What is your plan B?

As you can see that this blog is primarily targeting at employees after 45 rather than self-employed to business owners. I guess, this is the majority of the group now but, it is fast shrinking for people above 45. The reason is obvious.

You need to make a choice. One is to fight on by improving yourself, stay relevant, stay young (behaviourally) and be more competitive (maybe slight ruthless). Another option is to execute plan B. Phase yourself towards self-employed or owning businesses.

Recently there are many people choose options like full-time stock trading, currency trading, real-estate agent, insurance or financial planning, franchisees and some small services outfits.

All those are viable businesses and are exceptionally good for middle-age people who wants to have more control over their time and paying more attention to the family's non-financial needs.

Ask yourself, what is your plan B?

If you are thinking of doing it after working hours, you can consider Internet based Home Business. Selling on eBay, Google Adsense etc may be a good start to make yourself acquinted with the new way of doing businesses in this New Era.

Survival Skill # 12: Execute Plan B

My First $5,000 in 10 months

No Big Deal, you said!

Of course! That was what I used to earn in half a month.

Life is such, my friend. You can look at your own life basically in 2 ways. One is to feel bad about whatever happens and curse them along the way. Or you can enjoy every bit of it and look to improve it inch by inch.

I think, I adopt the second approach. You must look at every inch of progress and celebrate along the way. When the times are bad, every little bit counts. As you enjoy your journey in life, you look at your next nearest target. For example, what is next? Maybe another $15,000 in next 2 month! Patience will pay off. There are so many things in life needs time to develop. You choose the right strategy. The problem comes when you have only one thing to work on and no other alternatives. You will feel the pressure the push it to make it happen faster then it should.


Survival Skill #11: PATIENCE

More Positive Thinking

To add on to the topic that I talked about yesterday, I've also realised from many books that I read that success is all about POSITIVE THINKING. If you think you will be successful, you will. The key is the will power. It is very important to keep your spirits up and influence people around you to stay positive. You should do this to your family, especially.

When my wife was retrenched, she told me of her colleague's plight. This colleague of hers (let's call him Mr. B) is a man of late 40's. His wife is not working and his eldest daughter has just entered the local university 3 months ago. He has another younger daughter. The company gave them one month notice for the retrenchment. When he broke the news to his family, his wife and his daughters all cried. My wife was telling me that she could not understand why they need to cry. For his daughter is old enough to go and make some money. Do some part-time work like giving tuition (this is a popular part-time job for undergrads in Singapore) can make quite a fair bit of money. I did that when I was in my undergrad days too.

Well, I think it is OK to cry and let out and get over with it. The only problem comes when you cannot move on. This AGAIN calls for POSITIVE THINKING. Both my wife & I came from very humble background we did not feel that bad when we were both retrenched together (with 10 days). We both worked in different companies. Her retrenchment, as I said, was known 3 months ahead. The bosses were talking to them of various options. That was very kind of them. I was given 4 days to hand-over and go. I guess we had both been through difficult times before, another setback does not count much to us??

Anyway, with the help of his colleagues, Mr. B quickly found another job and settled down. Do you know that if you are sincere, you can get help easily. Mr. B is a very sincere and simple person. Most of his colleagues are more than willing to help him even though they themselves are not in any better situation. Look, your friends are not that selfish, after all.

My point is that we should not be overcome by these kind of short term setbacks. There are many ways to make a living in life. If times are really hard, you can always manage your expenses.

But if you stay POSITIVE, you will pull through.

Survival Skill # 6 (I emphasise again): POSITIVE THINKING

You are what you think you are!

Don't lower yourself. Do you believe that the Almighty created you just want to see you suffer? That cannot be! Whichever your spiritual orientation, believe that you are not created to be miserable. Your parent did not want you to come and suffer. They still do not. Unless you have been very unkind to them, of course! I hope that is not the case for you!

I had mentioned before that you must know your self-worth. Your mission in life. Maybe it is to make a million bucks in next 5 years? If so, starting thinking about how to make that million bucks. Stop self-pity and move forward. One thing we must learn, especially after 45, is that we need to know how to ignore negative forces. There are positive forces all over but unfortunately negative forces are more pervasive. It is very easy to get negative, when you don't watch yourself carefully.

I said this because I had experience this many times. Fortunately, I had been reading motivational books more frequently of late. If you are born with strong mind or lucky enough to be trained with strong will, you do not need much of these motivational books. I have some friends who are naturally strong and they are good and successful. However, there are many many more friends who are easily "attacked" by negativity. They will complain at the slight challenge in front of them.

I encourage you to read motivational books. There are many free ebooks on the Internet if you subscribe to some mailing lists. One of my favourite is "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill. A true Classic that I only read it recently. When I saw the book title previously, I didn't want to touch it because I thought it was like a scam book. After reading it I realised that this book has been written way before I was born! This must have been the earlist motivational book around?

Remember, you are what you think you are!
My survival skill #6 Positive Thinking

Make that Decision Now!

Have you been sitting on things that you were supposed to decide? Make that Decision Right Now! Are you afraid of making the wrong decision? Tell you what! It didn't even matter a bit! What matters most is whether you made a decision. Maybe, you decision is to NOT MAKE A DECISION.

Think of it this way: Things will always turn out to be better than you'd expected. Believe me! This always happens. If you want things to be better, it will be better. As simple as that.

Let me tell you a secret, everyone has something called the subconscious mind. This subconscious mind is extremely power. It will take instruction from you and act on it. If you think you are going to be rich and you think you have determined to move forward. The subconscious mind will quietly work on it until it finallly get you there. If you always stay positive, the positive outcome will come to you.

That is the power of survival skill #6: Positive Thinking

Taking on New Challenges

If you ever dream of taking new challenges, this is the time when you have plentiful opportunities. See, the world is not lack of opportunities for you. Just that it may not come at the time when you expected for it. Just take it as it comes.

How will you really feel? You are going to have fear in you. There is no doubt about it. Now, you need to learn to concentrate of doing the work at hand and stop worrying. So what if I fail? I will try again and again until I hit the right one. That is life.

Couping with Multi-Tasking

There is no doubt that in the new world, multi-taking is common phenomena. You are going to coupe with demands from different sources that asking for your attentions.

Oh yeah, you must learn to coupe with multi-tasking. (Just wonder why this term is so common these days. I used to be only people in the IT circle using it...). What is the first thing you realised from the effect of multi-tasking? For me, it is cutting down of my sleeping hours.

Yes, I know this is bad. But, for the moment, I just have to live with that until I found my way out. Learning to multi-tasking is another powerful skill. You need to learn how to multi-task yet when you are on each task, you put your 100% focus on the task at hand. Without such sub-focusing, you will not achieve the productivity you needed to succeed in this extremely demanding world.

One thing that can help you to achieve more is also to learn how to make decision quick. Stop sitting on the issue at hand. Make a choice and move on. Make mini plan for each tasks: Collect Information, Analyse, Decide and Act. Use these simple 4 step formula and allocate time for each of the tasks. Then you will have more control over your time.

These 4 simple steps are nothing more than common sense. However, have you implemented them? How successfully have you done so? I must readily admit that I am still learning too. You can never be able to perfect these skills. Let's say we improve inch-by-inch everyday.

Survival Skill # 10: Use 4-Step Mini Plan

Wish you success & happiness!