Self sabotage is self defense

After doing my own training for close to 2 years now, I notice among my participants, friends and relatives, there are many who are good at being bad. Strange? Not really when I explain further. Have you spoken to someone who is in trouble and tell you how down he is. However, when you start giving suggestions, suddenly he transforms into a super energetic guy to tell you why he can't change or act on his problem. Suddenly, he is motivated to convince you that he is NOT motivated. Still sounds strange? I call this act Self sabotage. It is aplenty. If only this guy can use the motivation for a better objective, things will be really different. Then, the next question is 'why not he does that?'

I believe the root causes are lack of self confidence and fear. When a person lacks confidence, he does not only sees his weaknesses and not his strengths, he also wants to tell the whole world his weaknesses. When you ask someone who has fear in presenting, they will tell you all the weaknesses they have 'confidently'. Hence, telling the world his weaknesses seems to be his way of boosting confidence (although it makes things worse at the end of the day).

For those who have fear, not knowing is the biggest fear of all. Between a fear of something and a fear of nothing, fear of nothing is definitely more scary because it can mean ANYTHING. Logically, it makes sense too. Which one will you choose: a fixed problem or an ever changing problem?

If we look at both the factors, the reactions we see are generally how a person is trying to defend himself. His defense techniques may not be effective, but that is what he knows until now.

How can we help them? Give them a metaphor. A good example will be if a guy normally lets the girlfriend get into a taxi before he goes in thinking that it is his way of protecting others, what happen if the taxi speeds off before he gets in? Wouldn't that jeopardize his gf? This metaphor will help us convince the person that he has a need to defend and protect but at the same time, he needs to know better methods. This will open up the person more and at the same time allowing them to hold to their mode of 'protecting themselves.

So for a person who has trouble presenting, would it be easier and more effective to ask :
'Do you want to learn how to present well?' versus
'Do you want to know more how to protect yourself better when you give a presentation?'

Second question will have better alignment. More importantly, it will not trigger off the person's defense mechanism of convincing you that he or she cannot do it.

Self sabo to self defense to self realization to self motivation.

The King and the Prime Minister

There was once a king (unconscious mind) who always meant well for his people. However, he was gullible and take messages as they were. To protect him, the Prime Minister (conscious mind) was usually very cautious about external influence to ensure that the King was not badly influenced.

Both of them worked together to manage the country and both meant well for the people. However, the relationship between them was strange because the king was speech-impaired and as a result sometimes the Prime Minister (PM) could not figure out very clearly what the King meant. To make matters worse, the king also had some hearing problems at times and so could not catch what the PM wanted to tell him.

The king sometimes went to the city to learn more about the condition of his people. From his trips, he gained different experiences and because his bodyguards also could not clearly understood his questions, they would sometimes gave wrong answers. The King being the gullible type, took the answers as they were without questioning them. When he went back to the palace, he would write new decrees and had the PM implement them. The PM knows some of those decrees were not the best for the people but being the PM, he could only advice the king.

One day, the PM shared his challenge with a wise man and the wise man came out with a brilliant idea. As both of them could not communicate well with each other, he advised the PM to jot down all his words and actions and create a dictionary out of it. From then on, the PM could then use the king's 'language' to communicate effectively with the king. Ever since, the ideas and implementation went well each time and the country and its people live happily. They have developed a new communication method and today we call this method NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming).

The Cast:
King - the Unconscious Mind
PM - the Conscious Mind
Country - our body
People - the people around us

Director's comment:
Our unconsious mind is very gullible and believe every experience that it goes through. From those experience, it starts to create different behaviour that meant well but not always the best behavior. Because of this, the conscious mind always try to protect the unconscious from negative external influence. The tricky part is the conscious mind is also moulded by the unconscious. So, even when the conscious mind has a good intention, but the behaviour exhibited can be totally opposite and it could make us feel helpless of 'why we do what we do.' The new communication method in this story is NLP where we learn the different language to talk to our unconscious and with better rapport and communication, we are now able to work with our unconscious mind to create behaviors that are congruent with each other.

