Think & Create

The best way to learn how to shop for clothes is to spend time browsing at your local clothing store.

1. Choose the right store. Think about what you like to purchase and go to the appropriate shop.

2. Browse the store. Think about your personality and make your selections based on your interests. Your clothes can indicate a great deal about you.

3. Try your selections. Make sure your purchases fit your shape and style.

4. Ask for opinions. Sometimes others may have insights you have never thought of. Respects their opinions and realize that they are only trying to help.

5. Be sensitive to your budget. Although you may want that pair of designer jeans, consider how much you can save at bargains, and other things you can buy with the money.

Have too many things on your plate? Unable to finish any of them?

Welcome to my world. I have so many things to do. Other than this blog, I have 4 more blogs that I maintain – not so successfully. I just don’t have the time to manage 5 blogs and put the time at work.

All that slowly begun to stop when I started to BE IN THE MOMENT.

Be in the moment simply implies that you concentrate fully on what you’re doing at this precise moment.

This is painful. I am warning you. I was the type that was thinking of the next thing to do, while doing something else. And all these led to half hearted or sloppy work. And this was affecting my life, both work and in my life.

I wanted everything. I wanted to be the best in everything and I anted to do everything.

But I couldn’t.

It took me 30 years to realize this.

Great men became great when they FOCUSED on ONLY ONE THING AT A TIME.

I refused to accept this fact for many years because I wanted to be the best in everything. I don’t know what made me change but I think I just got fed up of being mediocre. I wanted to become good in something.

I remember sitting in my office cubicle, after everyone has gone home and wondered why I just made the biggest screw up in my work. I was careless. Lack of sleep the night before, not from great sex, but from burning the midnight oil trying to learn one more API.

Enough was enough.

Now I have resigned to the fact that if I want to be good, I must focus on on thing and only one. And the quickest way to make up for lost time was to BE IN THE MOMENT.

To all you young ones, don’t waste precious time trying to be good in everything. You will end up being a disappointed man like me.

Instead, focus on one thing and be good in it. You’ll be amazed at how wonderful your life will be!

Chapter 1: The Right To Be Rich

Whatever may be said in praise of poverty, the fact remains that it is not possible
to live a really complete or successful life unless one is rich. No one can rise to
his greatest possible height in talent or soul development unless he has plenty of
money, for to unfold the soul and to develop talent he must have many things to
use, and he cannot have these things unless he has money to buy them with.

A person develops in mind, soul, and body by making use of things, and society
is so organized that man must have money in order to become the possessor of
things. Therefore, the basis of all advancement must be the science of getting
rich.

The object of all life is development, and everything that lives has an inalienable
right to all the development it is capable of attaining.

A person’s right to life means his right to have the free and unrestricted use of all
the things which may be necessary to his fullest mental, spiritual, and physical
unfoldment; or, in other words, his right to be rich.

In this book, I shall not speak of riches in a figurative way. To be really rich does
not mean to be satisfied or contented with a little. No one ought to be satisfied
with a little if he is capable of using and enjoying more. The purpose of nature is
the advancement and unfoldment of life, and everyone should have all that can
contribute to the power, elegance, beauty, and richness of life. To be content with
less is sinful.

The person who owns all he wants for the living of all the life he is capable of
living is rich, and no person who has not plenty of money can have all he wants.
Life has advanced so far and become so complex that even the most ordinary
man or woman requires a great amount of wealth in order to live in a manner that
even approaches completeness. Every person naturally wants to become all that
they are capable of becoming. This desire to realize innate possibilities is
inherent in human nature; we cannot help wanting to be all that we can be.

Success in life is becoming what you want to be. You can become what you
want to be only by making use of things, and you can have the free use of things only as you become rich enough to buy them. To understand the science of
getting rich is therefore the most essential of all knowledge.

There is nothing wrong in wanting to get rich. The desire for riches is really the desire for a richer, fuller, and more abundant life –and that desire is praiseworthy. The person who does not desire to live more abundantly is abnormal, and so the person who does not desire to have money enough to buy all he wants is abnormal.

There are three motives for which we live…

There are three motives for which we live: We live for the body, we live for the
mind, we live for the soul. No one of these is better or holier than the other; all
are alike desirable, and no one of the three –body, mind, or soul –can live fully
if either of the others is cut short of full life and expression. It is not right or noble
to live only for the soul and deny mind or body, and it is wrong to live for the
intellect and deny body or soul.

