The 7 Steps To Living At Your Full Potential

I was at The National University of Singapore (NUS) Toastmasters Club tonight evaluating a project speech. The speaker, Liana, graciously and generously shared with us something educational and inspirational. Her speech topic was about The 7 Steps To Living At Your Full Potential.

It was insightful as she added examples to how these steps could better enhance our life’s purpose. Liana, a personal development enthusiast, has kindly agreed for me to share about these 7 steps. Thanks very much, Liana.

The 7 Steps To Living At Your Full Potential are:

Step 1)   Broaden your vision.

Step 2)   Develop a healthy image.

Step 3)   Find strength behind your thoughts and words.

Step 4)   Let go of your past.

Step 5)   Find strength in the worst situation.

Step 6)   Live to give.

Step 7)   Choose to be happy in all situations.

I hope you will find these 7 steps purposeful and useful.

Let’s strive to integrate all these steps in our lives, so that we may Live Up to our potential and Excel Beyond Excellence!

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The Most Ironic And Funniest Thing About Laughing It Off

(This is controversial. Read only if you are ready…)

Everybody wants fun in their life. From time to time, you want to take things easy and with a pinch of salt. But… somebody had to pour cold shower and remind you to… Be serious!!!

D you know what the funniest thing about laughing it off is?

To really laugh it off, you have to actually ignore how serious things are.

No Joke.

You have to actually ‘look down’ on certain issues that are socially and culturally seen as important.

In short, when the situation is serious, terrible or even fatal, you have to shrug it off and laugh about it. A discarding of importance and prominence.

When you look at an upcoming examination, you go, “Ha, ha, ha! Yeahhh, it’s great to go for exams! It’s no big deal.”

When you open your eyes and realize it’s a working Monday, you jump up with excitement and exclaim, “Cool! I’m going to work. I can’t wait to get to work. Yippeee!”

And when you meet strangers on the street, you flash your most brilliant and charming smile, saying, “Hi, Good morning and a beautiful day to you!”

Weird… some might utter to themselves. Why go all that length to act “abnormal”? Must be crazy to even suggest doing this… No way I’m gonna do this. No way at all…

YET, the most ironic thing is that… you actually perform better after you laugh it off!

It takes the pressure and stress off you. Your body and mind become focused on just the task and activity at hand. It forgets to add negativity onto you. Because laughing it off is designed to be positive.

(* And the reason why you feel that it’s weird, abnormal or crazy to do this? That’s because you allow a social constraints and culture to determine your internal emotion and response.)

So can you laugh it off? Really, truly laugh it off?

Shake away the social conventions, and laugh it off?

Failure, rejection and defeat are now easier to bear. Guess what? When you can truly laugh it off, friends get attracted to you. And they go through the situation with you. Cool, isn’t it?

When you can TRULY laugh it off, you become the one in control of your life. You are now The Master of how you affect situations, not how situations affect you.

A final thought:

Look at life squarely in the eye. And laugh it off! 😀

3 Proven Ways To Resolve A Mental And Negotiation Stalemate

During the negotiation situation, it is highly possible to get stalled at certain point where neither party agree to budge. Things do not move and nothing progresses. This is a stalemate. People and process get ‘stuck’.

Stalement can occur any time in any communication and deals handling. Conflict usually escalate with unresolved issues as the refusal to give in tend to be things that are closer to heart.

Therefore, a prolonged stalemate unwinds all the effort used before the negotiation and it becomes a serious wastage of time and money. It becomes a Catch-22 situation where to end it implies that previous efforts are down the drain while to move on implies a need for one party to lose out.

To be unable to find a resolution will imply that it is not just a negotiation stalemate, it is also a mental one. People are unable to logically accede to each other’s position. Hence stalemate is mostly a mental one… the inability to see beyond their current perspectives.

Here are 3 proven ways to resolve such a stalemate:

1) Switch positions and perspectives.

2) Include someone objective into the negotiation.

3) Willingness to think out of the box and be creative.

Remember, negotiation is a regular part of life and ever present in business dealings. Keep these ways in mind to handle the stalemates, be it mental or negotiation nature. These ways will help the situation progress than stagnant.