Without time, everything is nothing

In advertising, the works are divided to 2 main components. One is creative which creates the nice, beautiful and inspiring artwork. The other, called media, is the one putting the artwork in the correct media like magazines or newspaper to reach targeted consumers.

Well, that's advertising. I also notice the similarity in life. We can have a lot of great ideas, even a lot of courage to execute some crazy ideas that we believe can save the world. However, all these great ideas and big beliefs are just like the advertising artwork. If they are not shown, it is merely good in-house materials. All equal to nothing if we do not have the time to execute them. They become good ideas...and period. They will not turn into reality. It's just great 'in-brain' materials.

Hence, having the time to execute our ideas is one damn important job. How can we find time? one may asked. Look around us, look at the amount of time wasters we engage ourselves in. How much time was spent in talking over the phone, checking senseless emails, reading gossips that has totally nothing to do with us, spending the dreamy time in the toilet, applying the i-guess-may-work cream on the face and other treatments, making unnecessary decision on a shirt or blouse which is just a t-shirt to be worn as pyjamas....

Got the idea? Time aplenty my dear!

Cause and Effect

'Cause and effect' is quite a universal understanding and can be found in many religions as well. For example, 'reap what you sow' and 'kamma' are commonly used in our daily conversations. What I intend to highlight here today is the concept of 'kamma' and its importance in this life, not the next nor the previous but THIS life.

I noticed that among Buddhists, each time when the subject of kamma appears, somehow the discussion links to past lives and future lives. While I subscribe to this concept too, but hey, wait a minute, don't causes happen in this life and effects received in this life? To me, it must and it will. I intend to discuss this today because otherhwise, the discussion of kamma becomes 'philosophical' as it talks about past and future lives and such discussions may create an impression that focusing on good kamma is for the next life and implies that it doesn't help them NOW.

The law of cause and effect simply means that what you have done has an effect to yourself. The effect may come immediately or later depending on the conditions for it to happen. When I say 'later', it could mean 5 minutes later, 1 year later or 50 years later, all depending on the conditions for the cause to take effect. More importantly, kamma doesn't necessarily mean 'good' or 'evil' outcomes. It is merely outcomes due to the actions (causes)taken earlier.

If you think I am trying to make the concept 'kamma' as mundane as possible, yes, you are right. The intention is to take out the 'hocus pocus' and 'mysticism' out of it so that we can see its working in everyday life.

Here are some examples:
If you leave your cup in the basin after drinking some sweet beverage, you will likely see ants on the cup by the evening.
If you drive more than the speed limit, you will get a speeding ticket.
If you give your boss a tight slap, you will get a warning letter.

See, kamma can be as mundane as the above examples. It is merely about 'what you do has an effect on you' when the conditions are right for the effect to manifest.

Now, in Chinese, kamma is called 因果（cause and effect). But actually an important word is missing which is 缘。缘 simply means conditions. So, 'cause and effect' should actually be written as cause-condition-effect (因缘果）.

So for the mundane examples I have given earlier, if the cup is immersed in water at the basin, the ants will not visit because the condition for them to reach the cup is missing. If the driver speeds in an area where there is no speed trap, he will not get a ticket. If you apologize immediately to your boss after slapping him, you may not get a warning letter. All these extra steps are actions that create conditions.

So, the way forward for all sinners, good Samaritans, potential saints is the same. Regardless of what you have done, your choice and only choice to improve is to do good. The effects of the good deeds will create either good effect or create the good conditions so that the past bad actions will not take effect.

By the way, the positive conditions are also partly created by our actions. They are the effects of our actions. In other words, conditions are themselves efffects!

Juggling elephants

I read a book with the title 'Juggling elephants' recently. It was a book about how to organize our lives better. As usual, good advice usually comes in few words and advice with many words is usually not good. It is a little thin book with big fonts and one can finish it in less than 2 days at most. So much for the description and let me move to the insights I gained.

