Anthony Robbins is a world renown motivational and personal development coach. He is the author of several best sellers such as ‘Awaken The Giant Within’,'Unlimited Power’ and the most recent being  which he called ‘Deliberate Creation’.  He is based in the United States and had traveled to many countries and spoken to over three million people. Continue reading “Deliberate Creation – Instant Self Hynopsis” »

Okay, here I am sitting in my study room staring at the computer monitor screen not knowing what to write. I guess I am suffering from mental block because my mind is blank!  It seems  that as of  late, it is taking me longer and far in between to update my blog.  I am not sure why, well perhaps it might be due to other distractions that gets the better of me.

Resistance to writing or writers block is a common phenomena that besets many writers and bloggers. You can overcome mental block with various techniques. Writing is fun if you enjoy doing so, what if you suffer from mental block and you just can’t seem able to formulate your thoughts no matter how hard you try? I am sure even the best gifted writer and blogger encounter such problem one way or another.

My mind just seems to wonder off easily, as if into twilight zone for no apparent reason. I guess one of the reasons was that I don’t sleep well lately.  I used to sleep at six hours every day but of recent  it seems that even after past midnight I am still wide awake in bed!.  No doubt adequate quality sleep is extremely important, lacking of which might cause a person to become lethargic and unable to focus on work during the day.

If you want to shorten your life or kaput early then by all means continue to deprive yourself of quality sleep.  Have you heard of that catch phrase ‘a  sleep deprived man is an angry man ?  Oh ,yes, I guess it is quite true because your whole body, particularly your hormone go off balance, blood pressure rise and you will have harder time to control your mood and temper when your body is not given adequate time to recharge.

This reminds me of a church pastor who behave just exactly that way. Even though he’s been serving in the ministry for decades, his mood swing is so obvious. One day, he told us that he gets agitated very quickly when he don’t sleep well the night before the Sunday sermon. I guess he must a lucky lot because he get cranky once in a blue moon which indirectly implies he sleep well most of the time!.

Okay, what else I wish to rant? Aha, there are some blogger who believed in the notion that one should not write any post for the sake of writing. In other words, no post is better than a lousy irrelevant post. I am not quite sure if I agree with that remark though.

I don’t see any harm in letting our mind to run freely and write anything that’s not relevant to the blog niche so long as you keep that to a minimum. After all, a blog is just that, a weblog where you pen your thoughts and sometime it is good to write something about facts of life and be a little crazy so to speak.

Some blogger think they can get away with mental block situation by deploying ‘autoblogging’ technique!  That’s a topic to for another time to discuss but I guess so long as you don’t plagiarize, steal content or even spin articles which then ends up with gibberish illogical grammar sentences it should be fine.

Come to think of it, it’s really kind of funny and weird because I used to hate writing, particularly during my school days. Fast forward thirty years later, here I am writing even though there is no teacher who will look over my shoulder to correct me or to reprimand me for being a lousy writer. It just comes naturally as one starts to build up the habit and interest to do so.

Someone once ask me why I choose to be blogger, what benefit do I get out from it (I told that chap I don’t earn much through blogging)  and if there will come a day I will quit all together and do something else more meaningful and enjoyable.  The fact of the matter is that I do enjoy blogging.

There is no hard fast rule on how to overcome writer’s block. You have to figure out the best approach to relax and free your mind from stress and distractions.  I usually make it a point to take a stroll in the evening,  watch a movie, read the newspaper or even take a nice shower and stay away from blogging at least till the next day.

Sometime the best ideas comes into your mind when you least you expect it.  Always make it a point write down what inspires you, preferably bring along with you a scratchpad and a pen wherever you are on the move (note: you can make use of smart mobile phone diary application to write down your thoughts and ideas whenever you are on the go ).

You just need to figure out what works best for you and then stick to that routine to refresh and rejuvenate your mind before you write. That’s so much so for today, just remember no one is born a gifted writer. You have to write as much as you can and in time to come,  your copy writing skills will improve before you even realize it!

