clycalvin.com

An interesting riddle I got from a friend today… What is the hardest thing to break?

Diamond? No… It’s hard to find but easy to break.

Promise? Definitely no, I bet none of us have never broken any promise before.

It’s none other than HABIT !

Analysis:

If you break the “H”, you will have “A BIT”…

If you break the “A”, you will still have “BIT”…

If you break the “B”, you will definitely have “IT”…

And if you continue breaking the “T”, you will have “I”…

Nothing can change ourselves more than a single alphabet… the 9th.

Since this new blog was setup, I received quite a number of comments and questions from my friends. The most common would be:

1. Wah, you wanna become professional blogger ar?
2. Why pay so much for it when you can get everything for free?
3. Why make your life difficult to not doing what most people do, instead taking the hard way?

The answer to the first question is no, it’s not my plan to be a professional blogger. I mean, c’mon… with my profile, it would take me centuries before reaching “Kenny Sia’s” status.

The answer to the second and third question is quite personal actually. First of all, I don’t believe in free lunch. If I wanna get something done, I’ll have to work for it. If someone gives you something for free, there are always something that you’d have to pay back, or sacrifice…

Besides, humans tend to appreciate something more when that particular thing BURNS THEIR WALLET…

So why take the hard way? Simple, I just wanna have a taste on everything by myself, manage and learn from it. In other words, I wanna take full responsibility on myself.

I do not mean all, but most of us are living in a world of denial. Whenever we get into troubles, there’s certainly something or someone that we can blame of. We can blame our boss for being autocratic, blame lecturers for being irresponsible, blame our friend for betrayal, and so on… By putting the blame, we will have a sense of self being, satisfy, momentarily… but in the process, we have closed up our mind to everything around us, which often result in making decisions that we tend to regret later.

That was one of the moments of truth in my life. I, as like the other team members, blamed participants from other universities for being irrational. We did work hard, so why disqualify us? But from another perspective, we did wrong as well. If we did not, things would not turned against us. We too have the responsibility for everything.

For everything that happened, it happened for a reason. Of course, I can’t be saying that by taking responsibility, I’ll surely become a better man or be successful in future. But if I do not start taking responsibility on myself, then who will?

Life will never change if we do not take actions, and reflect on ourselves.

Today, I just realized someone from another part of the world is doing something similar to what I’ve been wanted to do for long long time, and he is doing it in a relatively large scale, yet doing it great! Once again, I am one step behind.

Does this sound familiar to you? On a very boring day, you are lying on your bed, brainstorming, thinking hard about your future and what comes next, being drown deep into thoughts…

… and “ting !”, a magnificent idea suddenly struck you. The more you imagine, the more you think it’s gonna work. It will make you become more successful, it will bring you from where you are to where you want to be… An “angel” on your left told you,  “OMG, that’s so cool !”

But at the same time, another “devil” on your right keep whispering, “You’re definitely not ready for it !“. At this moment, there will be four categories of people:

Type 1: Lose Before Battle

Back to zero, give themselves tonnes of excuses why they just can’t do it, ignore the “dream”, blame their own faith and get along with life.

Type 2: 3-Minutes Passion

Start taking little actions, gathering information, crunching books and journals… but the more they read, the more confuse they become. In the end, they gave up.

Type 3:  Chicken Little – The Sky’s Falling

Similar to Type 2, but they persisted. Take their sweet time gathering the “required information”, but always thinking that they are still not fully prepared yet. By the time they get started, they realized other people are already a hundred years in advance.

Type 4: Just Do It

People in this category will always tell themselves, “JUST DO IT!” They are clear with what they want to achieve in life and they know it’s not going to be an easy path. They have the great passion to try their best to reach their target. To them, their objectives of life is not a “should”, but a “must”. They do fall down in the journey but they keep themselves resilient. In the end, some may just achieve what they want… some may not, but still they know they have achieve quite a lot.

