Ancient Chinese astronomers divided the whole year into 24 solar terms and Winter Solstice is the 22nd solar term. The Chinese in ancient time found that Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year after which the sun begins its slow return to the North and it usually falls between December 21st to 23rd of the year.

There may be two reasons why the Chinese hold celebrations on this day. One, is that after a hard working year, farmers always take a rest to enjoy their bountiful harvest. The second reason has to do with the theory of Yin and Yang. In Chinese philosophy, Yin symbolizes the feminine and negative qualities of the universe while Yang the masculine and positive. It is dialectical and dynamic in a sense. When something has reached one extreme, it will turn to the oposite. On the day of the Winter Solstice, the Yin is at its peak with the longest night. From then on, it will give way to the light and warmth of Yang. And the Chinese consider it a right time for optimism and joy.

So I would like to wish all Chinese Happy Dong Zhi and happy eating tang yuen to those non Chinese. I am making them myself, how about you? =)

Recently an old friend of mine that I have not met for quite a period of time gave me a comment that I should have start working at this age and not still studying. He said that at this age of mine I should be ashamed to still going to college. I was not angry at him instead I gave him a smile and told him that “There is never TOO OLD to gain knowledge”.

During the one and a half years of studying in Australia, I have a classmate who is as old as my dad. At that point of time I do feel a bit embarrassed to see him in the class as I do have the same concept as a lot of people in the world have that “he is too old to study!” But slowly I began to know him and talked to him. I found that his motivation to study is as much as all of us who claim to be the “studying age”. Having the advantage of working for 25 years in a factory as a technical engineer, he shared a lot of life time experiences with me that I did not learn in class. And finally I asked him the reason that he came back to the University to get a Degree. He corrected me. He said “I do not get into the University to get a Degree, I came to gain more knowledge”. Seeing that he scored way more higher than me in a test, I felt embarrassed of myself.

Now in college, there are a lot younger than me and there are those who are elder than me too. Many do tell me that how bad they feel to study still at his age. All I could tell them is there is never too late to gain knowledge. We study mainly to gain knowledge and as long you did not waste your time playing around, life is never too late to gain knowledge!

The famous Geek mathematician, Archimedes said :

In our life, we definitely need leveraging tools to make our life easier. And in the case of making more money, use every tools that is available and use them wisely to help you create more wealth.

For those who are new in the society, who do not have a network, the easiest way to start is by leveraging on others like your friends, partner, family or anyone around you that you could think of. The things that you could leverage on them are :

1. Their Resources and Time

2. Their Ideas

3. Their contacts or networks

4. Their expertise

There is no self-made millionaire in this world. You always need others to help you to be successful because you just cannot do everything by yourself. You can also leverage through systems, marketing, finance or customers.

Leverage is crucial to your long-term wealth in business and life. Whenever you as the owner do a task, ask yourself, “Am I being paid once for this task, or forever?” Use leverage… see, I only wrote this entry once, and tens of thousands of people have read it just like you. =)

]]> http://suelooi.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/the-power-of-leverage/feed/ 2 suelooi leverage http://suelooi.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/dare-to-tell-your-dreams/ http://suelooi.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/dare-to-tell-your-dreams/#comments Wed, 09 Jun 2010 09:23:29 +0000 suelooi http://suelooi.wordpress.com/?p=91 ]]> Everyone has their own dreams, some may be wild and some may be normal. But how many of you will tell everyone about your dream? Like myself, I once wanted to become a singer, that was my dream when I was still young. But what happened was I will just lock myself in the room, holding my comb or something rod like to act as a microphone then blast the music in my room and sing like those singers on stage ( I bet you could imagine how funny that will be =) ) I did not dare to tell anyone except my parents about my dreams because I myself know how badly I sing with all the tone out of place. But without me knowing many people did gave compliment on my singing. But like the below picture, we are afraid of people telling us this right?

But in our life, we should always look for dream stokers but not dream soakers. People who tells you that is what we call dream soakers. So we need to look for dream stokers. Someone who will tell you something like the below picture.

So tell your dreams to everyone! Let them criticize you! Because their criticism is the best motivator!

It is important to learn soft skills in our life whether we are working as an employee irregardless what kind of job or self-employed or businessman. Let me give you an example on soft skills.

Two salesmen eagerly race to your door!  The first one wins your attention.  You let him in and he shows you his latest model vacuum.  He tells you all about its sucking capacity, its ease of operation, the factory warranty, and the differences between different models.  With a patient but zoned-out bored look, you let the man leave.  He passes the second salesman waiting on your porch for his turn.

