Discovering your true purpose in life

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I have always been very intrigued with this term “delayed gratification” and am a strong believer in what it means. A simple way of understanding it is by asking yourself if you can wait to enjoy something that could have better consequences in the future.

A lot of books give this example. A child is being offered ten sweets. He can either take the ten sweets immediately, or wait for an hour and be given twenty sweets instead. What he chooses in the end is a good example of delayed gratification.

If the child had simply taken the ten sweets immediately for his own enjoyment, with no regard for the extra ten that could be his, he displays no signs of delayed gratification. if he had however, waited for that hour and in the end received twenty sweets, we can then say that this child has displayed delayed gratification. In other words, he has managed to wait a little longer in order to get more enjoyment out of his twenty sweets.

In life, this also applies everywhere. Are you the type who would spend every single cent of your salary on clothes, movies, food and drinks once you receive it; or are you the type who would save a little each month and after a few years have enough to take a trip to a desired holiday? I applaud and congratulate you if you belong to the second category.

There is no right or wrong category to belong to. After all, there are all types of human beings and life would be so much less interesting if we were all the same. But I believe that delayed gratification exists in people who are able to look far into the future and plan for a bigger picture, and hence is able to be more successful in the long term.

I myself have unconsciously displayed delayed gratification back in school, when I would choose to stay home and revise my school work instead of hanging out at Macs with my friends. The result is evident as I emerged tops in my graduation year.

How then can you also learn to delay gratification to enjoy its benefits? First, you have to believe in it and that it will have positive consequences for you. If you are the kind who ‘lives for the moment’ then I’m afraid this concept might not sit well with you. If you however wish to use this concept in certain areas of your life, it will already be a good starting point.

Once you believe in it, you have to start living it. Take baby steps in applying this concept. For example, if you come across a situation that enables you to choose – whether to go for a coffee break or finish up that proposal that could earn you a promotion – delay that coffee break and concentrate on that proposal. The long term positive consequences of a promotion far outweighs a few coffee breaks. Try to avoid the easier path, and instead ‘force’ yourself to do the tougher thing first. You will soon come to realise how powerful and how everything falls into place when you start to practice delayed gratification.

Enjoy the greater things in life with a simple concept

If there is anything that is constant in life, that would be CHANGE. Cliche and overused phrase really, but how very true.

Everything changes over time, whether you like it or not. Feelings about a person change over time ; you can like a person initially, fall in love with him, and yet could unfortunately also hate the person eventually. You can be a potato lover one day and then the next when you become pregnant could be disgusted by it.

We have all undergone changes in our lives in one way or another. Whether the change is for the better or for worse, we cannot tell. But there is one thing that I have learnt about changes, and that is never to say ‘Never“.

When I was younger, I was a determined person, well, to the extent of being stubborn. I held my opinions strongly, and was proud that they differed from the norm. Like how in university, when my girl friends around me started tweezing their eyebrows and I refused to do so, stating that according to ‘fengshui’, my eyebrows were the windows to my wealth. Or how I didn’t like putting on makeup to school, even though my friends were doing so. Or even how I hated allowing my hair to flow over my shoulders because the weather was simply too hot, and tying it up in a ponytail was the logical and cooler way to go.

And yet as years went by, and I grew up and learnt more about grooming, and I went for facials and had make up for presents, that those so called beliefs and opinions about what I should or should not do slowly disappeared. Gradually, I started to tweeze my eyebrows to keep them shapely, had fun experimenting with different kinds of make up and even allowed my hair down as it looked sexier and was less painful on my scalp (really, it’s probably because air con is more accessible when I started working).

I had to ‘eat my own words’ as I realised that I had changed. That the things I had said “Never” to, I had started doing now. And I laugh at myself, for having been so adamant in my thoughts, my actions and my words.

After all, things are never (opps, or should i say ‘hardly’) stagnant in this world and we change as we grow and we learn along the way. Wouldn’t life be boring if things didn’t change? So the next time you catch yourself saying “never”, try hard to think again, and rephrase those thoughts Things ‘never’ stay constant….

Our roads are so often paved for us that when we reach a dirt road, we don’t know how else to move forward. Since young, we have been given all sorts of advice on how things should be done, and even though sometimes we want to do it a different way, we ultimately succumb to the ‘right’ way. And then when we are older and are presented with more difficult challenges, where the ‘adults’ no longer have the ‘correct’ answer, we tremble with the fact that there is no advice that could be given and that we are now faced with the DECISION that we must make for ourselves in order to move forward.

My growing up years seemed to be bright and easy. From primary to secondary to college and university, I managed to get good grades and was in respectable extra curriculum activities; was given good opportunity to shine and was recognized for my contributions. When it came to the working world, however, I faced many difficulties. Not because the same old hardworking method did not work anymore, but because the results are no longer simply dependent on myself.

