33

This year my birthday fell between sunday and the national holiday.  4 days straight holiday was indeed a grace in itself.  But it does not stop there, my GF decided to kidnap me, to show a nice mountain view a quite relaxing moment after a hustle bustle of working life.  From complaints of many people to drizzling voice of rain, the nice smell of mountain air. 
Not only that, going home my family is there to greet me , we have a nice dinner and finished with a candle blowing and cake cutting.
Years have passed from trying to grab material in life and to collect as much wealth as possible, at the end cherishing with the love ones is more important.
It reminds me of the CEO of Coca-Cola once said that you can juggle many balls in life, all balls are made of rubber/plastic that can bounce back when you fail to grab it except one ball which is family it is made of fragile material. If we are not careful and drop it, it creates unwanted dent.
So in my 33 years living in this world and searching my purpose in life, I know one thing , juggle as many balls as you can as they will all bounce back but one thing for sure never ever drop the shiny glimmering ball that the Lord has given to each of us. "Our family and loves one"

Presentation Skills

Just attended presentation skills from the company.  The first comment I get from some of the other attendance would be "Why are you taking this class, you are so good on giving presentation already".  I reply to them in simple way "Everyone has their own way of delivering presentation and the more I learn the more I can integrate to my own style".  And so a two days journey of how to deliver presentation in confidence way begins at the end the final test would be a 6 minutes of giving the presentation starting from and issue, impact until it close with evidence and the next steps.
I definitely learn a lot, me who have been praised for giving impactful presentation have to bite the bullet and face the reality.  There are so many things I did not notice, small stuff that I am not aware of such as maintaining a balance stance, eye contact and wider movement and so many other details. 
When I deliver my 6 minutes presentation I can tell that I am not comfortable at all because I have to use a different way of doing things.  But I go ahead and took the whole new learning and try to practice it without mixing with my style.  The idea is to pour out all my skills from the glass and let the new ideas, behaviour and skills to be in, doing so I can appreciate the whole process and later on, once I got used to it, I will then absorb and integrate those that supports my audience needs the most.

"The one that has more options is the one who control the system". 
And so I am gathering all the options and choices of delivering presentation from the basic to the bizzarre way.

Thanks,Loy! For showing me and reminding me on a lot of things in order to give impactful presentation with confidence.  A great 2 days training.

A resistant client or unflexible customer service

Last Friday, I blew my steam off to one of our sales person, just because one of our customer who has been sending emails numerous times in a day, calling numerous times and so on and so forth. I have to say that day I had enough. All my NLP practice all my egoless down to drain after what he did on the email somehow I really got so upset to a point where I could not even talk to the customer on that day. It's like a raging fire splashed by a gallon of gasoline (boy was I exaggerating)

On Saturday, I reflect to myself hang on, why would customer call numerous times and sending email numerous times? There must be reason behind it. And suddenly it become my personal challenge now. A difficult client? Naaah it is a challenging one.

I have to swallow what I have taught to other customer service and to sales. I dissociate and ask myself how do I feel when I see myself angry? (not to mention I was so pissed off even my heart beat start to raise). And when I see myself angry I realised why would I angry about? Again and again it's about ego, I can even hear myself said "why is he taking my happiness?".
So I talk to myself you own 800 customers day in day out that you serve, there are many excellence remark from others you can't please everyone or not yet at least.
And who can take your happiness? Nobody you are the sole keeper of how you feel not anyone else.

1. So I decide to take this presupposition
"There is no resistant client only communicator that is less flexible."
"If what I do is not working, I change my approach"

2. Arrange meeting with him next week

3. Tell myself, "It's just a job and it's all in a days work"

If you are a soldier you are potentially be hit by a bullet.
If you are a customer service you are potentially be hit by complaint.

Take them as challenge to become better, calmer and sweeter customer service :D

Day In Day Out Passionately

Just got back from a trip have been entertained by two tour guides, one name Pom the other called Jojo, both has their ways of entertaining tourist. How do they maintain such vibrant and keep smiling, day in day out. Everyday they will do the same drill from the morning till the sun set.

