Goal Setting & Visualization

Last Saturday, I had the opportunity to attend a goal setting session for the upcoming 2007 financial year which begins tomorrow.

One very important point is that learning is a life long process. This means that those people who have a craving to absorb as much knowledge, experience & information are the ones who will succeed later in life. However, having these 2 things are not enough. Its what you do with it that will make a difference.

It is said that experience is not what happens to us in our daily lives but how we deal with it, learn from it & grow into a better human being that really matters.

In the line of business that I’m currently in, goal setting means facts & figures. This of course is compulsory as taxes & death but why stop there? Be creative about it & that is how our master trainer for this previous session last saturday suggested that we visualise in writing & graphics on what we would like to achive for 2007 & how it can be done.

As an example, lets say you would like to be the top performer of your company for next year. Imagine your picture on the headlines of a major newspaper or on the cover of a widely distributed magazine. Imagine the headlines. What you would say, how you would dress & also imagine who you would like to mention in your feature article that led to your success the entire year. Imagine your personal success secrets that you’d like to share with the readers.

After the imagination phase, put it in writing. Do a mock up using any desktop publishsing software such as MS Publisher, Photoshop or the likes & print it out in vivid color on an A3 paper. Have it framed & put it somewhere that you can look at everyday. This is for your personal use.

Once you get the feel & aura of it, the passion to work towards that goal should be 2nd nature. But it all begins with you.

Due to copyright reasons, its unfortunate that I can’t share with all of you my masterpiece but I’m sure the brief explanation above will give you at least some ideas on what I’m trying to explain.

Try it !

Never take things for granted

I currently have about 70GB of data to back up on DVDs but my notebook does not have a DVD-RW drive.

The idea of buying an external drive has been boggling my mind for the past month or so, but then again the idea of purchsing an entire new notebook with 2GB & the latest state of the art specs have also been haunting me lately.

Solution? I’m lucky to have friends/relatives who own some of the latest notebooks with a DVD-RW drive. So why buy when you can just drop by their office/house to burn some DVDs which might not be of any use at the end of next year or so…

Off I went into the night to my uncle who lives 2.65KM away from my residence. The distance of his house was not as exciting as the fact that he had just been given a new Sony Vaio notebook which costed his employer almost RM8k.

So, to my assumption, with RM8k worth of hardware, the DVDRW drive must at least be 16x in speed. I was totally WRONG!

I found this out the hard way though. After it took the first DVD almost 20 mins to burn, it finally dawned on me that the DVDRW drive was actually a 4x.

The moral of this story? Don’t buy Sony?!

hahaha! Just a joke.

The real moral is, for what ever matter or issue at any time and place, never ever ever take things for granted because it might not only cost you extra time, money and energy but it might also put a big dent or totally wipe out your reputation.

Too Much Cash?

This morning I had an appointment with a prospect who was shopping around for an education policy.

As stated in my previous article today, I  did what I usually do & that is to initially share the concept of Income Protection before moving on to what the prospect wanted, in this case, an education policy for his 2 children. Based on the facts he presented to me, this young businessman had a high positive networth (in plain english, he has more money/assets than he owes to others).

Another interesting fact was that his current policy & financial portfolio is sufficent to cater for all his income protection needs at the moment. Thus, he was really into purchasing this education policy for both the children not only because he had some extra cash to spend but also due to the fact that he very was well interested to benefit on the tax returns that comes with education policies.

Now, to be honest, I can confidently say that he is 1 in a 100 because all the other prospects I meet usually wind up into one of these categories :

1. They do not have sufficent income protection
2. They have not been advised on the importance of income protection
3. They do realize the need to protect their income but put it on hold for other less important things
4. They have many insurance policies but not even one of those polices are for the sole purpose of protecting thier income
5. They haven’t the slightest idea on what income protection really is

Which group do you belong to? 

Business Planning 2007

Yesterday was a very exciting session for me and 10 other consultants from our team. There were a lot of new things that we learnt from our leader & also our guest speaker from the HR Department.

It always suprises me that no matter how much you might think you know & no matter how many training sessions you’ve been through, there shall always be something new for you to learn, provided that you are in the correct state of mind.

One good point for me yesterday was to make sure that at the end of every day, to write down the main points that you have learned for that day. It need not be a new formula in physics or chemistry but maybe just one sentence that will eventually help you to grow further in life for the days ahead. Having it in your head & putting it into writing in a small book that youcan glance through are two different things.

Our group direction for 2007 is very clear. We will focus on two very basic but vital aspects of life insurance as a financial tool. They are :

1.  Income Protection
2.  Savings Protection

Under Income Protection, we will share with potential clients how life insurance can be used to protect your income for the rest of your life.

On the aspects of savings protection, we will share how life insurance can protect you from the losing yor hard earned money in the event of the unexpected.

You might ask, why are we heading in this direction? To simplify, a huge majority of the public know about life insurance but they lack the fundamental knowledge of how it can be used for these 2 very basic but important purposes. As an example, there is no point in a policy that will provide for your children’s education IF in the event you cannot work tomorrow (due to long term illness, hospitalization or permanent disability),  you will have to depend totally on your cash savings.

