There Is No Secret Ingredient

"Whether you think you can or can not; you are usually right" - Henry Ford

The title I chose was from "Kung Fu Panda" movie. Here's short review about it:

Po is a panda who works in a noodle restaurant owned by his goose father Mr. Ping, who hopes that Po will one day take over the restaurant, and wishes to disclose to him the secret ingredient of his family's famous noodle soup. Po is a kung fu fanatic with secret dreams of becoming a great master in the discipline. However, his weight, clumsiness, and incredibly large tummy make his goal difficult to attain.

The tortoise Master Oogway has a premonition that the evil snow leopard warrior Tai Lung, the former student of his own protégé, the red panda Master Shifu, will escape from prison and return to threaten the Valley of Peace. While Shifu sends Zeng, a messenger goose, to Chor Ghom Prison to have the security increased, Oogway orders a formal ceremony to choose the Dragon Warrior, a supreme master of kung fu who can defeat Tai Lung. It is assumed that one of the Furious Five — Tigress, Monkey, Mantis, Viper, and Crane — a quintet of supremely skilled martial artists trained by Shifu, will be chosen for this honor. Po, in his attempts to see the Dragon Warrior, finds himself in the middle of the ceremony. Oogway surprises everyone by designating Po himself as the Dragon Warrior, despite Po's protests and Shifu's pleas to reconsider.

Revolted at having Po under his tutelage, Shifu attempts to make him quit by berating and humiliating him; the Five also dismiss Po as a worthless interloper. Taking sage advice from Oogway himself, Po endures their abuse willingly, eventually endearing himself to them with his determination, good cooking and sense of humor.

In the Valley of Peace, Oogway disappears in a petal swirl, his final wish being that Shifu must train Po. However, Po confesses his belief that he may never be a match for Tai Lung. The following morning, Shifu discovers that Po is capable of impressive physical feats when motivated by food. He leads Po to the countryside for an intensive training regime in which Po is offered food as a reward for learning his lessons. As Shifu hopes, Po swiftly becomes a skilled combatant.

When they return, Shifu decides Po is ready to open the sacred Dragon Scroll, which promises great power to its possessor. However, when Po opens it, he finds nothing but a blank reflective surface. Stricken with despair at the scroll's apparent worthlessness, Shifu orders his students to lead the villagers to safety while he stays to delay Tai Lung for as long as he can.

Po meets up with his father, who tells him the secret ingredient of the family's noodle soup: nothing. He explains that things become special when people believe they are. Realizing that is the point of the Dragon Scroll, Po rushes off to help Shifu. At the end, Po defeats Tai Lung.

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The movie while very entertaining and funny, delivers a very strong morale that there is NO SECRET to become success. All we have to do is to BELIEVE in ourselves. When we believe, we unleash our full potential.

So if you believe that you can reach your dream, perhaps you can. This also applies if you believe in someone else. For example, your child, your spouse, or perhaps your co-worker. Faith/believe is a very strong agent for stimulating confidence in them. If you want your group to improve, you just have to start to believe that each will perform their part perfectly.

Of course believe itself is not enough, there are many other "ingredients" like communications, understanding, discipline, etc. But they are NO SECRET and everything start with "BELIEVE". Believe in your self purpose, believe in yourself, believe in your people.

Your comments and critics will be highly appreciated. Have a nice day!

How To Make Change Happen

"People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them. The key to the ability to change is a senseless of who you are, what you are about and what you value" - Stephen Covey.

This is a sequel to the first post about change management article "Do People Change?". The different thing is, what I'm about to share is the practical concept of allowing positive change to happen within ourselves.

Change is always hard. It is not easy, or else there won't be any theories about change management. But change is very important. I can't stress this enough. Shake your comfort zone, because it sucks you down slowly like a quicksand.

Here's simple equation about input and output:

"What you think, determines your action. What you do determines your habit. Your habit determines your attitude. Your attitude will form your character. And your character is the only thing that determines your reputation"

I really don't think the old statement "Change your habit, then you change your destiny" is entirely correct. It isn't wrong, but not 100% correct. Because the basic in what our habit is our thinking, or in other word, our values. However, I'm open to an argument if there's any

How do you form your values?