Often, we as human are thinking and worrying too much. Some are not satisfy with their life, they want to improve, but they do not want to take the responsibility. Some took little actions, but when it comes to obstacles they’d just give up. All these came from the same reason, they are not taking their goals seriously. They knew that without achieving their goal, they can still get along with life, their complaining life. They are only taking their goals as a “should”, but not a “must”.

Working hard for your goals might not 100% guarantee you achieving them, but not taking any action at all will always 100% guarantee you NOT achieving them.

Think for yourself, which category are you?

Went for a “In search of Blue Ocean” seminar last night, as recommended by a friend. I’ve attended a few of this type of seminar and people would just say all these so-called “introductory” seminars are tools to lure people to sign up for the “actual” seminar behind, provided by the same company, which can cost up to a few thousand bucks.

Many may just think, What can I really learn in just a 2 hours short seminar anyway? But to me, these are platforms that keep us updated with things that happen around us, that can affect our lifestyle, and which we never realize…

…until they hit us…

For example, the establishment of East Asia Community (东亚共同体) by ASEAN Plus Three (东盟 10 + 3), a cooperation between ASEAN countries and 3 East Asia giants; China, Korea and Japan. The community aims to broadened and deepened many areas of cooperation among its membership countries, including politic, economy, tourism, agriculture… etc. This idea was proposed by our ex-prime minister during the 90’s, but only then was taken into serious consideration a few years back. The objective is to unify the economy among the membership countries, providing free tax zone, as well as to cultivate cooperation among the countries during financial and economy crisis.

Malaysia has been a target of many foreign countries as our “culture blend” was considered best managed among the ASEAN countries. We have attracted heaps of foreign investors to invest in many projects, such as the Iskandar Project in Johor and the proposed project to build a bridge connecting Malacca and Sumatera.

Sounds great huh…?

But how many of us living in Malaysia will actually consider what are the long term consequences behind the establishment? I mean, is there any free lunch in reality?

Our country has great potential and resources, but we do not have the talent and ability to expand them. All of these projects, which were suppose to be utilized by the locals to increase the country’s income, have all been “sub-contracted” by foreign countries. Our government has directly “outsourced” all these projects, and yet still proudly claiming “Malaysia Boleh!”

We have many projects with great future, but most of them failed after a few years of development. This is mainly because we failed to establish the right system for everything we do. As mentioned by the late W. E. Deming, most of the problems that occurred in an organization, are due to the inefficiency of the system.

If employee under-perform, it’s the fault of the employer who failed to establish a good system.

If underlings misbehave, it’s the fault of the leader who failed to establish a good system.

If co-workers couldn’t meet expectation, it’s the fault of the boss who failed to establish a good system…

… and in our country, we failed to do the same as well.

Imagine, when Asia’s giant such as China’s market begins to take a big step into Malaysia, how would it affect us? Let take Starbuck Coffee for instance, a cup of coffee would normally cost RM10 or so. But China’s investor and entrepreneur can provide the same coffee bean, with same taste and coffee quality, but at less than 40% of Starbuck’s cost. For us consumers, that sounds marvelous. But how would this affect our country’s economy?

In China, franchising is not a matter of how many hundreds of franchises, but they count by how many THOUSANDS across the country! Numbers are just small matters…

How will our local products survive when people can provide the same, but higher quality products at lower cost in Malaysia?

How will most of our local entrepreneurs react when the foreign investors bring in this competition?

Are we going to put ourselves into the price slashing war, and end up drowning in the Red Ocean?

Some may procrastinate, saying that we would look for QUALITY than QUANTITY, but let’s be frank… how many of us have always preferred Malaysian Made Product than China Made Product?

As you can see, other countries are advancing in fast pace due to this “economy war”. Everyone are implementing innovation, thinking hard of how to further improve their business as well as the country’s future economy. Unfortunately in our country, the most popular topic we can listen everyday would be “political war”. All parties fighting among each other over who should be in “business“… but when there’s a problem, it’ll turn into “It’s none of my business“.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are at war… economically of course, and yet most of us are still unaware of it. In two months time (beginning of year 2010), we are going to battle with these people (foreign investors and entrepreneurs).

So how well are we prepared for it?

