Ups and downs

A friend consultant shares his philosophy with me, “When you are riding on a big waves, go crazy with your full speed. When you are down in a valley, fully absorb yourself to learn, exercise new muscles and prepare coming out of it.”

He was fired twice from his jobs. The first time he was fired, he went to get his Master degree in MBA. The second time he was fired, he went to get his Ph.D in business management and founded his consulting company.

Now he is an influential strategist, having over 100 employees working in his consulting companies.

He knows how to handle ups and downs in his life.

When you are moving on the right direction, everything comes to your way. You are in the Yang wind. Whatever you do you feel you can make a difference.

When you are in the Yin zone, whatever you do you feel you are a failure. You may not have that kinds of upset like being fired. However, you always have big or small bumps on your way.

You can control your pace to prevent or reduce that big failure. You can go away for a retreat so that you can come back strong.

Life is a marathon. You need to recharge, regain your energy, refresh and continue your journey.

The best way to pace yourself is to take a sabbatical… we are luck that we can practically take our sabbatical by planning it daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.

We can walk away from our work completely. We can have daily meditation, exercises, yoga, reading and reflection time for ourself. We can have weekly or monthly intermittent fasting, social activities. We have annual event, retreat…

Ups and downs are normal stuff in our life. And you are the master to face and control the ups and downs. Because we are luck that we have the authority and power to command our mind and physical muscles.

Creativity in your life

Creativity is not an abstract word, not a big word, not a dream.

A life with creativity is a life all about changes – you move forward, take chances, explore new frontiers.

The real risk in life is that you do not change.

To thrive in life, you can test all your dreams, your crazy plans, and be yourself.

There are always opportunities if you have tried enough. Each trial, wether is a success or small or big bump, brings you closer to your target. If you fall, you still fall forward, at least you have moved forward a body length.

Fall your calling down in your heart that keeps coming back hunting you to do something about it. Keep doing, keep trying, keep moving, these will break you free, open new territories, new exploration, and new you.

Therefore, you create a new life.

Creation is the blood stream of your life. It excite you, attract you, bring oxygen to your life.

Be ambitious. Be bold. Go big.

Don’t close your show.

Keep doing, keep creating.

Be vulnerable and brave

When we live in our dream, not dream our dream, we experience ups and downs in life.

We may be failed. We may hit to a wall. We may get hurt.

However, these are all part of the plan for you to grow stronger, get better, and bigger.

Theodore Roosevelt said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again… who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”

Time management = Your “why” management

For a long time, people have been saying about time management.

There are many tools available for you to choose from.

However, with tools you are still struggling with your crammed schedules and constant disruptions from all directions. Keeping your focus and staying centered in a world that seems increasingly out of balance is hard.

I tried to manage my time. There was somewhat improvement, and I expect to be better.

Then I realized that to manage the WHY is a more efficient and effective way to manage your time.

You can prioritize your day with your intention by asking yourself three whys: why you need do what you’ve planned to do; why they are important to you; why they are urgent today.

By arranging your day according to whys, you have a clear direction and sense of mission. They empower you. They can allow you to have a bigger impact to the world. At the end of the day, you feel fulfilled and happy.

Think about your whys when you prioritize your day.

Recharge yourself

You are ambitious.

You want to more. You want to learn more. You want to influence more. Your schedule is crammed with todos. You are burn out.

Now, you need a break to recharge.

You need to enjoy life, indulge yourself, satisfy your curiosity and relax. You need to keep your elasticity.

Recharge is to be ready for the next journey.

A better process is to space out your energy and focus, prioritize your todos, and focus on the process more than the results. Doing a little bit work every day.

“If you work a little bit something every day, you will end up with something that is massive.” — Kenneth Goldsmith

The process is more important than the results.

Make assertions

When you want to make a change, to influence someone, or to make a difference, you get to make an assertion.

An assertion is something that you believe is true. But you need to test it to confirm it.

You assertion may be like this – ” No matter how educated, talent, rich, or cool you believe you are, how you treat people ultimately tells all. Integrity is everything.”

With this assertion, you may need to test:

What is the definition of integrity?

What would happen for the highly educated, rich or cool people who don’t have integrity?

What does a person having integrity behave?

Why integrity is everything?

If someone is challenging your assertion, what would be your alternative answer? How will you test it?

You see, through this thinking and testing process, you can get clarity, make progress, and get better on going everything!

Make assertions for your work, for your life, for everything you do, and test them. This is how we make small changes. Little by little, you can make a difference.

Fact and truth

We hear people making a firm statement based on facts – what they saw, what has happened. And they claim the statement is the truth, because it’s based on facts.

However, fact is not equal truth.

As a leader, you can’t make a decision just based on fact. You need to know the truth.

Finding the truth takes effort, needs empathy, needs to create a safe zone to earn other’s trust.

Finding truth calls for wisdom, leadership and courage.

Altitude is a skill

If you can learn to be better at something, it’s a skill. And if it’s a skill, it’s yours if you want to have it.

Do you want to have a better altitude?

It is your decision and option to have a better altitude or not.

You can learn and own a skill.

Altitude is a skill.

You can decide to own a better altitude.

Trust is a decision

Trust is an important binding factor for any relationship.

We make a judgement to trust someone or not basing on several factors. A couple of the most factors are: the consistency of the person’s action and the motives & intentions of the person.

Therefore, trust is a decision we make.

To trust someone takes time. It’s not easy to make such a decision.

Once a trust is violated. It is difficult to rebuild it.

However, distrust is not a bad things for many occasions.

You don’t need to trust all your board members, you need to challenge them for the best of the company.

When you have conservation of trust towards to some clients, you get to do due-diligent checks on them to reduce risks.

Distrust is also a decision.

We make decisions daily from our best judgement. Trust or distrust are among them.

Don’t dream about life, live it!

We have dreams.

We all are born with dreams, big or small dreams.

Dreams make our life colorful, rich and complicated with multiple dimensions.

We need to reflect our goals and inspirations from time to time, so that we can keep our dreams alive. Because the dreams are the source of energy, our engine to live a fulfilled life.

The fulfilled life may be filled with sweats, sore legs, but with more satisfaction of newly developed muscles and experience. They make us stronger, happier and inspired.

Don’t save your dreams, don’t leave your dreams on your computer desktop, start to live in your dreams.

Start with baby steps.

Three baby steps can be:

Know your dreams, what you want achieve
Be present and start walk one foot in front of another towards to your dream, even you may be not ready, not knowing the result.
Accept the reality and keep move forward. You can’t control the reality. You don’t know what will happen after each step. However, you can control yourself. So accept whatever comes to your way and continue going.

Don’t just dream about your life, live it now.