Visualized.Feel.Abundance

Hey Folks,

I have taken great pains (4 post) to set the stage for what I am going to share with you today. I did it not to “fill in” posts but I sincerely feel that to really appreciate what I am going to say in this post, you need to understand the real situation. So take some time to read them before you continue with this post:

Understanding The “Boss” Mentality
Understanding The Effects Of Globalization And Outsourcing
Understanding The Effects Of The New Economy On Our Salary
Misconceptions of Key Performance Indicators, Promotions and Pay Increments

Summary Of Prior Post

“We live in an era where the economy dictates that companies pay their employees what they are worth and that worth is determined by how much a company is willing to pay as cost of the products or services they produce. Anytime the an employee ceases to produce the value they were paid for, the company would be forced to reevaluate the need for that employee.”

Who’s Considered An Asset
To be an asset in a company, it doesn’t always mean that you need to climb the corporate ladder (although it is a common result of being an asset). Every company needs assets at every level of their company structure. You don’t always have to be a manager or departmental head to be an asset. For example:

A production line worker that is always on time, meets his daily production target, helps fellow colleagues in times of need and encourages and keeps the team in high morale is an asset.

A housekeeper keeping the office and toilets pristinely clean everyday creates an environment so comfortable and conducive to work that every employee feels good when reaching office is an asset.

How To Be An Asset
What I am going to show you is a series of thought provoking questions that will guide you to:

1) Discover and determine your current value in your company
2) Find your direction and balance in your company
3) Become a positive influence in your company

Discover and determine your current value in your company
First, you need to asked yourself these basic questions:

1) For what purpose where you hired for?
- You can check the job description for your position or alternatively, check with your boss. You need to know exactly what your role is before you can determined your value.

2) How do I determine the value I have created for my company?
- For some jobs such as sales, this is simple, the amount of sales they bring is their value. For some jobs such as accounting and human resource, it is not as simple to determine. In such cases, the KPI will be an invaluable tool to justify your value. If you do not have a KPI set for you, talk to your boss and get one.

3) What values have I produced for the company?
- Again for jobs such as sales, just check your figures. The rest will depend mainly on whether they have met their KPI’s set for them or their department. The minimum that every employee could do is to meet their KPI as this alone tells your boss that you are not a liability.

Find your direction and balance in your company
Once you have the answers to the above, you have to ask yourself these questions next:

1) What is your vision of yourself in the company 5 years from now?
- Would you like to remain in the same position or proceed to the next level? Understand what that vision of yours will implies. If you decide to stay at where you are, you will need to understand that there will be a cap to how much salary you can earn in the long run. And if it is higher salary that you desire, you will need to improve your skill set (management skill, communications skill, etc) to advance.

- For example, a production line worker will never earn $5000 a month but a production line manager has the capacity to do that. However, he will need knowledge of how to run a production line, quality control measures and procedure, people management, scheduling, etc in order to advance.

2) Are you happy with that vision and is that what your heart desires?
- I know some employees who are perfectly happy to stay where they are while some may decide to scale the corporate ladder. Whichever is your preference, you need to be at ease with that decision. A happy and grateful employee is productive, well liked and becomes an asset while a resentful employee spreads negativity and affects the productivity everyone else around him and becomes a liability.

- Both the happy and resentful employee is in similar situation, draws similar pay and is equally productive (quantitatively) but they are viewed in a differently in light of their actions, which is a result of their thoughts.

3) What are the values you need to create to get where you want to be?
- If you desire to escalate, find out the job description or KPI of that position and acquire the necessary skill. Talk to your boss, he should be able to facilitate. If that position is higher then where your boss currently is, helping him to get there before you could help you greatly.

- If you desire to stay put, create you own unique proposition. Be the most productive employee, most helpful employee, the most innovative employee, etc.

