Are you comfortable with dress smart? Do you realize something about dressing smart do help in boosting our self image plus confidence through the eyes of others and even ourselves. Recently, I have started changing my way of dressing when going to work and I was astonished by the looks and questions of my colleagues in my working areas. The reason for the change of dressing was because I am actually preparing myself for my upcoming career path (Real Estate Salesperson) and I did not really inform a lot of people at my current workplace yet as I do not want to spread the words too soon until the day I am about to leave.

There are questions from my colleagues asking why am I dressing so smartly in a school environment and some even thought that I am actually going for a job interview. However, I do feel surprised that they have this kind of reactions as I am only dressing in smart casual without the full smart shirt yet. Personally, I do know a few colleagues who actually dress up even more formal than me and they gave me a very good first impression whenever I see them as they look smart. Let me ask you a question about what is your expectation when you are going to meet someone who is in the professional field or someone who are going for a corporate  job interview. You will definitely expect them to dress up nicely unless they are someone who has their own style of looking cool (like Steve Jobs). Basically, what am I trying to get to you is that dressing smart is something very important that I feel can help to boost your client’s confidence in you through their first impression and what you really need to build in yourself is that confidence level. However, dressing smart is just a first part of building a good impression in someone’s eyes. There are still things that need to be work on like training yourself on how to speak confidently in front of your clients in order to protrude a  convincing message towards them to show that you are a capable person who can deliver. Other than learning how to speak well, the way you walk with the body language that you deliver is also very important towards boosting the first impression in someone else eyes.

I do not know whether you have different views about how to dress smart to boost impression but this is what I feel through my own observation and experience. Right now, I am on a path to discover more of what I want to achieve in my personal life and also learning from people who have already achieved what I want. Do checkout on this site once a month to find out more of what I will share on this personal site of mine. I will keep track of what I have learned and explored along my journey to success on this personal blog. Cheers.

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

Image courtesy of CookieM

Recently, I have been going through an internet business mastery podcast and they have been emphasizing the importance of a definite major purpose in life. Something like what is the main thing you want to achieve in your lifetime so that it can be a guiding force towards your life journey. Personally, I have been thinking about it and to make things simpler to understand, I have came out with my own understanding of life through the theory of fixing up a jigsaw puzzle.

I do not know whether you have personally tried to fix up a 1000 pieces jigsaw puzzle before but I do. It is really a test of patience to slowly put all the pieces together. However, before you try to fix up any jigsaw puzzle (no matter how big the size is), you will need to have a main concept of what picture you are trying to fix up. If you do not know what picture you are trying to put together, you will definitely have a hard time figuring out which piece of the jigsaw puzzle to be put together with. This theory of fixing up a jigsaw puzzle follows the rules of planning our life too as we need to know what are the things we want to achieve in our life first by creating a visual image of our desired lifestyle as the big picture that we want to form. Once we know what is the big picture that we are trying to form, we can start to put all the individual pieces together by seeing which piece should come in next in our life. Therefore, I will encourage anyone who is reading this blog post to start thinking about what is the big picture they want in life by asking yourself a few of the following questions.

- What is your definite major purpose in life?
- What is your desired lifestyle that I want to achieve?
- What are the things you want to do before you die?

You can think it through and ask yourself more detailed questions so that you will get your big picture faster. Try to ask quality questions so that you will get quality answers through your own heart. Remember to always refer to your big picture when you are facing any decision problems and see whether it fit into your desired picture.

Image courtesy of Rockie Nolan

Recently, I have a talk with my girlfriend regarding a few things about our future. She mentioned something that I feel is very important about treating everyday like a brand new day. Personally, I was hit by her words straight in the head as I have read about this theory before in some self-help books but I did not really apply it in my daily routines.

What do I mean about treating your everyday like a brand new day? Everyday is actually a brand new day as the sun rise and set daily but do we actually treat our everyday like a brand new day? Most people will think that everyday is just another day in their lives but what we shouldn’t really do is bring our past experiences to the future which is the next day. Example like keep on thinking about the bad things that happened yesterday or even a few years ago and get affected by feeling depressed or low due to it.

Personally, I have been putting a lot of mental weight on myself through the past bad experiences and I am feeling guilty about it too. Therefore, I have decided to learn to treat my everyday as a brand new day. Let me bring you to a situation where you will see a clearer picture of what I am talking about. Imagine you are a basketball player, if you keep on thinking about why you miss the shot previously in the first half, will you able to focus on the game in the second half and make a comeback? The answer will be no unless your opponent is not doing a good job. Therefore, we have to learn to turn our mindset around by focusing our energy in the right direction.

I have given this method a try on a mahjong game last weekend and it seems to work for me. I have lost in the first few round of the game but the game has not ended yet as it is still quite early in the game. I change my mindset and stop focusing my mind about the games I have lost in the first few round. I focused all my energy on the next few games and the overall game results turned out to be me as the overall winner.

