Recently, I've read a book, and it says that to smile effectively, you will have to pause for a second before you smile to the person, in this way, the person will only know that the smile is for him/her and not that you smile to everyone. These are a good practice, and I have tried them and to my surprise, it really works. However, you may not want to overdo it, and I have been practicing them with my female friends and one of them tell me, why do you smile like that, you smile like a pervert with saliva dripping from your mouth, that's aweful. Okay! Probably, I was just trying with different combination, and maybe that's not a good one. I'm trying hard to fine tune my smile, and I am wondering why do I need to practice how to smile, since monkeys know how to smile.  

Perhaps, smiling is just a courtesy way to respect other and yourself, and it gives you a big success in relationships. If your job is to deal with people, you may get a way ahead of others if you know how to smile effectively.   Till then, enjoy smiling..

The gift I'm talking about is YOU, self-responsibility, I would like to share with you why this gift is the best you ever receive. When you wanted to change your life, and taking personal responsibility for yourself, you will see some changes taking place. All of these reactions just came without you even noticed.

To begin self-responsibility, you need to have a mission statement; big corporate organization often has mission statement to keep members and users aware of the organization's purpose. But, before you start writing your mission statement, acceptance is the first, you need to accept what you doing now and where are you right now. If you begin with acceptance, you no longer will blame anyone else for causing what you are right now; there are no excuses such as bad luck or lack of opportunity. If you keep harping on blame and excuses, it will just get worse and do not bring success. That's why acceptance is so powerful, that it will abandon them for good.

Why is it important to write mission statement for yourself, writing mission statement or affirmation statement or mission to accomplish, or whatever you want to call them, because every self-help book will ask you to do so. Writing personal mission statement will show you the paths to the destination you're right now, be it a year or 5 years is also decided by you, therefore, you are capable to change yourself the paths you choose that will lead you to a greater destination.

Once you have your mission statement, you would need to exercise the power of your written mission statement, there are plenty of different theory about how to exercise the power, either the power came from positive signals send to the universe or your subconscious has  reprograms to run the mission statement, but no matter which you choose to believe, it all came back to the same root, what you want to do with your life written in your mission statement will have amazing reactions that changes will take place. 

Many of us will just read and forget, and taking the first step is often frightening, if you spend time thinking about what you want and writing them down without whims and fears, you are taking the big step taking personal responsibility, only YOU can be the person you want to be. From the moment you start writing your personal mission statement, you are the author of your life, you plot your own life story, the real you who lives your dream life.

Instead of, doing the same things week in, week out. Try taking out a piece of paper and start writing your mission statement, and don't wait until next time. Exercise the power every day, writing them repeatedly or reading them repeatedly. I've been doing the same, and I've seen some results, I hope you too will believe writing mission statement works.

You're the boss! You decide the state of happiness or unhappiness, no one is going to work as hard as you to ensure your happiness. If you are unhappy about your jobs, marriages or relationships, think a little more deeply now, which types of person you are? First type is those who put obstacles in the way of feeling happiness , the second type are those who are waiting for things outside them to make them happy, while the last type are those who is the boss for their happiness, they have their own rules of happiness and will not response to what is going on around them, they know happiness is first and foremost a choice.

Everyone wanted to feel happiness, but what does happiness feel like? Most of us think that happiness is the feeling from our body, we feel great within. However, happiness can be the feeling of perfect harmony of life, inner satisfaction or having good things in life. Everyone pursuit of happiness is different, it's very hard to have a common answer that represent everyone, if you want to know, how does happiness feel like, you can begin to recall back your experience that bring you the most happiness, and try to identify the feeling now. Doesn't it feel great if you have done so?

There are certain things that is beyond our control, people can make us feel miserable if you allow them, many times we will associate with them - How to become positive dealing with negative people?. Life can sometimes be very unfair, you may come accross loss of family, loved one, being cheated or divorced. Someone did you wrong, you are in the state of unhappiness, you dwell on the sadness and forgotten that you have a choice, why do you want to spend the rest of your life paying for their mistake? The biggest enemy is yourself, and the only one who can ruin your life is you. Happiness is a choice and the life is yours.

People's sometimes are relunctant to feel happy because they plan not to be happy. There always never ending problems and don't become a victim of circumstance. If that's you, it's time to change and avoid the situations that can make you unhappy. It may take time to find your self-awareness, but looking at where your life now, it can place you further in the future. This doesn't mean that you should ignore your responsibilities and commitment. Be a designer of happiness that bring you joy. 

