Archive for December, 2009

December 31st, 2009

Personal Development: How To Write A Book #1

One of my friends, Jay Conrad Levinson, the author of the Guerilla Marketing book series and the best selling marketing book series in the world, has authored 56 different books in his lifetime.

To me, that’s a great number to look forward to. I’m intending to break the record of the total number of books an individual can write in a lifetime, because I think there’s lots of stuff in my head that’s waiting to come out into a written form. (hence the blog, heh)

I recently started stepping up on writing my peak performance books (I’ll keep it a secret as to what they are, but suffice to say that one of them is 80% done, and the other two are 20% complete), and I realized there are a lot of people who tell me how amazing my books have been

Well, personally, I don’t think I’ve achieved anything great, but when I tell others that they also have a book in them, they tell me all sorts of things.

Doodles 5Creative Commons License photo credit: AlishaV

“Oh, I can’t do it. My English isn’t good enough”

“I don’t have time to write”

“I want to write but I get the mental block all the time”

The trouble is not that they don’t have skills in writing, but they don’t have the pre-requisite skills to be able to be a writer in the first place .You have to have world experience. You need to learn how to use words to affect, influence and capture the imagination of others.

And the most important thing is that writing a good book merely requires you to provide information that is useful in an appetizing way. This is an art that can be learnt.

The way I started was through the process of persuasive language. There’s always something that enables people to buy into whatever you say or sell. In reality, good authors are able to affect the hearts and minds of their readers. After all, they appeal to a specific segment of readers.

I’m quite privileged to have been able to write several books with great co-authors. But I can tell you that the first one is always the toughest one. It’s like building a muscle. You have to strain and stretch and sometimes stumble before you get to a point of being able to make your next book easier and more effective.

What I can say for the first lesson is this – you really have to start off with a sense of excitement in what you want to share. That will be your first point of exploration. And, uh, if you don’t have much exciting stuff in your life, perhaps it’s time to explore yourself and figure out the reason why. That itself is going to be pretty interesting already.

The rest of it are just mere details.

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December 24th, 2009

Personal Development Singapore: Suicide Prevention

I read with a lot of dismay at the recent news relating to how a best friend allowed her friend to commit suicide. It all goes to show that if you truly want to be a friend, you need to know what to do.

A process of risk assessment is usually in order, and you have to make sure anyone whom you remotely think is going to commit suicide be referred to a trained specialist who can deal with such isses.

Most of the time, suicidal people say they want to do it not because they want to die but because they are looking for another opinion. I think your friends will deserve at least a second opinion when coming to this kind of a decision.

Suicidal thoughts are aplenty, but best friends are not. Get yourself trained in basic counseling skills and Google the numbers of professional counselors and the Samaritans Of Singapore. You’ll never know when you’ll need them!

 

 

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December 21st, 2009

Personal Development Singapore: 关系 (guan xi) / Relationships

After speaking to a close friend of mine about business in China, he enlightened me quite a bit about the way business is done in China. For example, it is commonly known that 关系 (guan1 xi4), or relationship, is often used as a pretext for developing a business relationship. They even go so far as to say that ALL business depends on 关系.

In my limited time in business, I have found a few truths. Firstly, the whole idea that successful business is about relationships alone is a whole load of B.S.. Relationships matter period, regardless of business or not. After all, you will want to retain some kind of relationship with people who are nice, who are willing to help some time or other.

Secondly, people who merely rely on relationships will find that when they run out of relationships, or when their “network” can’t or won’t help out, they will find themselves stranded, being unable to establish success on their own steam.

Let me give you an analogy. Do you remember the time when you were back in school and had a really tough time with an assignment? If you merely rely on relationships, you are going to do this: since you know your teacher is a nice guy/friend of a relative, you can stop studying and not improve your grades through doing your homework. You simply turn up 7 days later saying it’s really hard to do and you couldn’t do it, and s/he might just show you how to do it.

