategies For Learning That Is Needed” and it is actually based on what I have learnt from the soccer game that I played.

Last Saturday, our working school took part in the east zone healthy lifestyle day and I was told to participate in a 7-a-side soccer game. Initially, I didn’t know there is any plan for the game and what I was told was to buy a jersey which is the one you saw above. I was quite delighted when I received the jersey as it was my favourite team “Manchester United” colour and I get to choose my own printed number and  name. When I arrived at the sport event, I was surprised when our team captain actually went through a thinking discussion about how they are going to play the soccer game. Previously, I have played with the teachers before with another school but there wasn’t a plan on how we were going to play but this time round, the team captain was a different person and he seemed to be quite good at planning strategies. We listened to what he was saying and where he positioned the team players based on their known previous position and strength. There were a total of 11 teams and we were divided into two groups with one side having 6 teams and another side 5 teams. We were in the 6 teams side and we have to face 5 matches in order to go to the semi finals. Each match last 5 minutes and we have to score as many goals as possible. First match, we draw at 0-0 with another team and the team captain actually made a change of positions for the players for the second match as he felt we need more people who can run forward. With the change of positions, our team starts to score goals from second match onwards and in the end, we managed to win the title and come in 1st place.

It is a long time since my last sports event that has a trophy and I was quite delighted about winning it as a team. From the game itself, I tends to learn about the importance of having a strategies in mind first before you carry out any tasks as you will know better what to expect from it. Therefore, I felt strategies for learning is very important in whatever things we do and we must have a plan to win as you don’t plan to fail but never fail to plan.

Here’s the trophy that we won:

5th Ezine Articles #HAHD Challenge Prizes

Recently, I have received my second #HAHD (hundred article in hundred days) challenge award from Ezine Articles directory based on the recent 100 articles in 100 days challenge that I have took part. This is the second time I have signed up for the contest and so far I have received 3 packages from Ezine Articles directory already. One of the packages is about congratulating me becoming a platinum member on their article directory and the other two are the past two #HAHD article challenges (4th & 5th) that I have took up. Based on my experience with EzineArticles, I can see that they have put up a lot of effort to create a good experience with their viewers by going through all the articles send in by authors and on the other hand, giving away gifts to award authors who put in the effort in their hundred article challenge.

Recently, I have been reading Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and there’s a concept of going for win-win or no deal. From the way EzineArticles set a strict standard for their authors (publishers) to follow, this ensure that all publishers are publishing original content with minimum errors which will hence provide a good place for viewers (readers) to find out more. On the other hand, the original content allows EzineArticles directory to rank better in search engine as there is a flow of fresh content going through the network and if the articles are ranking well in search engine, it will thus provide good traffic for those authors who have submitted those articles. If you think through it, this provide a win-win-win situation for the article directory, readers and authors.

Just imagine if EzineArticles is not setting a standard in the first place, it will not have become an article directory with a high page rank and so much traffic entering the site. EzineArticles directory has been ranked the number 1 article directory by most internet marketer and this actually bring me back to a bollywood movie that I have watched recently (The 3 idiots) that mentioned this memorable quote: “Pursue excellence, and success will follow.”

Cheers

Javier

P.S. Anyway, those past 2 #HAHD award that I have achieved are through my pen names in some of the niches and maybe one day I should start writing to promote this blog too.

P.P.S. Just hope EzineArticles will provide more varieties of gifts for its upcoming #HAHD challenge so that it will motivate writers to write more to get the gifts.

Image courtesy of lee★fly

This is the second year that I am doing this year end review of what I have achieved in the year of 2010. As similar as last year 2009, this post is scheduled on 31 Dec 2010. Currently, I should be on my way to Malacca with my dear for a short trip to celebrate our 5th year anniversary on the 1st of Jan. By the time I am back in Singapore, I will be facing a new year with new challenges ahead of me.