3 Essential Keys To Speed Up Your Sales and Negotiation

Just finished conducting a Sales training workshop today for the NUS Toastmasters. Within the workshop, we explored what goes on within the mind and needs of customers and practiced on the CODE structure of sales and other important concepts of selling. You’ve been very wonderful participants. Thank you very much and keep working on the selling skills.

In addition, I will like to include 3 essential keys that will help you speed up whatever sales situation you are in. If you are a negotiator, these keys play an even more crucial part in helping you to secure the deals faster.

Key #1: You must think faster than your customer.

This key deals with the sales and negotiation situation. Different customers will throw you different replies and responses. In an amiable scenario, they are just making inquiry or voicing their true concerns. Hostility wise, some are out to test you, to throw you off guard or to even find fault to with so as to gain advantage over you.

Your thinking speed allows to derive a suitable respond to gain back the ground and to cleverly turn it around. You must be ready to anticipate whatever situation you get from the sales situation. A slip of effective grasp of the situation indicates a lack of preparation, knowledge and professionalism in the customer’s eyes.

Key #2: You have to let yourself go, rather than clamp up on what to say.

This key is about the sales communication with your customer. The moment you meet your customer, it’s all systems go. You will not have the luxury of time to craft your speech, your words or even attempt to rehearse the body language.

Since sales and negotiations are based on interactive communication, you will certainly not able to fully know what to expect. The best way is to let yourself go where you have to trust all the learning, the rehearsals, the training and the preparations. Sometimes going with the flow works well, at other times, you need to stop and re-negotiate again.

Whatever practice you have done beforehand is practice done. It is now show-time and you have to let your sales kung-fu do the talking. Too much effort applied in attempting to recall the technicalities of sales will only serve to make you clamp up in your communication. This becomes a break in the cycle of sales.

Learn to trust yourself and all the preparation you have done thus far. Let yourself go and let your communication flow.

Key #3: You must work in partnership with your customer rather than force sell.

This key works on the overall sales and negotiation relationship with your customer. Understand that sales is actually a relationship in formation. Both parties attempt to ‘feel their way around’ with their responses and their handling of situations. You must focus on exploring the relationship in the form of partnership. This means that you can then effectively derive a win-win outcome.

Effective partnerships imply to your customer that you are also looking out for his gain and benefit, not just your own. This increases the trust he has in you, thus making him mentally engaging you and emotionally open up.

Partnerships matter more than attempting to hard sell. Selling in a forceful and detectably manipulatively manner makes you appear insincere and exploitative. The last time I checked, customers don’t do deals with people they don’t trust. Neither do they give money to these people.

Keep in mind these 3 essential keys whenever you conduct negotiation or sell to customers. They are the keys to make sales and negotiation speed up with positive results.

Use these keys to Excel Beyond Excellence!

What You Don’t See…

What you don’t see… doesn’t mean it’s not there.

In short, avoid having a tunnel vision.

One of the greatest causes of problems in life is having a limited sense of perspectives and understanding. Learn to enlarge your vision to expand your mind.

There’s a greater, grander world out there beyond our perception and comprehension.

“What you don’t see doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

Remind yourself of this often.

What Time Management Really Is And The Truths Behind Your Managing of Time

Had a wonderful time conducting the seminar on Time Management yesterday. We had a roaring good time, especially with the jokes, quizzes and massive participation by everyone. My thanks and appreciation to everyone who attended the event. It is truly your contribution that made it so exciting, enriching and empowering.

Time management is one of the oldest subject ever discussed. Time has been with us since the dawn of err… time. (pun intended.). Man has always been attempting to measure it, organize it and understand it.

The one fact that we can all be sure of is: Everyone of us have the same amount of time everyday. In absolute terms, that is.

Beyond that, it’s interpreted differently. So here’s another thing we can be sure of: Everyone see time differently… subjectively.

Since we see time differently, we, as a result, use time differently. Internally, our own notion of time is subjected to our upbringing and our projection of the future.

In addition, the value of time is directly dependent on the way we use time. If we use it by idling, then it becomes worthless. If we made use of that hour to build our own dreams, then it’s has become one of the most meaningful and “gold-worthy” 60 minutes in your life.