1. Parents and/or Mentor's Point of View

Part of what we believe now is actually inherited from our parents. Without you even realize, how they taught us to eat, walk, play, and behave slowly form us into what we were. And generally, parents are role models for their children, so what they do can indirectly influence you as well.

2. Social Environment

If you are born as an eagle, but you grow and live with ducks since the beginning, then you are a duck indeed. Because you are what you think. So choose your friends and partners carefully. Many people make this mistake because they are too late to realize.

3. Needs

I will refer to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which points out that there are 5 level of needs of human. Starting from the lowest needs is the "Physiological" consist of basic human needs like food, water, and shelters. Up until the highest level is the "Self-actualization" that defines morality, creativity, spontaneity, etc. Being in one particular level in for a long period of time will also define our values.

I think we also have to agree that somehow values do not represents anything good or bad. It is a word to describe whatever we stood by. But there is good and bad values as to say there's good and bad thinking. Perform the input-output equation above and I bet you know where you're heading.

As hard as it is to change what our believes are, there's still lights at the end of the tunnel. Here are 3 tips we have to CONSTANTLY remember. I stressed the word CONSTANTLY because this is like "reprogramming" yourself.

1. START FROM OURSELF

If we want to step into a new higher level, stop making excuses, blame others or the situation, instead, look inside and get insights, realize your potential, overcome your doubts and laziness. It is ourselves to blame for whatever bad thing we have now. Unless we accept that, change will never happen.

2. START FROM SOMETHING SMALL

This is also very fundamental in change management. Small things have small impacts, correct? So, why bother about small changes? Why can't just focus on a big bang initiatives?

If you want to change, you have to "love" the process first. In order to love the process, you must not be frustrated by your attempts because it is just to hard to handle. This will do nothing but kill your inner motivation.

Choose from what you can afford to do to change, and then commit to it. After you succeed your first attempt, get used to it, and start to mount more loads in each attempt.

3. START NOW

Yes, now is the perfect time to start. After you make a good plan on what basic thinking and habits that you must change, do it now. We live in the present and present is the only moment that carved our future. The past is history and if you still carry it on your back, you will never be motivated to change the present.

Image by Dappers

Lead Yourself Well - 5 Ways to Improve Self Discipline

"The first and best victory is to conquer self" - Plato

How do you define self-discipline? I was once asked like this.

"Can you wake up early tomorrow and jog 3 miles?"

I said "Yes, of course"

"Can you do that again the day after that?

I said "Sure, why not?"

"Can you do that everyday for the rest of your life?"

I said "............"

Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There's plenty of movement, but you never know where it's heading. If you know you have talent, and you moved a lot but seldom deliver - you may just lack of self discipline.

Take a look back to last week for example. How much of your time did you devote to regular, disciplined activities? Did you do anything to grow and improve yourself professionally? Or dedicate yourself on savings? living healthy life?

If you put them aside and told yourself you will do it later, you need to work out these 5 action plan.

1. Develop and Follow Your Priorities

Anyone who does what he must only when he is in the mood or when it's convenient is NOT going to be successful. All you need is a good plan. If you can determine what's really a priority and free yourself from everything else, it will be much easier to follow through on important things. This is the essence of self discipline.

2. Make a Disciplined Lifestyle Your Goal

Discipline can not be a one time event. It has to be a lifestyle. One of the best ways to do that is to develop systems and routines, especially in areas crucial to your long term growth and success. If you want to be a good basketball player. Practice every hour, every day, all year long and beyond.

3. Challenge Your Excuses

This is an unfortunate habit of human. Giving excuses. However, to develop a lifestyle of discipline, you need to challenge yourself for not making excuses. If you have several reasons why you can't be self disciplined, realize that they are really just a bunch of excuses - all of which need to be challenged if you want to go to the next level of achievement.