The following are the personal successes that I am grateful and proud of achieving in the year of 2010:

- Learn Inline Skating at a cheaper cost (managed to get it through Law Of Attraction)

- Won a 2 Nights resort stay at Chiang Mai through online survey (Plan to go in march 2011)

- Got my driving license before the year ends

- Completed 16km, 21km and 42km marathons (learn about persistence)

- Start outsourcing my online work (able to see a significant improvement in work being done)

- First time visit Indonesia (Went to both Batam & Bintan Trip in April and August respectively)

- Read more than 20 books (greatest record so far in a year)

- Learn from Jim Rohn videos and started reading habits

- Able to meetup and learn from overseas affiliate friends

- Made consistent monthly income online (have to scale it up in upcoming year)

- Managed to get one of my sites up on first page of Google

- Start using mindmap software to plan (able to see a bigger picture)

- Realize the importance of lifestyle design & definite major purpose in life (from internet business mastery)

- Started the 21 days habit formation trial (manage to wake up earlier to do my stuff)

I have learned quite a lot of things along the journey of success in the year of 2010 and I feel that it is important for me to learn how to stay focus in order to see the results coming in. In the upcoming year, I will focus more on making more online sales and try to replace my JOB income with the online income. All the best to everyone including myself in the upcoming year 2011 and Happy New Year to you. I will update more after my trip from Malacca so do have fun in your journey of success too. See you in the year 2011 after this post.

Signing off from this year 2010,
Javier

Yeah… This is one of the goals that I wanted to achieve this year and I have successfully completed a full 42km marathon last weekend. This is my first 42km full marathon and I can say that it’s a very tiring one as I have not tried running such a long distance as the longest one I have ran is the 21km Army Half Marathon. This time round I managed to survive running till 19km and my legs already starts to feel the cramp. However, I try to jog and walk along the way till 27km and the rest is pure walking as my legs has maxed up its energy to run already.

Total timing for this marathon is 6:52:58 and I start to appreciate transport vehicle while trying to complete the whole marathon. Starting of the race is simple as you just need to run, however, when you reach the 21km mark, you do not feel like continuing running as your legs will start to feel the ache and cramp. Some people stop their run and give up in the middle of the race while the rest just endure through the whole race. I can say it is an enjoyable run as you get to see Singapore through the journey from early dawn till hot afternoon.

Currently, I am resting myself to recover from the run in order to prepare for my upcoming driving test. One thing I have learned from this marathon is that what you need to do is keep on moving forward and never give up as once you set the end point, you will definitely reach your destination no matter how much pain, ache or obstruction that you need to go through along the journey.

Image courtesy of gotetrunks

Last weekend, I was at the Singapore PC Show with my girlfriend as she wanted to buy a iPod speaker for herself. She had her 2nd generation iPod Touch during one of the IT Show last year and now Epic Centre (Apple Company) is already selling their 3rd generation iPod Touch. All of you should know that if any device or equipment can continue selling for a few generations means that there are definitely demand from the crowd that keep it going. However, whenever there are new generation of goods coming out to replace the old ones, the older generation models will definitely be selling at a much lower price compared to the new ones. Normal product owners will just sell their older goods at a discounted price at some warehouse or conference shows. However, what I saw at this current PC Show was something different and amazing marketing techniques by Apple Company. They were having an auction for their 1st generation iPod Touch at the PC Show and the starting price is $50 dollars. Every time a person raises their hand to increase the bid price, the host will increase $5 dollars and anyone can called a higher price to win their competitor bidder.

A normal 8GB iPod Touch is selling at $308 and this price has remained the same for quite some time already. However, something interesting about this auction was that people are willing to bid for this 1st generation iPod Touch without any warranty up to the price of $265 and more. However, the host stop the bidders from continuing the bid as he mentioned that if the bid price is more than that, it was not considered as an auction anymore. Therefore, he will come out with a solutions of checking with his boss to let all the 3 final bidders get their iPod Touch at $265. This is actually a great marketing plan to entice the customers as everyone is involved in the process of the auction. You can hear people saying why will someone get a 1st generation iPod Touch without any warranty at all at such a high price when they can get the latest model at just $50 more. This shows that there are definitely buyers out there that will perform funny actions to buy what they want but what’s really interesting is how Apple Company sell off their old goods as they did not really do it the normal way like what other company do and that’s why this company is so successful with some many raving fans buying their products.

Cheers
Javier

P.S. Hope I have shared something interesting for you to think through whether you can do things differently like how Apple Company did

You did not read wrongly about the title of this post as I have just managed to clear my desk after about 20 years of my life. Please don’t get me wrong as I did not wait for 20 years then start getting rid of clutter but instead this is the first time I actually manage to clear my desk to leave space for me to put my laptop on.

I have been staying in a 4-room flat with a family of 5 including me and for the past 20 over years, I have been sharing a room with my brother. A  normal 4-room flat is about 90 square metres with 3 bedrooms, 1 kitchen, 1 living room and 2 bathrooms so you can imagine how big a room is with all those places in the flats. Although I have a table, I did not really make use of the table to study or work because normally I have a lot of things on my table that cause me to be unable to actually do any other stuff on it. Usually, I will read or write anything by sitting at the side of my bed and use the bed as the table top.