We are all acquainted with the loathsome consequences of living for the body
and denying both mind and soul, and we see that real life means the complete
expression of all that a person can give forth through body, mind, and soul.
Whatever he can say, no one can be really happy or satisfied unless his body is
living fully in its every function, and unless the same is true of his mind and his
soul. Wherever there is unexpressed possibility or function not performed, there
is unsatisfied desire. Desire is possibility seeking expression or function seeking
performance.

A person cannot live fully in body without good food, comfortable clothing, and
warm shelter, and without freedom from excessive toil. Rest and recreation are
also necessary to his physical life.

One cannot live fully in mind without books and time to study them, without
opportunity for travel and observation, or without intellectual companionship.

To live fully in mind a person must have intellectual recreations, and must
surround himself with all the objects of art and beauty he is capable of using and
appreciating.

To live fully in soul, a person must have love, and love is denied fullest
expression by poverty.

A person’s highest happiness is found in the bestowal of benefits on those he
loves; love finds its most natural and spontaneous expression in giving. The
individual who has nothing to give cannot fill his place as a spouse or parent, as
a citizen, or as a human being. It is in the use of material things that a person
finds full life for his body, develops his mind, and unfolds his soul. It is therefore
of supreme importance to each individual to be rich.

It is perfectly right that you should desire to be rich. If you are a normal man or
woman you cannot help doing so. It is perfectly right that you should give your
best attention to the science of getting rich, for it is the noblest and most
necessary of all studies. If you neglect this study, you are derelict in your duty to
yourself, to God and humanity, for you can render to God and humanity no
greater service than to make the most of yourself.

Its funny how life is. My investment knowledge is ZERO. Don’t know much about money except its hard to come by. I am learning though, slowly but surely.

Last year, by chance, my wife and I met a young, quiet, self-employed mutual fund investment guy. He’s very young compared to my wife and I but he’s out there, self employed, working for CIMB Wealth Advisors. Over the years, mainly influenced by my parents, I have developed a keen sense of awareness for scams, especially those that involved my retirement savings. So when the Malaysian government allowed people to withdraw a portion of their retirement savings and invest, at their own risk, into units trusts (or mutual funds), I was the first to say NO – my money stays with the government. Last years dividends or returns was 4.5%.

Hmm…

Then comes this guy who said that whatever money that was taken out of my retirement fund, EPF, would, after the investment, go back into my EPF. So there was no chance for a third party to steal my money. What changed my perception about this young man was his calmness – he wasn’t the type that hypes up everything. He comes from a poor family, so he knows the value of money. So, I decided to invest.

And was I in for a shock.

In total, as of today, my wife and I have made a total of 5 withdrawals from our Account 1 (EPF savings is broken up into 2 accounts, Account I and Account 2. The money in Account 2 can be withdrawn for education and home purchasing. Account I has always been secured until recently when the government allowed 10% of Account I to be withdrawn every 3 months for investment purposes.)

When we first made our withdrawal in mid 2008, the market was going down. At our second withdrawal, the market was still going down. So we did accumulate quite a number of unit trust units while averaging down our purchasing price.

Last week, 1 year since our investment, my wife and I, each, had a 14% return on our investment. Much better than the 4.5% the government handed up this year. My only qualm to our young investment partner was why did he take out our investment from the mutual fund market when the market is going up – I could still make some money.

He reminded me that one year ago, we sat down and laid our goals – we wanted a 10% return on our investment. And this 10% was after deducting CIMB’s management fees of 1.5%. So when the time came, he took out our money. I had reached my goal. My investment garnered a 14% return. The young man gently reminded me not to be greedy as most people would have kept their money in the market and then cry in anguish when the market unexpectedly turns for the worst. I had reached me goal, he reminded me.

I had a choice of putting it back into my EPF, and then withdrawing it later when the market falls – but that would incur a further 1.5% management fees. So the alternative would be to park it into a Money Market fund for now.

Now I sit and wait for the market to drop. Then I move my funds from the Money Market back to some good, old unit trusts.

Thanks Kim.

Can I really make some money from internet marketing?

I thought it was impossible. After all, there are so many people doing it, but are they all successful?

When I say many people, I was also one of them. I plunged into internet marketing 4 years ago.

And I sank.