What would you do when things are urgent and you have no solution to them… yet?

What would you do when you feel so helpless knowing you do not have the ability to accomplish certain things?

What would you do when life deals you a cruel hand?

What would you do when your mind is overloaded with information, scattered all around and you can’t seems to combine them?

What would you do when people around keep on bombarding you with advices, ideas, stories, just for the sake to weaken you?

What would you do when you wanted something done so badly but you do not know where to start?

I have been through these, many of us have been through these, and all of us have different thoughts and ways to deal with these.

Most of the time, you feel so stressed up, having to complete certain tasks before due date, not having single idea of where to start, being pissed of by people around you who “big talk” when you’re already in that bad situation, etc…

But hey, is life really that bad? Have you ever tried to pull yourself out and view the situation as a “third person”?

Have you ever done something on impulse, only to feel regret later?

Sometimes, we tend to get so focused on the thing in front of our eyes that we often fail to realize what lies behind.

An obstacle is right in front of your eyes, you know you must get through it, you tried to find solutions to overcome it, you seek for advice from people around you… but in the end, you found nothing. After all the hard works, you are still standing at the same point before you started off.

Then you start blaming everybody, everything, even yourself…

But come to think of it, is there really no other alternative available? Have you ever thought of:

Are you already in the incorrect first step before you started?

Are you being too focused on the obstacle that you neglected things happening around it?

Are those information from people around you usable?

Is the situation really that bad, as what you have heard from others, but never witness it by yourself before?

How about starting from several choices that you have in mind, slowly and carefully considering each of them, then filter them one by one. At the end of the day, the combination of the left over might be the best solution!

There are always choices and alternatives in life. It is just that sometimes we are too tensed up and being blinded by the current situation that we are unable get a hold of them. Our emotion is disrupted and we lose our cool so easily.

No one can predict the future. Most of the time, we try to predict our future based on the past experience of the others. Can we be sure that we will be walking the same path as well? Is the outcome of our trial will be exactly the same as the others? No one can tell.

More importantly, we must realize what is the best for ourselves. What is our goal in life? What we want to achieve through the process? What is the expected outcome and what elements are required in between? Again, no one can tell, we know ourselves the best.

Since the end of last year game, I found myself lost interest in staying in the team anymore. If the seniors hadn’t appointed me to be one of the deputy, I think I would not be at where I am now.

For one reason, I have no confident in things I do. When someone is doing the same thing as mine and come out better than what I did, and he uses his result to give comment on mine, I’ll be de-motivated. This has happened for quite sometimes and I find it really irritating. I know there’re always better people around me and I really wish to learn from them, but in this case it’s really just like he’s purposely comparing his result with mine. I wonder why does people just like to step on others.

I used to think that no matter what I do, someone is never satisfied.

I used to think that someone always give pressure to others based on what he himself is good at.

I used to think as a deputy, the words I said can change things and motivate others.

Last night, I’ve a chat with one of the juniors. Currently he’s in-charge of all the management and “internal affair” of the team. To my surprise, after the long chat, I realized that:

- Things are not as bad as I thought.

- Different people have different way of “motivating” each other, just that the methods they used might not be suitable.

- To some juniors, I am who I am… but for some, I’m just a great talker little doer.

All these while I’ve been so self-centered. I’ve always been blinded by the prejudice I have against that one particular person that I neglected my responsibility for the remaining 23 members in the team.

When I was in my mid-teen age, I used to be a rebellious son. Everything my parents said, I’d find excuses to fight back, to show them that I was right. But little did I know that my parents have something that I never have, even til now…

Patience.

Being a leader is never an easy task. So what does it take to be a good leader?

Life is never fair. No matter how we dislike something, there’re times we have to bear with it in order to pleased others. Instead of being irrational, there’re things we need to sacrifice in order for other people to bring good to everyone. Being a leader is not about wanting people to walk your path, but to walk with people at the same path.

14 days left to competition, and the team’s spirit is deteriorating due to final exam in these two weeks. Just hope that in these two weeks time I can play my part, to change what I have done.