Then I try to think differently probably what keeps them going is the tip from all the tourists but that doesn't seem to answer it, the money is not that big, they don't even count much on the tip. Then what is it? I realised that "everything is connected" the fact that they give the best performance to us , showing us the best places to see has rejuvenated us. There are many of us on the boat some are businessmen, some are employees, some are photographer and lots more. Some even are writers not to mention writers that experience "writer's block". So all this people after they have been rejuvenated, they start to contribute to the world again and the world a better place.
From a tour guide comes inspiration for others.

At the end when you do things passionately it brings the best out of you and it brings the best out of others.

Thanks Pom and Jojo

Managing Time

One of my students asks me "I don't seems to have time to do things that I would like to do, why is that?" I just smile at him and ask him do you know the saying "time is money"?
He nodded.
What if I say that we can buy time do you believe that? At the beginning he look puzzled.
What I mean by buying time is that we move some of the urgent and important stuff to other person with a certain priced agreed.

Example of buying time doing the urgent and important stuff:
1. Use a driver instead of driving by yourself, that way you don't have to worry about finding parking place, cleaning up the car, maintenance of the car and all other car related pretty much is his responsibility.
2. What if I can't afford a driver? Well be flexible on your approach. If it takes 1 hour to go to the office by bus, find other alternative motorcycle or a cab. If it is still too expensive to take a cab you can always find other people who work around the same area to chip in.
3. Use a maid to do the laundry and the dishes, or take turns with your flat mate.

And then I raise another question if you can buy time, can you steal time?
Another puzzled look from my student.

I explained to him , stealing time can be
1. While in a traffic jam read books if it is too dizzy, use booked on tape there are many MP3 you can download about NLP, Foreign Language, religion and many other.
2. While waiting always have something handy to read or learn
3. Once in a while you go solo find a good quite restaurant read a chapter or two
4. Find mentor they can shortcut some experience that you are about to do

Have you addressed also some of the time leak you currently have? Like...
1. How many minutes have you use surfing the net blindlessly without any particular aim?
2. How much time do you spend on social networking on daily basis, a staggering number of 45 to 1 hour has been spend in average for people in a day just on social networking.
3. How much time do you use watching TV? a 2 hour spend on TV means you have basically thrown away a good amount of 30-35 minutes on commercial only.
4. How much time you have spend on things that is urgent but not important such as answering chatting from many contacts you have that is not even part of your inner circle person you would like to invest time with?
5. How many junk mail on daily basis are you reading?
6. How much time have we spent on gosipping and talking about other people?
7. How much time has been used to regret about the past? Regretting things that can't be changed? How much time have we decided not to take the stand that the past is not the future?

Have we measured our time consumption?
What can be measured can be improved. So find what things which considered waste of time and start doing some continuous improvement / Kaizen. Hence you will still have the same time and yet you can use accomplish more task.

Have we stop for a minute and reflect on what we do? Sawing a tree without thinking of sharpening it, is like too busy driving and forget to fill the gas. It will get you!
Have we prioritized clearly on things we would do?

So go ahead try some of the tips and I am sure your live will improve significantly.

Inspired by : Stephen Covey (habits 3 : First thing First)

Everything happens for a reason

The Icelandic Volcano really disrupted everyone’s traveling agenda. My appointed trainer couldn’t fly out from Copenhagen. And I thought I will not have my leading leaders training. What do you know apparently another trainer, who dedicates himself to inspiring people all over the world, decide to against all odds. He took the car drove to Barcelona from Switzerland to find the airport was closed so he had to drive to Valencia and flew to Istanbul and took another flight from Kuala Lumpur and connect down to Jakarta, he came one day and 2 hours late. He came with a smile and no jetlag shown in his eyes until the class was over. And guess what? He is an NLP-er too! It’s always nice to find another NLP-er to talk to. He taught me a lot of things, “Google this Google that” he said. He showed me that there are a lot of soft skills to learn out there. Aside from the leading leaders course he give me some simple tips on how to communicate. I really like his approach in human interactions. His ability to deliver the training is certainly a superb one, I have to give two thumbs up, wait I may need to take off my socks just to give another two more!

