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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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Image courtesy of _ES

Have you heard of the theory of pay yourself first? Many of you may been thinking that almost everyone is paying for our own bills or buying something for ourselves is considered as paying yourself first but this is not actually the case. The first time I had heard of this method was actually through a book called Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Initially, I do not really grab the idea of what does it actually means to pay yourself first when you are earning the money through working for others but I slowly get to know it clearing through reading books, attending seminar and listening to audio books.

You will get a better idea if you really keep on learning through the journey of success in life and I should say that I am slowly starting to understand the true meaning of paying yourself first. From the Rich Dad Poor Dad book, it mentioned that people normally pay their bills, fees, mortgages and other payment first whenever they received their salary from their job. What they will do next is buy what they want with whatever left over and save the leftover money after spending. This usually become a cycle as they do it every month and almost every year without much money left to try and make a difference in their life through becoming their own boss or even making any significant difference in their financial status.

The next great mentor that I learned about the pay yourself first method from is T.Harv Eker. I have read his book “Secrets of The Millionaire Mind” and attended his Millionaire Mind Intensive (MMI) Seminar where he taught how to set up different set of money jars where you can manage your money better. Personally, I have implemented his money jars method and trying to fine tune my finance as I have quite a few debts that I need to settle but I can say it is very useful to me as it motivate me to check on my own finance along my journey to success.

Another place I got to know about this method is through the audio book “The Richest Man in Babylon” where it mentioned to save 20 percent of your salary every month and pay off your debts and bills after paying yourself first. I got to know this theory more in dept after listening to the audio book “The Law of Success” where it mentioned the importance of consistently saving a percentage of money every month as this will helps us build more confidence in ourselves and our sub-consicious mind will feel motivated also when we consistently see growth in our financial portfolio.

The most recent reading that I found that really stunned me is another book by Robert Kiyosaki, “Increase Your Financial IQ”, where he mentioned that the amount of money he pay himself first is about 80 percent of his monthly income. Can you imagine how much money that is to a multi-millionaire? He started with a small percentage of 10 to 20 and now is 80 percent. It is mentioned in his book that the purpose of paying yourself first is to let you create the opportunities for yourself by preparing your money in advance and it will somehow build up your confidence in a way. Robert Kiyosaki also mentioned in his book that it is important that we start with a percentage that will make us feel uncomfortable so that we will not sit in our comfort zone and stop thinking about making more money to grow our own financial mean. Remember no matter how small the amount is, set a percentage that will make us feel uncomfortable with and once you feel comfortable with it, increase that amount as this proof that you have managed to find ways to counter the problem of not having enough to use.

As I have shared with you so many sources of great successful people mentioning about the importance of paying yourself first, you should start building your own financial freedom account and no matter how small the amount is, make sure it stretch your mind and create some stress in your monthly finance. This will make you think twice about spending the amount of money you have left behind after saving and let your mind think of more ways to grow that dollar.

Personally, I have set about 23 percent of my salary in my saving account and you may be thinking why I have such a weird figure. The reason behind it is I do set aside some money with my girlfriend for our joint account and I do have my personal saving portfolio which I put money into. I will update again on this topic in future if I do make any significant increase after creating a permanent passive income stream.

Cheers

Javier

Hope you have learned something through this pay yourself first method that I have shared and start doing something to your own financial future.

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Image courtesy of gibwheels

Today (27 Nov 2009, Saturday)  is a great day for me although the weather is pretty bad as it keep on raining. However, I can still feel the happiness in myself as I managed to bring back a lot of joyful memories of the past. This morning I went for my usual driving lesson as today is public holiday and I asked two of my friends whether they want to join me for swimming in the afternoon. One of my friends agreed, while another not confirm and we decided to meet at 2pm as my friend just came back from his chalet. The sky was still quite bright and shiny when i cycle out of my house but when I about to reach my destination, it started to rain heavily and I was caught in the rain. When I reach the shelter, I gave my friend a call and realized that he wanted to change the timing to 2.30pm instead but didn’t manage to get me as I didn’t answer my call while I was cycling. He said that if I have saw his message or picked up his call, I might not have caught up with the rain.

Although I was drenched, the funny thing was I was not feeling any unhappiness about it but I told my friend that I would go up to the bowling alley instead to wait for him. If you were curious where on earth I was meeting my friend, we were supposed to meet at Tampines Safra Club. I waited for my friend for about half an hour plus and was listening to my MP3 player. While waiting for my friend, I realized that my MP3’s battery went flat, it didn’t really make me sad as I realized I’m sitting down waiting so it was still okay for me.