I have been cleaning my table once in a while throughout the past 20 plus years of my life and I did not really make full use of the table to perform any tasks. Recently, I have been listening to some management audio books talking about getting rid of clutter in our life especially those things that may not be exactly important to us. The process of clearing is very fun as I have managed to clear almost 80% of my cupboard clothes and 50% of my unwanted table stuff. The reasons why I took this action of getting rid of all these clutter is actually because I want to be more productive in my life as I realize whenever I reach home after work, I will feel like sleeping more than getting to work on my personal project. I have been pondering about the reasons why and realize that since my working area is on my bed, the bed will definitely relate me to resting or sleeping. I realize I am more productive at work when my desk is not full of clutter so therefore I decided to actually clear my room to get myself clear of clutter.

If you have a cupboard full of clothes, it is actually time to start clearing it like what I did as usually we do not actually wear all the clothes we have in our cupboard. Usually, we will wear only 20% of the clothes in our cupboard and there will be clothes which we will not wear at all so it will be great for you to donate those to salvation army (charity). It is actually a very fun process to clear your clutter as you will feel more energy in your room especially if it is your work station. Therefore, take the action to start getting rid of the clutter in your life right now as I believe you will feel much better after doing this exercise.

Cheers
Javier

P.S. This blog post is written on the table beside my bed after the 3 hours of getting rid of the clutter. However, I have only managed to clear 20% but I believe this will definitely be one of the great steps towards my journey to success.

Recently, I have been trying to accomplish some tasks required during my work and I discovered some interesting factors while performing the tasks. There are a few tasks needed to be done on every single computers in a lab and while repeating the steps needed for every single computers, I realized there are some programs that need to be deleted from the computers which is not in used anymore. After uninstalling the unused programs, I realized by doing that extra step, there will be not enough time left to complete all the required tasks planned in the first place. In the end, I stopped the uninstalling programs step and continue what is planned in the first place.

While performing the tasks needed for every single computers, I am able to relate what we are doing with what I have learnt through reading personal development books and audio tapes while they talked about batching similar tasks together in order to accomplish the tasks at a faster pace. When you are able to batch similar things together, you will tend to build a momentum to finish all the tasks required at a faster pace as you can focus on the one task first without having to remember every single steps of all the tasks for every single repeat. It may be quite hard for you to visualize what I mean through words so I will try to illustrate it with a diagram and hope you can grab the useful idea so that you can apply in your daily life too.

It will be better if you batch similar tasks together as you will be able to complete all task 1 earlier. Although theoretically it show that you will be able to finish all the tasks at a same time no matter if you are batching your to-do or not, when you actually do it with your own emotions and day momentum, you will definitely be able to complete all your tasks faster with batching as you do not have to remember every single steps and do them all at one time but just focus your energy on one task only.

The most important thing is to plan out the outcome you want to achieve with steps of what to do and after that give batching a try to see what you can achieve from it. Currently, I am trying to find a better way to plan my life as previously I do not have the habit of planning in advance the things I want to achieve in detail. However, I have read so many personal development books recently and most of the successful people all achieve great things through planning so this shows that planning is a really important step if I want to achieve my dreams on my journey to success. Therefore, if you come across any great programs that teaches you how to plan your life, do recommend me through this blog.

Cheers

Javier

P.S. If you have experience any sort of batching in your life, share with us by writing a comment in this post.

Image courtesy of Wavy1

Recently, I came across a blog post on ZenHabits in regards on the above topics “How To Be a Positive Person” and I have actually save it down on my email regarding the words written about it. I have decided to place it on my blog too so that everyone can view it and see whether it will help improve your life in some ways.

Here’s what is shared on “How To Be a Positive Person”:

Realize it’s possible, instead of telling yourself why you can’t.
Become aware of your self-talk.
Squash negative thoughts like a bug.
Replace them with positive thoughts.
Love what you have already.
Be grateful for your life, your gifts, and other people.
Every day.
Focus on what you have, not on what you haven’t.
Don’t compare yourself to others.
But be inspired by them.
Accept criticism with grace.
But ignore the naysayers.
See bad things as a blessing in disguise.
See failure as a stepping stone to success.
Surround yourself by those who are positive.
Complain less, smile more.
Image that you’re already positive.
Then become that person in your next act.

Cheers

Javier