The first lesson is that juggling elephants is really no fun i.e. we struggle in our lives trying to balance so many things. At the end of the day, we are not sure if we are managing our lives or our lives managing us.

Our lives can be likened to a circus with 3 rings showing different performances.Each ring represents either 'work', 'relationship' and 'self'.

In these 3 rings, the most important thing is not the acts in the rings. It is the ringmaster i.e ourselves. The Ringmaster has the greatest impact to the performance. Why so? Because the ringmaster's job is more than just introducing the coming acts. He is also the person who manages what shows to add in and which shows to start first.

During showtime, the ringmaster can only introduce one performance in one of the rings at one time. Hence, the ringmaster cannot be in all 3 rings at once. Sounds familiar? How many times we are in a holiday and we think about work and while working, we think about family? Remember that we can only be one ring at one time.

Even though there is a perfect line-up of acts for each ring, the ringmaster always reviews the next event before bringing into the ring. Just because we have planned something, that doesn't mean we must execute it if it is not ready. So, if we have 4 things we plan to do and one needs some feedback from another party, we must decide not to do it because it will not be complete and will waste our time.

Then, naturally someone may ask if that's the case then we will be short of doing something. Remember that the key to success in the circus is to have quality acts in ALL 3 rings i.e. it is always the OVERALL performance that determine our success and not an individual activity.

So at all times, we must ask ourselves 'which ring should I be at this moment?' and 'what acts should I be focusing on right now?'

When we plan the acts in one of the rings, list the acts and look for new acts that can be brought into a particular ring. However, do caution that there is no shortage of acts in a circus. So, do not try to put too many acts into the rings just because they are good. Remember it is the quality of acts that determines the success, not the individual acts.


Every act must serve a purpose and hence not all acts belong in our circus even if some are good. Sometimes when we plan our things, we do have a lot of acts that answer to the same purpose. We need to make sure whether these acts are necessary. We don't have to be in SPCA and PAWS on the same day.

In the list of acts we have made, line up the acts based on what will create an effective performance. Again, it is not the individual acts that determine the success.

When we line up our acts for 3 rings, it is important to schedule major acts in each ring at different times to maintain efficiency and effectiveness. We need to space out the things we like to do so that we don't stumble under our own ambitions. At the end of it, we may not enjoy at all.

If we have to deal with people in our rings,

- remember that the relationship between the ringmaster and the performers affects the success of the circus;

- and so, every team member is important and has to be fully engaged to make the act successful;

- consistently offer positive reinforcement for good behaviour and constructive feedback for negative behaviour;

- people have needs way beyond the obvious ones;

- people sometimes need to relax and not take themselves too seriously.

A circus always has intermission. It is a time for the audience to relax and stretch themselves. But intermission is also a crucial part of creating a better performance. Hence, we still need to take a break (intermission) from our circus and during this time, we ask ourselves the question "what have we done to improve our performance in one or more of the rings?"

Finally, always remember that 'our circus is only as good as the next performance'. Whatever we have done well is in the past. If we want to be good, we must be good in the next act.

If life is a circus, then make sure we are the best ringmaster!

'Try and fix' versus 'fix and try'

The long 15 days of Chinese New Year was finally over or was it really that long? For adults, somehow their watches and clocks tick faster than the kids.

For those how think the 15 days passed very quickly, I'm sure there would be some things that you wished you have done, may be meeting up with some friends or doing the thing you have always wanted to do but never have the time.

I have some unfulfilled or un-executed wishes just like many. But I think the root cause for my inaction is not so much of poor planning or time really passes by that fast. For me, it is definitely a case of 'not sure when the right time is.' I plan to have an open house but then again not sure what the right date is. So for the past 15 days, I have been doing something I called 'try and fix' a date. With the 15 days over, I am still in the 'try and fix' mode. What I could have done differently? I could have done it the way the young people do their things - 'fix and try'!

'Fix and try' simply means you are not sure when the right time is but you fix an arbitrary date and inform others. Then from that moment on, you try to maneuver and orchestrate to try to make it happen. I think this is a better way for at least the date is IN the plan. It may not happen, but at least we tried. It may be disappointing to some, but at least if it does materialize, the rewards are worth it. It may give you some extra work, but at least your 15 days will be longer.

