Change is a human trait

Human beings just cannot sit still. They cannot feel satisfied with what they have.

When they have a stable life e.g. with a house, family and kids, they long for adventure and romance and all instability brings

But when they are abroad , in other lands, where their lives is constantly in toss and tumble, they long for a stable homely life.

We always desire the other.

Productivity Principles

We can apply these in our lives :

• Do the right thing the first time
• Do it at the right time with the right amount
• Avoid repetitions and redundancy
• Prioritize your work
• Work smart , not work hard
• Complaints are feedbacks
• Continuous improvement
  

Haste work is not excellent work

Whatever you do in haste is not excellent.

Excellent work requires time to contemplate, envision, refine , edit and re-edit, test and trial and improvement.

A good novel is not written in a day. It has to be revised and re-edited many, many times. Even its sentences have to be rephrased to produce a maximum effect on its readers.

Nevertheless, we must bear in mind the time and resource constraint in producing a piece of work. It is pointless to spend years on something that can never be finished e.g. Charles Babbage's 'inference engine'.

It is not the process nor the result

It is both the process and the result that are important.

Getting the result through unlawful process is invalid.

Going through the process without achieving result is a waste of time and effort.

Not going through the process or getting any result belongs to a dreamer.

Be a visionary not a dreamer.

Make sure you are not your own obstacle

I have a colleague. He is nearing his 50s and yet he has not achieved much in his career and life.

He got his basic degree like 10 years ago, which is considered late. He is not married and has no children. In my establishment, he is just an ordinary junior officer despite being in the field for more than 25 years.

Why ? He is his own obstacle.

He keeps telling people ( and himself ) things cannot be done. He sees ghost at every corner. Thus he refuses be adventurous and steps out of his comfort zone.

What a waste of potential. Thats what i told him last week.

The English idiom says "No venture no gain".

Sometime we need to live our lives dangerously.

Be watchful of your best or good friend(s)

Sometimes the person whom we considered as very good friend or even best friend are the person who back stab us.

He or she would probably knows all your intimate secrets as you would share them with him/her. With your secrets in his/her hands, he/she can easily back stab you in front of your boss or family members or even other friends.

I once considered a colleague a very good friend and told her all my company grievances. Some how my boss got a wind of my murmurings and was not too happy with me. Later, after i got transferred, i found out through another friend that my 'good' friend had been backstabbing me in front of my boss.

It came as a shock as she would be the last person i ever thought would betray me but alas, my perception of her was wrong.

People don't always do what they should do

We always hear others incessantly telling us - "You should have done this or that"

If everyone do what he or she should do, there would be no more problems in this world, would there ?

Unfortunately people sometimes don't do what they should.

Even so, what a person should do is subjected to individual's subjective interpretation, according to his or her experience and knowledge.

We can't please everyone so we got to please ourselves

"We can't please everyone so we got to please ourselves" from the song Garden Party by the late 50's idol RIcky Nelson.

Prioritize your pleasing.

1. Yourself
2. Your wife
3. Your family
4. Your boss
5. Your colleagues
6. Your friends
7. Acquaintances

Balanced not extreme

Lots of things in life are all about the right amounts - the equilibriums.

It is not about being minimum or the maximum.

A person who practices patience cannot be patient if someone murdered his entire family. Neither can a person sue another just because the other accidentally brushed against him.

It is all about balance - the threshold one should set for himself to react.

A humble person should not be too humble till he feels worthless. A little pride in his own achievements is good. But he should be so prideful that he thinks others are inferior to him.

It is unfortunate that lots of religions preaches extremism. Thats why we have religionists who are extremists, committing atrocities just because they think in absolute maximums and minimums.

The world is not only in white and black but also in shades of many colors and tones.

Turn the other cheek

The bible says that if someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other cheek for him to slap you as well !

So if someone rapes your wife, do u let him rape your daughter as well?

Or if someone murders your son, do you let him kill your daughter as well?

The bible verse above does not mean do nothing if you are wronged.

What it means is do not react according to your own whims if you are wronged. Make a complaint or police report and let the process of law takes its course.

If someone hits you. Don't hit back because that would make you as guilty as him. Make a police report and let the law deals with him.

If you hit him back, you are doing it out of revenge.

Taking no action when a wrong is being committed is very irresponsible. It emboldens the culprit and encourages him to repeat him offense.

By taking action, we are teaching him that being part of a community, he has to follow the society's rules and regulations and not to hurt others through his actions. This might even prevent him from committing bigger wrongs in future.

Work smart not work hard

We don't have to work hard to be successful. We can make others work for us if we are smart enough.

As a matter of fact, most hard-working people are people of lower social and financial strata e.g. farmers, fishermen, miners etc. They work from dawn to dusk just to earn that meager salary.

Successful people are smart people who knows how to fully-utilize what ever resources at hand including people. They utilized them to achieve success in a pre-planned way.

Nevertheless, the worst kind of people are dumb and lazy people. just make sure you are smart if you aren't hardworking.

Do not take life too seriously.

Some people spend their lives worrying about many things and some spend their days grudging against others.

Hey.Lighten up. Life is short. Don't shorten even more of your lives by doing things which are temporal and have no benefits at all.

Stop all the bickering and start living !

Delete the bad and enjoy the good.

Have a good life.

Why are some things banned ?

A muslim once asked me how does pork taste like? Is it good?

I told him if pork doesn't taste good, nobody would want to eat it. Forbidding it would be unnecessary for Muslims and Jews.

Similarly, lots of things which 'taste' good are being restricted or banned by the law or by religions for the dreadful effects of over-indulgences.

Alcohol , drugs and pork meat are forbidden to be consumed in some religions.

Sex, another wonderful thing , is severely restricted in many religions and laws.

