Life is like a continuously flowing river – and not a static pond. Our bodies, thoughts and attitudes are changing every moment. And we should be aware that we are changing all the time.

You should be aware of the fundamental changes in life that will affect you and your work, and be prepared to adapt accordingly. Knowing yourself and arming yourself with the right tools to make correct choices concerning your life and job, is not something easily acquired.

It is important that you keep up to date with yourself; to keep breaking the habit of thinking that you fit a perfect mould. Try to develop a day-to-day awareness of your behavior and attitude toward the myriad aspects of your life and work. Ultimately, it is perception and sensitivity that determine whether you will be able to perform to your required tasks.

Keep a personal score sheet listing your strengths and weaknesses, values and desires and then review it regularly to see how you have progressed.

Questioning yourself about your needs, personality type, strengths and weaknesses, and your values is just a start. Be prepared to change. After gaining awareness of your strong and weak points, concentrate on your strengths, winning is about giving your strengths full rein.

That does not mean that you should ignore those obvious weaknesses. It will have to be dealt with. Through effort, training, and experience you can become competent as you hone your skills progressively. Take things to heart. Be aware of the future – the rate of social change around is increasing. Change and impermanence is part and parcel of tomorrow’s world.

Like this famous proverb, sometimes, too much education kills our entrepreneurial instinct. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against education.

I have known many great business people, some of whom, close to zero formal education, and many with letters piling up behind their names. With few exceptions, I find that the more education one has, the longer and more thorough the person tends to think things through.

I am all for informed decisions and measurability. But very often, in business, speed is the essence. And if you are going to get your CFO to crunch the numbers to arrive at a decision that you know you need to take anyway, you may have lost not just time, but precious opportunity.

Just compare the street-fighting style of Richard Branson, Steve Jobs and Donald Trump, and you will understand the secrets behind their success. Despite the hugh congolomerate that they lead, they remain entrepreneurs through and through. Very sadly, our intrinsic need to worry and our self-doubt rob us off precious time. If all of us are to do things the way they are meant to be, the world will truly come to a stop.

“Tomorrow the sun will rise again.
A new day, a new challenge, and
Another chance to do better.”

From hindsight, predictions that the world would go into a deep and prolonged recession did not come true in 2009. In fact, recovery came earlier than expected and the much-feared, Great Depression was averted.

We are already into 2010 – a new year – packed with new challenges and tremendous opportunities for all of us to do better. I anticipate that change, challenge and opportunity are the key words that will be the order of the day in the months ahead for all of us.

Two important cores essential to our personal success – “Commitment” and “Mutual Support,” could contribute positively towards our efforts to doing better in 2010. For example, it is our commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of our goals coupled with mutual support (we survive solo, but win together) that will propel us to attain the success we seek.

Commitment is the most important single factor in individual success. It ignites action. However, commitment cannot be forced – it is self-generating and develops through involvement. On the other hand, the notion that commitment has multiple foci (ie. job, organisation, career and work groups) has gained increasing attention.

Everybody, whether they acknowledge it or not, needs support in some form or another. Our beliefs, norms, values morals and so forth, can be supported, and so can our actions. The point is, do you use your support system effectively? Or, do you even believe in getting support?

Look at the bigger picture, why not let others contribute to your success or at least contribute to expand on your potential? By doing so, will allow others to help shape the direction together. Is that a better option to integrating talent? Again, we survive solo, but win together.

I believe there is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love. There is only a scarcity of resolve to make it happen. And the quality of a person’s life is always in direct proportion to his or her commitment – regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.

Indeed, our actions may not always bring success, but there is no success without it. We had wasted some good years due to the recent global economic downturn. Now is time we move forward again. In trying times such as this, commitment and mutual support is even more crucial for our success – be it at work or personal success.

Happy New Year. !!!

NOTE: I have created “Straight Talking.com Group” in Facebook http://tinyurl.com/yk2rmuk on New Year’s Eve. It is a site for sharing positive vibes and mutual support. with everyone. As always, your presence is valued and appreciated. So do connect with me there.

The best business wisdom is not even wise. Some of the greatest businesses of all times were built against what was then common sense, and defied conventional wisdom.

When Steve Jobs re-joined Apples as its CEO after a stint outside the company, one of his first initiative was an odd-looking all-in-on PC called the Mac – bucking the trend for ‘clones’ and customisation at that time. The result? The Mac became one of the best-selling PC of all time, and Apple today continues to lead the PC industry.

Similarly,  when Genting founder Lim Goh Tong proposed to build a resort in a mountain far from the city, his closest friends thought he has gone crazy, and bankers stayed away from what they thought was an illogical, emotional decision. We know better now.

Employees and suppliers thought Ingvar Kamprad was not thinking straight, when one day he declared that IKEA furniture will be flat-packed and customers will have to assemble it themselves.

Defied conventional logic, they sure did. Sometimes the wisest thing do is not even wise at all. We need to balance our entrepreneurial instinct with what we know to be logical? And, once in a while, don’t we need to act irrationally, defy logic and let our instinct take charge?

Happy New Year everyone. !!!

“All our dreams can come true,
if we have the courage to pursue them.”
- Walt Disney.

Many of us like to think that fortune favors the bold. The truth is no one can make us feel inferior without our consent. With courage you dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity.