So yeah his effort to fly across the continent certainly appreciated.
Fire within me slowly ignited by his wonderful training.
Such fulfilling job to be a trainer especially when the attendees left inspired.
Someday I would like to become a trainer also.

Thanks Robert Kahn or should I say “Thanks Robbie!” Knowing you is a pleasure.

Managing State of Mind

Have you ever re-read messages in different time or place?
Have you ever been in situation where after you have re-read the message you have a different understanding?
Most of us probably do. And why is that? I mean the message just not suddenly change the arrangement of the word, the coma, the period and many other things.

That is because when we read the first time and the second time we probably in a different state of mind. When you feel down, exhausted and depressed would you have the same understanding about one particular message compare to when you feel ecstatic, exhalted and full of love?

State has a lot to do with how we take on the world, when you have a poor state you will certainly produce poor behaviour. So before focusing too much on behaviour check whether your state is correct.

Past reference has a lot to do with how you maintain your state, Internal representation about the reality has a lot to do with how we perceive things base on our experience. One thing for sure our experience has its limitation and options. One of the limitation is that no two things in the world happen exactly the same so you can't exactly use the answer of the past for the future problems there are no exact repository in our brain that has this, there is a need to extrapolate and to readjust our experience to what future decision we would like to take (Distortion & Generalization). Options in our mind is not a lot there is no human that experience all the things in the world some took from knowledge of others either from books, movies and musics however this info are not exactly the same either. For example, one word may have such deep understanding to one's soul for other may seem to be a garnish to the overall experience.

Understanding that managing state has a lot to do with how we manage our past reference, it is a must to make sure you sort out what you need to take to the present and future from your past. It is a lot harder to use brute force to fight with your own mind, subconcious is much more complex than that. So there is a need to check which past that we would like to use as our lessons. When you reframe properly about the past and take out what is best of it, you will have better past reference and this will impact directly to how you interpret internally.

When you start deleting and filtering what past reference to keep and what not, your internal representation will gradually change - this is the state where you have different understanding for the same message that you have re-read. Subconciously we digest the information and when we are wise enough to select only the most important past memory for our further development our state change dramatically and hence our behaviour will be affected to the max.

And voila you became a better person just by rearranging, sorting and filtering your memory :)

Stupidity

As I sat next to the pool, I think of things I have done in the past especially the stupid ones. There are some that are done because I have no knowledge what the impact would be to me, like a broken bone for instance :) (man that is one true pain). 25 years ago, I decided to run and fall and broke my hand never in my slightest mind that running can do that damage. So that is one stupidity for not having enough knowledge.

A breeze air just passed my face and I lingered in my mind again, is that it?
Is that the only trigger to stupidity nah I am sure there is more than this. So yeah another one would be less options or thinking of not having other options also known as desperado, when other choice of action seems impossible. When you were young, there are just tons of things that you think there is only one viable solution and that is the only thing you could do, boy was that so wrong.

Okay we covered two stupidities now, no knowledge of the future and no other options/desperado.

Then what? Can we go back to the past, I think not.
Would I do the same mistake having the knowledge that I have now most probably YES. Why is that? Cause if I change just a slight of my stupidity I may not end up where I am today. Okay so that’s cover the no knowledge part.
What about the second one the stupidity because of desperado very simple just make more options, in life there is always choice no matter how bad it is, trust me there will always more than one if you just look deeper.

And at the end if all those still fail you just have to use one of the NLP presuppositions
“PEOPLE ALWAYS MAKE THE BEST CHOICE AVAILABLE TO THEM AT THE TIME”

Blessing and Gratitude

It is easy to see weak points of anything. It is easy to criticize things. It is easy to compare things that we don’t have. Does it give you the pleasure you want by doing that? Is it going to make you feel better doing so? Most probably not, lingering on it day in day out will just make things worst. Questions like “Why me???” would just end up getting us deeper down the ground.

