Ten symptoms of having vision beyond yourself

Which one comes first? Helping ourselves or helping others?

Do you know the chicken and egg dilemma? Which one comes first, chicken or egg? That is a dilemma that has never been solved. And I find some similarity with our self-improvement process. Helping ourselves and helping others, which one comes first?

Should we help others in order to help ourselves?
The statement that Chris Melton from soupornuts.com shared, “In order to help yourself, you must help others. There’s no better long-term strategy to achieving your success.” That statement sounds like the “helping others” comes before “helping ourselves.”

But… shouldn’t we help ourselves before helping others?
The other quote that sounds to be contradicting, comes from Jack Welch, “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” Now it sounds as if the helping ourselves comes first before helping others.

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Now you can consider your limitation as advantages

Have you ever considered your limitation as advantages?

This is the third message in the “Limitation & Advantages” series. The first message shared with you the big picture, the five steps how you can win with your limitations. In the message, I am not suggesting us to ignore our limitation. None of us is perfect and instead of resisting our limitation, we should be able to acknowledge and befriend them, that is the beginning of how we can overcome and stretch them.

You should notice that the tag line of this blog is “Turning limitation into advantages, helping introverts to be successful.” That message will be empty without any examples. The second message in this series, the 7 interesting (and useful) facts about my flaws, will help you to know me better, the struggle and limitations I have. Hopefully this message will also become an inspiration on how you can turn limitation into advantages.

This article will share with you the reasons why you can consider your limitation as advantages. I have divided them into two, this part will share their benefits for you and the next one will share their benefits in the relationships you have.

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The most important skill you need to learn

Do you know the most important skill you need to learn?

If someone has the opportunity to learn that they can learn, the rest of life is a cinch.

Dr. Henry Cloud

Dr. Henry Cloud is a psychologist who has shared a lot on issues on emotional growth. His book on my hand right now is the “Changes That Heal”, sharing great insights on understanding our past, understanding what makes us who we are today, how to heal our emotional wound and what is needed to lead us having a better and healthier future.

He was explaining the adulthood process when that quote catch my attention, he was sharing about expertise in adulthood, and learning is extremely needed for that.

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In the pursuit of happiness…

My previous article -All you need to know to create your own happiness- has driven much traffic and readers. I’ve got a number of comments and thoughts that helps me reflect more on happiness. The list is truly far from complete… Here are some updated lessons on happiness that I have been collected from the comments, and some article that I found on the internet.

Alex Kay gives me a profound thought about not putting 10, but 7 or 9 as his scale of happiness. It is based on the explanation that he expected to learn more about happiness, a room for growth, to experience more happiness. I agreed with him that we all need to keep on learning to be happy, as all of us are actually in the pursuit of happiness.

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All you need to know to create your own happiness

How do you define happiness?

Many relate happiness with something they need to pursue and have. Many say that they need to have this and that to be happy.

But here is my finding about happiness, taken from Dan Gilbert video on TedTalk.

We synthesize happiness but we think happiness is a thing to be found.

Dan Gilbert

If I have to define happiness, it is not something that you need to find somewhere; happiness is an option of your response to your circumstances. Happiness is your choice, not what the circumstances give you. Happiness is something you can synthesize…

How can you synthesize happiness?

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Being extraordinary: Excuses you need to stop!

It’s great to be extraordinary, yet moving from ordinary to extraordinary will also require greater efforts. It does require us to change our mindset, change our behaviour and actions, habits and eventually it will change our character and destiny.

In any case, there is a very important point of being extraordinary… it is taking responsibility of your own life, behaviours and actions.

Robin Sharma, a leadership guru, has his podcast titled “Everyone’s A Leader”, where he mentioned that we all are leader, every single one of us, in spite of our positions and duties. On the first point explaining the ‘why’, he mentioned about APR: Absolute Personal Responsibility, an important point that every one of us must have and must take to be an extraordinary leader.

Many run away from their personal responsibility, from their life and duties assigned to them, by giving one popular word… EXCUSE

Excuse based on Oxford Dictionary…

A reason, either true or invented, that you give to explain or defend your behaviour.

Oxford Dictionary

Excuse is a mistake when it’s purposely invented as a way to defend our behaviour, we may need to give explanation, it is necessary but makes it in such a way that you’re responsible for your own actions.

Here are the excuses we often make in our life, excuses we need to stop…

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Lesson from President Suharto

On the news: The former president of Indonesia, Suharto has just passed away today. He ruled over Indonesia for 32 years. In the most of the part of his office period, he has developed Indonesia a lot, but sadly he didn’t end it very well. He tempted to misuse his power and influence to be consumed by greed, corrupted millions of money and favoured his family and friends for many economic projects. He ruled Indonesia from 1967-1998, period of 32 years but ended where he was forced by public mass to go down from his throne, after so much riots impacted by Asian economic crisis on 1997-1998.

He started well, but he did not finish well, he chose riches and money for his family over his character, integrity and trustworthiness. A reflection… will you do the same when you have that power and influence?

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What you have to do with your decision

I’ve written a series of post on decision making. In concluding the series, I would like to share more about the important thing after you make your decision.

You’ve got your decision made, you’ve chosen to go, against the storms outside to pursue your dream, purpose and passion, so what’s next?

In short, be thankful with your decision! Gratitude is especially important for us to not staying in the past, moving forward and making another decision to pursue our dream.

This post is posted as a part of the Gratitude Project, initiated by Akemi Gaines from Gratitude Magic.

I’ve been sharing the series on decision making, being a leader or being successful you will need to do a lot of decision making, and for many of us, decision making is not easy. And even after we made our decision, being confident about our decision is not an easy task as well. Here is what I learn about the decision we made…

Learn to get stuck with your decision…

I watch a very good video from Dan Gilbert, when he shared his idea in TEDTalk. His presentation talks about the synthetic happiness, the happiness that we made even when we don’t get what we want. It’s said about the joy of being stuck.

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The lazy man’s guide to better decision making

I’m sure that you have heard a lot about decision making by considering alternatives, listing down pros and cons, writing them down, etc. But I don’t think lazy person will do that, that’s too troublesome, isn’t it?

What I’m going to share in this article is more about the attitude you need to watch out when making the decision, it’s all in your mind and you too can make better decision if you look out for the warnings and mindset I’m going to share.

The easiest and laziest way to make decision is following our gut! I’ve shared about this in the first part of the series on decision making I have created. As what I have shared in the first part of the series, following our gut can give us better as we have no time to splash it with our doubt, fear or worry, but sometimes it will take consideration, check and re-check a lot of things before we can truly make a better decision.

Tina Su from ThinkSimpleNow.com gave me a comment in the first part of the series as below…

Learn to recognize when your gut is speaking out of fear and when it is speaking out of infinite intelligence.

Tina Su @ ThinkSimpleNow.com

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How to make better decisions (Part II)

Wondering, from so many choices given, which shoes will the woman take?

Life is all about choices and decisions! Few days ago, I discussed about making better decision against your fear and with your gut. This time, I’m going to share about the forces of making decision that are coming from outside of us!

Life will give you many choices, people will offer you with so many choices, and each one of them will request something from you, your time, your attention and your money. Either to buy their product, to make a deal with them, work with them, to meet their need, to spend time with you, or to help them.

From so many requests which one will you choose?

Many things can influence us in taking the decision, but not all of them will lead us in good decision-making. Reading the Reader’s Digest December 2007 article, “10 ways to make better decisions” has given me insights on the external threats that we need to be aware of…

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