What is the freedom feel like?

Many people pursue freedom in their life, actually freedom may be the top life goal for many many people.

We crave for freedom to do things we’d like to do, to live the life we choose to live, to be the person we want to be…

So, if you have the freedom, what is the freedom feel like now?

Someone answered me like this: “When I have the feeling of freedom, I always feel I am growing bigger, enormous, and stretched from extremities to all directions – like a spider net without boarder and I am part of the net.

The connection, be able to express myself, being useful… these give me the feeling of freedom.”

Again, take a moment and feel the freedom in you. What does it feel like?

3 Words for Acceptance

We are sometimes in situations where we are hurt or injured, we are stuck in a traffic going no where, we are mistreated…

What do we do?

Get mad? Get sad? Get sorry for yourself?

One formula to deal with the situations – give yourself five minutes to get rid of your steam, five minutes, that’s it! After that, you need get back to your life, pull off yourself together, forget about what had happened, because you can’t change it.

So remember three words: can’t change it!

Then accept it, move on.

Use the three words as anchor to transfer your energy and emotional power to things you need to do, the life you need to live.

Because you can’t change anything that had happened. Do something new. Change your situation. Refocus yourself for things make your life better.

Signals for action

You know that you are the sum of your action. Then are you aware what makes you to take action? What are the signals for you to take action?

Just pause for a second…

What did you do before you read my blog? What did make you to read my blog now?

When you reflect this, what picture appears in front of you? May be you can “see” what makes you to do what you do.

There are some signals that may stimulate or trigger you to take action:

Resonance. Something or someone resonates with your believes, your desires, or your values. You are excited, pumped… you can’t sit still. You get to express yourself. You get to explore these. Therefore, they invigorate your internal engine, your resources, your potentials. You grow.

Dissonance. Something is not aligning well with you. You are angry, sad, frustrated… you want to shout, cry, run, drive your car to 200k/h… you feel the butterfly in your stomach, the noise around you… When this happens, it also makes you crazy and try to figure out what is happening. This is a good signal and opportunity you can’t ignore. You have to do something about it. This is the birthplace for changes.

When you have emotions, you need to have a stop, reflect what is happening, figure out a positive approach, take the action.

Resonance and dissonance are both good signals for you to think and take actions.

Actions make who you are.

Be quiet

We are living in a very noise environment, literally there is loudly sound at malls, in buses, restaurants…

And the fast- paced world distracts us from our focus, our quiet time, makes our mind spin.

We response automatically to things happening to us and around us, because there is little time to think.

Our time is robbed by constant outside distractions, demands and requests. We feel busy every day. It actually gives us a super facial sense of accomplishment…

… till one day,

one day we suddenly feel somewhat empty, realize that we don’t know how to think any more.

We are so good at responding, it becomes our second nature – our habit. We are drifting in life.

We forget who we are, what we want, how to create our values…

This is the time when you need a quite time.

Be quiet.

Listen to your heart: what makes you happy? Who you are? What is your dream? What do you want?

If you want to do one thing today that gives you a big smile, put your mark on it, what would it be?

Listen to your mind: what can make you sing, smile and jump out of bed in the morning? Do one such thing today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow…

Find a quiet moment every day.

In the quiet, you will find yourself again.

The quiet mind is a powerful mind.
The quiet mind is a clear mind.
The quiet mind is the permeate source and engine house for you to discover your endless potential.

Just be quiet.

What is being open-minded?

We say to be open is a pleasant trait. Therefore, we all strive to be an open-minded person.

What is exactly being open-minded?

Being open is an altitude. It’s an altitude towards work and life. Being open provides you more opportunity to see things in many angles, with more possibilities and options. It also provides you more opportunities to connect with people, to get closer to the truth of a matter, to get more accuracy to do things.

Does open-minded mean you have to listen to others all the time? Most of the time? Or some of the time?

It really depends…

Being a leader, you may need to be more open in order to get fuller evaluation of a situation. Therefore, you will get better judgement and reduce the chance for potential risk. You can make decisions quickly for smaller things, but with open discussion and debate for bigger (fewer) decisions.

Jeff Bezos said “People who are right a lot listen a lot, and they change their mind a lot.”

He believes that if you do not change your mind frequently, you are going to be wrong a lot.

Therefore, being open means you need to be ready to change your minds, to face tough situations, to embrace the pain to grow stronger.

Being open-minded is not a show. It gets to be from the bottom of your heart. Only then, you can learn, grow, and get better for what you do.