You yawn and let the second guy in.  But there’s something different about this other salesman.  He takes a moment to look around your living room.  He sees a picture of your cute little girl and compliments you.  He asks you a couple other “small talk” questions and gets to know you better.  He listens to you.  He really listens to you and the problems you face.  Somehow he knows how to gently draw out your general home cleanliness concerns.  He has suggestions on how to clean drapes more effectively, how to dust without leaving streaks–nothing directly related to vacuum sales just yet.  Nevertheless you are drawn in.  This salesman has converted you as his friend.  You trust him and believe him.  Then the salesman points out the benefits you’ll receive if you purchase his vacuum.  Plus, you notice that he knows just as much about the product and company and the first guy!  Hmmm…

QUESTION: Which one closes the sale?

ANSWER: The one who used his “soft skills”– the latter one.

There are 4 important elements in soft skills :

1. Study their BODY LANGUAGE

Body language is an important part of communication which can constitute 50% or more of what we are communicating. If you wish to communicate well, then it makes sense to understand how you can (and cannot) use your body to say what you mean.

2. Energy

The energy that I am talking about  is the HAPPY energy in you! Imagine if you are talking to a person who keeps yawning in front of you, how will you feel? Or if you are a student, will you enjoy going to a class with a lecturer actively walking around with so much energy or a lecturer just standing all the time in front of the class pointing at the white board talking only? You can transfer your energy to the person you are talking to by showing your HAPPY energy to them.

3. Build Rapport through mirroring

You can build rapport through mirroring the BODY LANGUAGE, the TONALITY and also the CHOICE OF WORDS. What I meant with mirroring is “copying” or “following”. Like a mirror, it reflects whatever is in front of it. So you can reflect whoever you are talking to.

4. Break the State!

Some people are closed to what you are trying to share with them, some are defensive. A way to “open” them up is to break the state! How you may ask me. Well, what will make you jump up suddenly? A surprise? A shock? Create some surprises by changing the topic. For example, you were suppose to tell this friend how good is your product but he/she is closed to what you are sharing with him/her. So you can break the state by changing the topic to some recent news with a little high tone all of a sudden and start talking about the new topic before bringing him/her back to the product you are introducing.

The keys to the plan as described by Najib at the 30 March unveiling are “high income, sustainability and inclusiveness”.The goal is to stimulate economic growth by improving worker productivity across all sectors of society, in part through an improved system of affirmative action, with an eye towards sustainability. Among other reforms meant to accomplish this goal, the NEM seeks to empower the private sector and to reduce fiscal disparity between the wealthiest and poorest of Malaysians. The plan is intended to replace the New Economic Policy(NEP).Najib criticised the way that the NEP had been implemented over its 40 year history, arguing that affirmative action policies of the NEP needed to be better targeted.

Well, it does sound nice in a way how our Prime Minister put it. But in order to launch NEM, subsidies will be cut off. Prices of goods will rise and do you think you can survive by just earning RM1500 per month? So, do you think the government is trying to save the country from going  into bankruptcy or trying to save us? Are you sitting there now not worrying of your survival after NEM launched or are you thinking of ways to earn more money now?

Leader of the opposition party, DAP, Lim Kit Siang said :

But the biggest challenge for the NEM is whether there are “political will and leadership to break the log-jam of resistance by vested interest groups and preparing the rakyat to support deep-seated changes in policy directions”.

Will Najib fail in the first NEM test of political will and leadership as predicted by the NEM itself?

So are you supporting NEM or not?

I believe most of you had been through this where there is a little voice whispering to you, pulling you back from doing a lot of things. Some might be good but some might be bad.

For whatever that you are doing now, whether you are studying, working or just simply doing nothing sitting at home, even when you are reading my post now, there is a little voice whispering to you. The little voice might be telling you “What you are reading is so true” or “Hey, she is writing crap here!” or anything.

These little voices are what helping us making decision every single day. But sometimes these little voices are what pulling us back from being successful or doing the right thing.

I had been doing some cold calls to some real estate agents these few days. A few rejections I had but there were also a few that are interested. I have been through this one person who at the beginning sounded so irritated when I introduced myself to him. He gave me a feeling to scold him for being so rude to me. I did not scold him of course but I just off the call with a “Bye”. The little voice is whispering to me that “This guy is a complete jerk and you should never call him back!” But suddenly I was being reminded of a short training from Shuang Hor the other night that I attended in Singapore where this guy were sharing his experience in cold callings. He was telling us that he faced rejections and there is this little voice in him asking him to give up. But he didn’t, he called back again and again and end up the person praised him for being very persistent and finally wanted to meet him up!