I think that all of us should focus our mind in the right direction and stop letting those negative thoughts from bringing us down. I will start implementing this findings and will update again if I do see a big change in my life in the upcoming future.

Cheers
Javier
P.S. Do remember to remind yourself today is a brand new day!!

Image courtesy of Ben Heine

Have you ever wonder whether the power of questions can help you settle your challenges in life? If you have read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad before, you will know that it is important that we should ask quality questions through our mind in order to get quality answers and results. Rich Dad has taught us that when you desire something that is out of your current reach such as a beautiful bunglow along the beach or something super expensive, you should not be thinking or saying “I can’t afford it” as this closes your mind from going through the thinking process. However, you should be asking yourself “How can I afford it?” as asking this question allows your mind to think through and usually lots of ideas will be generated for you in your mind.

Some of you may be thinking even if you ask yourself questions, there is still a very low possiblity that you might achieve your dream or get what you want in life. Let me ask you a question, what is the possiblities of getting what you want if you has the following thought process in your mind: “I can’t afford it”? I can tell you the answer is a definite zero as your brain has closes itself without even have a chance to help you find a solution.

Personally, I have an experience during my work that really amazed me about this theory of asking questions. One of my ex colleagues needed my help to get a song out from a DVD rom which she needed to burn into a cd for her class but my first initial thought was I couldn’t get the song out of the disc as its a DVD. I asked her if she has the title of the song, I could find it online for her instead but she told me it’s a kids variety show song so she didn’t know the title at all. However, she highlighted to me that someone else had managed to retrieve a song from a DVD for her before so she thought I would be able to do it for her too. To cut long story short, I went to do some research online and found there’s actually ways to retrieve the songs from DVD.

This personal experience taught me that nothing is impossible and we should not give any problems we face a definite NO when we do not know the answer. If we actually put on our thinking cap and think through by asking ourself quality questions, we should be able to find a quality answer towards our questions we have in life. Remember never say die until you have really tried all kinds of ways in trying to solve your problems by asking questions in your mind. Just imagine, if the wright brothers were not asking the questions of whether can we human fly like a bird. Do you think that we will have aeroplanes now?

Cheers

Javier

P.S Hope this post can intrigue you to have a different point of view when you are facing challenges in your life. If you have no idea about the book Rich Dad Poor Dad, do go check it out at your local library.

Do you know that you can unleash your true potential? Do you know that we are only using less than 10 percent of our true potential? All human beings can achieve great things in life but all have to base on whether we believe and have faith in ourselves or not.

Recently, I have listened to an audio book called Psycho Cybernetics and at the same time went to read the Psycho Cybernetics book to reinforce the information that I have listened. There’s a chapter that mentioned about “Dehypnotize Yourself” and the following is an small abstract from that chapter.

Is Everyone Hypnotized?

It is no exaggeration to say that every human being is hypnotized to some extent, either by eithers he has uncritically accepted from others, or ideas he has repeated to himself or convinced himself are true. These negative ideas have exactly the same effect upon our behavior as the negative ideas implanted into the mind of a hypnotized subject by a professional hypnotist.

The main idea is for us to learn how to dehypnotize ourselves so that we can prevent our limiting beliefs from stopping us to achieve what we can with our true potential. In the book, it talks about using mental picturing in our threatre of the mind to get everything nicely in position. This is considered a technique of visualization which helps to build our self image.

What I have shared is just a small portion of the book and I do recommend you to pick up the book from your local bookstore or the library in order to find out in details about the concept shared by Dr. Maxwell Maltz. Just to let you know that Dr. Maxwell Maltz was a very famous plastic surgeon who made a discovery about the human self-image.

Cheers
Javier

P.S. The video shared above is extracted from my favourite childhood anime, Dragonball Z. Hope you like it too.

For the past week, I have been busy celebrating Chinese New Year with my family and friends. The special day that occurred this year was on 14 of Feb as there were two special occasions falling on the same day and they were first day of chinese new year (nian chu yi in chinese) and valentine day. I have been eating a lot of new year goodies without maintaining my diet as it was a special period and I can say those food have made me put on some weight and caused me to feel tired easily when I was back at work compared to the time when I was regularly eating fruits with normal portion of food. Luckily, chinese new year is not all year round or else I think I may have put on a pretty huge amount of weight on myself if I keep on going to different places (relatives and friends houses) to eat good food.

During this chinese new year period, I have seen a few of my nieces and cousins growing up faster than I have expected. This shows that I may have to work on myself to grow or else they may be growing faster than me and my progress in life will not be in time for my schedule. I have bought a motivational board and placed it in my office to motivate myself each and every day whenever I am feeling down. Take a look and see whether the words give any motivation to you too.

If You Think You Are Beaten, You Are.

If You Think You Dare Not, You Don’t.

If You Like To Win, But You Think You Can’t,

It Is Almost Certain You Won’t.

If You Think You’ll Lose, You’re Lost.