Each and every one of us has a talent. What is rare is our courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads. Our lives either shrinks or expands in proportion to our courage. A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time and a courageous person afterward.

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says “I’ll try again tomorrow.” Like love, courage must have hope for nourishment. It is the ladder on which all other virtues mount.

In our hour of adversity be not without hope. Before success comes in any man’s life he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps, some failures. It is when defeat overtakes us, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to quit. That is exactly what the majority of us will do. Your true strength is keeping everything together when everyone expects you to fall apart.

You have got to follow your passion. You have got to figure out what it is you love – who you really are. And have the courage to do that – the brave may not live forever, but the cautious don’t live at all. Most probably, the only courage that anybody ever needs is the courage to follow your own dreams.

All serious darings starts from within. If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all.  Courage is going from failure to failure without losing the enthusiasm.

Courage is contagious – when a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are stiffened. It is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that matters. For a brave man is not one who does not feel afraid, but someone who conquers the fear.

All of us have desires. And I believe all of us have the best of intentions.

But the reality is that we often give our best away. Many of life’s failure are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. We often allow self-doubt, time, situations or whatever else to erode our dreams – no one takes it away from us. We quit on ourselves.

The cold truth is once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit. We then carry regret with us. Regret turns into frustration, frustration into anger, anger into sorrow. And all the while, life has slipped away from us. Consequently, we give up our desire to do something to better ourselves.

No one takes anything away from us,
unless we give up on ourselves.

All you have to do is to apply yourself. Work, work, work, work. Whether it is your marriage, interpersonal relationship, raising kids, your health, schooling or your career, apply yourself. Effort only fully release its reward after a person refuse to quit.

Do more than is required. With all that you are able to do, apply a little extra, just an extra nudge, every day and see the difference it makes in your attitude and the outcome of your achievements. It works if you work it. !!!

The point is never stop dreaming. A person starts dying when he stop dreaming. No one can take away your dreams. Life has no limitations, except the ones you make. Don’t give up. !!!

Half the truth is often the great lie.
- Benjamin Franklin.

Happy people know better than to compromise the integrity of their souls for the sake of the moment. They cling to truthfulness at all times and carefully guard their hearts from deception.

Why? Because they have learned by that telling the truth makes it easier to sleep at night, inspires the loyalty of their friends, and earns them the respect of all.

Always tell the truth,
the whole truth,
and nothing
but the truth.

Nevertheless, honesty pure and undiluted is rare in our society today. It has fallen prey to convenience and a misguided belief that lying to people will help them in the end. Sure, truth is often painful, but it can also be your best friend.

…………………. Seek the truth. Then speak the truth.

The earth laughs in flowers.

What’s in a name? That we call rose.
By any other name would smell as sweet.

The world is a rose;
smell it and pass it to your friends.

In friend’s fragrant garden,
There are flowers of every hue.
Each with its own flair of beauty
And its gift of joy for you.

A single rose can be my garden,
a single friend can be my world.

True friendship is like a rose.
We don’t realize its beauty until it fades.

From a thorn comes a rose,
and from a rose comes a thorn.

Which is loveliest in a rose?
Its coy beauty when it’s budding,
or its splendor when it blooms?

In the hope of reaching the moon
men fail to see the flowers
that blooms at their feet.

Take time to smell the roses.

ANNOUNCEMENT
We have rebranded “As We See It ……….”
to “Thriving On Purpose” to reflect
what we are saying most of the time.

Momentary happiness is fleeting and temporary; but true happiness, once discovered and invested in, and cherished, grips the heart and inspires our lives.

Laugh more – especially at yourself. Laughter promotes good health, both in our body and spirit. It not only brightens our mood but also eases the tension within us. Laughter is often the corrective force which is preventing us from being cranks.

Laughter is mental, emotional, physical and spiritual. It helps us to find the balance in our lives. There is only a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt. It is impossible to laugh and be angry at the same time. Laughter and anger are mutually exclusive and only you have the power to choose either.

A cheerful heart is a good medicine.

What soap is to a body, laughter is to the soul. Carry laughter with you wherever you go. A good dose of laughter has been shown to improve blood circulation, stimulate digestion, lower blood pressure and prompt the brain to release pain-reducing endorphins. So do something for your health today – laugh. !!!

A good laugh overcomes more difficulties and dissipates more dark clouds than any other one thing.If only we can be induced to laugh more, we might hate less and perhaps find more serenity. It is the best way to remove negativity and turn painful situations around through laughter.

Laughter is also an expression of faith in God – it is the best response you can make to your own human frailities as you strive to live a happy life. May God bless you in your quest. !!!

“Tomorrow” is often the busiest day of the week.

What is at the bottom of your “To Do” list?

Or, is it at the top, day after day?

Unfortunately, the fact is the  longer we put off our unpleasant task, the more unpleasant they become – and the more stress they add to our life. Don’t fool yourself that important things can be put off till tomorrow.

Just say, “No.” !!!

Tomorrow is the only day that appeals to a lazy man. One of these days is none of these days. All procrastination really does is delay the inevitable. You may delay, but time will not. Today, why not take one task you’ve been putting off and “just do it.” You will be glad you did. !!!

Only Robinson Crusoe had everything done by Friday.