I spent close to USD2000 on ebooks and training courses and nothing came of it. Well, I did get around USD4 per month, if that’s any consolation. But what happened to the thousands of dollars all these internet marketing courses promised??

There are no short cuts to success!

When you see all those emails, some even from well known marketers, about how fast you can make money, DO NOT BELIEVE THEM. What their selling is a solution for those who already have a strong base. Its not a solution for new comers. New comers do not have a large base of subscribers to make any use of those solutions.

What new comers require is a step by step course, with a FULL MONEY BACK GUARANTEE, that will teach all of us the fundamentals of internet marketing. And among all the courses that I have spent my hard earned money, this is one course that I am glad I really did invest my hard earned cash into.

I initially signed up for Patric Chan’s Internet Marketing course, which then morphed into The Chan Do Chartered Membership. Upon signing up, you will receive all the course modules, in e-books and video. I study better from ebooks, but some prefer videos. What helped me the most, compared to all the other courses, is the FORUM for members. Nearly all my questions were answered in the forum.

Every month you’ll get a new topic, something that members vote for the month before, and Patric talks about it. He holds a live call in. If you miss the call in, you can get the recorded version online. What’s good about this call is that you can listen in and ask your questions.

And here’s the best thing about Patric Chan’s Chan Do Membership – you get a FREE AUTORESPONDER with your membership. This means you do not have to fork out money for a autoresponder service. In fact, you get more than an Autoresponder service, its also a means of having your own affiliates under you and much more. This service itself is worth the price of the membership itself when you compare against other pure Autoresponder services.

This is one course that I RECOMMEND WHOLE HEARTEDLY. You will not regret your investment, my membership paid itself over many times!

• Examine the food labels at a local organic food store to determine its source and find out if the facts are accurate.
• Educate yourself on the standards and definition of organic food provided by your local health authorities
• Go through each ingredient on the food label to ascertain that the products are devoid of preservatives and chemicals
• Long unidentifiable chemical names should be seen as a warning sign against purchasing a particular food
• Converse with experienced shoppers at your local organic grocer for tips on how to read food labels. Those who have consumed organic food for years can help you sort out confusing labels and choose which food are truly organic.

Happy eating!

This book is pragmatical, not philosophical –a practical manual, not a treatise
upon theories. It is intended for the men and women whose most pressing need
is for money, who wish to get rich first, and philosophize afterward.

It is for those who want results and who are willing to take the conclusions of
science as a basis for action, without going into all the processes by which those
conclusions were reached.

It is expected that the reader will take the fundamental statements upon faith, just
as he would take statements concerning a law of electrical action if they were
promulgated by a Marconi or an Edison, and, taking the statements upon faith,
that he will prove their truth by acting upon them without fear or hesitation.

Every man or woman who does this will certainly get rich, for the science herein
applied is an exact science and failure is impossible.

In writing this book I have sacrificed all other considerations to plainness and
simplicity of style, so that all might understand. The plan of action laid down
herein was deduced from the conclusions of philosophy. It has been thoroughly
tested, and bears the supreme test of practical experiment: It works.

Very truly yours,

W. D. Wattles

by Phillip Humbert

My friend and mentor, Thomas Leonard, was fond of saying that “space management is more important than time management.” What he meant was that while we cannot actually “manage” time (it just keeps marching forward, no matter how we use–or squander–it), we can and must manage our personal environment.

This is one of the KEY STRATEGIES of highly effective people. They “set themselves up” for success by surrounding themselves with the situations, tools, ideas, even the people, posters, music, furniture and toys that “drive” or “pull” or “push” them in the direction of their most important goals. It’s not coincidence or chance or “luck” that every day their environment “happens” to push them in precisely the direction they intend to go!

Too many of us live in the midst of chaos. Many people get up early, work very hard, and are busy (often very busy!) in their eagerness for success, but they permit their efforts, their focus and their results to be undermined by whatever “happens to happen.” That is not a recipe for success! Working hard and being productive are not the same thing.

This week I read an extraordinary statement from Carl Jung about this. Writing in a time when the masculine pronoun was taken for granted, he said that man “can meet the needs of outer necessity in an ideal way only…if he is in harmony with himself. Conversely, he can only adapt to his inner world and achieve harmony with himself when he is adapted to the environmental conditions.”

What an extraordinary thing! Obviously, today it would be phrased to include both women and man, but the point is extremely important.