Become a positive influence in your company
What ever you choose, remember to deliver the basic value you were hired for (meet KPI) and be a positive influence on your team, department and company. By looking towards the positive side of things and events, you put yourself in a position to spot opportunities and capitalized on them.

Here are some positive influence tips:

a) Communicate In The Right Direction - If you have doubts or negative feedbacks, convey upwards (to your bosses). If you have positive ideas and encouragements, convey downwards (to your staffs, colleagues).

b) Volunteer First - When management asked for volunteers, be the first to volunteer for the task that you know you are proficient in. You kill 2 birds by getting brownie points for volunteering and avoid being tasked something that you aren’t able to handle.

c) Help Yourself First - Always complete your own task first, then extend whatever help to the rest of the team. If team work is part of your KPI, clarify with your boss which comes first (teamwork or own task and write it down).

d) Keep A Smile On - Maintaining a smile on your face at work can do wonders to you and all that is around you. It is like an infectious virus then everyone will catch and it make people happy

e) Share Abundantly - Share your experience, knowledge and skills with your colleagues. By sharing abundantly, you will attract others to share with you, even your boss. I assure you that you will gain more then you have given out. For example, I share 5 tips with 30 colleagues and 5 of them share with me 1 tips each. Net total is that I have 10 tips now, 25 of them have the 5 they had while the other 5 have 6 each.

f) Always Bring At Least One Solution For A Problem - Never give your boss problems. If you must, bring along some probable solutions. If you have only 1 probable solution, add a solution you know your boss won’t take so you give him a choice.

“Don’t find fault, find a remedy;
anybody can complain. - Henry Ford”

g) Don’t Leave Problems Alone - I have seen many clerks manually extracting figures from their system by printing out reports then manually collating figures into an Excel spreadsheet. They spent 2-3 days a month doing just that! An elegant solution is to get your IT department or vendor to create a automated report that will takes just minutes to get the same report. Even when a cost is involved, I believe it will be justified in the long run.

“Most people spend more time
and energy going around problems
than in trying to solve them. - Henry Ford”

h) Run It Like You Own It - Always think of how a certain decision, action, process, etc will benefit the company (not yourself). Only when you start running the company like you own it, the benefits will come a full circle to benefit you.

“If there is any one secret of success,
it lies in the ability to get the other person’s
point of view and see things from that person’s angle
as well as from your own. - Henry Ford”

i) Never Work Hard, Work Smart - Working hard without working smart is the dumb mans way of earning a living. An employee working smart can produce the same result in much less time then an employee working hard. Using the same example in (g), the smart employee with automate the report has 3 more work day per month then the other who works hard (hard manual labor). If you spot and solve a problem that saves 10 man-minute per employee per day for a company of 1000 employees, you save your company 48,000 man hour each year henceforth! That is roughly 18 years your annual value to the company, imagine that!

j) Work Hard Only When Necessary - Sometime the company finds itself in some situation where they need you to draw a little deeper into your reserves to help them out! Do it, you will be appreciated. What you don’t need to do is to work late everyday even when you don’t need too. It could be deemed as inefficient.

k) Never Say “No” Right Away - When given a task or problem to consider, ask for some time and think about it seriously. It lends credence to you that you have given it due thought, even when you know from experience that it cannot be done, and sometimes, you might just find a solution that you haven’t thought of.

“I am looking for a lot of men
who have an infinite capacity to
not know what can’t be done. - Henry Ford”

l) You Always Have A Little More Then You Think - When you thought you have given all you have, just empty your cup one more time, reset your objective view and take a look at the whole team, department, company, processes again. You are bound to find something more to improve on.

“The man who will use his skill and
constructive imagination to see how
much he can give for a dollar,
instead of how little he can give for a dollar,
is bound to succeed. - Henry Ford”

I have shared a great many tips with you folks and I do hope you have benefited from it. If you have other tips or opinions, please feel free to contribute here. And nope, I am not going to talk about liability. Talking about it will just get you focused on it and I would prefer that you focus on being an asset.

