Are you afraid of success?

You must be kidding! How can anyone be afraid of being successful? So, you said.

Look, I am not kidding. Many people failed to achieve what they set out to be because they are afraid of being successful. This fear of success is the number one self limiting belief and self sabotage of the world. I had never believe it until recently. Why would people be afraid of success? There can be a lot of reason. It maybe linked to afraid of failure. See, when you are successful, don't you expect that your friends and relatives expect you to be always be successful? Won't they be expecting you to be successful in everything you do? Maybe you got lucky this time. Can you really maintain it always? Aren't you going to worry that you can keep up the expectation?

Wow, there are so many reasons that you should be afraid of. There are so many things that can go wrong. Don't you think that you are going to lose some of your best friends after you achieve success? Don't you worry that they are going to stay away from you?

See, I told you so. There are thousand and one thing that you can worry about. How can you just ignore them and try pretend nothing happened?

The fact is: You are what you think you are!

Get to know yourself and have less wory. In this world you can never have enough worries. I would rather stay away from the negative thoughts and concentrate on what I have on hand.

Acres of Diamond

Have you ever heard of this story? Have ever read of this book? As this is an old classic, Acres of Diamond has been read thousound times or million times. But, how many people had really learn from the teachings? If they had done so, they should be living a decent life.

Why are we not rich? How do I know that you are not rich? Very simple. If you are rich enough, you would not have mid life crisis. You would not be looking at this blog. You would not be seeking for survival tips. You would not have enjoy reading this column. You would have been giving away tips on how to be rich. Anyway, these are not my main concerns. As long as someone is seeking for hints, I will be there to provide one.

The simple theory of getting rich is firstly, you need to be able to leverage. By selling your time to earn a living will not get you rich. Next, you want to be in business. To do that you need to first find a product or service that people want. Then, you need to secure the product and you need to let people know about it. That means market survey, obtain rights to resell and advertising. Selling things that people want. This the universal truth.

Do you want to get rich?

Commit this into your memory:

"There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe.

A thought, in this substance, produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.

Man can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his thought upon formless substance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created."

The above quote is taken from "The Science of Getting Rich".

If you think that I am too "materialistic", think again. Without money, what can you really do? How can Bill Gates help the poor if he does not have the money. He even accepted Warren Buffet's money to be able to help the poor better. Money is not the problem. Not having money is the problem. Without money, how much can you help the world?

I admire people who goes into poor country to help them to build things and educate them. All these are extremely admirable spirit, but, I am sorry to say that the impact is limited. Only scales like what Bill Gates do, with certain long term plan and strategy can create a greater impact.

My point is, don't be shy of wanting to be rich. I want to be rich also.

Survival Skill #23: Don't be shy of wanting to be rich. Be proud of it instead.

Living in the Real World?

Ever thought of committing suicide?

I had a couple of friends who always told me the same thing. Something when they travel on a business trip, one funny thing cross their mind. How nice if the plane suddenly crash down and everything is over. No more worries.

Strange thing for me is that I never really think of that. I am the so called "kia-si" (in Singapore it means "scared of dying" or "no guts") type of person, I believe. What is this world all about? Has this been just a dream after all? What is real and what is unreal? Is it all in our mind only? Who can be sure of that? Eveything you see, you feel, your hear, your smell could just be imaginations only. All may just be in the mind only. What is really REAL?

But then, just thinking back. Is it important that we need to know all these? So what if we are living in a dream? So what if what we see, feel, smell, hear are just illusions? So what? Life goes on. How is it going to change your life? I don't know. Is it something we should be worried about? Maybe, maybe not.

Whatever you thought and thinking of doing, you are still here reading this blog. Just live and let die. OK. It time to go back to work...

Survival Skill #22: Leave the worries to other poeple...

Learn to Leverage

If you are working in a large multi-national company chances are you will have to deal with contract staffs. There is a new belief that your permenant staff colleagues are your enemies and your contractors are your friends. Why? It seems that these days, the so-called permenant staff's job is to do coordination and management only. Management for them are mainly managing the bosses' expectation. The actual job is mostly done by the contractors.

This is not new phenomena but it is becoming more evident recently. Many large companies do not want to hire permenant staff so that they do not have to fire people often. This has lead to a new strategy that office workers must adopt in order to survive. The skill to develop is to be able to manage upwards and be good to the contractors so that they will do the work for you.

If you have not acquired this skill, you better start looking into it. With such skills, you will be able to move smoothly in your career and make lots of money. You can call this Leverage. Since you are not into business, you can't do the leverage that businessman do. You can still apply the same theory as a salaried man (woman).

Survival Skill #22: Manage upwards and Leverage downwards

Symptoms of Career Crisis

If you have been working for over 10 years and hardly taken any vacations or long breaks to reflect on your future, it might be good that you find an opportunity to do so. It need not be an expensive vacation. Just take your mind off your current job and reflect upon yourself. There are some important things you want to know about yourself and sometimes you do not have the opportunity to do so because you are so engrossed into your job. By the way, someone said that the word "JOB" stands for "Just-Over-Broke". It is not my intention to argue about that because there are people who made millions on their "JOB".

Some of the things you want to look out for in your mid career are symptons of crisis. Here are some of them:

1. Motivation - Are you motivated to do your job? If you are not, that is a negative point.
2. Negativity - You are always not confident that your companies program will work.
3. Interest Level - You don't feel excited about the job assignments. It is boring. But you just do it anyway.
4. Initiative - You never try to think of anything to improve your job. Just wait for instructions.
5. Concentration - You can't concentrate. You always think about other things and always forget to do something.
6. You get tired easily.
7. You dragged yourself to work. Always late. You try to find excuses to absent from work.
   
8. You are very sensitive to rumours. You are always trying to find out more about gossips.
9. You avoid seeing your clients, business partners, suppliers. You don't join your colleagues for lunch etc.
   

If you have more than 5 of any of the above symptoms, you may want to re-think carefully what exactly you want to do. If you really think that your current work place is not right for you, you really need to start to be more active to get in touch with recruitment agencies (secretly). You may also want to actively acquire the skills and knowledge for your next job. Pro-actively preparing your resume and set at least one-hour per day at home to search newspapers or Internet for job openings. Be more active to contact any friends you know and indirectly testing the market. It is easier to switch when you are still holding on to a job.

There is no point to hang around if you have lose interest.

Survival Skill #21: Always Seek Out New Opportunities

Life Long Learning - inch-by-inch

The theory of becoming rich quickly is to be able to leverage on something that
generates income. That has been said thousands times or millions times. But,
how do you actually do it? Best Seller author can give you hundreds of
examples. All these are nothing more than hindsight. But, wait a minute... I am
not saying they are wrong. They are absolutely right and I agree with them
totally. What I am driving at is that knowing the facts is not enough.
Developing the skill to do it is the key.

That leads to the theory of life long learning. Knowingly or unknowingly, we
are learning everyday. Sometimes we learn things subconsciously. That is bad
because we may learn things that are bad for us! Don't you think so? In my
opinion, we must be more self conscious of what we learn everyday. One
suggestion is to have 10-15 minutes every night before you close your eyes to
sleep, reflect on what you have learned during the day. Make a decision to do
better tomorrow. Inch-by-inch, we will get closer to acquiring the skill we
want. Whether it is for making lots of money or becoming a better person to our
family, friends, the society and the world as a whole.

Survival Skill #20: Self Reflection