Randy Pausch of “The Last Lecture” has passed on. Please remember this man’s amazing lecture, and his message to really live life the way you want… and leave the legacy that you deserve to leave.
Ah… inner demons.
I’ve been constantly telling people that there’s no such thing as an external solution. And, of course, the uninitiated will argue with me about it. It’s okay - I understand. You probably think that in order to be vindicated, you have to handle the issue with someone else, just like the way the legal system does it. If someone wrongs you, you have to sue them. If someone shouts at you, you shout back. Well… the “eye for eye” strategy doesn’t bring much peace to the world. Worse still, if you’re feeling guilty about a mistake you made. It turns into a vicious cycle that prevents you from moving forward.
Personally, I am blessed by the fact that I don’t come down on myself very hard. The main reason is because I’d observe this in other people (mainly some family members) who insist on doing things in one way. They are rigid to a point that if things don’t go their way, they get upset, and extend their “upsetness” on other people. I learnt from a very young age that it’s not nice to impose on other people, and if they are willing to be imposed upon, I feel a sense of gratitude and the need for reciprocity. Such is the case of friends whom have taken good care of me while visiting them in other countries, and also when friends do something that I would personally deem to be a chore. Generally, I tend to let things go quite easily as long as they are not work-related, and as long as those things don’t have a chance of spoiling the future for other people.
But recently, I’ve realized some people make mistakes that they feel can never be atoned for. I think it’s a point of “giving up” where they feel that their efforts were a grave mistake and possibly detrimental to other people. Look, through my life, I’ve made some stupid mistakes that often affected other people. If I were to bash myself over the head because of that, I’d be perpetuating the problem because the human spirit seldom works well in the face of threat and punishment. So, I’d say stop punishing yourself.
Here’s what I’ve found to be true. Regret and guilt are also very strong motivators. Let me explain. If you crashed into the back of someone’s car, you could react in many ways. The only time you would feel guilty is if you accepted responsibility for the incident. Guilt is the absorption of responsibility such that you fail to distinguish between the “act” and the “person”.
In order to disassociate yourself from situations like this, you have to stop thinking that “you” are responsible. It’s the act and behavior that was responsible, and you need to accept the fact. If anything were to change, it would be your ACTS and not who you are. There are a number of things that control your acts, of course.
So, a useful strategy would be to:
1. Acknowledge the mistake as a behavior and not the intent. Return back to the time of the mistake and understand your own intent for doing this, while understanding the other person’s intent.
2. Align yourself with the outcome of you benefiting the other person to “equalize” the mistake, if any. This must, of course, be valuable to the other person, if another person is involved. (The alignment method is also known as parts alignment in NLP. Learn about NLP.)
3. Chart a strategy to arrive at the outcome, which should generate a solution for the aggrieved party, but also make you a better human being.
Hope that helps!
I tell people to set motivating targets and goals. In fact, this is a very powerful process that motivates. Unfortunately, because of the bad rep of motivation, it seems like many people who are planing their goals never achieve them, then this leads to them thinking that motivation is a sham.
Motivation is a STATE. You learn to control your states, and you will control the results that you get in your life. If you think that motivation is temporary, you’re right! in fact everything you do is temporary. If you want to get results, you need to constantly put yourself in the right STATE.
Many people find this an inconvenient fact. Yet, I know more so than many people that it is a question of knowing that you can habitualize this and turn this into your own personal success story.
Yet, there are people who set goals, never achieve them and then feel ashamed to talk about their failure. I think we need to eliminate the misconceptions of failure. Firstly, it is true that you should stop blaming, even yourself. It’s a fact that we fail a lot of the times. If you are not ready for failure, then you are going to be set for even more failure. Question there is: “are you ready to bounce back up?”
If you feel ashamed, it’s never going to help people to get back on track. These are the people who give up as a result of guilt and shame. Let me explore what’s going on here.