Live truly for yourself with a growth-mind, ie, an open-mind.

What is your story?

You made New Year’s resolutions. You could not keep them to the end of the year.

You made goals and milestones for your work. You did not carry on to complete them.

You have dreams and ambitions. You haven’t started your actions to pursue them…

These sound familiar, right?

What did happen there? What stories did you tell yourself? Did you realize you were tell yourself something when you stoped action as you planed?

May be you heard that you were telling yourself that today I felt tired, I need a break; or you were telling yourself that this is so hard, why not enjoy my life instead…; or you were telling yourself that why should I work that hard when someone else can cheat and get away with it…; or you were telling yourself that I have my dream, but I can do something about it on another day….and another day never comes.

If you do not catch the small talks you have with yourself. You may be drafting, wondering and wasting your time and your life.

What is your life purpose?

Socrates said that an unexamined life not worth living.

Take a pause, reflect what you have been doing and what you have been telling yourself. Take meditation, evaluate your life.

Only when you begin listen to yourself, examine if your stories are in alignment with your life purpose, you then can redirect your energy and your focus to where you want to go.

Get your stories right. Go with your stories.

Love yourself first and foremost

I was educated to serve others first from very young by the environment I grew up. If I served myself first, I was criticized as selfish. Therefore, I had been tried hard to think for others, serve others first.

Until…I began my second job, I realized that I was not happy always put others first. When I was not myself, I could not treat others fairly, I could not make others happy even though I tried really hard.

I learned then that only when I am myself, I can treat others better. When I feel happy, I am happily doing my work, talking to others and living happily.

Me comes first is not a selfish act. It is actually a responsible act. It is first and foremost important rule in life.

Michelle Obama said the lesson she learned first year at White House is to love herself first. Only then she can love the President Obama, her daughters, her job and what she does…

Oprah said the similar thing, love yourself first before you could love anyone else truly.

Love yourself first and foremost, then you can love the world more, give more, and create more.

Go with the flow

A close friend who has a typical type A personality, came back from a trip to Bali. She told me that the trip has big impact on her. The biggest one is to remember or remind herself from time to time to go with the flow.

“Why is that?” I asked her.

“Because I feel going with the flow relaxed me. I feel myself again, peace, happy and also become more energetic…”

She is right.

Flow is a energy. Going with flow is to go to the direction of energy. You give the way to the energy, not block the way of the energy. Of course you will feel better, because you are riding with the energy!

These are the moments when you are absorbed into doing your work, realizing your dream and making a difference with sweats.

Eyes on the goal

When I was walking on the glass ceiling of Toronto TV tower, I was fine until I looked down through the glass ceiling… I felt immediately dizzy, panic and could not walk any more.

I stopped, had a couple of deep breath. Then I raised my head, looked forward towards where I wanted to go. I felt fine again and walked across the glass ceiling to the other side.

We set up our goal and are pumped up to execute it. During the journey, we get busy. Then we are buried into meticulous matters, can’t see the end of the tunnel. We begin to loose our momentum, get lost on the way…

Just like walking on a glass ceiling, if we take a pause, review our goal and direction, we will regain our sense of clarity and our vision. We can then recharge and move forward to our goal. When our eyes on the goal, we are courageous.

There may be many “glass ceiling” sections in our life. This is normal.

The good news is that when we feel panic, it is a good signal for us to stop and take an inventory for where we are and where we are going. This is the wisdom of our physiology telling us to make a choice, to put our eyes on our goal.

Tough love

If use the tough love to link a scene, make a sentence, or tell a story, the first one comes to my mind is that we need to give the tough love to our children to let them grow stronger.

Then on a second thought, I realize that tough love can apply to many other areas of our life.

For examples: When we provide constructive suggestions or opinions to others honestly, we are presenting our tough love. When we expose our own vulnerability, we are giving ourselves a tough love.

It is not easy to give someone a tough love. This act calls for wisdom and courage.

Therefore, when someone presents you with their feedbacks and comments, please welcome and savor them. They give these to you, because they care about you. You are remarkable, therefore they make a remark to you.

When you show your vulnerability, you experience weakness, pain. You feel the wound. However, you grow new tissues and new muscles from there, and you become stronger.

On the other hand, it is also not easy for people to accept the tough love, because it needs labor – the physical labor and emotional labor, to be able to accept and receive the tough love.

It is like the pain for a new birth, receiving tough love needs the labor pain. However, this pain let’s us renew, makes us stronger.

Let’s embrace tough love.