Never ever stop believing!

Let’s say because of a downfall, a failure or a setback you give up. Then what? Stumped?

So many people in life have fallen only to rise to great heights! People like Steve Jobs of Apple, Sim Wong Hoo of Creative Tech., Soichiro Hondaof Honda and so many many more!

Did they for once give up? Did they for once stop believing in themselves? I think not! And guess what, if they managed to do it, so can you! Think about it. They are humans, just like you! And being part of the same human race, we have almost 99% of the same genes! So what sets them apart from us? What sets them apart from you?

I believe that everything we do in life is governed by a single principle. Not the supernatural law of nature, but the ultimate success formula! All I can tell you is this. If you take this formula and apply it to ANYTHING you do in life, you will succeed! BUT, it’s never going to be easy.

Ultimate Success Formula

Beliefs + Goals + Plan/Strategy + Take Action = Result (good or not)

Remember I asked earlier on about the main difference between great success and mediocrity? The main difference is what we do with the result! We could take that ‘failure’ and treat it as feedback! And then what do you do with this feedback?

You change your strategy and take action again!

This my friends is the power of belief. The choice is yours. To belief in it, or belief that im b*llsh**ing..

Cheers!

This is a breather… a break…

Quoted from a friend named blib:

Recently, I seem to have taken people around me for granted.
I seemed to have developed this huge obession with another. It is so huge that it has consumed me - all of me.

I want to take this time off to let Inyasa know that I’m sorry.
Sorry for throwing you aside, sorry for neglecting you.
Lets do the Pupeepu together again eh? Our kind of dance.
I believe that it will be the best dance ever. One that will remain in memories for a long long time to come.

I hopeless with words. Help me out here?

-blib-

Ahh.. a break… albeit a short one.
Time away from books, notes, complex analysis…

After much deliberation, I have decided to do it. I will post whatever I know about wealth creation right here! I think I might spread it over 8 days. So that I wont end up killing myself and flooding this blog!

What would you give if I told you that I am going to share how to make 15-20% returns on your investment year after year after year? You heard me! Not 3 or 4 or 5% but a whopping 15%, practically risk-free! Have I got your attention yet? Imagine what you could do with your money once you knew what the top 5% of investors are doing!!

Attention : Read on ONLY IF you want to take charge of your money and accelerate your financial growth!

Step 1.
While many people neglect this, I cannot stress the importance of looking for a company that has a great 5 to 10 year track record! What I mean is that when you go around looking for that stock or fund to invest in, ensure that the performance for the past 5yrs (min.) has been steady.
Very often, people (myself included) look for the fast kill. They buy shares/funds that are targetted to grow at 50-60%. While the figures look very very impressive, such growth is often unsustainable. As the saying goes “in the year, out the next!”

Step 2.
Ensure that funds(for simplicity and writing purposes, I will refer to stocks and funds as “funds”) have a wide economic moat. So you’ve never heard of an economic moat? Not to worry. It’s never too late.
A wide economic moat implies that the company has room for growth! Similarly, a fund with a narrow economic moat means that it has little room for future growth! Why are economic moats important?
A company with a wide economic moat may be one with a huge market share, high consumer switching costs and even patents, copyrights etc. For more information on economic moats, visit morningstar. They are No.1 on my recommended list of websites to visit for financial info.

Step 3.
Let me think… o yeah… companies that you are buying into should have credible managers! Why? So that they dont end up running away with all your money!
Ensure that they are honest and reliable. Now, how exactly do you define honest? Well, Adam, the person who taught me most of this, says that great managers don’t pay themselves bonuses when the company is facing a bad year. Valid point? You decide. Different people have different values in life so I find it very difficult to define properly what honesty is. But what you want to do, is to choose someone with similar values as yours. Thats the safest bet I guess. Heh.

Step 4.
Show me the money! No. Kidding. From step 4 onwards, I will show you how to pick and select the funds that will, 80% of the time, give you your 15-20% returns! It will be slightly more technical but I guarantee you, it will be worth it. And how do I know? Because I have applied theses strategies and used them on myself. And guess what? No points for getting the right answer here!