Jung was saying that we can ONLY achieve peak performance, fulfill our potential and know inner peace when we live in harmony with our surroundings! And yet, the vast majority of us work in surroundings that are determined by our employers, by “urgent” emails and phone calls, by the news of the day or whatever interruption happens to destroy our concentration. Even trivial things like yesterday’s dirty dishes, messy desks, unreliable computers or inadequate lighting distract us. That is no way to organize your life or achieve your dreams!

Thomas Leonard was a master at controlling his environment. Although he could afford to live anywhere he chose, he preferred small, tightly controlled spaces. He once told me, and I don’t think he was joking, that financial independence made it possible for him to enjoy “the luxury of an office smaller than most closets.” I never saw dust or dirt or stray papers laying around. And, I think everyone who knew him would acknowledge that in his short 47 years, he achieved an extraordinary amount. The two things – organized space and high productivity – are connected.

Our images of extremely successful people confirm this. The President is never surrounded by clutter. While children and rock stars may throw tantrums and trash their rooms, the Donald Trumps, Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey’s of the world are organized. Their offices and homes, their private jets and executive suites are efficient and inspiring spaces! They achieve great things in part because they are not distracted, confused or frustrated by their surroundings.

I am not a “neat freak” and readily admit that some people are most productive when surrounded by the “creative chaos” of books, papers and files piled all around them. The point is to create the precise environment that allows you to be most productive.

Highly successful people know this. World class athletes don’t have to “find” time to train. Stephen King and other prolific writers don’t “try” to write! Wealthy people don’t “force” themselves to do the paperwork of managing their investments. Successful people organize their environments to support their most important projects.

We can learn from these extraordinary people. We may not be able to be as rigorous and systematic about it (yet!), but we can create environments that encourage and support the achievement of our most important goals.

Greatness is rarely achieved in our “spare time”.

The Science Of Getting Rich

“The men and women who practice the foregoing instructions will certainly get rich, and the riches they receive will be in exact proportion to the definiteness of their vision, the fixity of their purpose, the steadiness of their faith, and the depth of their
gratitude.”

— Wallace D. Wattles

The Science Of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles is a timeless classic written
many years ago. Over a century ago, in fact. But it’s at the root of MANY multi-
Million dollar empires, Including Nightingale-Conant’s $65+ Million Dollar
Business and Bob Proctor’s “Born to be Rich” Program!

Its wisdom is MORE applicable today than when it was written almost 100 years
ago because, as you are about to see, and it not only provides you with thought-
provoking principles and strategies but it’s the most practical, step-by-step guide
you will ever find. Truly.

You are what you think. This books explains the SCIENCE of how to think
yourself rich. So I highly recommend that you read this book cover-to-cover right
now, because a whole new world is waiting for you right now.

By: Brian Tracy

The Most Important Measure of Success
Being respected by others is very important to each of us. A survey done by the Gallup organization found that the most prominent living Americans rated the respect of others as the most important measure of success in life. They worked very hard to earn the respect of their parents, the respect of their spouses and children, the respect of their peers and colleagues, and the respect of mankind at large.

Why You Respect Yourself
It seems that we truly respect ourselves only when we feel that we are respected by others, and we will go to great lengths to earn and keep that respect. When we feel that someone respects us for who we are and what we have accomplished, we tend to be more open to that person’s influence.

Two Things You Can Do
We can do two things to put ourselves in a position to be respected by others. The first is to develop our knowledge of our field. The more people perceive you know about your subject, the more they will respect you. The highest-paid people in almost every field are those who know more than the average people. They are recognized as experts, and they develop what is called “expert power.” Because of their superior knowledge, they are looked up to and listened to, and they are much more capable of influencing others to act in a particular way than they would be if their knowledge level were just average.

Develop Your Expertise
Another way to put ourselves in a position of being respected by others is to develop your expertise. Expertise is closely tied to knowledge, but it is a little different. Expertise is the ability to do, the ability to perform well in your chosen field. Men and women with expertise are those who practice over and over in whatever they do until they become known far and wide as the very best in their field.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:

First, study your field in detail. Dedicate at least one hour per day to reading, listening to audio programs, studying to become more and more knowledgeable about what you do.

Second, continually upgrade your knowledge and skills in your field. Identify your weakest important skill and go to work on that.

Knowledge and know-how are the keys to the 21st century.