'I have come to understand that life is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. i am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies.' - BRUCE LEE

How positive are you now? Have you noticed that when you woke up early in the morning, fresh and positive, then someone came to you and keep telling you negative stuff. Your mood for the day will become negative as well. These people have no intention to drain your positive energy, but it's good that you have your own set of thoughts to filter the negativity, and it's best to avoid these people.

Sometimes you may feel uneasy and guilt to avoid such people if they are your family members, friends or loved one. It's inevitable from time to time people just want to find someone trustworthy to listen to their story about how sad their life, or how they don't like their job, not satisfy with their relationship and don't have enough money. People just want to express their feeling out to feel better themselves, you in turn will become negative.

What can you do?
There are only 2 options for you, either you joined them to become negative or get out from there. If you are reluctant to get out from the conversation, you can choose to buy into that conversation and when you spotted them saying about what they don't want, change them to what do you want. Ask them "what do you really want?” In most cases, when you asked them "what do you want?", they would tell you what they want (often negative people don't know what they want) and this change the whole conversation to become more positive, thus helping the other person achieve a more positive person. If no matter how positive you want to change in the conversation and he/she still remained as negative. You should leave for god sakes, you are responsible to look after yourself to be more positive.

How do you know if you are positive or negative?

Often you can tell how positive or negative you are by how you feel. If you were to measure your positive or negative energy by scale of 1-100, giving 100 is very positive and 0 as very negative. How do you want yourself to be? I bet you would want your everyday life to be above 50 positive, so that you can smile more, worry less and stay as happy you could. How can you achieve 50 above daily, it's all based on how you choose to feel? If you choose to be happy, you will remain happy, I know, it's easy said than done, if you can't choose the state of happiness, there's another option you can take, sticks around with positive people or likeminded people, and start attracting their positive energy.

You can see the difference, your day will be more colorful and you would start to see tree dancing and flower blooming.

Cheers ~

Do you have a set of goals? How realistic is your goals? I was surprised that many people do not have a goal, they just don't have one. I was quite amused by a reply of a friend, I asked her one day, I said "It's only 4 more months to year end. Had you achieved your 2008 resolution?". She smiled with feigned and said "Yes, I always have the same resolution every year and achieved them every year too". I replied, "Wow, that's good, what's your resolution for this year, mind to share?". She said "My yearly resolution is not to have a resolution, and I always achieve them, I don't make one because often it would NOT be fulfilled."

Goals set has to be realistic and measurable, when goals given are not realistic and clear, it's already doomed from the beginning. It immediately gives you a negative feeling to hold on to the persistence to accomplish your mission to achieve them. Even if you neglected them for being unrealistic such as setting a goals "to live happier, having less money problems and earn more money through passive income (stocks and properties)". At first glance, it seems to be good goals, actually it's not clear, and it does not have a time period to achieve them. If you print this out and read them everyday, your subconscious mind would only know what you want but do not know when you want it, to be precise and clear, first, you need to list them down clearly.

1. Goals setting has to be clear and specific.
It's easy to say "I want clear all my debt in the next 2 years", but to be more goals specifics "I want clear my debt by cultivate habit to be good in money management (learn up financial tools, document your expenses in excel or paper), spend less for more (live frugally), save 10% of my income (saving for rainy days), I will pay my credit card balance double or triple the minimum payment required by cutting down my spending habits, and I want to accomplish this in the next 2 years" is better.

2. Goals setting must be measurable.
Health - I want to lose weight. How many KG do you plan to lose your weight in 6 months or 1 year time?
Wealth - I want to make more money. How much money do you want to make in 6 months or 1 year time?
Love - I want my relationship to be better - When will you know your relationship will be better, give result that will let you know that you've accomplished the goals.

3 Goals setting is followed by action.
You don't set goals and sits there waiting for them to come, you have to be motivated to get what you want to be by starting movement towards the goals. Sticks to your goals and be persistence, start it slow if can, actions speak louder than words.

4 Goals setting in writing.
Write down your goals, it makes them more real and print it out and sticks it somewhere you can see it everyday. Visualize them everyday, feels how it is looks like when you already achieve them, and this can influence your subconscious mind.

The last things to remember is that goals naturally evolve, from time to time, we would change our goals in certain levels of life. Change accordingly and be firmed to your goals.

