Making The Right Choices

I work in a line where my job is to help people and to empower them to achieve their goals and live their dreams in life. I enjoy what I do tremendously and I love my ‘work’. Self-empowerment simply means taking charge of your own life, you and only you decides what is right for you and where you want to go in the future, you make your own decisions and stick with them, not giving in to doubt or fear that you may have made the wrong choice. It is simply about taking your own life back into your own hands and listening to your inner self instead of relying on others for your future happiness and success.

Most of us rely on others to make decisions for us and we go along with them, this can be for many different reasons such as insecurity, low self-esteem or simply because it seems the easiest way to go. We do this in a variety of situations, some are as simple as choosing which movie to go and see and you follow along with your partner’s choice or where you want to go and eat. Taking your life back into your own hands and making your own choices is a simple as making healthy positive choices be they mental, emotional or physical. The following are all tips for making the right choices that enables you to become self-empowering.

We all have self-doubt at sometime or other, this is natural, but too many negative thoughts harm our way of thinking. Negative thinking however always seems to be so much easier to instil than positive, whether we care to believe it or not our feelings and how we feel or think does have a huge impact on our lives and what we think we are capable of achieving or not. We can so easily talk ourselves out of making decisions and choices if we listen to that small doubtful inner voice that so often shows up.

It is those two little words that so often come to mind even without paying them much attention, that cause so many problems. Once the what if have surfaced then self-doubt begins to take over every time and we can then go from a positive attitude to a negative one very quickly. Affirmations work well for changing negative thinking into positive thinking and affirmations are simply positive short statements that are repeated to oneself out loud or just in the mind. Write down four or five simple short statements and when self-doubt and the creep in consciously replace it with one of your chosen affirmations.

Realise that it is you and only you which puts these negative thoughts there, for example if you get stuck in a traffic jam then you can curse and work yourself up all you want but it wont change the fact that your stuck in a jam. Do not blame other drivers, the road works holding you up etc., take responsibility for the fact that you chose to drive that way, you set off at that particular time and instead of stressing yourself and those around you just let it go and focus on aspects that are more positive while you are stuck. Take this time to listen to that new CD you bought, read the report from your briefcase, practise affirmations or a stress reducing exercise, there are many more positive things you can do during this time than think negative.

Start with the little everyday choices that you are faced with, for example when asked what movie you want to go and see, stop and think and make a choice don’t just ask what your partner or friend would like to see. When asked which restaurant you would like to go to, give a decisive answer. Take control of your life in the small ways first and build up gradually until you are comfortable with this new way of thinking.

It will probably take a while for this new, more confident and positive way of thinking becomes easy, after all you have let negative thoughts and feelings rule your life for so long, they wont change overnight. By practising and pulling yourself up when negative thoughts and feelings enter your mind and doing this day in and day out slowly you will gain control back over your life and become more self-empowered.

Your True Wealth & Security Lies in Your Mindset And Nobody Can Take This Away From You!

A few days ago, a middle-aged gentleman attended my Patterns of Excellence Introductory Seminar and signed up. He told me that he wanted to re-think and re-plan his life’s strategy as he felt like he wasn’t going anywhere in his career. What frustrated him was that he used to be very successful in school. He was the perfect student who studied hard, got top grades and went to Raffles Institution, Raffles Junior Colleges and to NUS, where he got a first class honors degree.

He did everything by the book and coudn’t understand why he had less success and money than some of his friends who were from lousier schools and had poorer grades. ‘Where did I go wrong?’, he asked me.

He always wanted to attend my program and learn NLP but procrastinated for a long time. What really made him take action was that he had enough about working so hard, but always getting passed up for a promotion. What’s worse was that his company (an MNC) was undergoing a restructuring and there was a high posisbility that he may get retrenched. At the age of 43, he had the fear of what he was going to do if it should happen to him. He came to me looking for answers.

I explained that the world had changed so much since our parents time and the advice they gave us in the past will not only NOT help us succeed, but it may kill us. In the past, change happened slowly and people would work for the same company their entire lives. In the old days, parents gave good advice like, ‘ study hard. Get good grades. find a good job with a good company. do as you are told. don’t rock the boat. the longer you stay and the more loyal you are, your value and pay will automatically increase until you finally get to retire at 50 with a nice secure pension.’

However, the world we live in today is vastly different. Technology and knowledge is changing so fast that 80% of what you learn in school is OBSOLETE by the time you graduate. The nature of jobs are changing so fast that 50% of the jobs that exist today will not exist or exist in a different form 10 years from now. So what does this mean? This means that when you work for a company today, there is no job or income security anymore. The longer you stay in a company, your value will begin to decline (if you don’t upgrade yourself continously and do things differentl). By the time you hit 45-50 years old, there is a 70% chance of being retrenched! Why? becasue your boss will know taht he can hire someone half your age, half your pay, double your energy, doing the same job! And even if you can find another job, it will probably be at a much much lower pay!

Many people who are holding their prestigious degrees and in prestigous positions (Senior managers, Vice-presidents, directors) think they have security. But it is really an ILLUSION of security. Because you do not own your job or your income. Both these can be taken away from us at any time.

So what will give us true income, true freedom and true security? The answer is in continually investing in yourself and upgrading yourself. Your true wealth and security lies in your mindset and your personal mastery skills in being able to continually motivate yourself and overcome adversity. No one can take this away from you! With the right mindset and personals success strategies, you will be able to ride the sea of changes and take charge of the environment, instead of allowing the environment take charge of you! You have to begin to master your mind and design your own destiny (or someone will design it for you)

Problems Are God’s Way Of Tapping You On the Shoulder

I just completed one of my final Introductory Seminars for my Patterns of Excellence Program and am happy to report that my next Intake 5-8 April is Almost Full. However, I want to relate to you an interesting experience I had with one of the participants who signed up last night.

He told me that the reason he chose to sign up eventually (he heard about my program 3 years ago, but never took action) was because his problems has become so severe that he could not take it anymore. His wife decided to leave him, he lost his job and suffered a mild heart attack just a few days ago. All this pain finally drove him to do something to change his life.

He told me that he wanted to come to the program to learn how to make all his problems go away. he said he wanted to be a successful and happy person like me who seemed to have no problems. He will only be happy if his life was free of problems and he believed that I could help him achieve this.

That’s when I stopped him and said, ‘ You have got the WHOLE WRONG IDEA!’ ‘ I cannot make your problems go away!’ In fact, I believe that the more successful you are, the more problems you will have. Everyone has problems at any given point of time in their lives. In fact, I would bet that Bill Gates (the world’s richest man) has his own set of problems and I can tell you that his problems are a lot bigger than yours and mine.

The only people without problems are those lying in the graveyard. So, if you want to have no problems, then GO AND DIE (of course I did not say this…he would have slapped me and not signed up).

But the question people always ask is why must life be full of problems? Why can’t everything go the way we want? Why must things be so difficult? Why do some people get hit with such big problems in life sometimes? (e.g. kids run away, wife leaves them, diagnosed with cancer, business failure).

Well, I believe that whenever a ‘problem’ arises in our life, it is God’s way of tapping us on the shoulder and telling us that we need to learn something or change our thoughts or actions.

If we keeping falling ill, it’s a tap on the shoulder that we are not eating right, not exercising enough or thinking of negative thoughts (emotional stress is the number of cause of physical illness). If our kids don’t want to listen to us, it’s a tap on a shoulder that we are not listening or spending enough time with them.

If you receive complaints about your work, it is a tap on the shoulder that you are not putting enough effort or you are doing things the wrong way. If you keep getting into arguments with your partner, it is a tap on the shoulder that you doing what is required to sustain a good relationship.