With this post, I end my series of 5 post on “Are You An Asset Or Liability To Your Company?“.

Love,
James

PS: Folks, the key points in this post is Perspective and Gratitude. To understand and be thankful, allow a soul to drop whatever resentment is holding you back and gives you room to achieve greater things in life even when your skills stays the same. Think about it.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Hey Folks,

Today I will talk about something that has been talked about countless of times but I will talk about it again based on my perspective of the subject and the subject for today’s post is the Law of Attraction.

There are many explanations or definitions for The Law of Attraction, from Quantum Physics point of view to New Age movement to New Thought philosophy. I shall offer my view of what Law of Attraction means to me, how it works and why it works the way it works.

My Definition Of The Law Of Attraction
To me, the Law of Attraction is nothing but the reflection of ourselves! Yes, you heard me right the first time. The Law of Attraction is nothing but a reflection of ourselves. What you think, you become. It is without prejudice and it does not know the difference between a positive and a negative thought. It reflects what you are thinking and helps you attract whatever you are doing.

That is why people with an abundance mindset always seemed to able to find solutions to a problem or get good deals where none seems to exist. While people with limiting beliefs always seemed to find more problems and get no opportunities at all! Same situations with different thoughts and they get different results!

Testing My Definition
You can test out this theory anytime you like and it will work every time. I like to use driving as an example. When I am in a happy mood with ample time to take a relaxing drive to my appointment, I will tend to focus on positive things I encounter on the road. I will spot drivers signaling before changing lanes, I will tend to give way willingly and be happy about it, I will keep within the speed limit and stay off the overtaking lane. In general, I will find everything enjoyable about driving.

When I am in a bad mood and especially when I am running late. I tend to curse all the way to my destination about inconsiderate drivers hogging the overtaking lane. Why? Because I am trying to overtake on that lane too while driving at excessive speed sometimes. I get even more frustrated as I focus on little things that gets me frustrated. Oh and I won’t even notice that 70% of the other road users were nice that day.

Go ahead and try it but it may be a good idea to bring a neutral party along (preferably someone who is close to you), they tend to see the difference clearly. Karen (my wife) is usually my mirror in all these situations.

Practicing The Law Of Attraction
There you go. No complicated explanations, just simple observations that even my grandpa will understand. So if you want to apply the Law of Attraction in the positive way to get a better life, here is how you can do it in 3 simple, yet practical steps:

Step 1: Understanding Your Thoughts
Before you decide that you want to change, you must at least know from who you are changing from. I cannot decide for you what you need to change, you will have to look inwards, sort them out, discard what you don’t want and keep those that you want. Then look at your “new self” again and decide if that is what you want.

For me, thoughts that I had decided to throw away are:

- Procrastination
- Laziness
- Shyness
- Arrogance
- Fear of Failure

Now decide if there is any beneficial thoughts that you are lacking that you want to have. Add them in your “new self”. For me, I have added:

- Responsibility
- Gratitude
- Perseverance

Review your “new self” again. If you like what you see, write the qualities of your “new self” down on a piece of paper, a reminder card, your vision board or anything that you can easily and conveniently remind yourself with.

Step 2: Change Your Thoughts
Now that you have decided the new qualities you would like to have in your “new self”, you need to let your new thoughts grow its roots while you weed out those thoughts you want to throw away. The first thing you need to do is to believe in yourself and believe that you can change for the better.