Why me, why me? I am sure many of us ask this question one way or another in our struggle with adversity in life. After all, the life we live on this blue planet is full of surprises, it is a challenge to cope with events that affects us, situations that we do not anticipate and which we have no total control of. It is easy for us to find excuses and put the blame on others for our predicaments.

Life is never a bunch of roses so to speak.  It is through hardship and adversity that we continue to grow, improve and enhance mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  Struggle is part of living , no risk no gain, no pain no glory so to speak. I know that such saying might be out of touch for some people however the time will come that each and everyone will have to deal with crisis one way or another.

After all, it is more of some sort of natural reflex for us to find the path of least resistance to deal with difficulties confronting us. Indulging in self pity is one of them. We lament that we are not rich because we are not born with a silver spoon in our mouth. It is easier to explain why things go wrong  by directing the cause and effect away from us rather then to accept the fact that we are part of the problem and we can make a difference by taking responsibility for it.

We think other are better than us because they have higher IQ and intellectual ability to climb the rope of success. We resign to so-called fate or destiny and blame all our woes on karma. No amount of self improvement and personal development books that we read will make any difference so long as we are not willing to flip the switch in our mind to the ‘I can’ mentality.

Did you know that regardless of circumstances in life, you can make a difference and improve your lot and achieve all desires by having the right mindset? Sometimes, the greatest lesson and enlightenment comes not through what the personal development Guru says but through real life experiences and examples.

I stumble across this You-tube video about a physically challenge man who live life the fullest, the way he wanted it despite severe shortcomings. I find many of such real live events really inspiring. After all, we live only this once, and we should spend each moment to the best of what we can be and not want we think we could’ve become.

You don’t have to be angry with yourself, you certainly don’t have to be angry with others and makes life more complicated than it is when things go wrong.  Life as we know is transient, it is what we make it out to be and by the way, it is not how long you live that matters but rather how you live your life.

Stop finding excuses,  take responsibility when things don’t turn out the way you expect and chart your own course in life. Don’t wait for others to tell you what to do. As the saying goes, failure to plan is planning to fail. If you don’t make decisions, others will make on behalf of you and chances are that you will not like the outcome of such decisions made by others.

Time sure pass quickly.  For some, it’s the time for personal reflection while for others it might just be just another day, another month and another year, just like past years.  Success begins and ends with within you, within your mind.  As I look back the years, I realized how things  around us has changed.  There were ups and downs in life and each one has their own stories to tell.

Some say the year of the Dragon is suppose to bring good luck but I guess it’s all in the mind. If you choose to believe in bad things or you are pessimistic then chances are that you will attract such negative aura and it might become a reality. Some called it the Law Of Attraction. Whatever the case, instead of indulging in self pity or continue to wallow in our downturn luck, why not start afresh in this new year and set new goals and plans?

I am not a fan of Hong Kong Cantonese sleek drama but one particular episode of a thriller series caught my attention.  An interesting character in the drama series always uttered the catch phrase ‘How many decades one has in life?”. Interesting isn’t it if you think about it.

On the average if a person lives up to 60 years old, he has only 6 decades so from that perspectives life is short indeed. So if there is anything that you wish to achieve in life the time to start to work towards it is today, not tomorrow or the day after next.  Procrastination is your biggest enemy. Sit there do nothing and you will find yourself entangle with more disorganized tasks and unnecessary worries in life.

Here’s a free motivational guide eBook.  You don’t have to follow all the tips but I guess you it’s full of sound advice and I have no doubt if you start to plan your days ahead, create new goals and work towards it, you will achieve much satisfaction in life.  Cheers!

I have spent the past few days conducting interviews for candidates for the position of senior software engineer. It is a replacement position for someone who left my software team over a month ago. The interviews has given me some interesting insights into some of the human psychology.

One important factor that most interviewer take note of is the reason for the applicant decision to leave their current job. I have conducted many interviews for various job openings in both my previous as well as present employer.

I noticed one of the most common reason cited by applicants are that they find their current job not challenging enough, boring and they are unable to acquire new knowledge or skills. There also those who decide to leave for greener pasture due to unhappiness with their current pay or due to change of management resulting in potential conflicts with new superiors.