When we acknowldege God’s taps, learn the lesson and take positive action, we will move closer towards our goals and dreams in life. The trouble with most people is that they IGNORE the taps by justifying, avoiding, denying, giving excuses or blaming someone else for the problems arising. They say things like ‘ The stupid boss is just finding fault!’, ‘the clients are just unreasonable’, ‘ my kids are so ungrateful and defiant’, ‘ these chest pains will go away’, ‘ I wish my wife will quit nagging…just ignore her’.

So, what does God do when you don’t learn and do something to his taps? He starts tapping EVEN HARDER! This is when your problems start getting worst! Your business starts losing clients, the chest pains get worst, your kids start arguing and shouting back, quarrels with your partner gets more and more frequent.

And if you continue to IGNORE these taps, God will do whatever it takes until he gets his message across to you that you need to change your thoughts and actions. He will HIT YOU ON THE HEAD WITH A BRICK. This is when those major problems whack you in life… Your partner leaves you, your kids run away from home, you suffer a heart attack or you go bankrupt.

So, how do people choose to respond when they get hit with a brick? Some people will spend keep rubbing their head and complain of how much it hurts. These are the people who will just wallow in self-pity and depression. Some people will blame the person who threw the brick at them. These are the blamers in life.

Some people will reflect and ask, ‘what must I learn from this?’ ‘What is God trying to tell me?’. By asking this question and reflecting, they will finally get the message and start changing their life for the better. So, how are YOU dealing with God’s shoulder taps now???

Are You a Monkey With Your Hand Stuck in a Coconut

Recently a man came up to me and told me how he wanted so much to achieve financial freedom and after listening to a 3-hour free seminar,he was even more inspired. However, he kept hesitating to sign up for the course.

What kept him from signing up was his fear and limiting belief that he was a slow learner and that he would not be able to learn and use all the strategies. He kept saying that he was bad at math and that he found investing too risky to try. He kept lamenting that he has no self-confidence and that he had many bad habits (like giving up on things half-way) that would prevent him from benefiting from Wealth Academy.

Then he came up with another reason that paying $3,000+ for the course would be equivalent to his one month’s salary. He was just not willing to invest one-month of salary for a course that he did not believe could help him because of all his own limitations.

At that moment, it reminded me of a story I heard long time ago. It is a true story of how tribesmen caught monkeys in Africa. What they would do would be to take a coconut and make a hole that is just big enough for a monkey’s hand to go into. However, once the hand is closed, it will not be able to come out. They would then tie this coconut to a tree. Next, they would place a handful of peanuts into the coconut and leave a trail of it along the ground all the way to the nearby forest. They would then sit and wait patiently.

Sure enough, a monkey would soon appear and start picking up the peanuts one by one. Upon reaching the coconut, he would plunge his hand into the large fruit and grab as many peanuts as he can. The next thing he knows, his hand is trapped in the coconut. With his fist full of nuts, he cannot take his hand out.

Once knowing that it has been trapped, the monkey will then scream and shout and alert all the tribesmen who will then come along and capture the monkey! This poor monkey would then lose its freedom forever.

Now, at any point in time, could the monkey have ACTUALLY escaped? Of couse he could. All he had to do was to LET THE PEANUTS GO. But you know what? The nature of the monkey is such that it would NEVER LET GO of its peanuts. Why? Because it is so afraid of losing it. As a result, the monkey loses more than just his peanuts…he loses HIS FREEDOM!

I told this story to the man and told him, do you realize that you are acting like this monkey right now? I said it with as much tact as I could to prevent being slapped in the face. You hold on so tightly to your limiting beliefs, habits and $3,000 that you miss out on your chance of escaping from the rat race and the mediocrity of life and achieving FINANCIAL FREEDOM.

Is it really worth holding onto all these things just because it feels safe and comfortable to do so? How long are you going to be trapped and keep on complaining? I said to him, ‘let go of your past, your peanuts and go for something much bigger in life that your deserve’. ‘Go for your success and financial freedom’.