Next write down a list of actions/habits that would overcome those thoughts you decided to throw away and a list of actions/habits associated with those new beneficial thoughts that you would like to gain. Here’s my example:

Habits To Overcome (Thrown Away Thoughts)
- Just Do It (Procrastination)
- Do It Now (Laziness)
- Just Asked, No One Is Going To Eat You (Shyness)
- Empty Your Cup And Learn (Arrogance)
- Gain Knowledge And Just Do It (Fear of Failure)

Habits To Inculcate (For Thoughts Gained)
- Don’t Blame Anyone But Yourself (Responsibility)
- Be Thankful For Every Little Thing (Gratitude)
- If You Start, Don’t Stop (Perseverance)

Done writing them down like mine? Great! Now erase the bad thoughts (first section, in brackets) away leaving only the habits portion! It should look like this now:

Habits To Overcome
- Just Do It
- Do It Now
- Just Asked, No One Is Going To Eat You
- Empty Your Cup And Learn
- Gain Knowledge And Just Do It

Habits To Inculcate (For Thoughts Gained)
- Don’t Blame Anyone But Yourself (Responsibility)
- Be Thankful For Every Little Thing (Gratitude)
- If You Start, Don’t Stop (Perseverance)

Now you have to focus on drilling in your new habits. To do this effectively, you need to remind yourself that this are the habits you want, consciously, by reading what you have written daily. Reward yourself when you followed your new habits successfully - this actually strokes your sub-conscious mind and reprograms it to accept your new thoughts/habits.

Notice that we never even mentioned anything about bad thoughts? We only focus on the good habits that can overcome the bad thoughts. Why is that so? Because you don’t want to be reminded of the bad thoughts and in the process attracting them back again!

Step 3: Follow Your Thoughts
I have been told that it takes about 28 days to change one thought (completely) so does it mean that you need to change one thought at a time? I am not sure because I did it all at once. What I am sure is that you need to at least follow your new habits, keep track of your progress for at least 30 days, probably more. But once you cross that imaginary line where your new habits take hold. You will be surprise at the benefits it brings.

I believed that you have heard of the phrase “Birds of a feather flock together”. That’s what will happen once you are transformed, you will start to notice that you get to know more people with similar thoughts. If you got rid of procrastination, those “friends” that procrastinate will drift away from you and you get to attract new friends that are oriented towards taking action. The more you attract, the more you are motivated to do whatever is in line with your thoughts.

Summary
By now some of you may be asking “I thought this was about using Law of Attraction to attract things that I want?”, well, that is where most people got it wrong! Many believers of “Law of Attraction” just sit around trying to manifest their dreams. When their dreams are small and only requires a shift in focus to achieve, it comes true. But when the dream is beyond their current capabilities to attain, it will never come true no matter how hard they manifest. This is especially true when they have some limiting thoughts. Then they start to assign blame.

The natural path of “Law of Attraction” begins with changing yourself. When you are properly geared towards achieving success, even the sky won’t be a limit. This is my way of applying “Law of Attraction” practically. It is that simple and it has been around for ages!

I believe each human being has the potential to change,
to transform one’s own attitude, no matter how difficult the situation.
- 14th Dalai Lama

I believed that everyone can change and be successful if he allows himself to be. Nothing I say or do will have any effect until you are ready to receive. If you are ready, the way is open. Do leave me a comment to share your thoughts.

Love,
James

If you have benefited from the post, you could help us spread the word by stumbling, vote, digg or social bookmark it! Good things are meant to be shared not kept! I told you I got rid of being shy right!

Popularity: 11% [?]

Hey Folks,

It’s been slightly more then 2 months since I wrote my first post on the “9 Secret Steps To Life Transformation” series. It started with the simple vision that I wanted to pen down my success formula that I had put together through years of trial and error at my own cost. I wanted to share it with you and others like you who are interested to help yourself, which is probably why you are sitting here reading this blog.

I believed that abundance starts with giving and sharing. By sharing this gift, I believed that I will attract more into my life. More experience to gain, more positive people to meet, more things to learn and a more fulfilling life.

It is also my hope that my 9 steps has helped at least some of you in some ways. If it did, thank you. I thank you because, you made my sharing valuable and meaningful. If it had help no one or motivated none, it would have been futile. So, Thank You from the bottom of my heart.

