With my world

He is the strength I poses, the reason I strive myself to become a better person than I was yesterday…..

The Beauty of Uncertainty

I want to begin by again apologizing for not committing to up load articles on a regular basis. There is no excuse for it, I will however try to be more active in the future.

This time, I would like to share my learning’s on how some of us view changes. I remember, I use to view changes as something unpredictable therefore leading to fear and discomfort.

My mind was convinced that everything in my life should be planned well, thought thru, which made me fragile to conditions that requires adaptation towards change. The fear of not knowing or at least not having an idea of the situation encounter terrifies me to the max.

Because of the discomfort I was feeling inside, the outcome was objection or denial towards the change itself. I smile sometimes when I go back to those times.

Having experienced change in a paranoid way, allows me to understand how some people digest change differently. And now, having the opportunity to analyze and do some thought processing on this subject matter, I would like to share what I have gained.

To me, change is an opportunity for us to elevate. Be it work or personal matters. Change is necessary, change is a must in some cases therefore embracing change will be more beneficial rather then avoiding or fighting it.

Another way of looking at change is through the mysterious uncertainty that lay upon us, waiting to be discover by its founder, YOU.

I see the mysterious uncertainty that change may bring as hope, hope to a better state of being.
To share what I did to turn fear of change to excitement of the uncertainty, here are some mind stretching exercise I did:

1. Acknowledge the Fear. Be honest and try to see why or what’s making us frighten. Only by knowing “the why” we know “the how” therefore don’t hide the fear, bring it out and recognize it.

2. Once we understand why we are uncomfortable and fearful of the change, ask ourselves is it necessary? What’s the worst this change can bring? List it down if you see it’s a necessary thing to do.

3. Practice positive thoughts. At this stage, instead of focusing the thing I don’t want to happen, I will focus on the things that make me happy like things I’ve accomplished. I’ll focus on how grateful I am for the job I have, the house I live in, the car that I drive, the friends and family that I adore, and so on. This will allow us to shift our worries to a more positive nature.

These 3 simple steps above helped me throughout my several transitions in life. And at the end, I realize that the worries and fears was nothing but mind blocks coming from cluttering our minds with unnecessary negative thoughts and influence that we bring about.

Now, I hope the above experience can be an inspiration to embrace change, accepting uncertainty as a hope rather than despair. As with uncertainty comes the beauty of enriching ourselves allowing us to help oneself to help others help themselves.

Menjadi Pemimpin Bagi Diri Sendiri (the translation of “Self Leadership” in Bahasa)

Apakah Anda tahu untuk dapat menjadi seorang pemimpin sejati, Anda harus mampu memimpin diri sendiri terlebih dahulu?

Menurut suatu penilitian, ada 5 tingkat kepemimpinan, yaitu:
• Memimpin diri sendiri
• Memimpin segelintir orang
• Memimpin kelompok
• Memimpin unit bisnis atau organisasi
• Memimpin negara

Tentu saja, pertama-tama kita harus mampu menjadi pemimpin bagi diri sendiri sebelum mampu menjadi pemimpin bagi orang lain, organisasi, atau bahkan negara.

Bagaimana caranya? Marilah kita bersama-sama fokus pada 5 aturan utama untuk membangun kemampuan memimpin diri sendiri.

1. Jujur pada diri sendiri. Dengan jujur, kita akan mampu secara objektif mengidentifikasi kelebihan serta kekurangan diri sendiri. Dengan begitu, kita dapat menyelesaikan akar permasalahan yang menghambat pencapaian tujuan secara maksimal. Anda hanya perlu mengakui hal tersebut kepada diri Anda sendiri dan bertindaklah!
2. Tentukan target, baik untuk kehidupan pribadi maupun profesional. Tuliskan dan fokuslah pada target Anda. Jika Anda menghadapi rintangan, tetap fokus dan konsentrasi pada ‘hadiah utama’. Anggap rintangan tersebut sebagai suatu persimpangan sekaligus kesempatan Anda untuk mendewasakan diri dalam perjalanan mencapai target Anda.
3. Jadilah manusia pembelajar dengan rasa ingin tahu yang tinggi. Kelilingi diri kita dengan orang-orang yang dapat memberikan nilai tambah pada hidup kita. Sebagai manusia, kita belajar dengan lebih cepat dan efektif dengan melihat atau mendengar kisah sukses orang lain. Jadi bagun hubungan dengan orang-orang seperti itu.
4. Jangan berikan ruang untuk hal-hal negatif. Menjauhlah dari segala sesuatu yang hanya akan membawa hal-hal negatif dalam hidup kita. Negatifitas dapat tersamarkan dalam bentuk obrolan panjang dan menyenangkan dengan rekan kerja. Hanya diri kita sendiri yang dapat menentukan apa yang berharga untuk waktu dan tenaga kita. Lepaskan diri dari hal-hal semacam ini, bahkan jika itu berarti kita harus kehilangan kelompok. Mana yang lebih penting, kesejahteraan diri sendiri atau kesejahteraan kelompok? Kelompok bisa bertahan tanpa kita. Jadilah agen optimisme, pertama-tama kepada diri kita sendiri.
5. Jadilah rendah hati dan praktekkan hal-hal yang kita percayai setiap harinya. Jalani hari sekarang sebagaimana kita inginkan di masa depan. Bahkan lebih baik lagi, tinggalkan jejak-jejak langkah kita dengan memberikan makna pada hidup orang lain.

Memimpin diri sendiri sama ‘mudahnya’ dengan memahami diri kita dan usaha kita untuk mencapai tujuan hidup kita, baik jangka panjang maupun jangka pendek.

Memimpin diri sendiri merupakan seni kepemimpinan yang paling dasar yang harus kita kuasai. Bagaimanapun juga siapa yang ingin dipimpin oleh orang yang bahkan tidak bisa memimpin dirinya sendiri? Selamat memimpin, semuanya .

Self Leadership

Did you know that in order to become a leader in a company you first have to poses Self Leadership?

According to a study, there are five different domains of leadership, which are:
• Self-leadership
• Leading other people
• Leading a group
• Head a business or organization
• Head the nation

We of course have to start with leading ourselves before we progress to heading people or a business.

So let’s look in to how we can create Self Leadership for ourselves. To make it even easier to remember, we will only focus on the main 5 rules for Self Leadership.
1. Be Honest to ourselves. Being honest allows us to understand that we can focus on our strength to achieve our goals and work on the improvement needed. Only by being honest to ourselves, we can overcome the root cause that is setting us back. Nobody needs to know the lists, its ours to say and ours to keep, nevertheless it’s also ours to action upon.
2. Set Goals. Professional and Personal goals. Write them down and focus on these goals no matter what distraction we may come across, discipline ourselves on focusing to the big picture. See obstacle only as a detour from achieving the goals and see detour as a valuable experience maturing ourselves as we accomplish the goals.
3. Be a Learner with high Curiosity. Surround ourselves with mentors and people who can contribute values to our life. We, human learn faster and more effectively by role modeling and being inspired by actions/ success stories therefore keep these people close by.
4. Have a Zero tolerance for Negativity. Stay away from those that only bring negativity to our lives. Negativity can be disguised as friendly and fun chit chats amongst friends. It is us and only us to determine what is worth our time and energy. Break away from this, even if it means loosing the group. Which is more important, our well being or the groups well being? They can survive without us. Be the agent of Optimism, first to ourselves.
5. Stay 100% Humble and practice daily what we believe in. Live our life steps as we would like it to be in many years to come, better yet, leave footprints so that our daily existence can matter to someone, somehow.

Self leadership is as simple as understanding who we are as a person and work on what we would like to see ourselves become/ achieve, be it short term, long term and legacy wise.

Self Leadership is the most basic leadership we first must master. After all who would like to be lead by someone who can’t lead themselves? Happy Leading to all 

Look within, find the Missing and do the Fixing

It has always been my belief that my classroom is the world and life I’m living in. The greatest achievement in learning is to be able to tell ourselves what we have gotten from the experience happening within us.

It’s very easy to hear someone telling a story that compels us to become a better person however a powerful force of change will happen if this is experienced.

The 3 steps I take to ensure that there are no lessons missed after each days worth are:

1. Honest. I’ll be blunt to myself and with nothing to loose, bare it all out. If I have for any matter acted stupid, peculiar, etc, I shall find myself confessing to it. This is the only way I will understand that something indeed needs to be improved. By being honest to myself, I save the embarrassment created by the divine EGO of having someone else telling it to me.
2. Mentally Re-Visualize. This is an act of something I call, fix up. Understanding that we can go back to the past, I visit my unconscious state of mind by Mentally Re- Visualizing the incident/ experience that happen and during the visit reinvent/ recreate it as it should have went. This is an exercise I do to help me deal with the possibility that I might encounter the same happening and if I do, mentally I’ll be ready thus 1 step towards improvement has been done.
3. Celebrate. This is a different celebration. There’s no wine, nor food or dance music. This is a feeling of gratitude that another powerful lesson has been digested and manifested to latter benefit from. The feeling of richness will visit and at this time we become serene, we become still and composed, we become another step closer to completeness.

Gaining knowledge no longer need tons of efforts. Be aware of our feelings, if you feel bad about something, look within and we shall find what’s missing and need fixing.