4. Remove Rewards Until the Job Is Done

Don't have desserts before finishing your vegetables.

There is one experiment like this:

One hundred kids were gathered to be offered one marshmallow for each. They are elligible of having another marshmallow if they can wait long enough not to eat the first. End up only 5 of them made it for the 2nd marshmallow

If you want to be a successful person, you have to 'torture' yourself for not having short term reward. This is very powerful for cultivating your self-discipline.

5. Stay Focused on Results

Anytime you concentrate on the difficulty of work instead of its results or rewards, you're likely to become discouraged. Never focus on the hard part. Imagine what it's like at the end of the tunnel. This can boost your motivation in making yourself discipline. A good cause.

Have a nice day!

Image by pong_pong

Do People Change?

I've read an article written by a famous business person stating that "people never change". Here's how I look at the statement.

I will tell you how my life is. As far as I can remember I had a pretty good life. My childhood years were exciting. As a teenager, I grew in a very supportive environment. My passing grades were excellent. I'm married now to a lovely wife and have two cute children.

I've always been competitive in everything and hate to lose. This has been me since I was a kid. I believe that the competition was what kept me going chasing all those grades back then in school.

Then I went to college and when I was graduated, I was hired by a big company and being positioned as a junior manager in a production plant. Without me realizing, that character of "craving for victory" was still there and reflected in my daily activities.

Now at this point, I need to tell you, even I assume you already knew, that it was different in school from at workplace. When you study, you study yourself; of course there were group assignments, but it was pretty much solo. You work hard all by YOURSELF", then you get the grades. It's that simple.

But it's different in workplace. In order to 'win', we have to work with the other and you know what? I had huge problem doing that because I used to be star and I just couldn't stand working as a team. I felt the urge to stand out from the other.

The rest, I think you can guess, that eventually I won more enemies to friends - much more, and it was consuming me. I was 22 years old by the way. It's hard living your day, knowing that people despised you. Then I realized that something is wrong, but I was perhaps too foolish or too young...or both...to realize that at instant. The climax was when some group of workers plot against me by ceasing the production deliberately. It happened for almost a week and had caused the company a fortune. They plotted against me because I was cutting back their overtime. I didn't think they need OT, because the demand were slowing down. And nobody at that time in that company has ever done that before. I was lucky number one :-)

Luckily, all the bosses were supporting me and they knew that whatever I decided was merely to cut unnecessary cost, the problem was, it was lack of communication, so I've told. I was somehow cheered by the board's reaction, but couldn't lift my head up, knowing damages has been done. Two months after the incident, I resigned.

I didn't automatically start to look for a new job. Why? Because I know that something was wrong. I knew something was wrong because I feel guilty. For causing one week of production loss, for cutting another's income, for leaving the company that needed me so much. Yes, after what I did, they still asked me to stay after I state my resignation. The process of the handover itself took 3 months after I really left the company.

So, back to the main issue, I decided to cool my head off and tried to figure what's wrong with me. It was one year until I decided to get a new job and to continue my study. During that one year, I pondered every single day and came to a conclusion that I need to change. I need to change the way I behave, I promised myself that I will not be a selfish person no more, I realize that I need to be supportive, instead of suppressive. And that winning is not the only important thing in life. There're love, caring, participation, understanding, and empathy that's just much more important than my previous definition of 'Winning'.

Then I changed. I think I've changed..a lot. My life also has changed eventually. I have plenty of friends in my new company and I'm lucky enough to be promoted to a senior management level in my early 30's. By the way, I still love to win. But I'm not leaving anybody behind. If people around me win, because I help them, then I win. That's my new definition. So, YES, people CHANGE, providing there's LIFE CHANGING EXPERIENCE that trigger inner motivation.

I hope my experience can inspire positive insights for you. Have a nice day!

Image by carf

Information Overload - Downside of the World Wide Web

Are you a web surfer? Do you spend most of your times, at home, at work, sitting in front of 12 inch monitor doing stuffs?