In the past, working hard and smart could only result in one outcome – and that was good grades and recognition. Unfortunately, in the irrational world we live in, when I started working, I found that working hard simply doesn’t mean that you will excel in your career or business.

I have had the opportunity to work for an organisation as well as to operate many small businesses. In that particular organisation I worked with, I grew to realise that getting into the good books was what contributed to your success – you get better pay, more perks and less work – as compared to perhaps someone who works long hours and contributes a lot in his or her area of work. When it then came to starting my own businesses, I realised that it doesn’t matter how hard I work or how many hours I put into the business. What really matters is the customers opinion – whether they like your product or service. You can spend hours on an idea, only to figure out that it’s not what your customer wants, and then you have to go back to the drawing board. Or how many different ideas and promotions you can try, but if the customer ain’t biting, you ain’t getting your monetary results.

Hence, the logic of “work hard equates to good results” is just not as simple as that. There are so many challenges that are in the way from beginning of a business to the end (if there ever is one), and I’m just starting to learn. Apparently, challenges don’t like to come singularly. They like to come all at once and see how we handle them.

The most recent challenges I have came all together, handling finance, suppliers, staff and marketing. A handful to juggle I know, and it’s been killing me. But it has also made me see and made me want to rise up to it even more. After all, what doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger. With each realisation and acceptance that whatever challenges come my way is only meant to make me tougher, it makes it much easier to face the challenges and to overcome it.

Of course there are many times that the will falters and i ask the rhetorical question “Why me? Why now? WHYYYYYYY???”.

The only answer to that is “Why not you???”

True. Why not indeed.

And as I face my challenges head on, there is no longer anyone to guide me, to tell me what to do, and how to do it. It becomes a matter of trial and error. Perhaps then, this is the true formula for success. Wish me luck.

It is amazing sometimes how you might already be doing something regularly and yet be unaware of its existence. I was in such a situation until I read a book about positive imaging. Looking back, I realized that subconsciously my mind had been behaving in a certain way, my thoughts had been steered in a certain direction, and yet it was only then that I realized what I had been doing all along.

It has been said that in order to get what you want, you have to focus on it. You have to be able to see it in your head, visualize the end results and somehow, eventually you will receive it. I did not realize that I had been doing the same thing since I was in school. Thinking back, I had been visualizing my results every time I studied for my exams. I would back up my hard work with positive words of encouragement and tell myself that I would get my ‘A’, and I could actually see myself receiving my exam paper with an ‘A’ on it.

Almost, if not always, the result would be true. I would end up getting an ‘A’. Back then however, I would simply attribute it to my hard work and nothing else. Seems like positive imaging was also playing its part.

How then can we be utilize this powerful imaging technique to our advantage? Do we just think about what we want and hope that it will come true? As easy as it may sound, it takes more work than just that. According to authors who have wrote on this topic, including famous Norman Vincent Peale, it does take a lot of effort, not in coming up with the thought, but in maintaining the thought constantly until you attain your objective.

Say for example you want to get a promotion. After working so many years in the same job, you deserve to be promoted, especially since you managed to produce stellar results for a few recent projects. But you think about being promoted for one day, and the next day you’re back to slogging for another project and the thought gets pushed to the back of your mind. After another few months, you are faced with lots of stress at work, and have been working super long hours and once again the thought of you being promoted surfaces. You cannot stand it anymore! You have to be promoted. However, another important project comes along the next day and you are soaked in the mesh of work you have to do. This continues for a few years and then when you can no longer take it, you look back and wondered why you never ever fought for your promotion.

This scenario is probably very common among your friends and colleagues. Everyday, you will probably hear someone complain about missing out an opportunity or when someone else gets promoted, they viciously wish them the best. What you probably need to do really is to think about it CONSTANTLY, EVERYDAY, EVERY WAKING MINUTE, EVERY SLEEPING MINUTE. You need to think of yourself already sitting in that coveted office space. You need to imagine yourself handed a promotion letter one afternoon, imagine everyone in the office celebrating with you, imagine everyone patting your back offering their congratulations. Be as specific as possible. And the key is to hold this thought in your mind for ten minutes every morning and every night without fail. For it is indeed true that if you want something bad enough, you will get it. And if you think about something everyday, it will eventually come true.

I assume a lot of people probably know about this concept, if you can call it that, and are thinking that it has not worked for them yet. Well, it does not hurt to give it a try since it is free, and all it takes is a dose of discipline. And to get what you want, you have to be disciplined. If it is not working for you yet, you probably have not been doing something right. After all it has worked for me, and will continue working for me as long as I put my mind to it.

I remember when I was searching for my new apartment. I wanted to get this particular unit so badly that I started seeing myself viewing the property and actually paying the deposit to that unit. I even wrote down the unit no and the address and memorized it, pretending that I already owned that address. True to the power of visualization, I managed to get a call to view that unit and today I am proud to say that I am the owner of that apartment So if you ask if I believe it works, I would have to say I sincerely do. If only more people were aware of this wonderful tool.