Strategize NOW

Overcoming something horrific in life is never easy. Once the experience passed by, the surreal feeling of gratifying relief kicks in and by then we know that everything, literally everything will be ok.

What I’ve learn through life is most of us worry too much and focuses our mind to that portion life brings about. In panic and worry we tend to drown ourselves in a confuse state. This is normal. However coming to the point where I would like to share is; no matter how life treats us, focus solely on the goal we would like to achieve. Acknowledge the feeling that are felt and turn it around for it to be used in achieving the targeted goals.

Life is about strategy and the only way to have the correct strategy is by clarifying the goal/ objective. Even then, the strategy chosen might not be the correct one, yet nevertheless if its lived then it will be learned therefore nothing is at stake versus worrying and not doing anything about it.

I was told before to take life easy, don’t over do/push myself. What’s the measurement of over doing? What’s the comparison of pushing my self too much?

I guess the advice I should have gotten were suppose to be strategies my life towards my goals. Maybe, the word strategy it self is scary. It tends to be assumed negatively. Strategy seems to have this meaning that we will do anything to achieve our goals. Where for me strategy is only laying down the path I would like to take in order to get to the desired destination underlining it with my values.

So friends, brevity with the right strategy implemented leads to our success. If you don’t trust me, look around, really look around, model the successful people you know, ask them if possible if they, themselves implemented strategy in Life.

Listening to the Unheard Voice

Something happened today, something I knew was coming and thought was ready to handle. Nevertheless no matter how we prepare ourselves, there will be moments like this that will get under our skin and all the preparation can only help a bit.

From the incident today, I’ve learned that listening to our Body does the adjustment. I tried my best to acknowledge what my body was trying to tell me and I knew that I just had to let it out, let all the resentment out, through tears, though my writings and through being around great friends that can keep us grounded.

Despite of what happen today, which I regretfully can’t openly share here, I know for sure that when the sun comes up tomorrow, a new day, hope, opportunities and dreams arises with it.

This is the beauty of living in this universe and being a grateful human being. Truth is, I believe that grateful people tend to appreciate whatever they encounter, be it a sad story, an embarrassing moment or a draining thought, they always turn to see the positive side of learning they can get out of it. Like the saying “ its only a mistake, if we don’t learn from it”.

For tonight was an emotionally exhausting evening, it brings a whole new energy level for tomorrow. The key is stay conscious and aware of what we are feeling, deal with it, don’t deny it, find ways to face it with a certain given time frame to then help us bounce back strong, as they say, a hard fall down only makes a high bounce up…try it with your basket ball and see what I’m talking about.

Like yin and yang, life has up and downs, sad and happiness and grateful beings understand that to live it to the max is to understand that it’s a normal phase of becoming the next level of where we path ourselves to.

Tomorrow I’ll be in a new office with an awesome opportunity to accomplished new goals in my career step. The above mentioned phase I went through is the basket ball that was falling with a hard pass to then give a high bounce allowing me to make the dunk I need to score big.

All this can only be appreciate it and lived by listening to the unheard voice we all have. Practice yours and you will be amazed.

Learning Curve taken for Granted

After a crazy day in the office, I decided to go out with friends for some drinks. It’s something I called “breaking out the stress”. It helps my mind rest a while to then come back and deal with the roller coaster of life.

Its perfectly normal for us to break away for a while, many people does it different ways, some goes shopping, takes a walk in the park, meditate is to name a few out of the many way people do the breaks.

So my friends and I went to a cozy place not far from where we all live to chat, laugh and just be silly. What I like about it is most often I’ll be inspired by just the stories we share to each other and how we discuss our view on a particular subject.

That evening, we had company from another friend that we come upon knowing recently. And to my surprise this person can really translate the small things in life that we take for granted.

We were talking about how we make decisions in our life just like being in a traffic light. As we know, traffic lights here shows the time each lights will turn from red to green, vice versa. Given us time to think which turn we prefer to take. The decisions is being timed, quick thinking is a must. Calculating the risk of traffic or anything that might be encounter adds to the stress of deciding, yet we have to decide and time is ticking. Tik tok tik tok, green!!! Turn left? Right? or go straight? The exemplifies our daily life; we know and understand how to calculate risk nevertheless given only a small time to think which road to take can also be tricky. We exercised our self to make decisions quick considering every and anything that can or might happen. This conversation made me think on how I have encountered situations like this. A new job offer for instance, or a simple decision of what to do on weekends. What ever we chose will produce outcomes and when not carefully thought it may just lead us to a risk we prefer to stay away from. And not only that, too long to decide can also give us the risk of loosing what we are after. This Traffic Light Concept is absolutely how we are on most situation. Now what to do when the decision we made is wrong or not the most valid one? Put it this way, another day and time, we will pass the same traffic light and by then we will know which turn to make, no?

