Lessons From Tiger

"One of the thing that my parents have taught me is never listen to other people's expectations. You should live your own life and live up to your own expectation, and those are the only things I really care about" - Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods is a legendary golf athlete and perhaps the only athlete who could generate an income of USD 1 billion at 31 years of age. But this is not about his income we're going to talk about. It's about his life lessons and beliefs that led him to success. He has three simple principles; simple yet powerful that he persistently use in his way up, both in his career and his life.

Principle 1: Smile at Obstacles

You might be caught with surprise with his statement that said he smiles whenever faced with obstacles. Instead of complaining and whining, like most of people do, or avoiding, even run away from problems. He smiles because he sees an opportunity that could make him tougher if he solved it, and even though he failed, he believes he will learn something from it. Also, he smiles because he thinks that his faith is far more greater than any obstacles he faces.

Ralph Waldo Emerson's has quoted "Whatever happened now and in the future are small compared with what resides in us", that means a champion knows that he will always overcome challenges, because he has what it takes to do that.

The heart of champion will not fear from problems, instead challenged by them. Challenges were created for us to overcome with. It is indeed a gift from Above.

Principle 2: My Will Can Move Mountains

His enormous will has many time separate him from the typical. He believes that when he wanted something, he will get it. It is true, however that he did not necessarily won all tournaments. But he is the best from the rest, because his strong will create focus, which lead to concentration on one single purpose.

Principle 3: I Will Do It With All My Heart

His love in golf is so deep, he thinks, talks, and does, all has relation with the sport. It is almost impossible to beat someone who loves his job that much. It is nonsense for anyone who is enthusiastic in his work have to worry about his life. Every opportunities in the world are waiting for these people to have them. He spends hours everyday to work on his swings. When someone loves his job, no obstacles are big enough for them.

 

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4 Attitudes That Lead to Success

Have you ever felt that life is plain and quiet? Claude T. Bissell gives practical solution to have the passion back and make everything sparks.

1. Take Risk Beyond Safe Limit

Life will be less challenging because we never let ourselves in challenging situations. Of course, there will be risk also behind every challenge, but the risk is the only thing that can get us moving forward.

Bill Gates, richest man in the world is a very smart person who willing to take risk. When IBM need an operating system for their personal computers, their representative Jack Sams called Gates. Bill was unable to fulfill the demand, thus recommend Gary Kildall, owner of Digital Research to Sams. Kildall did not see the monstrous opportunities that laid before his nose and told his wife to do the negotiation. This has let IBM down and they wanted Gates to find another partner.

That time, Gates knew that this is a huge opportunity. He didn't waste it this ti me, even knowing that he had nothing of what IBM wanted, he scrambled for solution. Later he was able to develop the MS-DOS (Microsoft - Disk Operating System).

2. Be Attentive More Than What Others Do In General

Whatever it is your profession and your job, must involve human interactions. By increasing care and attention to customers and people around us, success and happiness will follow.

Joe Girard, a salesman who understand well the concept of customer comes first, hold  a world record of car sales which listed in Guiness Book of Record after registered 13.001 units of car in 15 years of service. His ability to understand his customers had caused his customers to refer him to their friends and families.

3. Dream Beyond Your Wildest

Big dreams can give us bigger boost of unleashing inner potential. Steven Spielberg is a true dreamer. His box office movies have already generated USD 8 billion. Jaws, E.T., Jurrasic Park were among them.

4. Expect More, Be Passionate

By having positive expectation in this life, you will become passionate and stay positive no matter what lays ahead. Colonel Sanders is a perfect example of someone having such expectation. He was so passionate to convince chicken restaurant owners to buy his mom's recipe - an expectation that led him to finally knock on the 1,009th door for his idea to be accepted.

These four solutions have been proven by them in their way to success. Now it's your turn. Live your life with passion!

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8 Very Simple Steps to Free Yourself From Stress

This post is a sequel to my previous posts about stress management.

Never let stress disrupt your performance. Get over with it with these simple 8 steps:

1. Breathe

A long and deep inhale can help your mind and body relax

2. Have an Eating Pattern

Diets with high calories and fat can cause your body weaker and dysfunctional in the long run.

3. Exercise

Coordinated body movement can make you feel calmer, more controllable mood, and easier to handle pressure

4. Get a Good Quality Sleep

A deep sleep of 6-8 hours every night can raise your energy level. Making you ready to face any challenge the following day

5. See Bigger Picture

Don't take your job as daily routine, instead, it is your pathway that leads to overwhelming success.