When you set a goal to, say, build a $100,000 income, you realize that there is a lot of tension. You are hopeful. But when you put in your heart and sweat into it, you may find that there is plenty of doubt. Self-talk creeps in and says “can I really do it”. The main problem is because you never looked at your strategy in the first place.
If you want to do something, you need the how-to first. Once you know how to do something, it will make your pathway clearer. But if you lack the knowledge in running a business, you should be contacting a decent coach to get you on your way.
Many people in Asia are resistant about getting and selecting a coach. This is going to be one of your biggest problems: learning how to use a coach. But more about that later.
Once you have a good coach, don’t expect this person to nanny you. Be proactive. Make sure you do what is expected of you. Your coach will know what you do well and what you don’t do well simply by your feedback related to what you do and how you do it. The main reason for the coach is to help buffer your beliefs. Often, we go into a downward spiral and it will take someone from the outside to pick you up.
It’s not necessary to feel shame or guilt when experiencing failure. In fact, it’s counterproductive. While you spend more time feeling guilty, the more resilient people are picking themselves up and going to the next wall. A good way of handling this is to really focus on reflecting on what you need to do instead. It’s bad enough to know you screwed up — what are you going to do about it? How can that drive you toward success?
Personally, I think the best way to handle failure is to look at it and upgrade your expectations about yourself. Yep - learn to believe MORE in what you do. If you have any doubt about it, you should really put my MP3s into your ears and keep listening to them over and over until they stick in your brain. :) Think of it as your mental anti-biotics to fight the negative flu.
In the meanwhile, constantly remind yourself to focus on your outcome and keep moving. Surround yourself with reminders and put yourself to the test. As long as you have one more breath within you, you should have the capability to be better with each reflection.
All right - I know quite a few readers are out of Asia, so you may not understand Chinese (actually I don’t very much ahaha) but this is a very popular reality series in Taiwan, which was heralded in 2007 by a highly popular participant, Yang Zongwei (aka Aska Yang).
[I actually pasted Chinese text, but it didn't appear so I decided to just Romanize everything.]
The man is talented, with a certain emotional depth that is really hard to explain. In this series, there’s a PK round where external singers are asked to compete against the participants. If the participant loses, they may have to leave the competition. One of the strongest competitors with an equally powerful voice was Xiao Jingteng (aka Jam Xiao), who actually returned three times.
Basically, if you follow the story and discover that in the first round, Xiao easily PK’ed one participant before he moved up to compete with Yang, beating the hot favorite in his second appearance with a song that Yang himself had sung before. Fortunately Yang was not booted out. Xiao, knowing that Yang was not giving his best, came back for a second challenge. This time, both sang the same song and Yang revealed put in his 100%.
I personally found it inspiring to see people competing but also growing. Xiao is much younger (20) than Yang (27 - his REAL age). But in terms of technique, both are probably equally skilled, and Xiao has arguably the more powerful voice. Yet, if you look at the competition one more time, you’ll see why Xiao lost.
(1) Confidence and Self-Esteem.
I really think that socially, Yang is much more adapted, more experienced, and definitely a better-rounded person. Conversely, Xiao is withdrawn and shy. This is an extremely big stumbling block for Xiao. Yet, it is true for most people in general. Are you shy? Confidence and self-esteem lacking? Maybe that might cost you more than you imagined!
(2) Emotional control.
This is probably one of the clearest reasons why Xiao lost - the lack of the emotional connection to the audience. If you watched the video, even if you don’t know Chinese, you can get a sense of the emotion in Yang’s singing. However, Xiao’s emotional pitch was just not deep enough. Sure, the man has power - but we can’t always use power everywhere in our lives. Sometimes, a softer, deeper emotional connection helps to sway people.
Whether you are a leader, speaker, teacher, student, manager, author or singer, you need to have that kind of a connection. How many of us can really express ourselves well? If we can’t, how can we expect other people to know what we want, why we want it, and how can anyone assist us at all? This is clearly reflected in the competition.