I'm asking you to take a look back around 20-30 years ago, when the world was a quieter place to live. When people went to bookstore to find about informations, or send a postmail when in need to communicate with others.

Then all of a sudden, you are surrounded with information. Informations that you have no idea whether it's right or wrong and they just keep coming whether you want it or not. Yes, thanks to the world wide web and the internet. The once conventional method of browsing for information; that could took hours to complete, now only a matter of minutes.

However, please be careful that what we do everyday in our life is divided in two.

1. The value added work
2. The non value added work

Vilfredi Pareto, an Italian scientist revealed that most of us spend 80% of our time to complete only 20% of important tasks. That's the reason why many people end up being mediocre; because they couldn't differ the value added and the non value added. This is later known as 'The Pareto Principles'.

I'm not saying that being overwhelmed by information is a bad thing. Hey, I like information as much as you do, especially free information. So, don't get me wrong. Many have said that whoever has the most information win in this time of era. True!

But bear also in mind that if our head is congested with information and ideas; chances are; we got stuck, not knowing what to do, or to be too considerable for everything. Suddenly, the world become so noisy and complicated and it is much easier to complicate things than to do the other way around.

Imagine you need to go from dot A to dot B. How can you reach B from A in efficient manner? Anybody will answer "Just go straight". In fact, it's true. But to theoritize and to practice is two different thing. In my previous article about self purpose, I wrote that we gotta have some sort of direction. Point B is our direction, assuming we're at point A.

Now, information overload can only hinder you and get you confused. You may get to point B, but the time you need will be much more. Or worse, you get lost.

To wrap things up, I will make it very simple for you, my valuable readers;

1. Have a clear self purpose
2. Get information only you STRICTLY NEED, no more, no less.
3. Get going!

That's it for now. Hope you can reach dot B in no time soon. Have a nice day!

Image by tina_manthorpe

Live It Day by Day - 10 Useful Tips for Stress Management

This happened several days ago when we've just got back from our holiday and things were just started to be hectic once again.

We had a terrible situation of which the whole company operation could probably ceased because of the material shortage. This wasn't because of poor planning, but it's problem at the custom that caused it to happen.

I was at the center of the problem at that time and was actually, in a lot of stress - without knowing it. I couldn't sleep and eat well thinking of the problem. I felt fine really, but somehow my boss saw me different.

Then he said to me "Live things day by day. We don't know what will happen tomorrow, and it is tough and also consuming to guess what will come the next day. Today we have today's issue; we deal with it, then that's it. Tomorrow? Come what may."

Short sentences, but I felt relaxed after hearing those. To put it simple, problem occurs. Everyday, every hour, every minute, and there's nothing we can do about it. They just come to you. Some can be identified, but many others can't.

If we realize this, that problems are in fact integral part of our lives, then don't bother worrying about them. Lift a glass of water with your arm straight up. Hold it for a minute, you won't feel a thing, hold it another hour, you will encounter spasm, hold it for a day, you will need an ambulance. It is the same glass full of water and it weighs THE SAME, but if we lift it longer that we should, it will harm us in return.

Here're 10 useful tips you can consider doing. You can combine this or do it one at the time:

1. Get out and get a fresh air, take a deep breath.


2. Think of something cheerful, the day you got married, your birthday, your promotion day, the old days when you picking up on girls/boys


3. Do three minutes of stretching.


4. Laugh and make fun of yourself.


5. Smile even if you don't feel like.


6. Whenever possible, donate, it feels much better if you give to others.


7. Spend more time doing your hobbies.


8. Share your load with loved ones.


9. Consume chocolate - researches revealed that somehow chocolate reduce stress


10. Go to somewhere else new, do something different, don't be lazy!

I hope your life improve. Have a nice day!

Image by Bitterroot

Self Purposeness

One of the most frequent question we had when we're young was "what do you want to be when you grow up?" And perhaps many of us 'at that particular moment' didn't care at all about that. "We still got plenty of time, why bother?" this line of statement must had been there also.

I went to business school about 4 years ago and there was one subject that really caught my attention. It was called "people skill". Basically, it's all about intra and inter-personal skill. It's about developing your social traits and self control.