Sounds interesting? Well, this is as I said earlier, only the basics.

And to become financially stable, another basic rule is to use other peoples’ money to protect your risks/liabilities. i.e. through insurance.

For further info or if you want to book me for consultation, just send me an email.

R.S.V.P. ?

Ever received an invitation card with those initials or just a plain RSVP? and you just reply anyway without thinking of what it really means but at the least you know that you need to give a reply.

This issue came up in a meeting with some freinds yesterday & it suprised me that not even one of them knew what RSVP stood for (well, like them & some of you too, I was also where they were many years back… hehe!) But one of them knew that the phrase had French origins.

To make it simple, RSVP is French for “Répondez s’il vous plaît”,  which in plain English translates into
“Respond please” or “Please reply”. This is a part of etiquette whereby the inviting party requires the recipient to reply within a speific time frame to ensure that there is enough seats/food/tables/gifts etc. for the said event.

You can read a more detailed article at http://people.howstuffworks.com/question450.htm

I hope that with this bit of info, you can now explain with style & knowledge to anyone you know who might still be wondering what on earth those letters stand for.

You can start with the person who sits next to you at the office.

Bonne chance !

Exhausted

The invitations were from 7 houses. Unfortunately, I had to surrender at 4 coz if I didn’t, I’d doze off at the next house anyway.

Maybe it was the food. Maybe it was the long distance from Bangi to Puncak Alam to Subang to … Or maybe I just needed a shot of Tongkat Ali. hehehe!

Though the journey was long & the buffet spread was really delicious, I kept reminding myself to keep within the normal human consumption limit as there might be additional consequences of failing to do so.

A word of advice for those of you who are going to host an open house in the near future. Please ensure that your food is properly prepared & does not attract flies because if not, there is a possibility that your guests’ stomachs might be at risk…

Open houses & diarrhea

Aidilfitri is a month long. When I was a kid, I remember that the occasional visits to relatives & friends houses was the main thing to do during those first several days of Raya. And since school was usually off for a week, that’s also how long the events lasted.

Today, in KL, its totally a different story. Opening your house is definately the way to go. Why? Its an easy one shot thingy after which you can then proceed to visit the others who were there to visit you. How is your weekend? Mine (like yours too I’m sure) is pretty packed.

Today alone, there are 6 invitations that need attendance. The logistical outlay is not as fantastic or fuel economical as I would like it (but mainly its the driving around that wears me out). At the rate of 6 houses per day, there should be no worries of breakfast, recess, lunch, tea, dinner & supper.

But then again…

Last night’s open house which seemed like 1 turned out into 3. Well, if you happen to know your neighbours personally, this is what happens because from one house, you just get sucked into the congregation & move to the next available open house on that particular night. So, it was dinner, dinner & supper.

There was one neighbour who seemed a bit quite last night. Knowing him, he’d usually be a lot more cheerful & vocal but after some catching up, I learnt that he had just gone through the classic diarrhea process via the ‘whole family’ package. He said that it was not as bad for him and his wife as it was for the kids because one of them had to be warded. This was serious & due to that, I only ate the minimum during those 3 houses last night – playing safe as some would call it.

Now, we can’t totally blame it on open houses. You might just catch diarrhea on the way home from work because you just could not resist stopping by the roadside to buy some delicacies for tea or maybe the place where you had lunch that day was ‘recycling’ the previous day’s leftovers.

Open house for the kids mean – ‘duit raya’, for teenagers – ‘the oppurtunity to go dating with free food or just a chance to get a closer look at the cute girl next door’, for students -’eat all you want’ but as for adults – ‘to maintain that long term relationship between friends & family’.
At least in my opinion that is.

So, eat all you want but BEWARE of the capital D which stands for Diarrhea …

A Quote from the animation movie Robots (by PIXAR)

Another movie that I had a chance to watch courtesy of a friend who loves animations. What I’ve learnt is that these kind of movies don’t require you to crack your head as in the Matrix but the values that are inculcated are so vital to our daily lives.

In the movie, when Rodney wanted to give up on his lifelong ambition of becoming an inventor, his father Herb has this to say : ” A dream that you don’t fight for is a dream that will haunt you for the rest of your life”

So, if you already know what your dreams are, go all out and fight for it!

Hooked up in front of the MATRIX

Yup, that’s where I was in the past week or so. It’s easy to buy the DVDs but its not that easy to finish the trilogy of 6+ hours in 1 shot because I do have other things to do.

Of course I have watched this movie before, but this time around, you tend to pay more attention to the details. The coding, the inteligence & the actions or things deemed impossible.

How every aspect of human life is replicated into the digital world such as what are programs, anomalies, viruses, glitches, hackers, oracle, architect, and of course the 1 and only Neo. This movie also questions/tests the capabilty of the human mind to think beyond what seems logic & not bounded by a set of rules & limitations as that of machines.

Where artificial intelligence is concerned, I haven’t a clue whether the world that we live in today will end up as what is depicted in this movie.

Impossible? I don’t think so.