Therefore, time has a cost. Hence it has a value attached.
So what is time management is really?

1) Time management is really about Life management. It is really about how you decide to run your life and what you intend to achieve during your living years. From a macro perspective, it is also the reason why it is also called your “lifetime”. For every life we have, we have a certain amount of time to make certain things happen.

Conversely, poor time management usually reflects a lesser quality of life. Less worth thus is derived from that person’s lifetime in this world.

2) It is a reflection of your life’s REAL priority. When we talk about management of time, we are also talking about what activity we decide to use that specific hour for. The way we put into use hence is an indication of our priority in life. For example, if a person verbally says he wants to pursue a professional degree academically but spends most of his time sleep and eating, then his REAL priority in life is actually to sleep and to eat his life/time away.

3) It carries your values, beliefs and character. As you allocate time, it begins to form patterns. When you continuously do similar activities, it will clear indicate your inner beliefs about different issues and corresponding perspectives. Over time, the activities and the inherent meaning become ingrained in your character, giving you your life’s purpose.

4) Time management demands steadiness of mind and a fair sense of rationality to maximize time. Just as everything we do demands time, we have to remain firm and steady if we are to stick to our time management plan. We must also sometimes resist temptation to do some other things no matter how much we desire it, emotionally. Therefore, steadiness and rationality enables us to keep to our plans, duration and deadlines.

5) Given effective and efficient time management, it can make most (if not all) of your life’s dreams come true. If you can manage time, you can manage our life. We become capable of allocating tasks that brings in purpose to our lives. With whatever dreams we have, time is required to bring it into fruitation. Therefore, when we can manage our absolute time well (meaning effectively and efficiently) and keeping to it, the dreams of our lives will simply be achieved.

6) Lastly, time management is also your essential tool to excel beyond excellence. (‘Nuff said.)

7 Undeniable Facts About Making Your Relationship Work

When I was in the taxi yesterday on my way to conduct a training, I overheard of the radio show some statistics about marriage. According to the ministry, there are more than 7000 divorce in this year alone and divorce rates are at the highest for the last 10 years.

Interesting, I thought to myself. Apparently, more and more husbands and wives are finding it harder to get along and live together. Of course, with every divorce and breakups, there are possible reasons as always. What we can know is that it’s no longer just a simple case of just being with each other, but more other factors come into play.

In my coaching, training and counseling work for individuals and couples, I am absolutely not surprised about the data that was presented over the radio program. There are signs around us that indicate this trend. Hence, this article about the undeniable facts about making your relationship work.

Fact #1: You can’t have a relationship, a real relationship, if you don’t communicate with each other. One way street is not the way to build relationship… unless it’s with yourself.

Fact #2: To accept the other person into your life, you have to open yourself up to that person. You have to meet and interact with that person. Living in emotional ivory tower simply isn’t going to work.

Fact #3: Relationships involves investing emotions, not just a mere list of “To Do”. You have to put in your feelings. Passion is like added spice to a bland dish, and so is shared intimacy to different degrees. Giving flowers or cards just because it’s a scheduled task on your organizer can only get you superficial gestures in return.

Fact #4: To build quality relationship, you have to willingly share good times and bad times with each other. Every time you are together, its in the ups or the downs of your life. Let it be shared with the worthy one. Fair weathered people not allowed here.

Fact#5: Being in a relationship does require you to both compromise sometimes. You will have to adjust to each other, making time and taking in differing viewpoints.

Each individual will end up shaping the other. Our life experiences and character will be infused within the lifestyle of the other. If no compromise is made, then it will be like a rock ramping against a brick. Never expect to be unchanged by someone you truly love.

Fact #6: To make it work long term, your values and beliefs must be accepted or the least, appreciated by each other. Otherwise, it will be full of turmoil within. A simple flutter of life’s waving hands and it will crumple.

Fact #7: Relationships involve changes and hence incur risk. Understand that everybody changes and nothing will always be the same. But you have to accept the risk as part of life and in relationship.

Yet the irony is, you can’t build a truly real relationship by being ‘safe’. Risk is sometimes what makes a relationship worth having and pursuing. It’s what makes relationships so alluring and beautiful.

Go on, strive to make it work. Make, not just your life, but also your relationship excel beyond excellence.