However, like I said, this is going to be an 8-parter series. Come back tomorrow to fuel your hunger. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Just realised I can’t say “or your money back”… Heh…)

Desperation

I have no idea. No idea how to insert pics with links into my blog, no idea how to change the code.

BUT, I will manage! I will do it! I will overcome it!

That my friends, is the power of words. Words, paired with the right mindset, will definitely supercharge your career. Why? Because with proper use of words, you will be able to reframe and look at things from a different mindset. In addition, with the right mindset, you will be able to accept ‘failure’. Why did I put failure within the ‘ ‘? That’s because failure is a mindset. A predefined concept learned through association with society! If you are able to take each ‘failure’ as feedback, modify your actions and attempt the same task again, you will definitely succeed!

Now does this mean that you will succeed immediately? Maybe. Imagine if even people like Steve Jobs had to taste several plates of failure, what more us? All I’m saying is this. If you want to succeed, and you have the tools for success, do not give up! Adapt, change and refine your techniques till you taste it! The sweet, thick, smooth flavour of success.

Let me give you an example of reframing. If your boss tells you that your work sucks, you could choose to let it affect you and spoil your whole day, OR, you could reframe the whole situation by thinking that your boss knows you are capable of so much more! Wouldnt that make things so much more pleasant? Wouldnt that empower you with more positive energy to tackle the task again?

Thats it. I’ve ranted enough. Ive simmered down. I will look for help. I will look for someone whos a guru at blogging. I will, I must.

For those of you who have read the previous 2 entries on rapport and are anxiously awaiting the next entry, here it is! The last of the 3 part series! I didnt intend for it to be so lengthy but I realised that, the more I wrote, the more I wanted to share!

Reading my last entry, I realised I’d better clarify some things before you start to get confused! What do I mean? Last time I mentioned modelling, matching and mirroring, I failed to include when to do so, how to do it and so on. So how exactly do you match and mirror someone?

Everyone has their own unique set of gestures, facial expressions, posture and personal space. Simply put, different people exhibit different patterns of body language!

When you are matching someone’s posture, you have to notice how they stand, how and where they position their arms and feet. Also, notice the angle which they have their head tilted. A head tilted slightly indicates interest, a head slanted down indicates negativity and doubt. Why are you doing this? This is important because similarity breeds rapport. A similar posture allows you to tap and get a rough feel of the other party’s psychological makeup!

The next thing you can mirror is someone’s gestures. Many people are limited to a set of gestures unique to them. Some people may wave their hands wildly when they engage in conversation, others may fidget. Still others may rub their arms or scratch. A word of caution, when you are mirroring or matching someone’s gestures, do it with a tinge of SUBTLETY!!! Do not attempt to fold your arms or scratch your nose at the same time as your client/date! He may get the wrong idea and think that you are poking fun or imitating him!

Also, do pay attention to your client’s/date’s facial expression. Although I have found this to be slightly more challenging, it does reveal so much about a person when you master it! Universal facial expressions include smiling when you’re happy and frowning when you’re sad or dissatisfied. Research and studies have also shown that a person’s eye movement can tell you rather accurately the part of the brain a person is accessing. For instance, when looking upwards, people tend to be thinking in pictures. (At this juncture, I have to admit that I cannot remember exactly the other eye positions and their thinking patterns. However if you are really interested, do read the 2 books I have recommended in the first post!)

What a great mouthful of information! And I havent even started on personal space yet! If all this seems so foreign and too much for you, fret not! Take this oppotunity to stretch yourself! Allow yourself to grow to be able to read and absorb more! Trust me! Step by step, little by little, all your improvements will add up!

Ready for the last part? Here we go!

Personal space, while many find it trivial, is the distance between you and your contact. Some people may be slightly claustrophobic and will feel uneasy when people stand too near. Others may prefer closeness and even some form of contact! So position yourself at varying distance and see how your client reacts!

I cannot stress the importance of building great rapport, both for working and social purposes. Somehow, I think typing out anymore here will seem to flood my blog! So if you are interested to know more, so that you can propel yourself to success with people, drop me a mail and I will send you a few more pages of my rambling!!

Cheers to Stuart, Adam, Anthony Robbins and Dale Carnegie. Without them, all this wouldnt have been possible.

Here it is! My promise.