One of my friends reached after about half an hour and we waited for another friend to come. After waiting for awhile, I turned around and saw another of my secondary friend with his family. We didn’t arrange the meetup but we ended up at the same place and while talking with him, my friend who we were waiting came. He was quite surprised to see my secondary friend too and we chatted for awhile before going for our bowling. We had fun and it seemed a long time since I met my secondary friend and we had a good chat while bowling. After bowling, we went out of the place and realized it was raining outside. In the end, my friends and I parted with our secondary friend and went to the LAN shop beside the bowling alley to play games while waiting for the rain to subside.

We had fun playing Counter Strike and we all realized we were no longer as skillful as before but I could say all of us enjoyed playing it as it brought back a lot of fun memories of our past while we were still in secondary school. After our game, we realized the rain had gone away and we decided to go Tampines Central. However, we were caught up in the rain half way through the journey as my friends decided to walk to our destination and I have to accompany them by cycling slowly. Although we were caught up in the rain, we were having fun and enjoying the cool weather.

What I have actually learned from today happening is that although bad things may happen to us as fast like the sudden rain, we can always look at the bright side of life as it do bring us joy, fun and unexpected meeting that can brighten up our day. Therefore, remember to always look at the bright side of life and you will definitely feel happier if you are seeking your own journey to success like me.

Cheers

Javier

P.S This post is written in the middle of the night so you tend to see it posted on 28 Nov 2009 instead Hope it brings up some learning to you too.

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Have you ever learned how to drive a car before? If you did, you may roughly know how much it cost to learn how to drive a car before getting a license. Seeing a car on the road is a very common thing as it is a form of transportation and most young adult will want to learn how to drive once they reach the acceptable age of 18 (in Singapore). I am one of those young adult who wants to get a driving license but it took me about 5 years before I start my first driving lesson.

Why did it take me so long to start learning how to drive a car? The answer to the question is all due to my own personal belief system. Personally, I actually wanted to learn how to drive when I am age 18 but I always quite hesitant about spending the money to learn how to drive as i know from my friends and family members that the overall cost to get a driving license will take about 1500-2000 dollars. A few years back, I see the amount of money being quite significant to me as I have other commitment on hand which stop myself from spending the money to learn and I will usually give myself or my friends the excuse that my family does not own a car, why should I learn it now although my heart tells me that I want to learn it.

During my army days (about 2 years ago), there was a time where I felt quite annoyed about not having a driving license as I stayed in a bulk where 10 out of 12 people had a driving lesson and all of them would start asking me why I didn’t go get my driving license. I even have friends who were willing to lend me their cars to drive if I am able to get my driving license. However, I was still quite reluctant about spending the sum of money and just went to take my driving theory only.

Back to the present, currently I am on the path of learning how to drive a car and how did I actually solve the money issue? Actually, I have always see the money too big of an issue on myself and didn’t really realize that I can break things down into simpler form. How did I actually learn about how to break down the money issue into a simpler form? It all started at the point when I start my first driving lesson after passing my final theory. Whoever pass their final theory is given 2 years to take their practical driving test and I was forced to think of ways to come up with the money to learn how to drive but until the point that I start looking up for driving instructor then I realized that the payment of one hour private lesson is about 22-30 bucks which is quite affordable in the short run and it all depends on the number of lessons that I am taking for each month.

Remember if you want to learn something that will benefit you, go ahead and take the action to do it. There are plenty of ways to break down the finance but if you feel that there’s no urgent time limit for you to learn the skill immediately, you can put that into your wishlist and once you manage to accumulate the money required, go ahead and fulfill your wishlist in order to enjoy the process of learning.

Cheers
Javier

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About 1 month ago, I have wrote a blog post on Top 10 Rocky Balboa Inspiring Quotes and recently I managed to find a youtube video which talks about Tony Robbins telling the story of Rocky Balboa that how he came about. Its a very inspiring story as I have actually heard it live during the Unleash the Power Within Seminar.

This video takes about 9 mins but you will understand the power of intention of someone who will succeed in his journey to success. Hope you will like it too.

Cheers
Javier
P.S. If you haven’t watch the 6 series of Rocky Balboa yet, go and rent it from your local movie store. Watch it and get inspired by the inspirational character, Rocky Balboa.

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