Though it seems hard, try to find 6 positive things you still have. Ok let me do it then
I still have people who loves me
I can still walk with my own feet
I can breath without any respiratory help
I still have a job
I still have shelter
Lastly, I still have love to share with the one I love

For those who don’t have the 6 I mentioned at least you can read and have internet connection.

Problems may come and go and if they stay with you for a while most probably because you are the most capable person to solve it.

I know it is easier said and done. If saying is easy, thinking about the positive things should not be that hard either, and from there I guess to start standing up again limb by limb. Stand stall and face the world once again.

Sharing

If you have the financial freedom and then what? Some might say that if they have the financial freedom they would start sharing it with others giving it to the poor. Well human are a product of habits and conditioning. If we never starts giving when we are poor most likely we would not change when we have abundance either. Some might say well if I have more of course I will give it to others. Well consider it this way when you have 100.000 IDR giving 10.000 IDR to stranger would not be that difficult, but what if you have say 100.000.000 IDR giving 10 mil IDR seems to be a lot, huh?

So why do we need to start sharing from early days? What are the benefits of doing so?
1. Net present value, a dollar given today to the poor is much worth than a dollar tomorrow, by giving a dollar as soon as possible in regular base we help more people and hopefully those people who has been helped can help other people. Sort of paying forward, we are using the power of multilevel marketing!
2. Habits/Conditioning, by having habits from early days it doesn’t seem to big later on when we have so much money on our hands.
3. Knowing what is enough, if we are to busy collecting all the material there is in the world we would be drown and cluttered what is more important for us, imagine this if you are drown in a 5 feet of water and deep ocean would it be the same devastating result? Yup, it does we can’t breath and we would be to busy collecting money and go to the last dime on everything.
4. Giving a good feelings, this is what we called wealth study by Jim Rohn, if we give some to the people in need we feel good. And when we feel good we can generate more earning. We have the abundance attitude according to Joel Osteen.
5. Example for others, like it or not we are a role model to the one we love and if we teach them from early day to share, most probably they will take this as their second nature.
6. We are the master, we finally said to money that money is used to help us and not make us the slave of it.
7. It separates us from the attachment to material, if we hear song from Monty Python , there is a line that says “you come with nothing you go with nothing!”

So yeah Ash Wednesday will start next week, Easter will be here.

So why not start giving in any ways we can, it doesn’t have to be grant just make the habits first.

90/10

Today I decided to come 5 minutes earlier just to fill up the gas. When my driver saw me standing outside the gate he rushed in trying to show that he is sorry for being late. Not realizing because of his hastiness his bike kissed my car front right bumper. Yup, it scratched big time and I am just about to start the day. I was just about to get mad but then again I said to myself hang on what will it do if I get mad will the scratch get away. Seeing his face with guilt is just enough I suppose. Not to mention "it's just a thing!".

I practice the 90/10 there is 10% things which we can't do about -in this case the scratch - it was not me who cause it but I have 90% control of not blowing of the steam to my driver. If I blew the steam and my driver lost concentration and drove in a foul mood the only thing could happen would be inviting accident on the road. Why would I even do that?
So thank to Stephen Covey, I decided not to get angry and said to him", For future 5 minutes late is fine compare to an accident - Safety number one".

I said to myself a scratch will not take my happiness.