We all know for a fact: 'let's catch up some day' simply means 'the day will never come.' They know it and we know it.

So, if you ever have something you want to do and do not know when, why not fix a date on it and try. The chances are anytime better than you try and fix a date.fix, try

Thunderstorm in the mind

To those who celebrate the Chinese New Year, hope you have good gains besides cholesterol and weight :)

Before I touch on this subject which I'm sure is still a mystery to you, allow me to share a real simple incident that happened to me leading into this important realization.

I have 2 tongue scrappers in my toilet, one with a pink tag and one with a blue tag. My son slept in my room and we shared the same bathroom. One day, my kid learnt to use the tongue scrapper and ever since, he has been using it. As a matter of hygiene, we don't share the scrappers. My son likes blue color and presumably he will use the tongue scrapper with the blue tag. In the morning, i usually wake up much earlier than the rest and usually do not switch on the lights in order not to wake the rest up. In that gloomy bathroom, I will try hard to identify the scrapper with the pink tag. Every morning I do that and then 1 day, I told myself 'just pick one and if it's the wrong one, so be it!' That day was a good day because I realized an important lesson. Here it is:

Many a time, we want to have only the good things to happen. What we do is that we try to prolong some good events for as long as possible. Even if we can, back in our mind, we are still worried that one day, this good blessing may end. At the same time, we think of ways to fight or avoid any bad incidents from happening. If we compare these good and bad things that occur upon us, it is just like the blue and pink tongue scrappers. However, IF we can accept both good and bad events, and accept that they will come one way or another, suddenly you will realize that you have new-found energy and new-found peace. The thunderstorm in your mind suddenly ceases and it becomes a peaceful and refreshing secret garden. Everything is clean, refreshing and cooling.

However, don't get me wrong. We should continue to put effort in making the good things longer and do not intentionally invite bad things to come. The main difference is that, we are NOT WORRIED about bad things happening or good things not being prolonged. In other words, we still maintain peace in the mind regardless of what may come next. Mentally, we accept both and our mind is focused on how to deal with it, rather than dealing with the fear of it.

Have you had a good holiday and back in your mind, you wonder what bad things may happen in the office when you get back to work? Have you had the satisfaction when your stocks in the share market are doing well but you have concerns that the price may go down tomorrow? If we can accept that the good news and the bad news will come, share prices will go up and down...thenn the thunderstorm in your brain will cease.

It's very subtle and sometimes we do not notice. Here is a list of examples and hopefully it will help you recognize the source of thunderstorm in your mind:

- joy of meeting and sorrow of departing
- anticipation of good news and bad news
- good and bad investment
- good rumours and bad rumours about oneself
- genuine donations and scams
- finding friends honest and dishonest
- your loved ones love you more in some times and but less in some other times


Make your mind a peaceful secret garden :)

Another year or another GREAT year?

Happy New Year! Yes time flies and it is another year. Notice the word 'another'? That's what that will happen if we do not use it well...just another year! Many have attempted to make resolutions but even more have failed. What the heck? Who cares, right?

Well, we do not take resolution seriously because we do not see the rewards for doing well and punishment for failing the year. For those who are observant, they do not want 'just another year'. They want the year to be great and each year is not necessarily greater but great new things happen. So, for those who keep their dreams and resolutions, they gain their reward. If it is to be another year, it shall be another GREAT year. For the rest who drag their life along, it will ALWAYS be another year.

So much for the reward and punishment. But some think they cannot blame themselves because they just don't have the time for resolutions, for checking or even for thinking. If this is the case, I strongly suggest that we all start to think of all the time we have for facebook games, all the time we spend in phone calls and all the time we spend in traffic jams whether in a car or over public transport. Make a point that you WILL repossess 5 minutes from these 3 areas every day and you know what? You will have 91 hours in 2011 just to review your actions and resolutions towards another great year.

All the best!