Why Men In Their 40s Are The Largest Group Of People With The Deepest Debts?

I am sure you will agree that money is a very essential part of our lives. The use of it can buy us necessities and upgrade our luxuries. However the misuses and abuses of it can the quality of our lives in peril and in deep predicament.

Debt occurs and is then accumulated beyond personal means to repay. According to Lianhe Wanbao and a few other financial researches, there seems to be a certain general profile of those who tend to be the deepest debt. At the same time, they also form the largest category of people by age range.

A typical profile of someone who is deep in debt is seems to be a male in his 40s.

Some of the reasons are overstretched budget, giving in to temptations and unable to adjust to changing lifestyle and demands.

No matter what age we are at and no matter which phase of lifestyle we live, there is always a need to remind of ourselves of the needs to control our finances.

Top 3 Reasons Why Miscommunication Occurs

Sometimes you are logging on the internet, dialing up to the broadband, and wah-lah! it doesn’t get through. At other times, you are typing a long email, replying to an important business deal, you click on the ‘send’ button, and horror of all horrors, you are presented with an error page. The internet connection has just got disconnected.

In life, you wish that things are smooth and they will go your way, the way you like it. But it simply doesn’t. When you communicate, you are passing a message. However the message and its intent do not get through all the time to your listeners. Its just like a baaaaadd connection.

Let’s explore some of the key reasons why miscommunication occur:

Firstly, it’s because of our expectations. Whenever we communicate, we expect. We hope. And we look forward to certain responses that are favorable to us, just something we though we might hear.

When those responses do not match our expectation, we get a quick flash of confusion, which later leads to bouts of frustration.

Secondly, it’s the channels of message delivery. Words, voice and body language don’t fully describe our experiences and our images, hence what we say are truly only a portion of what we really want to communicate.

When you think of an intense experience, you’ll have to use a certain word or phrase to describe it. For every word you use, you’ll have to leave out other words.

Yet experience on its own its multi-dimensional and multi-level. It is all emcompassing, hitting you all at once. Therefore, the degree which you can pass on the intented experience is entirely dependant on your capability and ability to communicate.

The third reason why miscommunication occur is because of our internal filters. The message delivered is often left to the readers and the listeners’ interpretation too. When you read a story, you map it unto your own experience. The images conjured and emotions felt within you also hinge on your own understanding of the words and comprehension of the definitions.

Having a better understanding of these reasons why miscommunication occurs, you can strive to be more tolerant of yourself and others during interaction and our relationships. It is often that we do not intent to miscommunicate but rather because of the presence of such inherent factors. These factors will always be there in all forms of communication.

What’s left for us is to constantly minimize these impact by learning how to communicate better.

Best wishes.

What You Really Must Know About Couples At Work

Just finished conducting a workshop today on “Attraction at Work” where its about how to be massively more attractive to others at the workplace. I sincerely thank all the participants for exploring with me this extremely essential aspect of our lives.

Going through the many enquries and question posed, one of the most common recurring questions is involving couples at work.

This question goes something like this: “Should dating/ married couples work together in the same department/ company?”

The real essence of it is that this not really about should or should not, but rather its a question of how.

Since now that you are already a couple, via dating or by marriage, short of asking you to go different ways, the better approach should be to seek a resolution or compromise to the current situation.

The question of how should be based on 2 key factors:

1) How comfortable are both of you at working together?

2) How do you manage working together?

The first factor is one of the degree of (inner) emotional acceptance. While the second deals with external act of work management as a couple.

Firstly you must understand the Pros and Cons of working together and working separately as a couple.

In order to better resolve the potential conflict of working together, there will have to be some premises for them:

Both must agree and accept that Arrangements will have to be made and abided to. Though its not necessary to be as iron clad as military.

Both must regularly Communicate, diplomatically airing their views and taking the time to understand each other’s position.

Both must Compromise whenever possible. As couple, you have to understand that its not possible to be making decisions just solely your own rational. There will have to be give and take by both party in order for the relationship to work.

Summary:

Acceptance of arrangement

Communication of comfort

Compromise of couplehood

Utilize these tips, work them through and you’ll have a much more fulfilling experience as a couple at work and home.