6. Empower and Delegate

You are neither Superman nor demi-God; learn to trust others to help you do your job. Only by this, then you can aim for a far more strategic role in works.

7. Perfection Can be Very Evil

If you spend most of your time trying to fix a working machine, you will never gain from that machine effectively. In short, you are wasting your valuable time.

8. Celebrate

Small reward to indulge yourself that comes in every accomplishment is a good motivation factor.

Blessed Those Who Are Grateful Everyday

On Monday, December 1st 2008, I've managed to walk again without crutches. About 3 weeks ago I've suffered from a terrible knee injury during my routine Sunday sport. My left knee ligaments were torn bad and at that time I couldn't even raise my leg. Plus it hurts like hell. If I have to illustrate how that happen, I can make it easy explaining to you that my body and thigh turned, while my calf did not because my foot was deeply 'planted' on the pitch. So, the knee joint sort of twisted 90 degree to the counter clockwise generating the sound of a smashed cracker inside my ears. I couldn't stand up at that time until my friends helped me. The shocking thing was, I felt my lower leg can rotate like shoulders, which of course it wasn't suppose to.I'm getting better now, even though I still can not bend my knee as used to be and it still feels funny inside.

Before this, I never ever imagine that I would be standing and walking with crutches for 3 full weeks and I feel that people are supposed to be healthy walking on their own feet. Not until the day it happened of course. Now, I look at people walking down the street, run forth and back, jogs, and the feeling was like ,"How lucky these people are with pair of healthy legs." A sentence that never before reside in my head. It is a mystery how life can turn from good to bad to one person, vice versa. And still human can't tell when those days would come.

I tried to analyze my feeling and had come to a conclusion that I'm not too grateful before. I always look for more and more. While never show enough gratitude for what I've acquired. Indirectly, this is also exhausting for my mind. I tried to practice myself of being more grateful these past few weeks and I have positive results from it. I feel more energized, more positive, better sleep quality, and I can ate more. Knowing this, I think that the wisest thing to do in my future is being more grateful for what I have in my life, while still being optimistic for the forthcoming days. The balance will be the key for a more life quality.

5 Ways To Move On With Your Life

Ever experience fatal mistake for once in your lifetime? So tremendous and caused many damages? Felt like there's no cure and nothing we can do to amend it? The fact is, you are not alone. Everybody messed up big time at least once in their life. Think about one of these examples. Perhaps it rings a bell.

1. Drug and/or booze addicts
2. Money laundry
3. Cheating on spouse
4. Public lies
5. Murder
6. Burglary
7. HIV infected from free sex or drug needle
8. Misconduct in workplace, demotion
9. Being laid off out of no reason
10. Hit someone with your vehicle
11. (The case could add up infinitely as different people has different encounter)

Usually, people messed up because of poor character. Because people choose to compromise over than to show their true character. Chances are, people with stronger character, provided they have a positive values, won't mess up so easily. It is always a good investment to work on your character.

So, it's done. Now what? There's nothing we can do to change it, no matter how much time or resource we take to remorse or to amend them. This is something, that even many times have been said, that "we will never be able to change the past". Forget those sci-fi movies with time machine and time traveler in them. Chances are those will be unlikely to happen in centuries ahead.

If we can not change the past, then the wisest thing to do is to 'forget' it. Each time after a huge disaster, there's always an aftermath and mostly this is the painful part. We deal with our losses, with our loved one's losses and it hurt, very bad. The 9/11 tragedy in NYC, the Aceh tsunami, onto the latest Mumbai attack. These left wounds. Wounds to be dealt with.

How can we forget such tragedy? Usually, time heals everything. Human has this very unique traits of slowly letting things go as time goes by. It doesn't, however, cure the wound completely. But it will get better if given some time.

Here are few tips so we can overcome the feeling quicker and get on with our life.