I must admit I don’t feel comfortable with such answers from applicants. You may wonder why it bothers me. Firstly, if your current job is not challenging enough than you should talk to your boss and try to work some arrangement to take up new roles or additional responsibilities that keeps you occupied and tasks that challenge you. A lot of time people complain about being bored with their job but they don’t want to volunteer to pick up more mental challenging tasks and assignments.

Learning is a life long experience and you should continue to upgrade ,improve and widen your knowledge, skill set and enhance your areas of expertise whenever and as much as you can. Don’t wait and don’t expect your employer, particularly your boss to be entirely responsible for your personal development. Don’t wait to be told what to do. Be more pro-active and be open to take on new tasks and challenges without expecting or hoping that doing so will result in pay increase or bonus for that matter.

Opportunity abounds for those who wish to learn and improve their knowledge regardless of the environment they are in. You need to have the right mindset and determination to succeed in life and that includes making it a point to learn new things, not just each month or each week but each and every day. You are responsible for your own personal development and improvement.

I know it sounds ridiculous to some people; knowledge is power and if you make it a point to learn something new each day, imagine the amount of wealth of knowledge and experience you will gain which will directly and indirectly contribute to the success of goals that you set whatever they may be.

Is it possible for you to learn new things each day? Of course you can!. Establish goals that you would like to achieve and then identify what areas improvements you need to accomplish those goals. Reading is one of the best ways to gain more knowledge in the shortest possible time. Make it a point to read as much as you can daily. You don’t need to digest the entire book in a day which is quite impossible but rather go through one or more chapters daily, according to the amount of time you can afford to set aside for reading.

The key factor to note is that you must set aside some time daily to learn something new that would help you move closer to accomplish your goal. Don’t find excuses for yourself such as that you are too busy with work or that you have no spare time to improve yourself daily. It is not a matter of how smart and how fast you are on being able to acquire new knowledge that matters but rather how much knowledge you acquired daily which allows you to move a step closer to reach your goals.

I always make it point to bring along something to read when I am taking a public transport, particularly on the way to the office or during weekends when I run errands for the family. You might be surprised how much you learn during the brief period of time when you are on the bus or the train. Well, you shouldn’t take your eyes off the road should you drive though!. With online access to the Internet via portable smart PC tablets and smart phones, it is even much more easier than ever to access information on the go.

We live in a fast paced changing world. Unless you strive to constantly improve yourself moving forward both on and off the job, you will soon find yourself outsmart and outpaced by others and lose that important job in no time. Don’t procrastinate and don’t wait until circumstances forced you to take desperate action. As the saying goes, there is no better time to prepare for the contingency than today. Make it a habit to acquire new knowledge daily. Each time when you leave office always make it a point to ask yourself what new things have you learn.

You may have heard of the saying ‘At times, the best action to take is by not taking any action at all’. Inaction is a form of action.
Well, the above saying is what I would term being oblivious to your surroundings or just let things be at it is for the simple fact that you can’t change things or that the more you try to address something by taking action the worst it becomes.

This sort of mentality is prevalent in office politics. I have to admit though sometime you really need be passive and not take action even though you know for the sure fact that you are equally guilty for not taking action. Sometimes it does not pay even if you do the right thing.

I am not liberty to quote names here. Well, in the company that I worked for, you get to be responsible for highlighting any issues that you brought up in the meetings even if it is not within your area of scope work. For instance, you may highlight a problem during the meeting. The boss expect you to suggest a recommendation to address the issue and before you know it, you are assigned the task to fix it!

There is the herd mentality where you adopt the wait and see attitude. You just wait for someone to take the first action before you join in and follow suit. As the saying goes, don’t try to be a hero because hero die young.

I don’t deny the fact that some people gets promoted because they don’t wait for others and they don’t wait to be told what to do. They take actions to remedy situations before it gets out of hand. I truly admire such good personality and attitude.

The way I see it, it all depends on who you work for, the culture and environment of when and where you are. If you are your own boss, particularly if you are an online business entrepreneur then it is imperative you take actions at the soonest opportunity to address any issues that may impact your business. Don’t wait until it is too late to take actions.