So I called back claiming that I was afraid that the line will cut off just now because I was going into the lift. This time around I did not wait for him to respond and straight away tell him my purpose of calling. Surprisingly he never talk to me rudely anymore and he sounded so much interest in it and wanted to meet me up. I was glad I did not listened to that little voice in me.

So for whatever that you are doing now, you need to learn to judge things by yourself instead of listening to that little voice in you. Study for your exam and stop listening to the little voice that is telling you that you are too tired to study! Get up and learn to play the game and stop listening to the little voice that is telling you that the game is too hard for you!

I wonder all of you watch Survivor? To those who do not know about this live game, let me share a little information about it with you.

Survivor is a game where you will be put into an isolated place with no money, no basic necessities, just yourself and some cloths. In this game you will need to fight to survive for a period of time finding your own way to live on and going through games to get awards for your survival. The last one who survived wins the game and get an amount of money. OUTWIT, OUTLAST, OUTPLAY. That is what needed to play the Survivor game.

For the training that I went through during the past few days, especially with the Bankruptcy Game that I shared in my previous post, I had learned to be a SURVIVOR. The only difference of Bankruptcy Game and Survivor is I learned to OUTWIT and OUTPLAY but not OUTLAST because we were being trained to work as a team.

We did a mistake by splitting up for the Bankruptcy Game. We should work in a group and know our own strength to work together as a team like how Jonathan and Candice did. When they shared us their experience of how they made money in the Bankruptcy Game, I was really impressed with the way they think and the way they manage to make decision fast. Like I shared in my previous post, I made a mistake by not daring enough to buy a cheap product and sell it off with a higher price afraid of loosing what I have already got.

Another mistake that I did was not having a strategy and not knowing my inner-strength. After playing the Bankruptcy Game I learned to know my inner-strength, what I am good in and how to plan out my strategy before I do something. It is very important thing to learn in life especially being self-employed now, we need to have strategies for most of the things we do so that we wouldn’t be lost in the process. And the most important is to hold firm on what we really want!

]]> http://suelooi.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/training-no-2-survivor/feed/ 0 suelooi Survivor http://suelooi.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/training-no-1/ http://suelooi.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/training-no-1/#comments Tue, 11 May 2010 09:57:46 +0000 suelooi http://suelooi.wordpress.com/?p=61 ]]> Yesterday was the first day of my training on being a consultant with True North Asia. And it was really quite an experience day that I learned quite a lot of things from it.

I was waken with a loud door knock at 7am. I know most of you might say that “it is just 7am, not too early” but for a person like me who had been waking up earliest at 10am every day, waking up at 7am is not an easy thing =)

Me and Audrey followed Jonathan to the office and together with Sarah, Leo and Vicky we had a meeting where Jonathan taught us how to do our TIME MANAGEMENT. We learned how to plan out our plans on each week and every day and write down our target every week. After that Jonathan gave us a task which all of us need to create our own DATA BASE of contacts.

After lunch we had a 2 and half hours game which was really interesting. We were brought to 1 Utama and all our bags, phones, money were taken, then were asked to walk around in 1 Utama for 2 and half hours to get as much cash as possible with conditions that we cannot tell people that we were having training and also we were working.

In that 2 and half hours, I tried so many ways and I approached more than 50 people with so many rejections! End up I got RM 1 each from 2 person who I told that I loss my purse and trying to borrow 50 cents to make a call. And with the same technique a person really just gave me 20 cents! Then I went and offered help to carry things to his car and let the person choose how much he would give me and guess how much he gave me? 50 cents! I wanted to go and buy some things to sell it off with a higher price but too much doubts were stopping me to do it which I was regretting it now because I hit the biggest mistake in doing sales, FEAR!

Of course I did learn a lot of things through this game especially after hearing what others did to get their cash. It was tiring walking around non stop for 2 and half hours but it is worth going through it!

Failure is the mother of Success!“

Yet, talk to an entrepreneur or an enlightened CEO who sees innovation and creativity as the path to profitability and long term sustainability, and they will talk openly about failures, mistakes, and setbacks as steps along the path to success.

Organizations, not just individuals, can also learn from mistakes. Boeing became a success in the passenger jet market with its workhorse, the Boeing 707, by learning from the tragic design flaw in the Comet, the first passenger jet to be extensively used in commercial air travel. By studying metal fatigue design failures in the Comet that literally caused its wings to fall off in mid-flight, Boeing engineered into its 707 the wingspan “flex” that is common to airplane design today.

What we can take from successes stories like Tony Blair is that the path to success has many milestones–some are positive and productive, and some are setbacks. It’s not what we lose from the setbacks, but rather what we learn and apply that make the future a success.

So are you still afraid of failure?