Being in debt is not fun, it's been 5 months since I started my life to be good in money management. I have been living frugally every month without much entertainment, most of my time spent was either gym, swimming, reading books and writing blog. I'm happy to keep myself disciplined in paying myself first, smarter in spending within my needs and afford ability. The interesting part is get to noticed my debts getting lesser and lesser. Guess what? I am living much more happier.

The journey to debt free (referring to bad debts) requires a lot of determination and disciplined, once you have decided to take the first step, you are on you way to debt free and settling Money problems. It takes a thousand miles to begin with a single step. Money shortages are always stressful and serious debt can emotionally drain you.

Thus, you can find dozen of debt management articles spread across the internet, you can read and understand them, but most of us need to dealt with ourself first, the biggest enemy is ourself. Life has up and down, different period in our life, we would have negative feelings of fear and anxiety.

Glad, after all it just money, take out the negative feelings, money problems can always be solve, you are still breathing, you are still alive, you are not losing your loved one or diagnose by incurable disease. You should be glad.

Accept, and don't blame. Part of your debts could be from your spending habit, it's your spending decision to create the problem for youself no matter you are aware of it or  not. There's always a choice, accept and works towards the responsibility.

Stop, spending is easy, stopping is hard. Digging is hard but stop digging is easy, if you are digging yourself into a hole, it's easy to stop digging. Likewise, same to money, when you stop spending, you are getting better control of your financial. Spend within your mean, you just need foods, water, cloth and a roof over your head to survive.

Personality, there's always good and bad debts, many people value a person by what car they drive, what they wear, what brand they carry in their hand or the brand of the watch they wear. What would be the purpose of having debts when you wear a ROLEX watch? Money is not to value a person status in society but the qualities of the person, character and personality. Sticks with true and honest people who don't really judge people by wealth but your their personality.

Learn, to be a lifelong student, it's part and parcel of learning experience in self-growth, debts you can resolve today can be an experience for you to deals with tougher challenge in future. When there is a challenge, there is always an opportunities, it could be a turning point in life for you to discover a better living lifestyle and a new start of life.

We get the message "Ubah Gaya Hidup", everything just hike up when fuel price increased. House is getting more expensive, stocks market is unstable, banks may increase interest rates. Political drama keep going on and economy isn't getting better, our country is in a mess. It seems like we had no idea what's gonna happen next.

Despite all the negativity that kept pouring in, "Ubah Gaya Hidup" living better for less seems impossible to be truth. In other perspective, a tough time could means a good time to make a difference in your life, a positive change.

How to take advantage in a bad economy?
Many of us are trimming their expenses and going out less, many has cancelled their yearly vacations from their to-do-list, you can utilize this time around to go travel with smaller crowds, MATTA Fair is just around the corner, visit and grab the cheapest package as fast as you can.

Invest, if you have money in your bank account, this would be a buyer paradise to invest in real estate, there may be many houses out for "lelong" and you can get a good location due to many empty lots available. Another opportunity would be starting your business, a great time to serve the market who would like to spend less for more, or perhaps look for a market that has the most number of businesses closing down and start building the root from there by researching the reason and find the solutions to cater for the market needs this time around.

Start a blog and earn money as people would be spending more at home surfing the internet looking for information and ideas to improve their life, aims for something that people would like to read such as money, entertainment, personal development and daily solutions method.

If worst come to worst, you can take this opportunity to explore working abroad where currency is much stronger. If you really have too many expenses you can't cope and in bad shape due bad economy, this could be a good idea to think about.

After all, economy wouldn't be bad all the times, we can make use of the bad times to learn and the good time to save so that we can handle it in future. "Ubah Gaya Hidup" to kicks the bad habits out and cultivate good one.

When it comes to money, it is very sensitive topic to talk about, when something goes wrong, it will ended up in a big fight and worst still affect the relationship that is so close. Everybody fight over money, husband/wife, friends, couple and family members.

No matter how nice you are, when talk about money that's not the way you want, you can be the fiercest person on earth. Money makes the world go round, here's where the common use of "No Money No Talk" came from. Everyone need money to get food into their stomach and a roof over their head, money is not evil, what's evil is the stress that cause by lack of money, for long we have know that stress can affect your mood and emotions, stress can make you gain or lose weight, depression, sleepless, loss appetite, loss interest in sex, anxiety and many more. Stress can kill you slowly and affect your health in long run, so why fight over money?.

