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.