1. Be Positive. To the universe, we are only a particle of a dust. So if you think, you have a BIG problem. Think again. Try to think this way. Pull yourself away from your complicated thoughts and see if this is what you called a big problem. Other people might have had worse ones. So, instead, count yourself lucky. Only by being positive thinking, you can actually see there are lights at the end of tunnel and that this is not the end of the world.
2. Embrace Your Current Condition. I know that you probably still haven't accept your current condition. You don't accept yourself being sacked unfairly, being robbed, being cheated, or diagnosed with deadly disease. But hey, this is a world where everyday people run forward. And they won't stop even if they know your condition. This is the world where the fast outran the slow. The strong take out the weak. So unless you stop regretting what you shouldn't have done or feeling so bad of mis-treated by someone and start to accept that this is your ACTUAL condition, you will never be able to move on. A book by Jim Collins "Good to Great" has revealed on a "Stockdale Paradox" whose held captive as Viet Cong prisoner in Vietnam war and he managed to survive because he (1) accepted that he was indeed a prisoner, living prisoner's life, with no guarantee getting out from there alive, but at the same time he also (2) believed that one day, he will be out from there and reunite with his families.
3. Start Get Your Life Back. When was your last time before the tragedy; hang out with your friends, went out to the bar, catch a movie, go skiing, eating out with your spouse, go bungee jumping ?(if this is what it takes of course). Anything that could get your lifeline going. You need sparks to light up your life. If you think you have been sitting too long, then you probably are correct. So stand up, make a plan on what to do this weekend, do it, and have fun with it.
4. Forgive Them, No Matter How Hard. This is to some people probably the hardest part, especially when you are the victims. However hard though, forgiveness is needed in order to accept your current situation. Forgiving is not and never about losing. If you let things go and forgive those who has betrayed or treated you bad, you will be much more relaxed and you will have no chance of being the person you once hate. This is of course very possible because you have minimized the chance of retaliation to zero.  If you think you can't look them in the eyes and forgive them, then don't force it. Give it sometime. Forgiveness is meant to be sincere. It has to be done and it has to be sincere. That simple.
5. There's Always Reason Behind Everything. Yes there is always a positive reason behind every tragedy. Unfortunately, we can only guess what it will be and will never know until we get it in the future. We can only connect them backward, not forward. Each of us has a noble role in this world, from the day we're born. So this is our responsibility for God, our loved ones, and the society we live in.

Pygmalion Law - The Principles Of Positive Thinking

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

Pygmalion - (Greek mythology) a king who created a statue of a woman and fell in love with it; Aphrodite brought the sculpture to life as Galatea


Pygmalion was a young man who has awesome talent in sculpture. His work was second to none. However, his ability is not the one that called friends and neighbours to worship him.

- If the center atrium in town is full of dirt and people are complaining, he would say "We're blessed, the other atrium is not this dirty"

- When a sculpture buyer drives a hard bargain and Pygmalion's friend whispered around about how cheap that person is, he would say "Perhaps that person have another important needs, so he has to spend wisely"

- When kids stole apples in his yard, he did not swear. Instead, he felt pity "Unfortunate for them for not having enough food and education in their homes"

That's how Pygmalion thinks. He never sees thing from the bad side, instead his mind automatically search for the positive side in everything.

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One day, he is sculpturing a very smooth wooden statue of a woman. The statue has a dimension that is similar to that of real human. When the work is done, it really resembles a human being. It smiles attractively and it has body curves to die for.

His friends commented "No matter how good your statue is...it will always remain a statue. It is not your wife"

Despite those comments, Pygmalion treated the wooden statue as a real human. Countless time that he stared and touched it.

God in Mount Olympus finally noticed and somehow pay great deal of respect upon Pygmalion's efforts and decided to turn the statue into real human. Then, he lived happily ever after with his summoned wife, which legend has her as the most beautiful women in Greece.

His name is still remembered until now to represent the effect of positive thinking. When we think positively, many times the results will also end up positive.

For example.

1. If we are polite to other people, then that person will also be polite toward us.
2. If we treat our children as smart ones, then they will turn into smart kids.
3. If we are sure that our efforts will bring results, there's big chance that results will follow

Those positive effect is called the "Pygmalion Effect"

Our minds has a strange "prophecy fulflling" function, whether positive or negative.

1. When we think our neighbour is not a friend to keep, then they will act as one.
2. If we regard our children dishonest, they will lie to us
3. If we are desperate and think that whatever we do will be in vain, then we are not going to make it

Pygmalion's way is to think, perceive, and to hope only good things from a situation or someone.

The colour of our life is dependant to the colour of the "glasses" we put on. Life will get better if we see it better. Think positive about ourself, others, situations, and God.

Good family relationship, more trustable friends and neighbours, working becomes fun, the world is friendlier, life is more beautiful is some of many results if we implant this Pygmalion factor in our mind.

So, make sure you have a Pygmalion inside.

Have a nice day!

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