If you have benefited from this series, I welcome you to leave a note or comment here. If you have any suggestion for me to improve, you may leave it here too

Before I sign off this post, here is a summary of all the post in the series for your easy reference:

Step 1 - Take Back Your Full Responsibility
Take Back Your Full Responsibility
Story 1 (Part 1)
Story 1 (Part 2)

Step 2 - Show Your Gratitude
Show Gratitude To What You Have
Karen’s Story On Gratitude
A Technique To Give Gratitude

Step 3 - Find Your Dreams
Find Your Dreams
The Ladder Of Dreams

Step 4 - Visualize Your Dreams
Visualize Your Dreams
8 Steps Visualization Technique

Step 5 - Feel Your Dreams
How To Keep Your Dreams Alive (Part 1)
How To Keep Your Dreams Alive (Part 2)
How To Keep Your Dreams Alive (Part 3)
How To Keep Your Dreams Alive (Part 4)

Step 6 - Take Action
The Unspoken Secret Of “The Secret” Movie
Take Action
Do You Procrastinate
Bury The Procrastination Monster

Step 7 - Feel The Abundance
Do You Have Limiting Beliefs
Knowledge Creates Abundance
Karen Lim’s Abundance At Work

Step 8 - Stay On Course
Stay On Course
Learning From Steve Jobs

Step 9 - Study Your Reflection
Study Your Reflections
Study A Successful Refection
How To Choose The Right Mentor

Love,
James

PS: I came across this site telling this touching story about making a difference and it describe how I feel when I know I had made a difference. Enjoy - http://www.makeadifferencemovie.com/  (We are not related to the site but I love the story)

Popularity: 37% [?]

Hey Folks,

In my last post, I mentioned that you should study your own reflections of successes and failures so you can avoid factors contributing to failure and pursue factors favorable to success. But in life, we have only so much time we can try and hope we don’t get errors! So how do we minimized failures and maximize success within a limited time frame?

We study Successful Reflections! More accurately, we study successful people, their processes and their habits. We study their successes and their failures and we learn from them they way we learn from our own reflections.

There is an important aspect in life and that is “Success Leaves Traces“. All successful people have some common habits or common traits across the board and here are just some of their traits (notice how similar they are to our 9 steps) :

• They never blame others for their past failures
• They always give thanks to people who have helped them along the way
• They always have a dream
• They can usually describe their dreams vividly even before they reach it
• They walk the talk
• They share their experiences and knowledge
• They Never Give Up
• They usually end up with a biography

You could learn from them when they decide to publish their biography or you could actively seek them out as a mentor. Or more likely, you can buy one of the countless books they have published about certain aspects of their success or attend one of their seminars.

So how do you choose a mentor? I have listed my criteria which works for me:

1. They are successful in the same field I am in or aspire to be in
2. They have a set of principle or philosophy which I admire and wish to incorporate as my own
3. They write books and/or speak at seminars
4. They are willing to teach

Remember in my last post I mentioned about I mentioned that given any secret formula or process, it will work if you:

1. UNDERSTAND the process correctly;
2. APPLY the process correctly; and
3. Apply process under SIMILAR CIRCUMSTANCES.

Having a mentor is guide you on the process they have created gives you the best chance to get these 3 factors right. Who else could be better then the creator to tell you if you got it right, applied it correctly and known if your circumstances were similar to their circumstances? None other then the creator themselves, right?

So if you have been struggling with whatever goal you are trying to achieve now for the pass months or years or tried whatever secret formula and process to no avail. Take sometime to think about it, is there someone in your field that is successful and willing to teach or take on an apprentice/student or offer courses or seminars where you can learn directly from them. If there is, empty your cup and learn from them unreservedly.

In the next post, I will talk about my experience with my pass and present mentor. I will also talked about what worked and what did not and the 3 things that you need to do that will ensure a fruitful experience in learning from a mentor.

Love,
James

Popularity: 10% [?]

Hi,

What I am sharing today is a True Story.