Another analogy given was how Life can be looked at how a Bus way operates. A bus way goes from one point to another and along the way it stops to pick up people. This analogy has the same meaning of how we meet people in our life and how each and every one of them contributed to our life adding value to which we are at this present moment. Some will be with us until the end of the journey; others will stop and leave us on the next stop. Both though have in someway contributed to our life, in a short period of time or a long one. They contributed to the values we stand by today which makes this very clear to me that it doesn’t matter how long a person is in your life, they’ve been there and some part of them will always be part of who we are. For that don’t be sadden at the fact that they are no longer in our life but be grateful for what they have given. Bad or Good is only how we see it, both brings value and that’s what matters the most.

That evening, not only that I broke away from the stress, I was given something to take home and digest to then understand. This friend has indeed added value to my life.

Simply Learning To Learn from others and the activities that surrounds us sure takes us a long way.

Thank you for being such an inspiring friend.

Choices in Life

Up until today, there has been numbers of choices that I have chosen in life. Many of them speaks for me but some others relates to the people that surrounds me.

There are times where I will go back and think of those decisions and wonder were they the best and right ones?  Often times I know I’ve made the correct choice yet to be honest there are ones that up to today still remains in questions. 

I’ve done some thought process on this and I came up with a concept of either we try and take the risk or we will never learn what should be done. Most of the time for those unsure ones follows uncertainty and that’s where it all fumbles. Uncertainty is a word that are close to all of us. A word we try to stay away with measures and strategies that we implement in ourselves just to minimize the unpredictable cause it may bring in.

As we get caught in the fear of uncertainty, we tend to forget that uncertainty can also be viewed as a breath of fresh air which can lead us to a wonderful change we long needed in most case never discovered by many people just because they are so damn afraid to face change and settle with what they think (not feel) is the best. Yes, compromising what they feel for something they think is best is not in my dictionary.

My life decisions are just like my writings, I write what I feel, which makes it more real so why not make the life decisions based on the feeling as well and live a believable life right? Believable for ourselves that is…after all we are responsible for our own happiness, yes? Although the cost is the uncertainty which by time will unfold and answers are given.

Khalil Gibran once wrote:

When Love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep

And when his wings enfold you, yield to him, though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

And when he speaks to you believe in him, though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the Garden

Khalil Gibran might be referring to the uncertainty of what LOVE brings but for me it basically has the same meaning in general. Worry not with the choices we made, worry only when we are heading no where, Point Taken!

Beautiful Contradiction

When I start writing this, I was filled with confusion. My friends will say that this rarely happens to me and I have to strongly agree with them.

See,  I’m more of an understanding person. I tend to view what people see from their shoes making myself a person with high empathy and extreme understanding towards conditions and people.

Today, my feelings are contradicted with my mind.

As I heard the news, my mind can comprehend the situation however my feelings are not responding the same way. I have to be honest, the news stroked me and it did disappoint me yet I always try to compromise for the best. Specially when it comes to the people I care the most. They are important for me and therefore a little adjustment towards my feelings is worth the pain. Some friends of mine will start pitching their eyes silly when I say this. LOL. They just dont want to see me hurt, yet for me life is diversity, life is colorful, pain is part of the beauty that life present.

Have anyone of you felt the same? Should you have, just remember a classic saying that says “what doesn’t kills you, makes you stronger” especially when it is done out of genuine LOVE and care that you have towards the problem, the person or the situation.

When the heart starts feeling the uncomfortable emotion, just begin to diminish it slowly with happy thoughts to invite back the good feeling that will bring us back to the level of greatness we should all be in.

Happiness attracts happiness…..

Although we can’t escape the problems we encounter in life, we are creative beings that can find alternatives ways or thoughts that can help us run through the finish line of life. We are fierce and strong enough to make decisions that can change our life from the feel of dying to the excitement of living. Many people perhaps can related to this, alive yet it feels like dying and the fear of dying it self I believe subsist because we have not realy LIVED. So fact is, its not dying we should worry about. But instead worry about how we have LIVED our life to the fullest and finally die a happy creature. It’s amazing how when you think of this, it gives you a new perspective of life and where we are standing at this right moment.

So lets wipe away any feelings that can terrorize our soul and start Living. Fight back grumpy emotion that can bring out our worst and bring up the genuinely happy person we are meant to be.

Don’t denial the feelings and don’t go against the nature, play along with it, strategies it and achieve your desire goal in LIFE. Mine… is simply LIVING.