Conversely, if you’re the sort that bashes his/her head on the wall in order to get to a solution, but can’t find the answer, your teacher is going to know. Whether or not s/he likes you, s/he probably can find evidence that you really did your best. You might actually have proof of work that is incomplete. Then, you might have distilled it to one thing that you need clarification about. You ask the questions to your teacher, you get an answer, and you actually can find a solution. This time, you have achieved success. You did 99% of the work, and needed 1% (you would have gotten there eventually on your own steam) of help. Ultimately, compare this with the previous scenario where you only did an amazing 0% of the work.

Who controls his destiny now?

It’s of utmost importance to everyone to know that, yes, relationships are important, but you need to be someone worth building a relationship with in the first place.

What successes do you have that are worth respecting?

What ways have you helped people in ways that help them to stand on their feet rather than give them pure handouts?

So, make sure you develop yourself first. Then, you can really contribute to others in a positive relationship.

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December 9th, 2009

Personal Development Singapore: Self-Awareness

I just had a flash of insight a couple of hours ago because I was in the middle of doing an unprecedented in-house training for a group of my trainers. While we all had a fun time with “mind blowing” details (I was teaching them the dynamics of marketing online), it somehow struck me that there are things that people are “interested” in doing, but won’t do. There are also things that people are “obsessed” with doing, that no matter what happens, they MUST do.

I got a little surprised myself because I thought about what makes me want to do something versus what I don’t like to do, and what struck me was that I really enjoyed working with people and seeing them learn, but seriously dislike it when people aren’t able to learn. And I don’t mean this intellectually – I mean it viscerally in my gut. It’s a reaction to their reaction of the inability to grasp information.

So as I thought about the implications of this, it could mean two things. First, it could mean that it might force me to be a better trainer. Second, it could mean that it might make me ignore certain things in an audience simply because I might want to have the illusion that I’m doing a great training. Ultimately, I don’t just want to do good training or pretend that it was, I want to make sure that the people around me “get it” regardless of how I feel, the participant must be more competent to take action.

This is the kind of awareness I tell people to partake in regularly because I find that it is so illuminating. Without this kind of insight, we can never learn to improve. It is self-awareness of things that propel you and the forces that repel you that make you discover more about who you are and what you do.

For example, do you know what you believe? And, do you know that your beliefs could damage you? One idea behind the Law of Attraction (that many people have mistakenly thought originates from the documentary ‘The Secret) is that whatever your beliefs are shape you and attract like things.

tabula rasaCreative Commons License photo credit: myuibe

Now, I don’t want to me mystical and tell you that it’s about universal reverberations. Let’s just focus on your thoughts. What happens when you have a negative or disempowering belief? If you have always feared going up on stage, the prospect of doing it actually creates a physiological chain reaction. Not only does it prevent you from being your confident best, it also prevents you from opening yourself to a different interpretation to on-stage success. The stress leads to a release of a neuro-chemical known as cortisol, which, if in your system for the long term, causes bodily aches and pains. What now happens is that the thing you fear, is literally causing you more pain, and becomes cyclical. The more pain you feel, the more you associate it with other negative beliefs about your life, your age, etc. The result: a nervous breakdown.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that this is bad for your future, and it has really nothing to do with universal vibrations. All it is, is your reduction of strength from a very real, physical limitation placed on yourself through your beliefs.

269/365 quietCreative Commons License photo credit: Lazurite

Until someone points out to you “hey – in the past you were just nervous but nowadays you seem to have gotten really frustrated and angry when told you have to do a presentation” do you realize that something has to change.

I believe that self-awareness comes with practice. Not everyone is able to gain self-awareness because we keep getting caught up in the day-to-day, getting distracted, and missing time for ourselves. Maybe it’s time to re-prioritize. Maybe it’s time to make time to listen to our inner thoughts, reflecting on why we do the things we do, and re-calibrating ourselves toward our success.

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December 8th, 2009

Turn Your Goals Into An Obsession

This year I’ve been on a number of different trips out of the country, most of them for work purposes. While I seldom go to different places for the purpose of looking at things or ‘vacationing’, I do enjoy the getaway in a foreign place once in a while just to chill.