Have you ever felt stressed over a job assignment? You know, the kind that you just don’t know what to do, how to handle or simply out of your depth of comprehension? The kind of assignment that you think was assigned to you to make you quit the job (or as they say “look for a greener pasture”)? I have been through a few round.

In the past, before I learn of the Law of Attraction, when I was assigned the implementation of an IT project for my company. I would dread it from the moment it was assigned to me. I am not a technical person and I do not know how to manage an IT project from conception to implementation. I felt that it would take too long for me to learn and I have no idea what I was supposed to do so naturally I do what most people in similar situation will do. I quit!

A few years and another job later, I was in a similar situation and I needed to implement an IT project for my company. I am still as nontechnical as I was and still have yet to manage any IT project from conception to implementation but now I understand what Abundance is about and I could see choices and options that I have never seen before.

As James mentioned in his last post, Knowledge can create Abundance. That is what I chose to do. I acquired knowledge. Not from books, not from course but from James (He was previously an IT Project Manager, hee hee). So why didn’t I think of that last time, again it’s about limited mindset (I belief it could not be done, with or without James help and advice) and hence limited choices.

I learn from him that I need to concentrate on the “Management” aspect of the project and let the vendors offer the technical advice and solutions. I learn from him that I need to enlist the full support of upper and middle management and key users in the implementation of the IT project and make them understand their responsibilities towards the project (I would have had a heart attack if I had to do this in the past). I learn from him that project management is all about managing schedule, collecting and understanding requirements, moderating user’s expectations and basically getting a workable system up and running that is usable within an acceptable time frame and budget!

At the end, it still wasn’t an easy assignment but neither was it “Mission Impossible”. With knowledge, I ended up with a lot of choices to choose from. Choices such as:

• It’s too technical or It’s about management
• It’s too much work or It can be delegated
• It’s my responsibility or It’s my colleague’ responsibility as well
• There’s too much with too short a time or It’s about which is important given the time frame
• Management does not support me or I need to win management support
• And many other choices, major and minor ones

To be honest, the choices were always there but we limit them by our limited mindset. What I did was to open the door to Abundance with a key called knowledge. And the key reasoning that helped me was when James said this

“No company would like to spend tens and hundreds of thousand to implement a project doomed to failure, they might as well save the money. No software company is out to mess up their own project, reputation and incur a liability, they might as well don’t take the project. Hence, I conclude that no one is out to mess up your assignment unless you mess it up yourself. If that is the case, you have the choice to turn down the assignment and save yourself the trouble!”

I would say that without those new knowledge I acquire from James on how to manage that project, the chances of messing up would be high.

So how does the Law of Attraction fit into all this? Knowing Law of Attraction allowed me to handle difficulties with a positive attitude and see immediate choices to fill the gap between where I am to my end goal. Once of those choices was learning from James (he was always there beside me but I never bother to tap into this side of his knowledge) and I took it.

Acquiring that knowledge creates an Abundance of choices that led to more knowledge and choices and it goes on, as long as you focus on the positive side of things and keep pressing on. Issues with work, resistance to change, tight work schedules of co-workers, uncountable requirements that everyone wants implemented and countless perceived negative situation are bound to pop up here and there. We have to acknowledge and work around them.

One of the most important lessons I learn in this period was to ASK when in doubt, ASK when you need more information, ASK when you need clarification, ASK to confirm if you have to and never ASSUME. Asking is a very powerful way of tapping into the knowledge of the people around you.

Understand this, what we are sharing here may sound like a different concept of abundance commonly discussed elsewhere but actually they are the same. We just add a missing piece of the puzzle where many people could not bridge (i.e. what you need to do to get from limited to abundance mindset). Knowledge is one of the many possible missing piece of puzzle that can close that gap and I hope by sharing my story, you will embrace Abundance by acquiring whatever necessary knowledge you need.

Hugs,
Karen

Popularity: 8% [?]