For Out Of The World We Find,

Success Begins With A Fellow’s Will.

It’s All In The State Of Mind.

If You Think You Are Outclassed, You Are.

You’ve Got To Think High To Rise.

You’ve Got To Be Sure Of Yourself

Before You Can Ever Win A Prize

Life’s Battles Don’t Always Go

To The Stronger Or Faster Man,

But Sooner Or Later The Man

Who Wins Is The Man Who Thinks He Can!

Hope I have shared something great to you too and hope you have a great holidays during this occasion. Wishing you a Happy Belated Valentine Day and Chinese New Year.

Cheers

Javier

Recently, I went to catch this movie called “Invictus” after seeing Tony Robbins’s tweets on twitter recommending it to his followers. This invictus movie is really inspiring and there is a lot of great stuff to be learnt about our beliefs and thinking. If you have not watched it yet, I do recommend you go check it out as it will inspire you to do great things too.

Invictus Synopsis

The film tells the inspiring true story of how Nelson Mandela joined forces with the captain of South Africa’s rugby team to help unite their country. Newly elected President Mandela knows his nation remains racially and economically divided in the wake of apartheid. Believing he can bring his people together through the universal language of sport, Mandela rallies South Africa’s rugby team as they make their historic run to the 1995 Rugby World Cup Championship match.

Before I end this post, I will like to share with you the Invictus Poem that is talked about in the Invictus movie.

Invictus poem written by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Cheers

Javier

Have you played Role Playing Game (RPG) before? In most RPGs, there are monsters of all sorts of levels for you to fight against to train yourself before meeting the bosses of each specific location. Personally, I have learned something about life through playing RPG. For example, sometimes we feel that a specific problem may be overwhelming for us right now but once we become bigger than our problems and look back at the problem, it seems no longer that big anymore.

Almost everyone start from low level (Level 1) in RPG and we fight our ways through with monsters of our current level in order to gain level. Sometimes, we do fight monsters of slightly higher level in order to level up faster. The most interesting part is when you are at a pretty high level, you won’t feel a kick anymore when you try to kill those monsters at lower levels. Remember those are the monsters that you are having troubles killing when your level was pretty low previously. What I’m trying to get to you from this post is that don’t always take problems as a bad thing as problems are actually ways for us to grow ourselves in order to reach a higher level.

I got the idea of writing this post through the book I have read previously by T.Harv Eker called “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind”. The author of the book has mentioned about how most people treat their problems in life and make themselves so stressed up. The most interesting part where he teaches us in his book how we can remind ourselves when we faced problems in our life is to keep on repeat the words “Mini Me” to ourselves. By repeating the words to ourselves, we will realize that we need to be bigger than our problems in order to grow to the next level.

Cheers
Javier

Fisherman’s Wharf

Macau Grand Prix Museum

With my Dear at Venetian Main Lobby

Ruins of St Paul Macau

Tang Cheng

Happy New Year to everyone who visit this blog, this is a new year 2010 and I will like to update some progress along the way. Recently in late December 2009, I went to Hong Kong, Macau and Zhu Hai for a 5 days 4 nights holiday and it was my first time taking a flight overseas. When I start to think back about the past 1 year, I realized that I have actually grown quite a bit as 2009 was the first year that I stepped out my home country, Singapore. Once the plane starts to take off, I started to panic as this was my first time sitting on an airplane but once I thought of my desired travel lifestyle, I started to feel better. Sitting on the airplane allowed me to experience what Tony Robbins had mentioned before in his seminar that an airplane took so much energy to take off and due to the weather conditions, they have to adjust the flight in order to reach the destination. If you are aware of what I’m actually trying to get you, you will understand that we have to take massive actions and adjust our plans along our journey to success in order to reach our destination.

A few things that I enjoyed during this overseas trip were the food and cold weather, the temperature over there were from 8 – 18 Degree Celsius which I could not experience in Singapore. When the last day of my holiday, I started to realize that this is actually the lifestyle that I always desired with no worries about work or money and able to travel around freely to new countries to explore the new places with my loved ones.

One interesting thing that happened when I came back in Singapore was that I found that my CPA commission had increased in profits during my trip which I have left my campaign untouched during the 5 days. Now, I start to see some consistent real profits coming in and I will update here again once that amount become more significant. This overseas trip has allowed me to see new things and opportunities in my journey to success and I become more clear of what I want in my life.

Before I end this post, I will like to write down my 3 main promises that I want to meet in Year 2010.

1) Prepare and participate in a 42KM Marathon.

(Have signed up a 16KM North East Run recently and will take part more along the year)

2) Read at least 15 self-help books

(Have to restart my morning reading habit again)

3) Make a consistent 4 figure income online and at least a 5 figure for one month

(Have to put in more effort and work on my belief to make this works for myself)

Lastly, a happy new year to all my readers and all the best in your journey to success too.

Cheers
Javier

P.S. Remember to take massive actions and adjust your flight accordingly along your journey to success.