Thinking

Power of Intention by Dr. Wayne Dwyer

I was listening to the CD on my hour trip each way up and down Kuala Belait from Bandar Seri Begawan. I usually use the driving time to listen to audio books and find that it adds to my learning as I miss out on some points during my reading of the book.

This statement caught my attention: "What you think about, expands."

So when we think about wanting more money, we actually expand your "wanting more money" instead of getting richer. This statement comes from scarcity thinking which cause us to think, feel and take actions that expands this scarcity. So we end up not having enough and "wanting more money"

If this works out in the negative, then the better way to think as a strategy for success in life would be to think, "I live in abundance." This thinking would cause us to think, feel and behave with abundance and the law of attraction would work to generate abundance for us. As we think abundance, we talk abundance, attract the people who live in abundance to support us to generate abundance. Who would you wish to know and do business with; or to work with or for? A person with abundance thinking or one who is not?

So what is your self talk? How does it reflect your thinking?

Open mindedness and change

Taiwan Core value Training 14-17 June 2007

I learnt a great lesson this trip. I am always apprehensive of other trainers attending our CV program. When I heard that one of our participants was in the training business, a speaker, NLP practitioner and qualified in psychology I thought that she would have a hard time. This is caused by trainers being in their head (ego) and judging the programs from their own personal experience. This is normal.

However she kept an open mind and had a wonderful experience. Our CV process has enabled her to finally realized that all this while she has operated from the head and the people most important to her, in this case her son, had sensed it. Her 11 year old son frequently tells her that he loves her and always asked her if he is loved in return. She wonders why he keeps asking even though she always reply in the affirmative. Now she realizes that there was no essence of love in her reply. She had many tears of regrets mixed with joy and happiness with this new experience of finally understanding what she has been missing.

The CV process works for everyone because we are providing the tools to help people access the answers that are in them. They only have to choose what they wish to do now that they realized that they are responsible for their own life.

This further strengthens the contention that whatever we are in our life or profession, we can change if we choose to. So what are you holding on to that is stopping you from making progress in your journey towards greater self realization and happiness?

Airplanes

Isn't it amazing that this morning at 6AM I woke up in Brunei and at midnight 18 hours later I am going to bed in Taipei, thousands of miles away?

Humans are incredible. We have mastered flight and reduced travelling great distances into a matter of hours. All those dreamers who had it in their mind to fly like the birds were visionaries whose passion for the unthinkable then has made air travel commonplace today. WHen the Wright Brothers had their first successful solo flight, imagine the euphoria they felt! And today we tend to get complacent about what we have in terms of the convenieces and safety of air travel. We complain when the flight is late. We complain when the inflight food is not to our taste. We whine loudly when movies are unavailable! We forget how fortunate we are to live in this wonderful age of air travel where we can get to any point of earth within 24 hours! Wow!

Most of time when I am in a plane I am in awe of our human genius. The rest of the times I am sleeping soundly, secure in the knowledge that I am safe. When I look out the windows and see those whispery floating clouds, the beautiful sunrises and sunsets, the twinkling lights of human habitation thousands of miles below me, I think to myself, wow.....what a great life I have!

And today if you have the financial means to go with your desires you can even experience space travel. Such is our ingenuity as a species that we can plumb the depths of ocean, scale the highest mountains, fly like the birds from place to place and explore outer space.

All these came from our considerable human mind driven by our hearts desire to achieve and experience. What can YOU do that you have not attempted? What great changes in your life do you wish for that you have not been too proactive about?

I am in Taipei, Taiwan, about to take part again as an instructor in another great weekend of learning by myself and all the students of Linda (www.lindachandler.com) in her program Core Value Training (www.corevaluetraining.com) I am thankful for this opportunity to fulfil a lifetime dream of making a difference and living my life purpose by service to others. So many of my dreams have come true proving my primary school teachers wrong that dreaming is all I am good for. For in having dreams I somehow took the positive actions needed to gain the knowledge, skills and life experience to live a fruitful life.

What do you dream of for yourself and your family?

Choices

We make decisions based on the information that we have at that moment. This information is based on what we have heard, read and experienced. It is easy to look back in hindsight and judge. Hindsight, as it is said, is twenty-twenty. Why is this? Hindsight is very clear because we have new information.

