photo credit: Janice Yuvallos

Should you fake it before you make it?

Mary Jacksh wrote the danger of faking it in her article, “Why Faking It Can be Soul-destroying“. Some people agreed and some are not. It’s an interesting discussion and I would like to share more about my opinion here.

How often have you heard the quote “faking it before you make it”? In some degree the quote reflects some concepts in growth. But it is not always effective if it stays alone. Let me share with you more on what you can and cannot fake.

The danger of faking your confidence

Mary shared about the danger of faking your confidence. One of them is on affirmation. You may have told your overweight self in the mirror “slim and beautiful.” Or that person in the mirror who was struggling to make ends meet “a millionaire”. As Mary put it, those are the times “we are trying to brainwash ourselves.”

Yet, someone is not seen in the mirror, one little voice that will not accept that. It keeps on saying, “you are not that slim”, “you are not that rich”, “you are not that great”, and so on. It’s our subconscious mind, one that usually controls us.

It’s one that will not let you delusion yourself. By force, you may have changed what you believe consciously, but things will not change unless you deal with much bigger part that controls you. Your subconscious mind. And affirmation is hardly able to change your subconscious mind.

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“I want pay increase!” I was asking for some pay increment. The statement is not that direct, but I did request that from my boss. I am confident enough on the experience that I have gained from the past one year on my previous job. I have also taken few IT certifications that I thought will give me the right to get the increment. I have learned a lot… so I believed I am eligible for that.

I was wrong…
Yes, I was wrong. My request was rejected. Or rather, it was postponed for further evaluation. I have told the story before that the process taught me about patience. But more than that, the process taught me about learning.

This blog has shared a lot about being teachable, to learn and to have an open-mind attitude. It is important topic to talk about. Each of us has to be a learner throughout our life. Learning is like climbing the stairs. Learning allows you to go to the top, to see and to know more things. But unfortunately, some made mistakes with learning, they forgot that it’s the means rather than the destination. Those are the lies of learning that are able to endanger you.

And those are the mindset that I wanted to share in this article…

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How do you grow?

Here is the five chapters of your autobiography if you’re growing…

Chapter 1: I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost… I am helpless. It isn’t my fault. It takes me forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2: I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I am in the same place, but it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3: I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it still there. I still fall in… it’s a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

Chapter 4: I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

Chapter 5: I walk down another street.

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters by Portia Nelson

An interesting biography, the important step is in Chapter 3, the two statements…

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This book inspired me very much about the changing of mindset that we all need. This book gives us comparisons between the mindset of rich and poor people. Check my articles that are inspired from this book to see how different the mindset of the millionaires, the mindset that we all need to learn.

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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It’s three days away from Christmas and everyone seem to be celebrating Christmas. Many stores open a year-end sale and gift bazaar to make this season a season of shopping, and hopefully a season of giving.

I’ve been looking forward to post a message on Christmas. Today I will talk about it, especially on the attitude in giving. It’s inspired from the following quote on giving…

Sometimes we hold on to our possesions because we fear we might run out – life seems scarce. But when we believe that giving is the way to live, we will produce more in the future – life seems abundant.

John C. Maxwell

This message is inspired not from an activity related to giving. It’s inspired more from my activity related to my house-keeping. Working oversea and away from family forced me to do my own house-keeping chores.

Over the years I found that I am a collector, I don’t like to throw things and I wanna keep it forever. I collect many things and unfortunately, most are useless. In my mind, I’m afraid that I might need it in the future, I better keep as many as possible, I don’t know what will I need in the future and I afraid that I will not be able to find what I need in the future, regretting things that I have thrown away.

This goes on and on, until I decided to make some action after reading an article from Tina Su at ThinkSimpleNow.com titled How to Cure PackRat-itis. Doing it, I’m reminded of the abundant attitude that I have ever read from The Maxwell Leadership Bible as quoted above. It’s the secret of giving, the belief that giving is a way to live, the belief that life seems abundant!

So what will you do when you have abundant attitude? When you live a life seems abundant?

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What is naive ? The dictionary WordWeb mentioned that as

“marked by or showing unaffected simplicity and lack of guile or worldly experience“

The Oxford mentioned it even in a different way:

“(disapproving) lacking experience of life, knowledge or good judgement and willing to believe that people always tell you the truth“

It sounds so bad, isn’t it? But what if we can learn something from a naive person?

In this article, I’d like to bring you a naive profile, and it’s from the “Enchanted” movie, it’s really fun watching the movie. It has quite a simple plot, but I had a good time watching it and laughed a lot.

I’m sure that all of us will laugh or at least smile while watching the movie, and one of the answers must be because of that naive princess. Couldn’t blame her, as it’s her first trip to real world from the fairytale land. She came in this world without knowing nothing of this world, what she has ever known is the fairy land, happiness land, where everything will end up with happily ever after.

Naive doesn’t know the word “naive”. Me too, I know the word “naive” when a friend commented on me when I tried to influence her to join me doing network marketing business, she is using the word “naive” to show that I’m so mmm… naive, inexperienced, believe that everyone is telling the truth, believe that everything is so simple and easy to do.

This is also the reason I put the “naive” as part of the sub-title in my blog. It’s a limitation and it’s important to change and to know how I can turn this naive-ness of mine, this limitation into an advantage.

Taking the positive side, let’s see what we can learn from this naive princess from the “Enchanted” movie…

1. You won’t know unless you try

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What is the little voice? It’s normally coming when you’re about to do something, it’s the voice of your doubt, your fear, and your worry. Last week I attended T. Harv Eker’s Millionaire Mind Intensive seminar in Singapore, and he taught about the little voice.

It will always be there and the choice is yours. Either a victim or a victor. With a victim attitude you will follow the little voice and blame anyone around you, your parents, your friends, devil or God that makes you so fearful. A victor, on the other hand, will feel the fear and do it anyway!
See the difference? they both feel the fear, but one is withdrawing and blaming while the other doing it anyway!

In the Millionaire Mind Intensive by Harv Eker, I also participated in the arrow breaking exercise, he encourages us to break a wooden arrow with steel-pointed tip with our throat. What we have to do is just walking toward another person holding an arrow toward the soft part in our throat, and we supposed to be able to break the arrow.

It scared me initially, but from the exercise, I learned a very good lesson, the smart way to take control of your fear. The five questions you need to ask your little voice to overcome your fear:…

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Not only from great people, take lessons from difficult people. Wherever we are, sooner or later, we’ll meet one or two difficult people, even more maybe. It’s better to take lessons from them rather than resent or complain about them.

What kind of lessons? T. Harv Eker in his book, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, state it clearly…

From now on, I want you to practice re-framing other people’s negativity as a reminder of how not to be.

T. Harv Eker

Recently, I dealt with some people, big position with small heart, treated their people like tools for their own benefit. I pity them as people who are unable to trust even their own staff, fear on losing of what they have, and eventually they have to take ways to force their staffs to stay with bond, trick them, using their pay as threat to get what they want. I really have no idea, why don’t they think that happier staff, happier customer,better business, and eventually bigger profit.

So here it is, some steps to “re-frame” difficult people:
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