For some people, though, this vacationing is like an obsession. It’s planned several times a year and given deadlines as though there were a profit margin to be earned from it. It must mean that they will end up “musting” their desires into reality.

I thought about it a while and wondered at the concept of obsession. Yes, it’s an emotional state, but how often can we control it and get into this obsessive state so that no matter what happens, we will turn up at our destination?

I remember times when I was literally obsessed with things, getting things done. It was because of a greater purpose. For example, there was a time when I had difficulty understanding the new area of study that I was involved with in the past – internet marketing – and I literally grew to be so obsessed with it, I could clock 14 hour days just watching the screen, testing things out and making things happen.

For some others, this obsession comes from the absolute need to stay trim and fit. I have a friend who spends 6 hours a day in the gym, and you can tell that this kind of effort really can sculpt a body.

The secret ingredient for this is a catalyst. You need a big push forward, which is like a propulsion mechanism. It’s placing all your forward thrusters and boosters toward the direction you want, and often requiring you to just stop thinking so much.

A lot of time, we are obsessed with inner thoughts – what if this… what if that… and by the time we are done with these inner thoughts, the desire is ‘talked away’. You end up not doing anything. Reverse that sequence. Talk yourself ‘up’. Get yourself excited and intensify the reality of the goal and outcome that you are striving toward.

By seeing it everyday, you get a chance to live in the moment of your emotions, which then drive the specific behaviors required to reach your goal, and turn that goal into your only solution with no other way out. Sometimes, choices do spoil the ability for someone to take action!

Here’s an example. You’ve been telling yourself you need a vacation, but in your head, that goal is blurred by you saying that you don’t have time, you’re too tired and so on. Now instead of doing that, take the goal, and give yourself all the reasons why you need to reach that goal, and the consequences of not going there. Everything that detracts from that direction is now considered a distraction – use the excuses you are good at giving and put off those distractions! You don’t have time to rest. You can’t afford to waste time. ;)

As you build up the intensity of this, dive in and get your things done, because the emotional state has been geared up to get you going, so, use that to move along with the flow of energy you’ve built up.

Oh, and once you achieve your goal, list it. It’s always good to give yourself a pat on the back for having achieved the things you’ve accomplished… then use this as your springboard to even more goals you wish to accomplish.

CategoryGoals, Personal Development, Reflections | CommentView Comments

December 3rd, 2009

Personal Development Singapore: Motivation And Praise

I was doing some research about motivation and the effect praise has on it. It is surprising how little people actually know about motivation and praise, and the psychological background to it.

Here’s a diagram that I took from Henderlong and Lepper (2002), which reveals the findings from research done on verbal praise and how it enhances a child’s behavior. praise

While this may have less impact on adults, I believe this to be useful for two reasons. First, it gives us a benchmark as to how exactly to praise our children, and hopefully to learn the lessons within to even praise adults. Second, it shows us which factors actually could lead to praise being ineffective.

Comments or questions?

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December 2nd, 2009

Personal Development Singapore: Lonliness Disease?

I just read this while waiting at the airport for my flight to Jakarta:

“Participants are 52 per cent more likely to be lonely if a person to whom they are directly connected (at one degree of separation) is lonely,” the authors write.

At two degrees of separation, they were 25 per cent more likely to feel lonely. At three degrees it was 15 per cent and at four degrees the effect disappeared. This pattern – what the authors term the “three degrees of influence rule of social contagion” – also appeared in the obesity, smoking and happiness studies.

I think I’ve always known this to be true of many things other than just obesity, smoking and happiness. I believe that the social modeling instinct we are born with causes us to model the people and environment around us. Would you be surprised that millionaires hang around millionaires? Or that promiscuous people hang around other promiscuous people? Or depressed people mix more with depressed people than others?

After all, once you ‘learn’ this skill, you tend to have the capability to pass it on in your behavior and attitude, isn’t it?

We all have thought viruses. This points to one final conclusion – what are you interested in ‘catching’? Watch out for the people whom you hang around with!

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