This is why we seek learning. We go to Toastmasters meetings, Core Value Training, Money and You and other seminars. We attend to learn new skills, tools, have new experiences, share what we know and listen to others to give us greater awareness to make more informed decisions. We increase our knowledge and learn to operate from the heart as well as the mind. Or we can choose to just shuttle between home and work place and use the common excuse of "no time".

We have the power to choose the life we wish to lead. We have the power to lead a life of success, happiness and peace. We can decide to do something about our self confidence and join Toastmasters. Through improving our communication and leadership skills we increase our self confidence. In the process we make new friends and learn to live in harmony with others in a process of mutual learning. We can decide that we need new information in order to compete better in this fast moving world. To help us, there are so many books, seminars and online courses that are accessible. It is up to us to choose the appropriate action to reach the goals that we have set for the level of success in life that we desire.

So what actions can you take to move you towards your goals? What skills & knowledge do you need to get you to the next level of success? What experience do you need to live the life that you envision? What choices can you make now to change the situation that you are in?

Pleasure, happiness & Integrity

I had lunch with my friend Johny today. It was a real challenge to get to the restaurant that he chose. His Majesty's second daughter is getting married and the ceremonies in town caused what is rare in Brunei, traffic jams.

The dim sum was delicious and the conversation was meaningful. Johny shared with his materialist friend the following that I thought is insightful;

"I shared this with my daughters. When you buy things you get pleasure. It is not happiness. Don't get confused by the two."

What kind of life are you living? A life of pleasure or of happiness?

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Steve is from Nigeria. In his Toastmaster's speech he told a story to his two children with a moral about how you lose by winning at all cost when that cost include losing your integrity. He weaved a masterful speech with examples from the business world about how this lack of integrity destroyed some of the largest companies in America.

Many people continue to believe that in this competitive world today you can chose to ignore integrity. What do you choose for yourself?

Love

Leo Buscaglia in his book "LOVE" set some premises to discuss love:

One cannot give what he does not possess,
To give love you must possess love.

One cannot teach what he does not understand,
To teach love you must comprehend love.

One cannot know what he does not study,
To study love you must live in love.

One cannot appreciate what he does not recognize,
To recognize love you must be receptive to love.

One cannot have doubt about that which he wishes to trust,
To trust love you must be convinced of love.

One cannot admit what he does not yield to,
To yield to love you must be vulnerable to love.

One cannot live what he does not dedicate himself to,
To dedicate yourself to love you must be forever growing in love.

Otters Toastmasters Club, Brunei

Yesterday Genevieve and I attended the Otters Toastmasters Club meeting at the OGDC in Seria, Brunei. It was a great evening with a good turnout. The table topics session by Richard was challenging. In-coming President TM Lan was asked to present her vision for her term in 2 minutes impromptu and she rose to the occasion! The three manual speech speakers were outstanding; Steve delivered CC2 "Winning by losing" with great polish and mastery; Rosli delivered CC2 "Tuition" with parental insights and conviction while President Nurliana delivered ATM-G 9 "How to teach sex" with credibility and impactful statistics on teenage pregnancies. The Toastmaster, TM Tony was humourous in his chairing of the evening"s meeting. Overall a wonderful evening of motivated, talented and great fellowship. I enjoyed myself and it was worth the 45 minutes drive to and from home.

I realized, again, that successful people are always learning new skills as shown by these great communicators attending an evening TM meeting to improve even more! So what have you done to be a better communicator lately?

Take action, drop into a Toastmasters Club soon and join to increase your self confidence through better communication and leadership skills.

Communication

I was the Toastmaster (www.toastmasters.org) of the evening at The Brunei Speakers' Club. We meet in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, every Tuesday from 7:30PM tp 9:30PM and welcome guests.

It was a great evening training session with a full room and many guests. We had a wonderful impromptu session with Lukman Sedgwick as the Table Topics Master. This is why we need new members; for their ehthusiasm, creativity and originality. The members and guests selected for the session responded well to the call to speak effectively for 2 minutes without preparation. (Foto shows Kathleen speaking impromtu) The prepared speeches session featured President Yee Wan Chung on CCL9 evaluated by Melanie Chin, DTM and Staurt Lee on CL6 evaluated by Rozana Yunos, ATM-B. What fine examples of improved communicators to inspire the membership to complete their speech projects! We must have impressed our guests because two committed to be members!