It is a different story when you work for others in the corporate world. You have to observed the culture of the company, the department and even your boss and peers working style. Sometime it is better to stay low profile and not take any actions unless it is something that involves your job security at stake. In summary, inaction is mostly being irresponsible but sometimes you just can’t help it. As the saying goes, if you can’t beat the crowd, join the crowd.

You may or may not have heard of the Parkinson’s Law which states that “Work expands to fill the time available.” If you care to think about this law, you will realize that it makes sense from time management perspective. For instance, a task assignment which you are able to complete within an hour will take you 10 hours instead if you are given that much time (10 hours) time line to deliver. Believe it or not, your focus, productivity and performance will increase or decline to match the deadline to complete a task.

Of course there are those who go to the extra mile whereby if they are given a task to complete a project, they will try their best to deliver it well ahead of the schedule if they are capable of. Alas, on the other hand majority of people I know of will take their sweet time to get something done if they are not given any real deadline to complete it. This brings me to the next interesting question of setting deadline to complete a task.

Most of us dislike being constantly pressured by the boss to meet tight project time line. I mean who on earth likes to be push to rush to get a job done right? We would prefer a reasonable comfortable pace time line whereby we can relax and at the same time focus moderately on the work without having to push ourselves to the limit.

As a matter of fact, bluntly speaking, you will never get any thing accomplish if there is no concrete time line involve because there is always another tomorrow so your subconscious mind will tell you to finish it by tomorrow and when that day comes, you will defer it to another day and so forth!.

One of the common traits shared by many successful Internet marketers and online business entrepreneurs are that they set achievable tight time line to accomplish their goals and objectives and they push themselves to the limit to get it done. Parkinson’s Law can also indirectly explain why people are more incline to procrastinate when there is no time line imposed to get something done.

I know of a guy who works for a software house in Singapore. He is a very good software programmer who always get his job done no matter how complex or complicated the task assigned. He always deliver amidst tight project time line. I once spoke to him and suggest the idea of him to team up with me to develop Internet marketing software on part time basis, notably after office hours and on weekends. I have no reason to cast doubt on his ability to deliver since he is a software expert in web programming.

The problem though is that he is always behind schedule and give me all sorts of excuse such as lack of time or due to too much commitments at work. I finally realized the problem was not because he is overloaded or whatever, the real problem you see if that I did not impose any serious deadline on what he need to deliver on his part. Since it is a joint partnership, I didn’t want him to think I am pushy person so I let him decide when he is able to complete the task, at his convenience so to speak.

As a result well, the Parkinson’s Law kicks in. He was never ever able to deliver what is committed and needed on his part of the bargain and eventually we decided to call off the whole sideline project. Have it ever occur to you why you are able not able to succeed online while you may be a star performer in your company?

Part of the reasons is due to the fact that you are too nice to yourself. Sure enough you ought to be nice to yourself and you ought not to be too hard on yourself. You are able to perform up to your boss expectations in your workplace because of the deadlines impose to all the tasks assigned to you!.

In summary, Internet Marketing and online business that you do in your own spare time or even if you are into full time can only take off and succeed provided you are commited and take action. You must have well define plan with definite timeline on various milestone checkpoints that include specific dates on when you want to achieve your goals and plans.

I have been bombarded by a number of readers who ask me whether if I know what I am writing in particular with regards to “Two words that you should not use – But & Why”. I guess the concerns and doubts are expected given the fact that we ask questions all the time, usually in the form of “Why”. It seems that there is no relevancy of not using “Why” as it does not amount to anything.

No doubt it is only through asking questions in the form of “why” that we gain insight and understanding. Nevertheless we need to know who and when to pose the “why” question.

It is important for a student to ask the teacher why this or that in order to clarify their thoughts, concepts and understanding of the subjects. On the contrary you need to be more judicious and cautious on using this word when you are engage in selling proposition or dealing with office politics.

The whole idea behing this topic is how to prevent or reduce possibilities of activating your customer “internal emotional ego and defense radar” response. It is a win win situation if you can get the opposite party to agree to disagree with you rather than to disagree with you simply because you are seen as someone who puts them down should they agree with you.