Artefact

We just got a brand new piano at home, man that thing weigh at 250 kg surprise how it can be brought upstairs by 3 people. After the piano is well placed in the second floor and officially moving out my clothes hanger. I realised there is a need to take out some of my old clothes and throw it away, old habits not to throw old things caught me eventually. It's not like I will ever use those clothes anyway, so why not give it to the poor at least it can make a smile on their face. While folding the clothes one by one, I found one shirt that was given to me on my birthday back in 1997 yup it has been 12 years ago, a blue stripe colour T-shirt. It was torn a bit and I never got around to even throw it away just because it was given by somebody special but I realized that you can't hold on to the past and move to the future at the same time.
And so I decided to take the last look on that shirt fold it together with other shirt of mine and give it to the poor. Now I safe 30 seconds of my time every morning because I have more space and not to have to choose between new and old shirt all are now put in such an order I just have to pick them from right to left.

If you really really want to appreciate the experience take a pic.

The lesson is easy:
1. Things you have never use for years may not be something you need after all time to give to someone who need it.
2. If you use the slight time on your past, you basically takes out time for your brain to do wondrous in the future.
3. Time is precious if you don't have time to tidy up and throw away things it'll catch u someday, just like saying "I am too busy driving and forgot to fill the gas."

I'm Here

I'm here. Such simple words yet such powerful impact. In office life we depend each other between leaders and their subordinates. Leaders can have a lot of opinion and ways to appraise their team, one thing I find it as part of the most important one would be these words coming out from them "I'm here". It's not just merely a saying but it represents the fact that he/she is there it shows that he/she is dependable. Being dependable can go along way for our development.
If you have a self image of a "rock" or a "citadel" or anything that represents strong and steadiness you will definitely be able to act as a dependable person and can say "I'm here" out loud on any occassions you might encounter.

It is a gradual steps , start from being dependable on every agreement you have made start from just fulfilling the promise and gradually start honoring both promise and time cause most things become stale if it was over the deadline.

Being dependable can go across the board it can be
Dependable to my family
Dependable to my partner
Dependable to my boss
Dependable to my subordinate
Dependable to my students
Dependable to myself

Make a commitment and do as follows
Visual : Imagine a strong object that will not budge (i.e. Citadel)
Auditory : Saying it inside or outloud (your preference) "I'm here!"
Kinestethic : Stand tall and chin up ready to face the world. Calm breathing. Stay centered 2-3 cm below your belly button.

Every little success will bring confidence and next thing you know you will be dependable unconciously.

Focus on which dependability you need to prioritize and say "I'm here".

Defying the odds

Seeing people where they are surprises me. Those who have hold on to their belief and has such black and white view of the world now becomes so flexible as if rainbow come out from his mouth when discussing things. He who used to sell "manggoes" now selling stores. She who use to sell duck's egg now a CEO. Who would have think that a high school student can become a CEO?
Who would think bumble bee could fly if no one ever seen it flying.

So what is odds? Is it unsupporting data of now? Is it our past reference?

The beauty of life is that
1. Our past is not our future
2. Our future is not something we can predict

I am not saying that we should forget about planning. I am merely saying that there are times we need to strike balance between seeing the odds of the future and to focus on little things that makes a different now. Cause when the time comes we might surprise ourself on how ready we are on taking the odds. The odds seems to even out at the end.

All things are not started tomorrow but NOW. Right at our very own mindset.

A Shot of Happiness

In life we make mistakes, some decided to carry all the guilt and let it weigh them down. Smile seems to be a burden, sorrow becomes best friends, addiction to pain and punishment becomes a habit. Life never feel the same anymore.

Amazing how a mistake that has been done and over with has haunted people to make another mistake, a mistake of not enjoying the life that the Lord has given to us.
Well I was not exempted with this pain punishing exercise until one day I realized, God did not create me to suffer, God did not want me to be unproductive there was a reason I took that decision either I was not wise enough, not patient enough, not skill enough or other things. Instead of dwelling with the past I decided to take the lesson, share with the young ones on how to handle mistakes and move on.

Take the lesson
Repent
Forgive yourself
Not do the same mistake
Give a shot of happiness

Everyone has the right to have a shot in happiness and don't let anyone tell you otherwise!
In this new year, it is time to raise up again, dust yourself off and grab that happiness you've been longing for.

Your punishment has been lifted, the Lord never hold grudge cause it simply not His way.