The Toastmasters movement in Brunei has done well, going from one club six years ago to three clubs now; The Brunei Speakers'Club, The HSBC Speakers' Group and The Otters TMC. Brunei is now its own area with its own Area Governor. The first AG is Rozana Yunos!

The Toastmasters has enhanced the communication and leadership skills of many members in Brunei who have gone on to higher things in their business or corporate life. For me Toastmasters has opened doors of opportunities to learn and to serve. And as the saying goes, what you sow you reap and in my experience the harvest has been far beyond what I have ever put into TM in Brunei. It has given me a great sense of purpose to give something back to this wonderful community that we live in. My life and the life of my family has been positively impacted by our involvement with TM while in Canada and now in Brunei. And improved my communication skills too!

So here is the question: what have you done for yourself that will yield a rich harvest of confidence and success in your life?

Be happy.

Responsibility

AM I RESPONSIBLE?


Responsibility is so commonly bantered about it is easily abused as a value. What is true resonsibility? When are we truly being responsible? Can anyone be really responsible all of the time? Is responsibility optional in our society today?


I have been browsing through a book I bought ages ago by Stephen Covey on the 7 Habits of highly effective people. I particularly like this paragraph on responsibility.

Its the nature of reactive people to absolve themselves of responsibility. Its so much safer to say, "I am not responsible." If I say "I am responsible," I might have to say, "I am irresponsible." It would be very hard for me to say that I have the power to choose my response and that the response I have chosen has resulted in my involvement in a negative, collusive environment, especially if for years I have absolved myself of responsibility for results in the name of someone else's weakness.

This I supposed is why many people have a difficult time in addressing personal responsibility. So having this awareness of what is going on inside of us emotionally and mentally may help us to realise why we are not willing to say, "I am responsible." And also why we blame everyone else for our troubles so quickly and easily. For example,when we are speeding and a slow-coach pulls out from a junction, we get angry at him instead of taking responsibility for speeding. If I admit I am wrong on this one, what else am I wrong about?

So when we are blaming someone else or the world for our problems, maybe its time to do some self reflection. Tomorrow when you are living in your work-world pay attention to your self talk and your verbalisations to others.

Have fun.



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Truly it is our friends that make a difference!

Today, I just completed another trekking exercise up those nine hills near my house. Three of us with varying levels of fitness went for a quick walk up and down the jungle paths and I found the hills somehow easier to climb today. I am sure I felt fitter! And look at the beautiful clear skies we have in Brunei with those floating cottony clouds! (See photo)

The conversation and companionship definitely made me forget the aches in my leg muscles and I felt that we completed the trek in no time at all!

Friends do make the journey easier to bear. Therefore before you start on any undertaking, call on someone else to come along for the journey.

Have a great day.

Doing things alone is tough

Today I decided to take time out from my computer and the internet to go climb some hills and trek through the jungle near my home(see photo. I live next to the big building in the distance) my second time this week. This is in readiness for climbing Mount Kinabalu in Sabah, Malaysia, this coming August with some Malaysian friends.

It started out ok. However with the blazing 2PM sun, the heat (temperatures were about 30 degrees Celcius) and the humidity (about 80%) made it sweaty and tiring. The rain yesterday probably added to the high humidity. As it is only supposed to be an hour to trek the nine hills up and down I only brought one 400ml bottle of water so that did not help as I got very thirsty! Also my lack of trekking practice, therefore fitness, made the trek longer than it should have been.

I remember doing this trek with my brother about ten years ago. Even though I was not fit (maybe being younger helped) we ran the nine hills, up and down in under an hour. Ah well memories are always so sweet in retospect. And I think a lot of that finishing ability back then was having a running mate. It helps, a lot, as I realized today, for motivation when we hit those moments of fatique and don't wish to carry on, to have someone around for support and encouragement.

This is the same in almost everything we do. Having someone else along helps us stay on course when the going gets tough. That is what family and friends are for, to be there when needed.

So call someone today, you may be the support and motivation they need.