If you recall in your past why do you get so angry fighting over money with someone, is it because it does not meet your dreams, desires and goals. Stop for a moment, think again what leads to the arguments and what is cause of the stress and increased the tension. Is it important? Now switch your thought to how lovely and care the person gives to you. In fact, at that point of time, you can only see is their flaws and not why you love them. Even if you win the fight over money and got what you want, unfortunately someone you love and care about suddenly becomes someone you can't be around, do you want that? Money can't buy happiness, money problems lead to stress. Stress can leads to divorce, break up, loss of friendship and disconnect family love.

"No matter how thin you slice it, there are always two sides." - Baruch Spinoza

Whether you want it or not, couples fight over money because one or neither party are lack of money management. To avoid the fight, it is important to know that couple instead thinking like two, both should be thinking and acting like one to achieve the goals they set, goals setting should be realistic and discuss peacefully among each other. Hold to the trust to each other.

Only people make money evil and fighting, money has no problem, if you deals money issues in different perspective positively, you could see the other side of peace and harmonious. If you have read "who moved my cheese", when rat hit a roadblock, they would look for other way out, but unfortunately for human being, when they hit a roadblock, they start to blamed on others. If rat can find other way out, why can't you?

There's always an argument that money can't buy happiness, I had written a post about this in october 2007, can money buy happiness? if money can't buy happiness, the same fact goes to happiness can't buy money. 

If money can't buy happiness, what can? Are you sastify with your current job? If you does, on what level? Money is definitely important to survive but there's a need to balance equally between Money and Happiness in long run. Most of time the job we are working now might not be the ideal job we are looking for and many of us fall into the line not by choice but by accident. We accepted the job, learned and stay in the job because of benefits and higher pay, we believe that we don't have any options left to choose.

If you choose to stay in the job merely because the job give what you want and moreover it give you certains level of comfort to perform the task with colleagues you are familiar, routine tasks you have been doing all the while and salary that you can survive, but most of the time, this doesn't ensure you for a lifetime happiness. Till then, do you think a degree is still necessary? A college degree only open up you to the scope in the field you are expert at, but restricted you to other fields to discover. Yet, it came to surprise that most of us doesn't really work on what their qualification for that line and we are taught to major at what field by influenced (by friends, relatives, parents and media) that guarantee a good future at that point of time.

After spending four to five years for a degree and the cost involved, we believe that we love this line and journey, but after working for five to ten years down the road, we lost the faith that it guarantee our happiness. We accept whatever we can take and salary we get, keep convincing ourself that there's no choice in our life and this is suppose life are meant to be, we are locked in here and no way out.  If we keep doing what we already have and what we already know, it's just a routine, it doesn't make us happy. It doesn't fulfill the dream of what we could be. We accept it because we believe that's the way life is.

So, what is money and happiness? If you are given a choice to determine your life with money and happiness, which one would give you more sastifaction. Looking at what we expect and finding out what actually value us most by giving rating and deem most important can give you piece of sastifaction. In fact, the term "money can't buy happiness" is depend on how you give rating to your happiness and money.

I felt sorry to myself for not blogging for weeks, where's my goals, where's all the promises that I have make to myself. Missing in action for weeks, back to reality again, recently just caught up with forex trading and taking all my free time to understand and learn the system. I would say interesting and still much to learn. Here's where I start - babypips.

What does successful means to you (in terms of financial)? If you want to be successful, then you should go to motivational talks, seminars and read up all the latest self development or financial books, how to earn multi million through trading, investment, real estate and etc.

Does that really make you millionaire or billionaire? If it's so easy then everyone would be rich!, this is what I get recently chatting with a friend in mamak "reading a book and joining seminar would get your rich, then everyone would be rich, don't be so NAIVE". My friend really keep me mute for seconds.

Somehow I think back what my friend say could be true if only you listen or read advice from the books or seminar more than ACT, we know we understand a lot theorytically, but practically not. It's easy said than done, the question about how easy successful can be?  It's not easy but the answer to achieving it is taking ACTION. Spending thousand and hundred of ringgit to seminar and reading another book without taking what you learnt into practice means nothing in the end. 

This could see why successful people keep taking action and moving forward by looking for resources they are lack of, while not so successful people are waiting for something to happen and sit still in the position without leaving their comfort zone.

Well, I guess I should start moving and acting on what I know now rather than waiting what I want to know tomorrow. At least I have taken the action no matter it's large or small, it moves me closer to achieving my goals.