Personally, the contest itself shows how talent is really not everything. You still need the heart to reach out to people. If you’re an unpolished diamond, then you may need someone to guide you and bring you out. In a recent concert appearance with Zhang Huimei (also affectionately known as A-Mei), you can tell Xiao is coming out of his shell a little. Yet, his recent album has not sold as well as Yang’s, but I think the 21-year old has another good number of years ahead of him to groom this talent.
Watch the two videos and get the sense of my experience!
I had an opportunity to discuss some ideas with Jeff Wellman, a friend of mine, whom I met at JVAlert Live in Philadelphia. While he is a successful internet marketer, he’s still got a lot in him to reach his own 7-figure dream. Right now, Jeff’s all heart and is willing to do whatever it takes to get him to achieve results for his group. When I heard what he was doing, I realized that his bending over backward for his entire community was doing him a bit more harm than good.
We sat down and we had discussions galore. I mean he’s a guy whom I wouldn’t have an issue sitting up with all night (we did that in Orlando) and talking about stuff. Not just trashy talk - I mean real serious business and growth. I think what I mentioned to him somewhere along the line blew him away, and we decided then to bring a powerful seminar for his people.
It so happens that there are many people who are self-enslaved by their own limiting patterns of behavior. Personally, I think this is something that needs to change, and I’m going to help make this happen with Jeff’s groups of people. You wanna join in? Well, first one is at no charge because I’m doing this for Jeff’s customers anyway.
http://www.layoffyourboss2.com/wealthempowermentwebinar.htm
Go ahead and join in. You might get blown away while we are having fun! :)
P.S.
POWER stands for “Patterns Of Wealth Empowerment Revealed”
So, the classes of 4E1, 4E2 and 4E6 had the opportunity to see me. Strange… that I’m back in the schools training once in a blue moon. It does help though, to see young aspiring individuals. Here’s wishing you guys all the very best. Take the lessons in your stride and push yourself to greater heights!
In case you were wondering… I was struggling with the upgrade of my blog. So, since it’s been updated, I think I’m a happier man.. haha.
If any of you have missed me… I’ve basically been busy planning out my whole new business at www.InternetMarketingSingapore.com. If you have been a part of it, you will know how important the new business is for the moment. Once it hits the launch, you’ll see very interesting developments that we have in-house that will take Singapore by storm.
Anyway, enough about money making.
I was also in the midst of training Whoosh 24 for Module 2 in the Patterns of Excellence. During that time, I was in an interview with a peak performance coach, Michael Bolduc, who essentially uses NLP and NAC (he was part of the Tony Robbins team) to help create speed change. And boy was it an eye opener! I think many people would have thought it was going to be a mild call. I have to rate it M18 lol.
It does look like we are going to be doing some new stuff, and I must say that a lot of the interesting things I do in the world of Personal development are also going to come forward after my main project for internet marketing is done. One of it is an interesting twist to the idea of Goal-Setting. Another one is the trouble a lot of people face: stress. But stress management is sooooo passe. I prefer looking at a deeper approach of alignment. Well… many things to do, but so little time.
One distinction I came across is this: don’t confuse doing with being. Many people plan tasks, but don’t plan the things they want to be. So, who do you want to be today? What identity do you want to play out, and what does that do to your behavior? See, being controls doing. So, instead of focusing on your doings, why not plan your beings? :)
All right, just a quick one from me and I’m back to training…
If you ever wondered why it’s a “dog’s life”, you better head down here to take a look.
==> http://www.kloudiia.com/1281/if-you-drink-see-this/
psst… in case you thought I was talking about the picture of the girl in the banner, well, she’s cute too, but not for your eyes. hahaha…
Just came out of a training with SMSS… and what do you know. Absolutely a thrill! say “well, that’s to be expected - they come from a good school”. I think that’s true, but I also think that I’ve never seen such a group of students who are that close-knit. Anyhow, here are the pics, and I’m waiting for your successes!
(sorry gals, I only took a video of y’all and I have yet to convert it into a smaller compressed file, so here’s a screenshot of the video. please send me photos you took!!!)
