Live Life With No Regrets!« March 2007 | Main | May 2007 »
"There are three things that are stately in their stride,
four that move with stately bearing:
a lion, mighty among beasts,
who retreats before nothing;
a strutting rooster, a he-goat,
and a king with his army around him.
(Proverbs 30:29-31)
Walk tall in life. Do not fear man. I think that this verse tells us not to walk like a loser but as a winner in life.
Look straight ahead, don't look down. Walk like a confident child of God!
I'm even more impressioned that an essential skill in life is pitching or selling your ideas to other people clearly and succintly.
The pattern in business is that there is one party who has an idea but doesn't have resources and another party who has resources but no idea.
The person with the idea (business, movie, etc) always pitches to the one having the resources.
Even if your daddy is Bill Gates or Donald Trump, you still have to pitch the idea to them. And even if you are Bill Gates, you still have to pitch your idea to your board or vice-presidents.
Pitching is a skill, an art. It is the ability to create a compelling image in the mind of your audience with your words, your voice and your body language. It is an entertainment experience, it creates positive feelings. It is logical. Its purpose is to create a buy-in.
The buy-in could be for any idea, whether it is to go on a holiday, a business start-up idea, a movie idea, a change in direction, etc.
The audience can be anyone and the presentation tailored accordingly using the appropriate language, vocabulary.
The pitch should be entertaining yet have a basic storyline formular of beginning, middle and end, so that the audience doesn't have hanging questions.
It was unfortunate that one of the winners was disqualified for submitting an entry that had already won a prize in another competition. However, I was chosen being the next best runner up.
OMG, OMG. (cue Hallelujah chrous).
A few steps closer to my destiny...
Most of us are really very talented, but we underrate ourselves and deny ourselves opportunities by creating mental obstacles.
We say to ourselves we don't deserve something, we were lucky, it was a fluke or something like that.
The reality is that all things in life is really by grace. It is by grace you are born in a prosperous country, it is by grace you have inborn talents, it is by grace that you had parents with connections, it is by grace that you met so-and-so that gave you that break.
Consider that Harrison Ford became the famous actor that he is because of the coincidence/divine appointment of fixing George Lucas's cabinets.
Or that Phil Collins and Genesis got their break because Phil was a cabbie that happened to pick up Richard Branson and invited him for tea at his mom's (even though Branson was busy and needed to go to his destination) and passed him his band's demo tape.
I've heard people exclaim that Martin Yan or Delia Smith's cooking is really too simple. "I can cook better than them!" they say. Yet Martin and Delia took the opportunity to use whatever they had and to go on TV with their talents. They didn't listen to negative self-talk that said that their cooking was too simple or anything like that.
We should not listen to this negative talk. There is a reason for opportunities. It isn't luck. There is a purpose for everything, a divine stage manager behind the scenes orchestrating the stage entry and exits on this world.
Do not despise the day of small beginnings. (Zechariah 4:10)
Will I get to rub shoulders with George Clooney, Steven Spielberg, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie come May?
Will my name be listed in the credits of a Hollywood movie?
Will I be accepting my Oscar for best screenplay at the Academy Awards?
Muah ha ha ha... dreams may still come true...
If there were two paths before me, one leading to safety, security but status quo living and boredom and dreariness and the other with danger warnings saying "Go back", "You Risk All You Ever Have", "Adventure", "Danger"...
Guess which road I will take?
Not the Pepsi challenge but the Jesus challenge.
For the next 40 days, pray for all that you need and wish.
Forgive your enemies from the heart.
Seek God's will in everything.
Journal the results. You and I may be surprised.
I realize that after calculating the amount of effort to lose just 8 pounds of fat that it isn't easy. I thought a month would be all it takes, but it seems that you have to really put in 3 times as much effort to do so.
That's good, at least I am obeying Jesus' admonition to calculate your forces to see if you can fight against an greater army or enough resources to build a tower. Sun Tzu repeats it in Art of War that a good general must make many calculations in order to win.
I think that is one of the weaknesses that I must work on, I seem to underestimate the amount of effort needed to accomplish goals.
Just last week, unfortunately, I made my cousin miss her flight back to Penang because I calculated to the minute the exact amount of time needed to get to her gate. I was too used to taking flights to KL, checking in exactly 1/2 hour before the flight takes off and getting to the gate exactly 10 minutes before departure. I cut things too close. Unfortunately, I didn't take into account that:
1. A flight to Penang is different from a KL shuttle flight and needs a earlier check-in time.
2. There was a queue at immigration.
3. She lost her immigration white card and had to fill it in again.
I don't like to waste time waiting yet, ended up wasting even more time.
The lesson learnt here is to take into account other random factors that may get in the way of your obstacles.
We have dreams of building a business into a million dollar company in 3 years. It may take 9 years. Every company has a different schedule. Some companies take 20 years to IPO, others may only take 3. Just keep being faithful, keep plugging on it, receive feedback gratefully, adjust your goals accordingly and keep on improving (kaizen).
I need to lose 4kg to reach my ideal weight of 60.5kg.
That is about 8.8lbs.
At 3500kcal/pound = 30800kcal.
A 5.6km run expends 409kcal.
I need to run = 30800/409 = 75 times @ 5.6km each.
Doing it 3 times/week = 25 weeks = 1/2 year, just for 8.8lbs!!!!!
If I want to do it in 1 month with 4 sessions/week = 16 sessions.
30800/16 = 1925kcal/session = 26km/session.
It's so difficult to lose fat. (You have to make sure you don't lose muscle mass as well.)
So, therefore hitting my weight goal in 1 month may not be realistic.
If I target 3 months at 4 sessions a week and running 8km each time, then I can do it. Plus I need to do weight training to maintain muscle mass.
Losing 1kg/month is more realistic for me. (If based purely on exercise to increase calorie consumption).
If I can reduce my caloric intake by 350/day I can lose an additional 3lbs in a month. That's the equivalent of 2 1/2 cans of coke.
I think that if you want to achieve your goals, you've got to be serious about it. Unfortunately, the word "serious" brings with it connotations of solemnity, toughness, frowns...
I think that it shouldn't be that way. Being serious means that you really want something. It means that it is a high priority. In fact, I think that if you are serious, you can actually have fun, it means that the goal resonates with your entire being, and that you are joyful in the working out of your goal with passion. It means that you don't have to cater to every whim and fancy that comes in your way or be burdened by 1000 other trivial things. It means you can say "No" with certainty, be firm, and not feel guilty about saying no.
There are people who say they want to lose weight but aren't serious about it. They buy slimming teas or drinks, yet eat a candy bar the next hour.
Any goal that is worthwhile to pursue should be pursued with seriousness.
How to find your mission in life by Richard Nelson Bolles is a short and interesting read but concise in what it needs to get across. A mere 67 pages with just one to two paragraphs per page, it strives to get across the fact that our mission life is secondary to the mission giver.
Making no apologies for being a Christian, we must know that between the bookends of our lives on this earth, namely our birth and death, we have a mission. But it is more important to remember who the mission giver is and to be united and connected to him in order for us to know our mission.
To summarise:
Some other more important things are:
