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.

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.

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.

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.

Saying and doing

We say a lot, sometimes we are moved by our own speeches. We make a lot of plans. We make New Year’s resolutions.

How many of the sayings are transferred into action?

There is a gap between saying and doing.

When we say too much, but without equal doing, we are hiding. We hide from fear – fearing failure.

However, you know that failure is the closet step to your success. Each failure points the other potential right way for you. You get to find this out only through your action.

When you realize there is a gap between your saying and doing. It is the good time to do things, little by little, step by step, drip, drip, and drip, you are getting closer to your success.

Gratitude

Miracle has happened to many people’s lives when they stared to express and feel the gratitudes very often. They write gratitude diary usually.

I tried to write gratitude diary. But, it seems that I can’t keep the consistence. Then I realized that if I begin to appreciate myself, then I can become having more appreciations to other.

If you haven’t started this practice yet, one way to start your gratitude journey is use 3+1 approach.

3+1 means that 1) write down 3 things you feel the gratitude towards to yourself. Such as, I am grateful today for my yoga; I am grateful for completed 80% of my to-do-list; I am grateful for having a health. 2) write down 1 thing that you feel grateful for externals, such as, I am grateful that I live and work in a safe environment; or I am grateful today because I have heart to heart conversation with a few colleagues today.

Try the 3+1 rule and start your gratitudes today.

Are you busy?

When I ask friends how they are doing, some of them said they are very busy. While some of them said they are doing well and not that busy.

I reflect what they do and realize that some of my friends from the second group have similar job positions with the first group, and some of them are even having higher executive positions.

What is going on here? Aren’t the General Managers supposed to be busier?

“Busy people have no future.” – one of my CEO friends said.

She further explained that she prioritize her to-do-list. She makes time to think, to rest, to reflect, to make personal growth plan. She is not busy. She feels fulfilled and happy about work and life.

Are you really busy? Or you haven’t planned your work and life that well? Or you are pursuing a busy status to show you are capable or important?

Well, you can learn how to plan your work and life through many channels as long as you are clear and determined to sort this out. Getting work done is about working smarter, not busier.

However, if you pretend to be busy, then you may be hiding. You may be hiding your talent, your character, and hiding yourself from opportunity as well.

Check it now: are you busy?

Assumption

I am more aware of assumptions now than before.

This has two folds: I become more aware of my own assumptions when I talk to others and when I have a self talk.

These moments usually are the time when I have emotions – strongly against or for some things or some opinions. Therefore, I become realizing that I have assumptions or altitudes towards the situation. I have screwed up things in the past by allowing my emotions (assumptions) took control my life…

By realizing an assumption has helped me to see things differently, in others eyes, and give other the benefit of the doubt. Therefore, I have lived in a more peaceful mind, a happier mind.

“Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups” – unknown

When next time you get emotional during a conversation, check what is going in your mind; when you have a conflict with someone, check where is the debating point. How many of them are assumptions from you or others?

Once you become aware of your assumptions, you will become sensible and smarter.

If you realize others’ assumption, you can either point it out or let it go. Because you can create millions of assumptions. The only way to know the truth of it is to test it. Without testing, an assumption is just an assumption, it will not get you any where.

Get real,

Test it,

Live truly.

We don’t need screwups and assumptions if we don’t have to.