If you disagree with what I said, then perhaps you should honestly ask yourself if you have come across any incidents whereby you get piss of and agitated of someone who keep interrupting when you speak and asking you to justify your thoughts by asking all sort of mumbo jumbo “why” questions..Cheers

Barish Kurniawan of Brunei wrote:

Hi Rich, I find your article post entitled “Two words that you should not use – But & Why “ to be rather misleading and confusing to say the least. First thing first, a person will never learn if they do not bother to ask questions in particular those in the form of ‘why’ questions.

In many aspect of life, in particular in the area of education such as mathematics or physics, it is imperative to understand the underlying fundamental and basics by asking questions in the form of “why”. You need to explore and gather facts finding by asking pertinent questions in the form of “why”.

Therefore I am incline to dismiss this article of yours as completely out of touch with reality. Perhaps you may further clarify as to ‘why’ you think we can live a better life without having to bother about asking as to why things are the way it is today versus what it can be if only we realize why it goes that way. In summary, why not ?  Knowledge comes through asking “why” at the right time and at the right place isnt it?

Napolean Bonaparte, the French conqueror once said that the word ‘impossible” is not in his dictionary. When his generals told him that it is ‘impossible’ to cross over the Alps with loads of heavy war equipments and that there is no way to get the horses up, he had most of the horses shot and then force his army to march on foot over the Alps!

People who are successful in life sees obstacles as opportunities while pessimist sees it as “impossible” tasks. Thus certain words which are not helpful and which may prevent us from achieving our goals,plans and aspirations are best discarded from our mind completely. After all  it serves no purpose for you to use words which trigger human subconcious mind to associate the surroundings and situations which they are in with feelings of doubts, lack of confidence, fear or sense of hopelessness isnt it?

Likewise  there are two words which you should not use because they serve no purpose other than getting people to be on their toes and in defensive mood. These two words are “BUT” and “WHY”.

No “BUT” Please!
Let’s consider the word “BUT”. The word “BUT” communicates the message tone of disagreement, division or disapproval. For some reasons, the human mind is condition to be sensitive to the word “BUT”.

So what do you do if you disagree with your customer on a project proposal and you wish to offer alternative viewpoint? It is easy, just subsititute the word “BUT” with something else such as “nevertheless” or “may I suggest” or etc.

For instance, observe the following statement;
” Mr A, your proposal is good indeed, BUT I think we should consider plan B before making the final decision on which path to take.”
” Mr A, your proposal is good indeed, may I suggest we also consider plan B before making the final decision on which path to take?”.

Which of the above statement sound less hostile ?  The answer is obvious isnt it?  You can get someone to agree with your suggestion if you do not raise their “internal biological and emotional defense radar” behaviour.

No “WHY” Please!
The “WHY” is another useless and trouble inviting word which I think you should not use at all. Simply because when you pose the question in the form of “WHY” to someone, you will only get the person to find a reason to justify their reasoning and thoughts. Unless you want to enter an argument with someone, it is best to replace the word “WHY” with something else.  For instance, it is a meanigless to ask the question “Why do I exist in this world” or “Why do you do the things you do?”.

You will lose the edge and advantage in any negotiating deals if you trigger your customer subconcious mind to find a reason and justification to their thoughts for instance;
Let’s say a potential customer is not happy with the price of a product which you are promoting. 

Instead of asking the customer why he or she thinks the product is too expensive, it would be more beneficial for you to emphasize  the additional benefits which comes along with the  increase product costing. If you ask the customer why they think the product is too expensive, they WILL find excuses and justifications for their concerns and argument regarding the cost of the product.

Summary:
Words such as “BUT” and “WHY” triggers human defensive mood and complicates selling with regards to negotiating business deals. It is best not to use them at all.It wasn’t easy for me to figure out the unnecessary troubles that I self inflicted upon myself ; unitentionally through the bad choice of words that I used when communicating with people. 

Words are powerful indeed, it can build or tear down a nation! Thus be very careful with your choice of words, more so if you are in the business of selling (which we all do in one way or another.).