One night, my lecturer asked the audiences that question and we're supposed to answer. Many of us couldn't answer, included me. Or to make it softer, even if we did, we weren't sure about our answers. It is NOT easy to find a TRUE self purpose. As hard as it is, I will share 2 methods that I find useful in finding one's self purpose.

I believe many of us have heard about that notorious Steve Jobs graduation night speech in Stanford College. I remember, there he said that he was once diagnosed of having cancer and that he was only allowed to live for several months - at most. He was devastated, confused, but somehow, at the same time he found out that he had to spend the most of his time building his dream.

1. Last Day

So, this is one technique. Ask yourself "If today is the last day of my life, what will I do? What is it that I need to do most instead of others?" Because when you're about to die, nothing else matters. Pride is no longer a factor. Doubt is also not a factor.

Have you ever tell your loved ones that you love them? If you do, have you told them enough?

Have you do led a good life all this time?

Have you make peace to God?

Have you been valuable to your family? society? Have you give enough?

Go to somewhere private and tranquil, then ask yourself those questions over and over again until you find your answer.

2. How you want people to remember you by?

Yes, how do you want to remember you when you've died? Adolf Hitler is famous. And so does Mother Theresa. But people remember them different. One is dictator, biggest war criminal in mankind history, the other is a humble human being, devoted only to give and fight for the good of others.

How do you want people to remember you?

The criminal?

The sleek?

The liar?

The unfaithful?

The indifferent?

The kind?

The great?

It is all up to us. However stubborn we are, however we think we're right. We can't declare our reputation. What we do, how we think and talk, will then be JUDGED by others and their perception on us is our reputation.

One thing about reputation is that it is always over-estimated. It walks two steps in front of us. If you are very good in one subject, people will tend to over estimate you that you are also good at the others. It works the opposite. Lie once, and people will perceive you as all time liar. There is such thing as "LEVERAGE" if you're talking about reputation.

To wrap things up, self purposeness is not all about career only, or finance alone. It consist of a more noble direction. And noble direction is, to be valuable for others, to give.

Have a nice day!

Impeccable!!

The only word to describe Patrick Zygmanowski's performance on his solo piano recital tonight. Held in a 300 seat theatre in Holland's cultural centre, Erasmus Huis in Jakarta, the audience were undeniably hipnotized during 2 hours of play and ended up with 3 minutes of standing ovation.

Born in 1970, he is currently one of the most well known French pianist. He started as early as six years old and delivered his first solo recital on the age of 11. Jacques Rouvier, Jean Hubeau, Lev Naoumov, Menahem Pressler, Gerhard Oppitz, and Pascal Devoyon were all his tutors.

He has won many awards and actively participate in international music festival. Currently he teaches at L'Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris Alfred Cortot as professor and also at Osaka College of Music in Japan as visiting professor.

Last year, he was awarded Le Prix Delmas de L'Academie des Beaux-Arts, one of the most prestigious recognition in arts.

Mc Cain OR Obama

A friend from Singapore visited me last week and as I was in a car picking him up from the airport.

Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere he said "Do you realize that whenever US is ruled by Democrats, the economy must flourished. Then on the contrary, went down hard each time a Republican step up.

I didn't answer him, but to ponder and couldn't help but to agree myself. Perhaps, it's time for another president from the Democrat party to rule again, bring peace and stability to the world.

This picture is not about McCain mocking Obama as many thought so.

It was just a reflect reaction when McCain realize that he went the wrong way of the stage after shaking hand with Obama in Hofstra University, NYC.

Pictures really worth a thousand words...right words and wrong ones.

First Mile

Hi,

I dedicate this page to my family whose keep supporting me through good and bad.

Generally, this blog will serve information on self improvement from my own experiences, insights, reviews, and opinions.

My only purpose for writing this blog is to help my audiences improve their life quality by inspiring them on the way they think.

I hope my writings can be valuable for the widest scope of people possible.

Regards,

Prawiro