Why ? Over-indulgence in these would cause physical , social and moral damages to the society.

Free sex would cause unwanted pregnancies, dangerous abortions, abandoned kids and school dropouts.

Simple as that !

It is impossible to change a person's character or behavior

People seldom change. It is virtually impossible to change a person's decades of thickened character or behavior.

A single counseling session or a few word of advice cannot change a person's years of hardened habits.

If you think that by marrying someone, you can change a person's character or behavior, forget it.

Some women think that by marrying a guy, they could slowly change his smoking habits. Boy, are they in for a big surprise. Their husbands may not smoke in front of them but they will still smoke behind their backs.

What does it take to change a person? It takes a big tragedy or death or an encounter with the Almighty  to move a person towards change. The death of a love one, the loss of a limb , the loss of almost everything in a fire etc are events that would really shake a person to his core and change him.

If everything is ok, why should he change?

People don't always tell the whole truth

We almost always automatically accept what people tell us as gospel truths.

But sometimes we find out that people do not tell the whole truth. Some people even tell lies.

Many a time we get caught flatfooted when people that we really trust e.g. our family members , our closest friends , our neighbors , colleagues etc lie to us for whatever reason(s) they only know.

We get so disappointed being easily deceived by these people.

So please check the facts before we readily accept someone's story as the gospel truth.

Looks is not everything but it is a very major thing

Looks is not everything. That is true.

But it is a very major thing. Perhaps the most important thing to many.

Rightly or wrongly, people will first judge us by our looks, especially if they do not really know us.

Good looks will gain favors and opportunities - in love , in career, in trusts and in life.

When we go to the supermarket or mall , we would try to get the best-looking fruits or dress we can afford. If we cannot afford, reluctantly we would have to go for the second best.

People always lie to themselves and others , saying "Looks is not important." This is totally crap !

In certain careers e.g. in hospitality , entertainment , public and counter services, good-looking people are specially-chosen for the job.

Nowadays, i pay attention to my looks. I use cleansers for my face and dress selectively to portray a positive image. I lost weight and found that it made more people interested in me and give me better treatment than i used to get.

People judge us by appearance and reaction

When strangers first get to know us, they would first judge us by our appearance - what we look like, how we dress , what the accessories we wear etc.

Why? Because they do not know our behavior and personality.

Scientists said that most of what we inputted into our brains is through our eyes. Our eyes is the most receptive of all our senses.

Perhaps part of human evolution is developing the ability to judge friends or foes through our senses , especially through the eyes.

I noticed this :

• If you are small-size, people would think you would be easily overcome. Thus people would not think twice when they want to scold you or even attack you.
• If you are fat, people would get the first impression that you are clumsy and incompetent.
• If you are ugly, you would be easily-blamed for any failures.
• if you are beautiful and handsome , people of the opposite sex would treat you nicely.
• If you are tall, chances of being selected as a leader is big.

To prevent being taken advantage of due to our appearance , we must send 'signals' to others that we are as weak as they perceived. We can do this through our careful speeches and facial reactions e.g.

"I would definitely take legal action if .. "
"I once scolded .... "
"I am a very determined person."

Why do we need to do this? To prevent us from being bullied and take advantage of and to prevent future abuses.

Planning your life

Nobody told me this when i was growing up.

We need to plan our lives in all areas in order to be successful.

As soon as our reasoning faculties are able to plan and comprehen, we should be planning and charting the future path of our existence.

We should have flexible short term ( within a year ) , medium term ( 1 - 5 years ) and long term goals ( the rest of our lives ) for our education , career , marriage , family , finance etc. planned as soon as possible.

However, we should bear in mind that such goals should be flexible and can be changed easily to accommodate emerging prospects and opportunities.

We should not have our ambitions and goal iron-casted because at the time of planning we have yet to see and consider new opportunities.

It is useful to keep a list of objectives to see how they are fulfilled. Use a blog or something.

My goal in life is to seek happiness in everything.

I don't know about you.

But my goal is life is to seek happiness in everything.

Everything i do and experience and contribute.

Nothing in this world is permanent. Even the most durable things in our lives might perhaps last for only a few decades. The least durable things could last for only seconds.

Therefore seeing that everything is temporal, I will use all my resource to seek happiness even though these moments of happiness and joy are temporal.

I shall also contribute to others' happiness within my means if their happiness also gives me joy and pleasure.

I shall delete all sadness and moments of frustration and evil people from my mind and my life like the way i clicked the delete button on my laptop.

I hope that before i leave this life, i would have experienced many, many moments of happiness and joy and good memories.

Listen to advice from ..experts only !

In the course of our life's journey, many people will want to give u all kinds of advice concerning many things - love , faith , career , jobs , finance, stock market tips etc. They would claim to have this or that successes.

People love to give advice freely as giving advice costs them nothing and they need not shoulder any responsibility for losses resulting from their advice.

If you do not listen to advice , you would be labeled as 'stubborn' but if you do , you might end up trying to figure out which advice to follow as there would be many conflicting advice.

There was once in my life, i got many conflicting advice on my future from well-intentioned people but who know little about what they advised. Most of what they tell me are merely hearsay. I went on a wild goose chase following their advice. From that day onwards, i learned an important lesson.

The lesson i learned is to seek advice from real experts - from those who have a proven record of success in the field you need advice on. Not from any tom, dick or harry.

Go to a good mechanic if u need to seek advice on cars and go to a good vet if you need advice on pets.Don't try to seek advice on cars from a fisherman!

However, sometimes experts get it wrong too ! But not as often as non-experts. Just do some research on your own after listening to the experts for confirmation of facts.

Note : As you are talking and asking people on what to do, always be on the lookout for swindlers and cheaters who want to profit from your state of uninformed. If the advice sounds too good, probably it is.