Rapport

The fact that you’ve come back to read this only goes to show that you have a hunger for establishing rapport with anyboyd - instantly!

What is rapport?

Have you ever bumped into someone for the first time and just totally clicked with them? You felt as though you were both running on the same frequency or the same ‘channel’! No lame openings like “so, erm… what do you do for a living…” or small talk about the weather. Instead, you managed to speak openly and freely about just anything under the sun?

At the same time, have you met someone only to detest them at first sight? You felt as though they were ’shifty’, could’nt be trusted and just didnt understand your point. Everything they said and did, every small little gesture, every word they uttered, just seemed to irritate you more and more and more?

That, my friend, is the magic of rapport. Observe it, and you will be on your way to success! Deny it and face the consequences, on your own.

So comes the big question at this point. How do I build instantenous rapport - easily?

The secret to… building instantenous rapport

Traditionally, many books mention things like using the other persons name frequently or others like sincere compliments. While this is great, lets face it, it doesn’t always work! I’m sure you can think of times when the more you heard your name the more pissed you felt, or ’sincere’ compliments from people just felt like apple polishing. So what is the huge secret?

Using principles from NLP, neuro-linguistic programming, building rapport is as simple as ABC!
First of all, you must understand and respect the other party’s attitudes, beliefs and values.
Next, you will have to adopt similar physiology, tonality and language patterns.

In a nutshell, you HAVE to match them! Or even better still, mirror them to make them feel as if they were ’seeing’ themselves, or even talking to themselves! Don’t believe me? Let’s carry out an ‘experiment’, just to show you how people have been applying this concept, on a daily basis, subconsiously!

The next time you’re out waiting for a friend or a bus, notice how people in groups communicate and behave. If you notice, the people in that group actually look as if they were engaged in a dance! Every sentence, hand gesture and movement is complimented smoothly by another! Now do you see the importance of matching?

That’s pretty much it! I will go into the finer details in my next entry! So just be patient!
The next entry will only be for people who want to excel even more in life!

So… watch this space!

In the meantime, do visit stuart’s website! I draw much inspiration from there.

3am. No. I think 3.30 am.

What am I doing? Finals are in 6 days time and I’m here fiddling with this. This post/blog/headache. At last, I’ve figured out how to work it… or at least I think. (many thanks so Shijia )

I was just thinking of sharing about the great wonders of rapport! Imagine being able to meet people and create that instantaneous bond, making both you and the other party feel like best friends! Just take a moment and think about what it could do for you. Clinching business deals, speaking to a full house and even hooking up with that hot babe - all with the snap of a finger!

Like I mentioned, I was just thinking about it. And I think… I’ll leave it for another day.
However, what I will leave you with is this. For those of you who love speed, cars and tech gadgets, this is the site for you!

If you’re not, then just sit tight and wait for my next post! I promise it will be worthwhile.

Exams are drawing near.
I can’t see the light. Or can I?

I was reading a great book today and I thought it would be nice to write it down.
For memories. Bitter-sweet ones.

“Whether you say you can or you can’t, you’re right!”
Everything we do is affected by what we say! Whether you’re talking on the phone or to yourself (yes, we do talk to ourselves) what we say will ultimately determine the results that we get!

Imagine being able to get the very best out of life! To achieve excellent results in your studies, to command the highest salary in your career and to be the envy of your friends! Imagine being the Tiger Woods of your industry! Have I got your attention yet?

Words that come out from our mouths speak alot of our values, beliefs and attitude towards life. Unless we can properly optimize our values, beliefs and attitudes, life will be a constant contradiction! Don’t know what I mean? Here’s an example. Many times I’ve come across friends who say that they would like to be rich. They want to be millionaires, period. Then I ask them, at that instant, what they really really want to do in life. Guess what they said? Did they tell me that they were going to find ways and means to get to the million? NO! Majority of them wanted to ‘chill out’ by the beach! It’s no wonder why so many of us feel confused and lost in life!Now do you understand the importance of aligning your values?

Enough said. If you’d like to know so much more, and be the person you’ve always wanted to be, check out :
1) Unlimited Power - Anthony Robins
2) How to master your mind and design your destiny - Adam Khoo

Watch this blog for more to come!